book review: A Day in the Country and Other Stories by Guy De Maupassant

This collection of short stories might have plenty of variety but it is all written with great mastery of a form that eludes some writers.

Here the reader's attention is grabbed through a number of different ways including thriller, ghost story as well as insights into the social world of 19th century French life.

To pick out a selection from the first third of the book to give a flavour is not too difficult.

Simon's Dad is a heart warming tale of a boy seeking a father to end the bullying at school and as a result ending years of shame and pain for his mother by landing his mother a husband. You find your heart swelling at the end of the story as Simon informs his bullies that their days of targeting him are over.

Then you get a change in mood with the story that gives the title to the collection, A Day in the Country, providing a girl from a shopkeeping family with a moment of love that she can never forget. Her bawdy mother and ineffectual father are used brilliantly to illustrate the difference between those working in the suburbs and country folk.

That difference between the country and the city is also picked up in the story Riding Out which sees a man keen to show his family he can ride knocking down an old woman as he loses control of his steed in central Paris.

If there was a theme to the first third of the collection it might have been countryside and the second has stories that make various references to money. The Necklace describes the costs that borrowing and losing a necklace have on one couple only for them to discover at the end of a decade spent clearing their debts that it wasn't worth a great deal of money.

Penny pinching is on display again in The Umbrella where a woman wants her husband to have a good umbrella but is not prepared to pay for that. As his work colleagues ruin the cheap ones that he turns up to work with she would rather claim on the insurance than pay out for a proper umbrella.

That ability to pierce a side of someone's character is on display again with Bed 29 where a proud and vain solider is unable to show compassion for an old lover struck down with syphillis. Happy to be seen with her when she was beautiful he has no words of comfort for her when she is ill.

The last third of the book contains some of the longer and darker stories. The Little Roque Girl is an account of the discovery of a murdered girl and then the unravelling of the Major's mind. Responsible for her rape and death he finally loses his mind after being haunted by her ghost.

Our Spot is also fairly dark showing off the agression of a couple that lose their fishing spot on the river bank. Their anger at losing out results in the death of the rival fisherman but as the court case recounts the anger and death is more by accident and the fisherman is aquitted.

A great collection of stories that provoke various reactions but come from a writer clearly able to turn his pen at will to deliver stories of very quality.

Ill but not the type that's good for reading

Apologies for the absence recently. I was struck down with flu. There are those moments when you get ill and it can result in some time off work and some decent reading but other times when there is a constant headache and it's hard to find energy to keep the eyes open the books sadly remain closed.

This was one of those times. It has left me scrambling to try and get some books finished tonight and tomorrow to keep my reading on track this year.

Fingers crossed that happens.

book review: The Princess of Mantua by Marie Ferranti

It is not until the novella is complete and the full scale of the author's literary invention hits you that you really start to appreciate what you have just read.

In a nutshell this story charts the life of Barbara von Brandenburg who levaes her home at the age of ten and heads off to marry an Italian Prince of Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga. No sooner has she arrived and got married than her husband runs away and spends years fighting and making a name for himself leaving his bride alone to grow from a girl into a woman.

Once he returns they start to get cracking on producing ten children and in having a major influence on 15th century Italian life. In the principality run by her husband Barbara manages to tempt some of the great artists to produce works of wonder that are designed to cement their standing in society and immortalise the family.

Her picture shows an ugly dour looking woman who by the time it was painted was perhaps racked by loss and grief of her husband, the health of her children and the detoriation in relationships with her best friend and cousin Maria.

Told using the information contained in the letters between the cousins this story sketches out a behind the scenes tale of life at the top end of the scale in the 15th century.

The story itself is interesting enough and the relationships between Barbara and her daughter, who she seems to hate to the point of cruelty, and with her sons is intriguing enough. But it is on finding out that the letters never existed. The cousin Maria a work of fiction and the author's knowledge of the real Barbara of Brandenburg is not that great that you realise just how much imagination has been at play here.

