dovegreyreader scribbles

Reading Mitteleuropa with Patrick Leigh Fermor

There will be a Thomas Mann Magic Mountain post on here any day soon, but meanwhile there is nothing like an armchair visit to Mitteleuropa whilst sitting waiting for the Polar Vortex to arrive. It only took that reading of A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor to set the bookish train in motion because as I journeyed with Patrick, books various flitted in and out of my mind.  Some were prompted by his mention of the author, others by the place or the circumstance, and I have spent a pleasurable hour or so wandering around my shelves and digging around in the blog archives.

I still have no intention of reading Proust (though please do continue with your persuasive reasons as to why I should, never say never etc) but I came across a couple of books about him that survived the cull but have been gathering dust.

Proust's Overcoat - The True Story of One Man's Passion For All Things Proust by Lorenza Foschini comes with a high five puff from Linda Grant  " A riveting story...A peach of a book.'

Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret, the reminisces of his housekeeper by the woman who it was said by Proust knew everything about him.

It is a long time since I read Embers by Sandor Marai and Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb but I remember them both as exceptional books. I've written about Esther's Inheritance also by Sandor Marai here.

No reading journey to Mitteleuropa is complete without Joseph Roth. The Radetzky Bridge gleaned a mention from Patrick so The Radetzky March makes it onto the pile. Looking back I see I have had Roth-mania more often than I had realised...Rebellion, Job, Flight Without End, Hotel Savoy, The Wandering Jews  all victims of early posts on here.

Patrick Leigh Fermor, walking across Europe in 1933, had no idea what was to come but as I read I felt a real sense of foreboding, especially in Vienna, and reached for another book of the sui generis category, The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. I had the privilege to talk with Edmund about this book at Port Eliot Festival many moons ago and the emotion of that event will never leave me, nor his five star assessment of an early piece of my pottery oeuvre (bless him for being so nice).

Anything by Irene Nemirovsky fits the remit perfectly because, though Patrick  Leigh Fermor is largely unaware of it, the diaspora is beginning in the far reaches of Europe, exile is becoming a reality for many, and I think Irene captures the essence of it in so many of her books. I've read all those in translation now, so I'll just have to start over until more arrive, my thoughts on most of them are gathered together here

Irmgard Keun drifted onto my reading radar when I started to explore the authors whose books were banned and The Artificial Silk Girl is a real favourite. Doris, a young German woman, finds herself out of her depth in 1930's Germany and her plight is deeply compelling...

'I constantly find myself in situations where I don't know something and I have to pretend.'

I have a beautiful little hardback edition of Kathie von Ankum's translation and I treasure it, whilst Child of All Nations was another excellent read.

I clearly remember an intense Mitteleuropa reading phase when Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schniztler and Jaroslav Hasek all had an outing so it has been good to pick them up again and feel an affinity with A Time of Gifts because they all get a mention.

And of course I am sure you will all have lots of other suggestions...over to you...

And stay warm everyone.

 

And the winners are....

Hello Chums, Magnus here...

A copy of Dazzling the Gods by Tom Vowler will be winging its way to each of these six lucky winners, and no need to do any checking and contacting us because, with a small amount of help from Bookhound, I have emailed each of you just this very minute (what could possibly go wrong)

 

Vic & Val 

Jane

Bet

Chris

Andrea Hoile

Geraldine

 

Thank you for entering everyone and keep your eyes peeled because there are a couple of cracking prize draws lined up over the next few weeks.

Yours in pilchards,

Magnus xx

 

 

Dazzling the Gods ~ Tom Vowler

It can sometimes be down to the luck of the postal delivery (and the gods) that puts a collection of short stories on the top of the tbr pile. The post arrives, I'm in reading mode, nothing to rush for and I'll open the book and start reading. So it was when Dazzling the Gods by Tom Vowler landed.

I met Tom some years ago. He was then living in Tavistock and had published his first collection of short stories The Method which I had enjoyed immensely. He moved to the Big Smoke (Plymouth) and we lost touch so I was delighted when he asked if I would like to see a copy of his latest collection, crowd-funded by Unbound.

Now I think about it I have a few rules for short stories, the question is did these fulfill...

I need them to take me somewhere different...

At the Musee D'Orsay . I really don't want to go there now I've been and I've seen what might happen in the basement, that's plenty....and different.

Find the unusual, the out-of-the-ordinary...

The Grandmaster of Gaza, chess-playing in a war zone. 

'He contemplates the hole she's dug for herself...'

I'm so relieved it's a chess board, my first thought at this opening line is far, far worse.

I'd like a short story to show me around...

Ireland and Debt. The siblings, the streets of Dublin, the child singled out for abuse, the different paths in life and what happens when those paths cross once more.

Let me see the dusty corners...

Dazzling the Gods, the drug user who succumbs to the saddest of crimes to fulfill her longing for something else.

Show me what is hidden, but reveal it slowly... 

The Offspring Badge which subtly reveals why a marriage has faltered....

Remind me of something else...

Romi and Romina, androids and so prescient after seeing that award winning picture at the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition. The robots are on the march

Mix things up a bit...

Clive, Tanya and Roz in Banging Che Guevara

Leave me wondering...

Scene Forty Seven has certainly done that

Create ambiguities... just about every story does this in some way. With clever use of words to wrong foot and send assumptions in one direction before dragging them back..

Be nice to cats... Tom Vowler has already apologised about the cat.

And I haven't even told you about Blowhole and the couple in hiding, or The Arrangement, the professor and his wife and the sadness that seeps out right at the end having been so contained and controlled. Or the bravado and tragedy of Fly, Icarus, Fly.

And there's more. Safe to say every box ticked, a truly fulfilling and worthy collection of short stories. Every Unbound investor must be delighted with their support for Dazzling the Gods and congratulations to Tom Vowler for continuing the ambiguity right through to the Acknowledgements at the end...fact or additional fiction? 

'...and imagine how that scene in Confessions of a Loss Adjuster' would have turned out had my father not arrived home from work unexpectedly that day in 1993 to find my mother in close liaison with Craig from HR....'

As always I would be interested to know your short-story-expectations too, along with recommendations of more collections as I feel sure I have missed a raft of them recently.

Meanwhile I commend Dazzling the Gods to the house and please do scroll down to the next post for gifts.

Prize Draw copies of Dazzling the Gods by Tom Vowler

Hello Chums Magnus here...

It's been a long old winter and really my main challenge each day is to sneak upstairs to rest on a nice warm bed rather than any of this stupid basket-on-the-windowsill-looking-quaint stuff. The only downside is being regularly doused in that anti-flea stuff, the upside is I sulk for hours afterwards and am usually appeased with a tin of pilchards.

But listen up, for your delectation today, the chance to win one of six copies of Dazzling the Gods by Tom Vowler which can go WORLDWIDE, so tarry ye not about putting your name in comments to be in with a shout.

Ah, now here's the thing...

The new threaded comments mean no numbers are allocated for the draw so Bookhound and I will develop a new system (man thing) for choosing the winners which will probably involve him numbering the comments and using the prize-draw number generator as usual, or names in a hat or something. Leave it with us. 

And if you are reading this via your email inbox you will need to follow this link to dovegreyreader and leave a comment there rather than replying to the email.

