Mr Pip - post III

As the village becomes trapped in the civil war with both sides looking for a reason to inflict a bit of pain and suffering Watts and Pip take centre stage with the former assuming the fictional character's identity. That proves to be a risky strategy but one that fills Matilda with yet more evidence of how inspirational literature can make someone make extraordinary decisions.

Inspired she then goes on to make some decisions of her own that are always set against the backdrop of the touchstone that is Great Expectations. The last section of the book perhaps suffers from losing the tension on the island. All the way through the theme has been around the question of fiction and reality and perhaps searching for the truth and tying up some loose ends meets with a literary convention but it would have been more profound had it been absent.

A review will follow soon...

Mister Pip - post II

The enigmatic character of Mr Watts starts to catch the imagination not just of the main character Matilda but also her mother who is confused and scared by the teachings of the white man.

A classic clash of ignorance and knowledge reverts to a more tangible one of God against the devil with the non-believer of Watts becoming a target for Matilda's mother. That anger spills over into theft and when the village is raided by one of the sides in the civil war the pebbled tribute that the young girl has made to Dicken's character Pip from Great expectations leads to complications.

Who is Pip is the question the fighters demand? Showing them the book would settle it but the book has gone missing. Of course the question who is Pip is the fundamental one for all of the children in the school as well as for Watts himself. Is Pip, a boy who left his roots to chase great expectations an inspiration, for Watts is the world of Pip's London an escape from the island. Who is Pip is more of a fundamental question than the one the fighter's initially pose.

More tomorrow...

Miles behind

With the current focus being on reading the blog review posts have fallen off a cliff. Just looking at what needs to be reviewed is going to fill up most of this month. Plan to start getting some reviews later this week or from early next.


This is what is due:

The Crystal World by JG Ballard
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
The Ancient Shore by Shirley Hazzard
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Tenth Man by Graham Greene
The Life of Monsieur Moliere by Mikhail Bulgakov
Journey to Nowhere by Eva Figes
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Lost Hearts and Other Chilling Tales by M R James
Legend of a Suicide by David Vann
Explorers of the new century by Magnus Mills
The Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
Man in the Dark by Paul Auster
Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
Murder at the Savoy by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

Mister Pip - post I

Only just started this and already you get the feeling it is going to be a clever interweaving detailing how fictional characters and the power of the written word can sustain people in extreme circumstances.

The villagers of a community that exists by the sea are introduced to the world of Dickens and Great expectations via the last remaining white man who has stayed behind after the miners left. In the face of a civil war the small seaside community gathers round the school as the focal point to rebuild the community and inside Pop Eye, an englishman far from home, introduces them to the world of Victorian England.

In some respects it feels like a cross over with a cinematic experience because so far it could easily have been the first 10 minutes of a film. See if the rest manages to keep that going.

More tomorrow...

bookmark of the week

As thoughts start to turn to Christmas and candlelight carol services it reminds me of a long held ambition to go to a carol service at a large cathedral to enjoy the sort of experience that has been going on for hundreds of years. I'm yet to do it but if I was then Canterbury cathedral would be a very good choice.

Murder at the Savoy - post II

Although this book might not have the pace of some of the earlier Beck books you have to admire the confidence that the authors have in opening up the cast of characters. Some people would rely on the main detective and a sidekick, think Morse, but here there are a handful of police officers that are fleshed out enough to be able to carry the story on their own.

If anything in this book Beck takes a background role as the foot work is done by others and the breakthrough comes collectively. This is one of those stories that is perhaps on the cusp of not only finishing the series with the last four books but feels like that because it is describing a country on the edge of change.

The constant references to the heat are not just there to paint the scene but also provide an indication of a growing friction created by change. The forces of conservatism are being attacked by the youthful led demands for change in the 60s.

The fact a thriller can convey such socio and political information without interrupting or spoiling the main story is testament to the writing ability of Sjowall and Wahloo. This leaves you wanting to crack on with the seventh book in the series.

A review will follow soon...

Murder at the Savoy - post I

Every reader has a guilty pleasure, a book that although it isn't Tolstoy fills them with joy, and in my case the genre best able to deliver that quick hit of intense reading pleasure is the thriller.

Being slightly more specific about it the police procedurals, following the case through the lens of the police activity, when done well can be gripping. Two of the masters are husband and wife team Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and with their creation of Martin Beck they take you onto the streets of Sweden in the 1960s and into police stations in Stockholm and Malmo.

The crime tends to take place early on and then the rest of the book is spent following Beck and his colleagues as they try to fathom the often unfathomable and bring the case to a conclusion.

This is no different with a prominent business man shot in a hotel, the Savoy dining room, by a gun man who then jumps out of an open window into the hot summer night and disappears.

From that starting point, with no clear witness statements the police have to start the hunt for a killer.

More tomorrow....

Howards End is on the Landing - post II

Avoiding the risk of repetition the other point to make about Howards End is the way chapters are used to group together genres or authors. A personal library is rarely an A to Z listing by rather has grown organically with books either lumped together on the basis of date purchased or in the case of Hill by type and author.

The result is that you get chapters which become almost short stories in themselves as she tells of her meetings, friendships and the influences of writers that she has known and this makes it both easy to digest the numerous book titles bein recommended but also gives you pause for thought to examine the way your own books have been selected and your feelings towards them.

Although as Powell had one of his characters saying "books do furnish a room" there is also an emotional dimension to why they are on the shelves in the first place and that is something Hill oozes and reminds you not to forget when thinking, caring and reading your own library.

A review will follow soon...

Howards End is on the Landing - post I

At first coming across this book you half wonder what on earth it will be like between the covers. A year of reading conjures up certain ideas. The most obvious of course is the idea of a chronological 'january, february etc etc' but it is done in such a wonderfully engaging way the best description is of sitting in on a conversation.

But this is not just a conversation with some one who owns a lot of books but can tell you about the reasons for those books being in her home and the stories behind them. So this becomes a memoir, a celebration of literature but also a chance to talk about the oddities of publishing - the small books issued for Christmas and rarely read.

Hill is well travelled in the literary world but has a great ability to lay out the joy of reading so that anyone who shares even one tenth of her enthusiasm finds themselves nodding along and taking inspiration from her library.

More tomorrow...

Man in the Dark - post II

In a way the story about the parallel world and the war is just a metaphor for feelings of disorientation and grief. You realise that after that story is snuffed out as the author lies in the dark talking to his granddaughter this really is a book about loss and perhaps if anything it is slightly over complicated.

The start makes it feel like some author meets creation Vonnegut number and has a slight feel of De Lillo but then the second part, divided only in terms of my reading and not formally, is more of a personal tale of coming to terms with loss.

As the main character retells the story of his life and the love for his wife with all of his mistakes and the granddaughter tells of her grief for a love killed in Iraq the idea of what happens to those that are left behind is the big one Auster is grappling with.

Just as with Incredible Loud and extremely Close follows the story of someone pulling the loose ends of a tragedy in the death of a father in 9/11 together this is similar.

After the twin towers fell the sense of loss, anger, disorientation and grief can only be imagined. In the second half of this book Auster manages to get close but perhaps The Falling Man edges it.

A review will follow soon...