 

The Friendship of Poets.

I didn't know Helen Dunmore and I don't know Susan Glickman, but when I bought my copy of Helen Dunmore's poetry collection Inside the Wave last year, a few months before Helen died, one of the first things I noticed was the book's dedication 

'For Susan Glickman'

Having also had a book dedicated to me for the first time recently I now understand quite how special this is. Jacob's Room is Full of Books might have been written by Susan Hill, but it's my book really; it's like a baby of mine. I look on the book fondly when I spy it in bookshops and have even been known to give it greater prominence if I feel it is sitting in the shadows; a bit like easing a child to the front of a crowded venue so they can see. I have been known to open a copy just to check my name is still there; maybe stare at it a bit longer than usual; maybe hope that someone will ask me 'Is it any good?' or 'Should I read it?' I'd like to think, being traditionally English and therefore modest, self-effacing and retiring (ahem) that there would be no brag and boast, that I wouldn't say ' Of course Susan dedicated that to me you know...'. But there are no certainties in life. The words might slip and slide out before I could stop them because I am inordinately proud and honoured by the whole thing.

 

And I don't know but I can only imagine Canadian author and poet Susan Glickman might have felt similarly honoured about Inside the Wave; to be the dedicatee of someone's final collection of poems surely an honour beyond thanks, an indication of a very special friendship. The connection was enough to make me order a collection of Susan Glickman's poetry and The Smooth Yarrow  (2012) has sat beside Inside the Wave ever since. 

Inside the Wave is a collection that has become something of a touchstone for me, in many ways a gentle and uplifting elegy, a requiem, by a remarkable writer, and I have read it over and again. It is a book of  resilience and reality, of consolation and comfort. Different poems take on new resonance with each read and it has been revealing to hear Helen Dunmore's children talking about the legacy of their mother's words since the post-humous announcement of the Costa Book Award. About how much those words have always meant to them, but how incredibly precious they are now....

My Life's Stem Was Cut

My life’s stem was cut,
But quickly, lovingly
I was lifted up,
I heard the rush of the tap
And I was set in water
In the blue vase, beautiful
In lip and curve,
And here I am
Opening one petal
As the tea cools.
I wait while the sun moves
And the bees finish their dancing,
I know I am dying
But why not keep flowering
As long as I can
from my cut stem?

Helen Dunmore (Inside the Wave) 

When a final poem, written just days before her death, was published in The Guardian, I printed it out and stuck it in the back of my copy. Hold Out Your Arms the ultimate in consolation and preparation for the next journey.

I was reading both collections again this week, Inside the Wave and The Smooth Yarrow,  and came across a poem by Susan Glickman, dedicated to Helen Dunmore, entitled 'Snow'. It is a poem that reads as a conversation of questions and works best if read out loud with all the intonations of voice that a question and response create. I would normally quote an extract here to give a flavour, but Snow is a poem to be read as a whole so I wrote to Susan Glickman and am very grateful for her blessing to publish it here in full. 

Snow

        for Helen Dunmore 

What is it?
    A storm of feathers
From a bird?
    From a landlocked cloud.
Full of thunder?
    No, full of silence.
Silence?
     As a kind of song.
For one voice or many?
    Many. It is a dance of transient beings.
But you said it was a song.
    I meant a dance. Silence itself, moving.
Where?
    To the edge.
The edge of what?
    Where earth and sky meet.
The horizon?
    The horizon.
Perhaps it is nothing but sand.
    It may be nothing, but it is not sand.
What do you mean, nothing?
    It's landscapes are illusory.
Can you build with it?
    When it is wet enough.
And when it is not wet, what then?
    It cracks underfoot, or hardens into dangerous transparency.
Like glass?
    But without reflection.
Moving like a river?
    Unmoving. Like a lake.
Water then.
    Then water.

Susan Glickman (The Smooth Yarrow)

What is the nature of something so transient. The more I read it the more I felt it, as it moved towards those final two lines. Grasping at something that is so fleeting  yet so very special, something so tricky to define. Without incurring the wrath of Philip Pullman writing in Daemon Voices, as he takes up the cudgels over the 'interrogation of poetry', (especially in the classroom), I found much to love and ponder here, moments like that single extended line stretching out icily into the frozen distance.

I am so delighted that Helen Dunmore has lit my way to Susan Glickman because there is another much longer poem in Susan Glickman's collection which I had only read properly this week.

I loved 'In the Garden' for its realistic take on gardening and plants, all seeming particularly relevant after my recent foray out there and I think we'd all agree with this...

'Like poets, gardeners
never concede failure.
If something doesn't thrive
they promptly transplant it....

But then  I read this, the final stanza...

'Those we love we try to coax into staying
but it is not their way, though they swear
never to forget us, and to return bearing new gifts.
We clutch this promise to us through the chill that follows
squinting at the snow. imagining instead
a blizzard of white blossom.'

 

Ostensibly  about plants as winter approaches (and don't we all love to keep things in flower to first frosts) but what a wonderful analogy it seems with thoughts of losing someone special. Those words arced across to Snow and My Life's Stem Was Cut  and to the sad loss of Helen Dunmore,  before transporting me back to Hanmer Springs, New Zealand and that stunning blossom in the grounds of the deserted Queen Mary's Hospital. In the space of minutes I had travelled many thousands of emotional miles

I have no idea about the day-to-day realities of the bonds of friendship in this case, but its language is out there for everyone to share, so how pleased I am to have discovered this one, and as if to complete the circle and bring me back to where I started, Susan Glickman tells me that her forthcoming collection will be dedicated to Helen Dunmore.

I can't possibly end without my very most favourite poem from Inside the Wave...

Little papoose

If I were the moon
With a star papoose
In the windy sky
I'd carry my one star home.

If I were the sea
With boats in my arms
On this cold morning
I'd carry them,

If I were sleeping
And my dream turned
I would carry you
Little papoose
Wherever you choose.

Helen Dunmore

 

Footnote : A hat tip to poetry publisher Bloodaxe  for bringing Inside the Wave to fruition, and who have been around for a great many of my poetry-loving years featuring large on my shelves. Searching for more collections by Helen Dunmore, and having bought The Malarkey in Waterstones recently, I headed to the Bloodaxe website for any more available titles. How pleased I was to discover they would send Glad of These Times to me for £7.95 post free. Sadly my order was followed by an email of apology and cancellation, a website error as the book is out of print. Never mind, I will find a copy somewhere...and still a hat tip to Bloodaxe for being there.

What  an investment and such incredible value poetry books still represent for the hours and hours they give back in return.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Book of Dust Volume One - La Belle Sauvage ~ Philip Pullman

I feel a bit of a lightweight wading in to write about La Belle Sauvage, the first volume of The Book of Dust trilogy by Philip Pullman. The thing is so much has been written, spoken and generally debated about it already, three months on from publication. After all, I saw my first copy on day of publication in the hands of someone at Auckland Airport on my way back from New Zealand, and whilst I had a bit of a covet for something that might help pass the thirty-two hours it would take to get to Heathrow, I hadn't really planned to read it. I had read Northern Lights, the first in the last series His Dark Materials and bailed out on the second book which lost pace for me. Mea culpa etc.

But then into November, the jet-lag hit with a vengeance and I needed something compelling to see me through the long nights. I listened to an audio sample of La Belle Sauvage and read a sample on my Kindle and was immediately dragged in, plus a local bookshop had the book at less than half-price with some really nice postcards too. So I beetled off to gather together this rescue remedy...I would listen to some, read some and generally immerse myself in this huge great literary distraction.

It worked like a dream, in fact, as I kept saying, the book was worth being awake for. Superbly narrated on audio by Michael Sheen...

...and the book a thing of beauty to have and to hold and to read.

When I needed a rest from listening I read, and vice versa, as I followed the adventures of  eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead and his friend Alice as they rescue baby Lyra from a flood of Biblical proportions and  for which there has been ample warning ignored by all but a few. Lyra must be taken to a place of safety and the care of her father Lord Asriel but there will be trials, tribulations and much danger along the way.

Maybe I warmed to this in an instant because my brother was called Malcolm. It's not a name I've met much beyond the confines of Macbeth if I'm honest, but it will be forty-three years next month since he died and it's a loss I feel keenly as the date approaches.

I can't say I thought deeply about the book as I read and listened at 3am, and nor did I take my customary pencil to the pages, or make copious notes. I was too enthralled by the story-telling and the adventure so I certainly wasn't seeking out hidden meanings and analogies, allegories or any other clever nuances, though I had no doubt they were in there. In fact it was only one of Robert Macfarlane's Word of the Day entries on Twitter last week that resolved one mystery that had never occurred to me...

Word of the day: "Lethe" - one of the rivers of the underworld in Greek mythology, the water of which produces forgetfulness of the past & oblivion in those who drink it. Cf 'aletheia', a Greek word for 'truth', meaning 'unconcealedness', 'unforgottenness'.

Well I expect you all knew but I had no idea.The Alethiometer, of course. The device that gives truthful answers to questions in Philip Pullman's series.

I read several reviews but the piece that proved revelatory (appropriately) to my own reading was that by Rowan Williams, the ex- Archbishop of Canterbury. Entitled The Book of Dust: Philip Pullman may not be fond of the Church but he is intensely spiritual and published in The New Statesman

It gave me a handle on the series which I had previously lacked and revealed potential explanations I had missed. Though Rowan Williams suggests 'this is probably a rather tiresomely abstract preface to the pleasures of reading' I found it somehow built me a scaffolding of meaning and understanding around the books that made sense. One interpretation among many, not definitive, or narrowing my perceptions in any way, but most definitely informing and developing them, because I certainly plan to return to His Dark Materials while I wait for  Volume Two of The Book of Dust.

I am currently slow-reading my way through Philip Pullman's book of essays Daemon Voices - Essays on Storytelling  (thank you Father Christmas) and suspect that  Rowan Williams's choice of title alone may well have caused the author a sharp intake of breath. Philip Pullman has very definite views on the nature of, and the word, 'spirituality', but thankfully he also has very clear views about the places that a book can take a reader, he calls it 'the borderland'... and I'm afraid I haven't been able to keep my marginalia and underlining pencil away from this book, it is superb. A book that is really making me think.

'...the land along the frontier, is the space that opens up between the private mind of the reader and the book they're reading. It'll be different for every individual, because while parts of the borderland belong to the book, other parts belong only to that particular reader - to us: our own memories, the associations we have with this or that particular word or landscape, the aspects that resonate with our own particular temperament...

That certainly explains my brother's name-attachment to the book, but this too...

'...so whereas many readers might be reading the same book, no two of them will read it in exactly the same way.'

So a bit of a gallimaufry of thoughts on La Belle Sauvage, and with the suggestion that those who have read it may have read an entirely different book to me, please do add your thoughts in comments about it, or about those thoughts on borderland reading in general...

And if you read His Dark Materials what thinkest thou... any advice on my planned return most welcome, and now of course I'm wishing I hadn't sent the books to the charity shop.

 

 

 

 

Dreaming of bluebells... thank you Kerry Andrew @kj_funk

Bless Kerry Andrew, singing as You Are Wolf, because she has made a recording of that magical spell for Bluebell which she premiered at The Lost Words event at The Foundling Museum a few weeks ago. 

I'm putting it here so that I can find it and dream of bluebells whenever I want to....and you can too.

 

Dreaming of Sweet Peas & other lovely things...

I don't know about you but I am in need of flowers.

Like plenty of Northern Hemisphere gardens ours is looking ever so glum at the moment. Winter shrubs are trying hard but we don’t have that many of them, whilst everything else just looks matted and muddy and messy. Add in a hefty gust of wind through the greenhouse which took out two panes of glass this week and there was the potential for a slough of despond...

I'd gone in to check my penstemon cuttings with which I am well pleased...

and something else with which I am also well-pleased..

Felt the breeze, saw the glass, swore a bit, put the big gloves on and picked up every last splinter before dogs and cat ran over it, but no matter because the good times are coming and I have been turning my thoughts to Things To Grow.

Last year was not a success. I mostly grew fodder for slugs and snails. Things of Beauty in their shells...

The Enemy when on the march. Here wilfully ignoring the gourmet pellets and tucking into the haute cuisine of a baby sunflower...

I spend far too much money on stuff to kill them, and hours wandering around with the salt at 10pm. Plenty of nights I’d come back in having scored a century and barely made an impression. My strategy was to take them out as they slithered across the grass, except the lawn was a mass of brown slurrified patches the next day so I had to give that one up. Anyway this year I am planning on a menu that the slugs will hate, except for the sweet peas which I can’t manage without. 

Last year’s sweet peas were a disaster. They sort of withered on the vine before they’d even got started which we think was all about having them in the wrong place, it was cold and wet and there were slug battalions of course. It all means no sunflowers, no nicotiana, no allsortsof things, but it also means less feeling as if I am engaging in daily guerrilla warfare.

And so to the Something Else in the greenhouse.

I know this is really stupid and I won’t gain anything by having done it I’m sure, but everywhere was looking so dark and dank and gloomy a few weeks ago that I nipped out to the greenhouse and sowed a couple of dozen sweet pea seeds. I’d decided against autumn sowing, and trying to keep everything frost free all winter, but I suddenly just needed to feel as if I’d thwarted winter somehow. Sarah Raven suggests two thirds of damp compost, put the seed in, top up with dry compost and cover with newspaper....or was it two thirds dry compost and cover with damp? Well, never mind, they are out there, swaddled in newspaper and a top wrapping of thermal blanket, so if they need light they are doomed for now but at least they are warm. I am craving a lot of these...

I ordered the seeds from Ben at Higgledy Gardens, Mammoth and Charlie’s Angel along with some statice, salvia and cosmos which I am hoping are not top of the slug menu, and if anyone has anymore suggestions for a few more slug-hating annuals to accompany I would be very grateful for them. I have had poor results (probably my fault) with a  lot of proprietary seed brands but I always have success with Higgledy Ben's.

And there must be some sweet pea experts out there... what are your top tips about pinching out and planting out and scaffolding and  staking and feeding and things because I’m aiming for prolific again this year.  

Last year I sowed African marigolds in pots for the greenhouse and it blazed a sunny orange through all the dull days, a real success, so I’ll be doing more of those too.

 The perennials and biannuals are slowly making their mark year on year, the aquilegias now thrive and so far have stayed true to type...

 

and my dear dad's pride and joy, his dahlias...

Plus a growing swathe of honesty now which looks after itself..

Nasturtiums and and sweet william pop up wherever they like, along with the nigella. Also an increasing array of ornamental and oriental poppies of which I am overly proud even if they do last barely a day when they flower.

This is Checkers, grown from seed and I'm never doing that again. It took three years and a lot of nurturing to arrive at this, but now  established it's a really exciting day when it flowers alongside Coral Reef

The roses are all behaving too. They seem to have wintered nicely in their tubs, soon be time for pruning and feeding. We hope for a glorious summer for Olivia Rose Austin and the gang

But  it’s nice to slip some annual colour in amongst it all so all suggestions welcome.

Meanwhile how are all your gardens growing...

And do you have sowing and planting plans afoot...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock ~ Imogen Hermes Gowar

It is September 1785, Deptford, London and shipping merchant Jonas Hancock, widowed and childless, is awaiting news of his ship, and I am waiting too, deeply embedded in The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock in my little corner of Waterstones, Exeter. And having just been immersed in some eighteenth century art I couldn't help but think back to the exhibition we had just seen; Francis Towne might have been painting this view of Exeter as Mr Hancock waited...

A View of Exeter - Francis Towne c 1773-1787 (copyright RAMM Exeter)

But what do I make of Jonas Hancock...

'He is a portly gentleman of forty-five, dressed in worsted and fustian and linen, honest familiar textures to match his threadbare scalp, the silverish fuzz of his jowls, the scuffed and stained skin of his fingertips... his meaty face is amiable and his small eyes with their pale lashes are clear and trusting...'

I'm getting that good feeling about the book already.

When the knock eventually comes on the door, and Captain Tysoe Jones is standing there in a jacket so faded by salt and sun that 'it appears dove-grey,' I am convinced to buy. 'Oh good,' I think, because I always take hints of dove-grey as a good sign.

Jonas Hancock will imminently find himself in possession of a mermaid (dead) in exchange for which his captain has sold his ship and whilst his captain is delighted, Jonas is less than impressed.

The mermaid is not a pretty sight, indeed it is 'dessicated and furious'...

'...brown and wizened like an apple forgotten at the bottom of the barrel...its head is large and its fists are drawn up to its face...'

It had 'fearful claws' and a snarl with sharp fangs, and with a torso that ends in the tail of a fish. No stitches to be seen, no glue, no paint. It is dry and frail and the scales rustle as Jonas Hancock picks it up in his two hands, and I have to confess that already Imogen Hermes Gowar has me in the palm of her hand too.

'Only a fool could lose money on a mermaid,' says Captain Jones, 'Only a fool could be angry to get one,' and I am hooked because I cannot imagine what might happen next.

Meanwhile across London meet courtesan Angelica Neal and the seamier side of London life. Houses of ill-repute, filthy streets, debauchery and prostitution prevail. Having married for money and to be 'kept' Angelica, also now widowed, finds herself hovering on the brink of of her former life as a whore but resisting the advances of her former 'Madam' Mrs Chappell. Angelica was a good earner for her and Mother Chappell would love to have her back in the fold.

Mrs Chappell, often likened to an abbess, as if she ran a nunnery and wondrously depicted throughout the book...

'..built like an armchair, more upholstered than clothed...'

as her girls flutter around her meeting her every need. The attention to dress (and the preparation for wearing it) and location (and the smells) is a real plus in this book, details are intricately woven and visually coherent... I could see it all.

And if you have ever wondered what happens when a woman who is built and upholstered like an armchair gets caught short on a carriage drive...well prepare to find out how she deals with it...

And, whilst Mrs Chappell is a full-scale rogue, with that comes the thought that at least her homes do offer a degree of safety and protection for the girls compared to life on the streets and despite the ruthless exploitation involved. Where men are concerned there is no messing with Mother Chappell, she will protect her girls.

Anyway, London is agog with news of the mermaid and Mr Hancock, fine and honest dealer that he is, slowly realises that his acquisition could bring him new-found wealth and he proceeds with an exhibition. Ultimately the available Mr Hancock and the available Mrs Neal will meet and who knows what may happen next. In fact Jonas exposes a side to Angelica's personality that she barely knew existed herself, not the flesh (that has been exposed often enough) but the soul, which in a way spoke for all the women in the book.

Descriptive, enticing writing pervades every page in this debut novel from Imogen Hermes Gower, whilst the research, which must have been extensive, floats  lightly but effectively throughout. There is dependence and sadness, sympathy and joy too and no shortage of wayward living, so plan for your readerly emotions to be tossed this way and that, but expect humour as well, plenty of it. 

There may  however be a single moment in the book, an episode when your enthusiasm may feel ...how can I best describe it... yes, limp and wilting from the excess of action (whilst those in the book are far from) and my advice would be to weather that particular melee, tread carefully across the crowded room, set your sights on the far bank of this particular rubicon and stay the course for the sake of Angelica and Jonas. You will be rewarded.

When Angelica demands a live mermaid and Captain Jones is dispatched to find one, expect sloughs of despond, doubts, lassitude and ill-fortune to descend and put a spanner in the works and at this point I was tempted (and succumbed) to do something I never ever do. I was so deeply invested in the book and the lives that, with about eighty pages to go, I turned to the final page for a glimpse of the last few lines...not to read them mind you...just to clutch at some happy words, because I couldn't bear the not knowing and would need to prepare if this was going to go belly up. I can only liken it to that Oliver-Twist- Moment when the misfortune has turned to the good but is in grave danger of being taken away.

Of course I am not going to say whether I was pleased or in despair, but even contemplating such a sin is surely the sign of a good read.

I suspect The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock might be the book to look out for this year  and a TV dramatisation would be delicious. A book that surprisingly lived up to the hype for me, and is garnering great reviews. Beautifully written, the whole flowed and consumed my attention, and when I wasn't reading it I was thinking about it. I could sit down now (weeks since I finished it) and weary you with every last detail, and I can't do that with every book I've read.

And with the eighteenth century wafting around in my imagination, it's a book that makes me want to revisit Denis Severs' House in Spitalfields too.

One final thought. The book is one of those joyous things to have and to hold...exquisite cover with those gold dots that catch the eye, but at £12.99 I also have to say very sensibly priced for hardback fiction. Meanwhile if you don't want to buy head to library reservations pronto and bag your copy, and if you have read it, or plan to, please do share thoughts in comments.

  

 

 

'Dartmoor a Wild & Wondrous Region' ~ RAMM, Exeter & I buy a book....

I think it's time we went to another art exhibition, you can't get enough of them at this time of year.

The word on the street was that Waterstones, Exeter was much improved and worth a visit, so Bookhound and I set off one rainy day to take in the exhibition 'Dartmoor a Wild and Wondrous Region' at the RAMM (Royal Albert Memorial Museum) and a sojourn in Waterstones while we were in the city.

Plymouth Art Gallery and Museum is currently closed for two years whilst undergoing major refurbishment and expansion and we are missing it, though a revamp (especially the cafe and shop) is long overdue. It's a place full of lovely memories of life in Plymouth when we moved there to live in 1976, and ever thereafter we have nipped in for a wander when nearby. Bookhound was at art college next door, I was doing my heath visitor training over the road at the (then) Polytechnic, and he would go into the art gallery and museum and sketch.

To this day, every time we drive or walk past one of us will start the conversation we had one day back then, and the other will finish it...

Me : 'Shall we go in the museum?'

Bookhound (in all innocence) : 'No, there's nothing new in there...' 

Ah, that's forty -two years of married life for you.

We have often looked fondly on the increasingly moth-eaten stuffed squirrel climbing a tree in its glass case. Bookhound did a watercolour painting of it which we had framed back in the day, I'll be upset if it's been pensioned off when the place re-opens. And it's always good to have a gaze at Scott's Antarctic skis and just imagine, or take in the sheer size of  A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach by Stanhope Forbes. The latter on 'holiday' down at the Penlee Gallery in Penzance last we saw it, and who knows where the skis are. 

Anyway we did the exhibition in Exeter and it was grand.

As brooding and atmospheric as we had hoped, and as the place can be at any time of year..

 

Moorland Scene ~ FJ Widgery (1861-1942) c. RAMM, Exeter

 

We walked out to Nun's Cross Farm last week; in my mind's eye the colour palette seemed to mirror the exhibition we had seen...

It was dark and grey and threatening snow so we took a safe trail that wouldn't land us in trouble...

It was interesting to compare the walks we do now, with maps, compass, flasks, food and good walking kit plus safety gear, with those vistas portrayed in the pictures. The limited definitive locations of the 18th and early 19th century a clue to the inaccessibility of Dartmoor for artists with no access to any of the luxuries of today. Lustleigh Cleave and Lydford Gorge prevailed, but plenty of generic Dartmoor scenes to engage the senses too..

Lydford Waterfall ~ Richard Wilson (c1771)

There was some newer work alongside, and I was completely smitten by this painting by an artist who is new to me but who I must now investigate...

Dartmoor 1974 - Edward Burra (1905-1976)

And this, from 1913, caught my eye...

Clayhidon ~ Charles Ginner (1878-1952) Oil on canvas 1913 (c. RAMM Exeter)

 

If you are heading west the Exeter exhibition is on until 1 April, entrance is free and I can recommend the museum cafe.

I can also recommend the new-look Exeter Waterstones (there are two, this is the one near John Lewis) and feel that we finally have a bookshop approaching my personal acceptable norm for stock selection and comfort. This is not to neglect our smaller independents which I support too, but sometimes I need space and choice.

I sauntered in while Bookhound did his antique shop run. Find me in an hour or too I said...

I had a single book in mind, and as I walked into the shop there were just two signed copies left on the table, where clearly there had been many more. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to invest in this much-hyped book or not, but if I don't read it I can't have an opinion, so my plan had been to tuck myself away in a corner and read the first chapter or two. Before I could blink one copy had gone so I grabbed the last one and settled down. Waterstones, Exeter seem to be encouraging this now; signs suggesting I could take my cup of tea and potential purchases and sit in the new and up-sized cafe, or at one of the many tables sited around the shop. I don't really need permission but it's nice to have it.

By the time Bookhound found me I was fifty pages in and had already bought the book because people were starting to stare at it covetously. If the money hadn't been running out on the parking I might still have been sat there, and the next three days were completely consumed by it.

Watch this space...

The Great Unwritten About : Two

I already have a growing pile of books read in 2018 for your delectation, and rather than attempting to write a full blog post about each of them, and then failing and ending up with a shelf-full of the Great Unwritten About in December, through this year I will do a regular round up with brief thoughts on those, in between the longer posts about others as usual. I'm also back to keeping a written reading journal having abandoned it when I started writing here in 2006. I'm loving it all over again so what will appear here is a potted or actual version of those immediate thoughts...

Please do add your thoughts in comments too.

The Hours Before Dawn ~ Celia Fremlin

Billed as a 'lost masterpiece that chilled me to the core,' this 1958 novel went on to win prizes after publication and has now been re-issued by Faber. I had never heard of Celia Fremlin despite her sixteen novels, which perhaps confirms the assertion in the Foreword by Laura Wilson that this author is 'woefully underrated.' Psychological suspense in a domestic setting, and me gripped by the lives of Louise and Mark Henderson and their three children, and the growing sense of unease at the arrival of a lodger, Vera Brandon, a teacher. Unease becomes menace as poor over-worked and sleep-deprived Louise, beleaguered by domestic drudgery and a less-than supportive husband, finds herself taking a closer look at the mysterious interloper. The book also reads as superb social history of the lives of 1950's women, though I'd like to think my mum didn't have any of this sort of stress going on.

 

Such Small Hands ~ Andres Barba 

Oh I say. Brace for eerie. Seven-year-old Marina has been seriously injured in a car accident that has killed her parents. During her four month stay in hospital she is assigned a psychiatrist who gives her a doll before she is settled at an orphanage. Settled is a bit optimistic because on arrival Marina starts to upset the equilibrium just a little. Think Lord of the Flies for girls and a deeply disturbing insight into the capabilities of a child's mind, untrammeled by mature thinking. The route to savagery seems equally short and accessible regardless of gender. The book is sinister and macabre but don't let that put you off, it is four-seasons-in-a-day reading...sorrowful and tender too, like one of those Japanese water flowers that starts small and compact and grows. I didn't have nightmares but I did think about it for days afterwards.

 

The White Book ~ Han Kang

Translated from Korean. A baby born prematurely dies on the floor next to her mother who has given birth alone in an isolated village far from help on a winter's morning. A sister, born years later, mourns and interrogates the loss with a meditation on the colour white...

'A single handkerchief drifted down, slowest of all, finally to the ground. Like a bird with its wings half-furled. Like a soul tentatively sounding out a place it might alight.'

I drifted into the this book and then trod gently through it over several weeks, and with that sense of stepping on newly-fallen snow, almost as if I was trespassing on something secret and private, even worried about making a mess of such tender thoughts...as an intruder on the intimate and paralysing grief of a mother mediated through a daughter who only has life because the unknown sister lost hers. One of those complete and profound reading experiences.

 

Slade House ~ David Mitchell

Expect confusion and then trust in David Mitchell to sort it, that is the best advice I can offer if you decide to read Slade House. Telepathic twins and a house that reappears every nine years in order to trap and extract another soul to sustain their life eternal. There I told you. But then marvel at an imagination that can create all this. It is surreal invention and alternate worlds, with one foot firmly resting in reality and a hand resting in his other novels. If you have read The Bone Clocks or The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet than you will know what to expect if the inimitable Dr Marius appears in one of his/her many incarnations. As the penny drops so the pleasure of reading a book by David Mitchell increases, and I remember that I still haven't read Black Swan Green so I'm going there next.

 

Bookworm ~ Lucy Mangan

(read via NetGalley. For publication March 2018 )

A memoir built on the scaffolding of children's literature with a repeated emphasis on being a child who loved books, didn't want to do anything else but read books, would seek out corners at parties to read books etc etc. At least Lucy doesn't seem to have had a letter sent home with her from school saying she was reading too many books and would become an empty shell, therefore her reading was going to be curtailed. But if you want a journey through childhood reading, with a fascinating social history alongside, here's the book for you. Lucy Mangan's experience of all your favourites will be in here, as well as detailed analysis of the work of many of the authors. We  almost fell out over Anne of Green Gables, Lucy and I, but the relationship was retrieved when Lucy finally saw the light and loved Anne Shirley. There may be a cautionary tale in here too, one about a parent expecting their own child to become a bookworm just because they were one themselves. No matter how hard we try, however many books we expose them too, and with however much enthusiasm (or coercion) we impart the love, children will still become their own type of reader (or not) eventually. 

 

 

The Dry ~ Jane Harper

These short thoughts are no indicator of a lesser book or lesser enjoyment and this one had me flicking the kindle pages like a demon. The Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year for 2017. Australia is scorchio and tinder dry, this is the literary equivalent of snow in a Northern Hemisphere crime novel, creating the same suffocating and stifling atmosphere that masks the realities, burning them to invisible, just like snow will conceal and freeze them. Why has Luke Hadler seemingly murdered his wife and children before turning the gun on himself? Aaron Falk, now a detective in Melbourne, returns to his childhood home for his best friend's funeral only to find that events from the past continue to cloud the present...a community never forgets, nor forgives, feuds are perpetual. Lies, secrets and tensions so acute that the community is at flash-point. Clever plotting and the use of suspense at the end of each chapter had me reading late into the night (so easy on a Kindle) and I loved the italicised passages recounting actual events, giving the reader knowledge over the characters in the book. Excellent, can't wait for the next book from Jane Harper.

 

The Sleep Quilt ~ Tracy Chevalier

I was delighted to hear from Tracy Chevalier recently asking if I might be interested in seeing a copy of her latest book The Sleep Quilt - Tracy Chevalier and Fine Cell Work.

Looking back I see I have written about several of Tracy's books in the past.... The Girl with the Pearl Earring,  The Last Runaway and At the Edge of the Orchard.

Tracy is another author I first met at Port Eliot Festival when she very kindly came to the dovegreyreader tent to talk about her writing and share her love of quilts.

N

Tracy learnt to quilt when she wanted to include quilting themes into The Last Runaway and we were thrilled to see a very accomplished first quilt (all hand -pieced) unfurl as a work in progress...

The Sleep Quilt - Tracy Chevalier and Fine Cell Work is a collaboration between Tracy and the charity Fine Cell Work,

'a charity and social enterprise that runs rehabilitation projects in thirty British prisons by training prisoners in paid, skilled, creative needlework, undertaken in the long hours spent in their cells to foster hope, discipline and self-belief.'

My Walking Friend and I often set out on our weekly Dartmoor walks in the shadow of the prison up at Princetown. Whilst it looks pleasant on a sunny day the place spends much of its time shrouded in grey mist. Nip across to Instagram over here <<<<<<<< for a snowy walk this week and the prison looking very dark and gloomy.

The entrance archway and prison gate fill me with a sense of foreboding every time I pass...

When I parted company with the NHS in 2009 I was the health visitor covering Princetown where Dartmoor Prison is located.  If I'm honest it's the patch we all avoided having to do back in the day (it has changed these days). It can be a cold, desolate and lonely place at 4pm on a winter's afternoon, with seemingly incessant rain and mist that may not clear for days and days. As I wandered along the wide main street lugging my baby scales and my bag containing everything else, I often wondered about the inmates. Am I allowed to confess that very, very occasionally I envied the possibility of warmth and the dry within...but only that.

For several years I was also part of the local library book group that ran in conjunction with a group in the prison. We would move through a series of locked doors to convene in the prison library and talk about a shared read. We all enjoyed going and the inmates would put on a smile, enjoy some contact with the outside world and we had some really in-depth book discussions with them.

Lady Anne Tree, the  founder of Fine Cell Work elaborates further...

'I pondered the necessity of prisoners having something worthwhile to do during their long hours of lonely idleness I wanted that work to be creative, enjoyable worthwhile and saleable. I was determined that the work should be of a professional standard no whiff of charitable acceptance about it, and should be something of which its creator could be proud. I wanted the prisoner on release to have as much money as he or she had earned.'

The Sleep Quilt itself, commissioned by Tracy Chevalier and measuring 9ft x 7ft, consists of sixty-three squares made by the prisoners and exploring what sleep means for them. It has been exhibited around the country where I saw it at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in 2015 (it won 2nd prize in the Group Quilts category). I was both moved and impressed by not only the standard of needlework but also the stories so clearly stitched into each square. I stitch stories into my work, they did likewise and this had all taken time, thought and no small effort to produce.

Sleep in prison can be a happy release or a rare commodity. For many, night time is when the mental demons gather, there is plenty of emotion to be expressed and it was fascinating, having seen the quilt, to be able to read more about the lives behind the stitches and to read about the benefits of quilting that many of us on the outside already know and understand.

Take this prisoner in HMP Wymott

'I find it very addictive, when I'm not doing it I find I'm thinking of it solving problems ...'

Or this prisoner in HMP Wandsworth...

'Perfection is not usually what's expected in prisons...'

Or this, the camaraderie that quilting creates and proof that it can be translated into seemingly unlikely situations...

'As I started to do the work I was aware of a feeling of calmness that I was experiencing for the first time since coming to prison. An added bonus was getting to know the other guys doing the work, there was almost a family feeling between them in the way they helped one another and spent time actually talking about things other than the usual prison talk.'

The final and mammoth 'task' of quilting the Sleep Quilt was given to one single stitcher...

'A burly Polish inmate in London's Brixton prison who worked ten hours a day for six weeks on it, in between bouts of weightlifting. Indeed he was one of Fine Cell Work's great success stories...'

How interesting to read that the needlework and quilting projects gave these inmates respect  and admiration in a male environment; no teasing, in fact a waiting list of others keen to join.

And there is a surprising and welcome impact on the prison officers too as this guard from HMP Wandsworth testifies...

'As an officer you have to wear two hats. It's a bit of a split personality. With Fine Cell Work you suddenly realise you're a human being and not just a uniform. Prisoners come and talk to you and realise you're a human being too. I am doing something for a worthwhile charity and possibly giving inmates who have an entrenched view of 'The System' a different angle to consider.'

The book is beautifully designed in a small quilt square shape and lavishly illustrated with the block designs on a single page each, making it possible to see the intricacy of the designs, the fabric choices and the stitches, as well as read the thoughts of the makers. And it is sold in aid of an extremely worthwhile cause too...all royalties from the sale of the book will go to Fine Cell Work.

I have been immersing myself in a few quilting projects since Christmas, all part of my End-of-Winter-Can't-Come-Too-Soon therapy, and I find myself thinking about the prisoners and the positive therapy that patchwork and quilting is for them too. I have rejoined the local quilting group that I set up with two friends thirty years ago now, and which has happily gone from strength to strength in my absence, and it is exhibition year so I need to get a wriggle on and get a few things finished (and not send them to New Zealand).

I'm still working on the whole cloth piece but there has been progress even since I took these pictures a couple of weeks ago,I'm onto the outer borders so there is hope...

There is a rhythm and flow to hand quilting, especially whole cloth with no pieced seams to negotiate. I can see me setting up something else the minute I finish this.

How about you...any winter projects to share...

And I would be interested to know your thoughts on Fine Cell Work...

 

 

 

 

Finding The Lost Words and more in London...

It seemed completely appropriate that the second venue for The Lost Words exhibition should be The Foundling Museum in London's Brunswick Square.

For me personally because this is my 1970's happy-London-place, my known little corner of the city. From the window of my street-facing room in the nurses' home at 28 Barnard Street, just along from Russell Square tube station, I could look across to the square and the trees. The Brunswick Centre opposite, now listed and much-respected in architectural circles, struck us back in 1972, the year of its completion, as a bit of a concrete & metal-window eyesore if I'm honest. Useful for a supermarket, a newsagent and a cinema (Jaws and that all-night sitting through War & Peace; the latter, I'm sure I wittered on about endlessly the year we read the book as Team Tolstoy) but beyond that a bit of a bleak, uninhabited, grey wilderness in contrast to the peaceful beauty of the London square next door.  Unrecognisable now with its cafe culture and bustling crowds. For me though it is still one of those found, known and familiar places that I inhabit  with ease in my mind when I am away from it, and revel in when I go back.

And then there's The Foundling Museum itself. Now housed in a building across Brunswick Square, the original hospital (demolished in 1926) was founded in 1739 by royal charter 'for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children.' Babies and children, left with tokens or a piece of fabric as a means of identifying a child, could be 'found' again should family circumstances improve. The Hospital for Sick Children would be established just over a century later in nearby Great Ormond Street, and Coram Fields in Brunswick Square the place where, as student nurses, we would be charged with wheeling out the babies who were well enough for an excursion and some 'fresh air.'

I went to the Threads of Feeling exhibition at the museum in 2010 and wrote about it here. I have never forgotten it and so I sensed connections, the thread of loss and re-finding continuing with The Lost Words and this exhibition.

Having loved The Lost Words so completely, to see the actual pictures, some hung deliberately at child's-eye level, is a real privilege so don't miss this one if you are in London...or Edinburgh, because it's next venue will apparently be The Royal Botanic Gardens there.

Bookhound and I had travelled up for the day last Friday, not only for the exhibition but to hear Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris talk about The Lost Words at an evening event at the museum. Their personable artistic rapport was completely engaging, lots of discussions about the book's genesis, the work on it and the impact it has made, much good humour and laughter too along with several wonderful readings of the spells including a 'duet' on Willow.

...and then there was the music.

Well, now then.

I hadn't really paid much attention to this bit in the run-up. Someone had set a couple of the 'spells' to music and if I'm honest I was expecting a bit of ethereal hand-over-the-ear singing and some twiddling about on a mandolin. Really no expectation whatsoever of what was to come.

Even when I saw Kerry Andrew and spotted the small amplifier resting on the chair I was still thinking, 'Hmm, mandolin and backing track.' Except I couldn't see a mandolin...only Robert looking worried with a small set of bells in hand, and Jackie looking dangerous with a small cymbal...'Hmm, participation percussion...'

What followed was...excuse the shouting (softly though) OUT OF THIS WORLD.

Really out of this world as both Wren and Bluebell (my favourite picture), having been written and painted into existence, were now sung into performance and permanence.

Kerry Andrew is an award-winning composer (indeed she has a PhD in it) of consummate musicality and with the voice of a nightingale. The 'backing track' was laid down live (by her) as she sang, replayed on a loop, another layer added, voice percussion created sounds, spoken word added more depth, some flute (no mandolin) and then singing. Kerry has diamond-clear diction and the most exquisite singing voice extending comfortably over a wide range, and I think I forgot to breath. In fact I think the whole room forgot to breath. Robert Macfarlane's bells were out-rung by the well-timed chiming of a Foundling Museum clock, which let him off the hook; Jackie looked so utterly enthralled (and I was far too deep into the bluebells to notice) that I'm not sure what she did with her cymbal, nothing dangerous or distracting anyway.

I'll swear the wren flew around the room, and that we all heard the swish of the bluebells as we walked through them; the words floating in the air long after the final note, and we all as of one, floating with them. It was one of those life-moments that will never be repeated and to have been there such a privilege. Bluebells had been commissioned by The Foundling Museum for this event, this evening its premier performance, and we can all only hope it will be recorded because that music most certainly cannot be lost either.

To give you a flavour....here's an audio version of Wren. Though to be there; to hear the fuller version, as we did; to watch the music grow and expand and take off in flight; to watch the expressiveness of Kerry's hands, to see it in performance, well it really is something quite extraordinary (sorry to go on but...).

It was good to say hello to Robert Macfarlane again (we first met when he braved the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot Festival in 2012) and Jackie Morris who I had first met at The Lost Words signing at Dulverton, but also to meet Kerry whose debut novel Swansong has just been published by Jonathan Cape. 

Of Swansong Robert Macfarlane says this...

"Swansong is the real thing, right from the start: spiky, strange and contemporary, but always with a dark undertow of myth and folklore tugging at its telling. The voice jags at you, and the plot grips: this is a brilliant novel by a writer - and musician - of frankly alarming talent."

What I did next is something I NEVER do.

I dashed down to the shop and bought Kerry's CD. She sings as You are Wolf ,the CD, Hawk to the Hunting Gone. With its themes of birds in folklore Cuckoo, Swansong, Little Sparrow, Little Wren, Murmuration, Three Ravens, The Buzzard's Heart and one track called Doves, a version of 'When Doves Cry by Prince) it had me written all over it.

Anyway, I ripped the wrapper off , dashed back and asked her to sign it. Though Wren and Bluebell aren't on it (we can but pray to St Cecilia for a Lost Words CD from Kerry) everything else is in a similar style and I needed to take that voice home with me. I have the forthcoming CD Keld on pre-order (via Kerry’s website which links to Bandcamp)  and the track I have heard so far confirms that I'll happily go where her voice takes me.

How other-worldly and other-wordly it was to play Hawk to the Hunting Gone in the car as we drove the fifty miles to the Tamar Valley and home from Exeter St David's at 2am, pondering the whole event and listening.

I plan to hold onto the bright joy of this evening for a very long time.

 

 

 

 

Memento Mori ~ Muriel Spark (redux)

 First published here in 2010

'If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.'

This quote from Memento Mori by Muriel Spark reminded me of something quite bizarre and in the true and very subjective tradition of dovegreyreading I have to share it.

As a young and clearly very impressionable child I attended an Anglican Sunday School, as many of us did in the 1950s. We all wore smart coats and white gloves (yes really) and I'd love meeting my friend Joan; we'd whisper about the latest free gift in Princess,our favoured comic of the moment, in between sticking felt bible pictures up on a cloth board, hearing about missionaries, singing Jesus Bids Us Shine and collecting the crosses for our Bibles on special days and attendance stickers for our albums.

We were very diligent about it all and we had two particularly devout teachers, Mrs Heart and Mrs Youell who impressed upon us weekly that the very last and final words we should all think and say before we went to sleep every night absolutely had to be 'Into thy hands I commend my spirit' just in case we didn't wake up the next morning, because who knows where you'd end up if you didn't.
This used to cast something of a cloud over Sundays and take some of the glitz out of our dazzling new free-gift rosebud rings it has to be said.

Can you imagine anyone saying that to a child now and not incurring the wrath of the Bishop at least?

Well if you've ever tried it at the age of seven you'll understand the anguish I used to go through when all I could think of after I'd uttered the words was the Famous Five book I'd just put down, so I'd say them again...and again until convinced it was impossible to do. Eternal Blyton damnation was my sure and certain destiny because I'd dropped off to sleep thinking about Julian, Dick and Ann, George and Timmy the dog instead.

I think I actually used to be quite surprised to wake up the next morning and as a direct result I may perhaps still retain something of an aversion to thinking thoughts of death last thing at night.
Things took a turn for the better when we moved up to the Seniors and Joan's brother took over as our teacher. I've mentioned it here before but for anyone who missed it, he was eventually to become the drummer in the legendary glam-rock band Mud and I'm sure he quickly sorted out our rather confused theories on eternal damnation.


But I digress, Memento Mori is not about youth, it's about old age and it has to be the most hilarious of Muriel Spark's books that I've read to date. Yet as usual that hilarity interspersed with Muriel's customary moments of acerbic caution and perhaps that epigram chosen for the book reveal something of the depth of Muriel Spark's concern as she traces the fortunes of her cast of characters mostly all well past retirement age. 

What shall I do with absurdity -
O heart, O troubled heart - this caricature,
Decrepit old age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?

                                W.B Yeats, The Tower

The setting is London and vacillates between the geriatric ward in a local hospital and the nearby home of Godfrey and his wife Charmian. Charmian, a once famous author now undergoing something of a literary revival much to Godfrey's chagrin but now suffering from an apparent increasing confusion and memory loss. The short-term memory might be failing but Charmian has little difficulty bringing her long term memory to bear on events when she needs to and Godfrey's penchant for a sight of stocking tops and suspenders soon gets him into all sorts of trouble.

Intrigue and mystery descend when the anonymous phone calls begin...a remote but rather creepy voice says "Remember you will die" and that's it.

Inspector Mortimer (note the 'Mort'...always reminds me of the significance of Mortmain, the father with writer's block in I Capture the Castle) retired Chief Inspector is rather strangely handed the case to investigate and it is he who utters those words I have quoted and slowly but surely fingers the supernatural collar of Death as the prime suspect for making the calls.

Muriel Sparks quotes her own experience of visiting elderly relatives in geriatric wards, as they were then known...it's probably Elderly Care now, in her autobiography Curriculum Vitae, suggesting this honed her eye for the detail both tragic and comic in this novel. The book's dedication to a staff nurse on such a ward seems to confirm her gratitude for the inspiration and I doubt I'll ever forget the inmates. Muriel Spark calls them the 'grannies' and they are a force of hilarious eccentricities to be reckoned with especially Granny Valvona with her penchant for reading out daily horoscopes had me in hysterics...

'Granny Taylor - Gemini. Evening festivities may give you all the excitement you want. A brisk day for business enterprises,' Granny Valvona read out for the second time that day.
    'There,' said Miss Taylor.
    The Maud Long Ward had been put to bed and was now awaiting supper.
    'It comes near the mark,' said Miss Valvona. 'You can always know by your horoscope when your visitors are coming to see you...'

Between them they could bring a country to its knees I'm sure, so when a ward sister of an inclement disposition takes charge you just know her days are numbered...clever grannies.

I have discovered that some of Muriel's novels throw me into an enviable state of readerly confusion; years ago that confusion may have had me casting her book aside, now I relish the challenge. This one is not of that confusing ilk which is just as well given the apparent mental confusion of many of the characters, but how lovely all the same it is to come to all these for the first time now.

The Driver's Seat ~ Muriel Spark (redux)

 First published here in 2010

I'm feeling completely enthused about, and infused by Muriel Spark's writing and that wonderful feeling that I have all those novels ahead of me waiting to be either rediscovered or read for the first time. Peter Kemp's book, the Cleveland County Libraries (Throston branch) reject, Muriel Spark in the Novelists and Their World series published by Elek Books in 1974 is still providing useful background information too.

Muriel Spark is the master disconcerter, her writing subverts, unsettles expectations and is certainly leading me into unknown reading territory.

Or perhaps it's that my reactions all feel slightly alien to my usual way of thinking?

Whatever it is it's quite exciting  and very refreshing.

 If I'm reading a novel that deals, for example with mental illness as does The Driver's Seat , then I'd approach any thoughts I might write here with an element of respect and compassion for  the subject. I wouldn't slip into any of that behind the scenes medical black humour. Except perhaps the responsibility isn't all mine, it's also down to the author to lead my thinking in that direction.

So after a few pages I wouldn't normally be describing the main protagonist as several sandwiches short of a picnic, that would be a step too far, so blame Muriel Spark for the creation of the character of Lise who by page three I realised really was as mad and as disturbed as a bag of frogs. With that came the awareness that I was reading a book that could, and probably would, take me anywhere and everywhere and it did.

Lise...and I couldn't help but tranpose those last two letters to spell 'lies', is due a well-earned holiday from the seemingly mundane office where she works and setting off to buy a new travel outfit purchases something quite outlandish, the colours and designs clash with garish abandon and you almost get that sense of visual disturbance that a Bridget Riley painting offers ..

'a lemon-yellow top with a skirt patterned in bright V's of orange, mauve and blue.'
and a coat over the top
'narrow stripes, red and white with a white collar.'

It's the stuff of migraines that's for sure but perhaps a true reflection of Lise's state of mind, and in sharp contrast to her 'meticulously neat', minimalist, uber-modern and very functional apartment. Everything has a place.

'Lise keeps her flat as clean-lined and clear to return to after her work as if it were uninhabited.'

Rightly or wrongly, I'm quickly leaping to assessments about the distressing nature of mental illness and the impact of uncontrollable mind processes which can so often reflect in a need to control something external such as immediate surroundings.

So Lise boards her plane and heads off and really I can't tell you any more without spoiling the plot, suffice to say Lise is in a driver's seat of her own and searching for slightly more than a rest by the pool and a suntan. 

What transpires is dark, deranged and shocking.

Just about every sentence will make you stop and start, because nothing is as it should be, much is quite bizarre and absurd, nothing is what it seems or what you might expect, or what you might even call normal. Nothing Lise says quite connects to what has gone before or what is to come either so don't expect to feel in the least bit settled whilst you are reading this book. It makes you want to jump up and pace around as you try to get a handle on it, to understand what is going on and interpret and reframe the black humour with which it seemed to begin

'I'm a strict believer, in fact a Witness, but I never trust the airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don't. I've been told the Scandinavian airlines are fairly reliable in that respect.'

It's all imperceptibly replaced by something far more serious, forget bags of frogs and picnics, Muriel Spark left me no room for levity or flippant analysis of Lise's mental state as I reached the final pages.
There are moments too when you wonder why Muriel Spark has chosen a particular word or phrasing over another, and marveling at this book's tightly constructed cleverness. I came away knowing that I had read as serious an account of the deranged, paranoid mind as it was possible to find, Lise's purpose and destiny is unstoppable,

''Dressed for the carnival!' says a woman looking grossly at Lise as she passes, and laughing as she goes, laughing without possibility of restraint, like a stream bound to descend whatever slope lies before it.'

Except deranged or not Lise takes control of her destiny and you know you're just going to have to close your eyes when she meets it.