It's perhaps a comment on the way that some of these historical biographies are put together that even one completely made up can be as engaging, if not more enjoyable a read, than its non-fiction contemporaries.

Thoughts after the second third of A Day in the Country

If there was a theme to the first third of the collection it might have been countryside and the second has stories that make various references to money. The Necklace describes the costs that borrowing and losing a necklace have on one couple only for them to discover at the end of a decade spent clearing their debts that it wasn't worth a great deal of money.

Penny pinching is on display again in The Umbrella where a woman wants her husband to have a good umbrella but is not prepared to pay for that. As his work colleagues ruin the cheap ones that he turns up to work with she would rather claim on the insurance than pay out for a proper umbrella.

That ability to pierce a side of someone's character is on display again with Bed 29 where a proud and vain solider is unable to show compassion for an old lover struck down with syphillis. Happy to be seen with her when she was beautiful he has no words of comfort for her when she is ill.

A review follows soon...

book review: Jezebel by Irene Nemirovsky

When you are first introduced to Gladys Eysenach she is a small old lady sitting in the dock in court charged with the murder of her young lover. The case seems to be open and shut and it's a question of getting the judge to be merciful in the sentence.

But as the focus of the story turns back in time to tell of how Gladys came to find herself going up to the top of society then down into the darkness of murder and a court case you wonder just whether or not you will feel sympathy for this woman.

Certinaly in the courtroom you feel the stirrings of pity although Gladys seems to have a pride that barbs but as you start to encounter her in the prime of her life that split between dislike and pity becomes harder to straddle.

Ultimately this is a story of vanity, fear of growing old and a damming inditement of a society that only values appearances. Once the wrinkles come and the true age is clear you are washed up. Or at least that's what Gladys thinks shoes she does everything she can to exploit her youthful beauty. She goes to extraordinary lengths to shave ten years off her birth certificate and her treatment of her daughter is bordering on the insane.

First she refuses to allow her daughter to marry for fear people will see hoer as an older woman capable of having a daughter of marriagable age. But when her daughter's fiance dies in the trenches Gladys is faced with the new challenge of becoming a grandmother.

Again she rejects the child not so much on the grounds of social disaster but because she is determined never to be called a grandmother.

As she wanders through life, getting ever more desperate to be loved and adored by men, it brings her closer to the moment when her real age could catch up with her. The way she seems to postpone that moment means that on reflection the court case goes in her favour more than you might have initially expected.

Nemirovsky is brilliant at characters and even when there is a select cast, as there is here, she delivers real depth. Add to that her ability to spring a few surprises on the reader and this packs more of a punch than you might expect.

Thoughts after the first third of A Day in the Country

What makes a master short story writer? The ability to make you laugh, come to the brink of tears and have your heart warmed all in just a few pages has to be the best way to qualify the talent.

Guy De Maupassant is seen as one of the best in the short story genre and it's not long before you can see why with this collection showing his ability to paint a detailed picture of a situation in just a few paragraphs.

To pick out a selection from the first third of the book to give a flavour is not too difficult.

Simon's Dad is a heart warming tale of a boy seeking a father to end the bullying at school and as a result ending years of shame and pain for his mother by landing his mother a husband. You find your heart swelling at the end of the story as Simon informs his bullies that their days of targeting him are over.

Then you get a change in mood with the story that gives the title to the collection, A Day in the Country, providing a girl from a shopkeeping family with a moment of love that she can never forget. Her bawdy mother and ineffectual father are used brilliantly to illustrate the difference between those working in the suburbs and country folk.

That difference between the country and the city is also picked up in the story Riding Out which sees a man keen to show his family he can ride knocking down an old woman as he loses control of his steed in central Paris.

More soon...

Thoughts at the half way point of Jezebel

You would think that with a story starting with a court case and the judgment handed out to the murderer that the tension in the book might be lost.

Sure you expect the focus on events to shift back into the past after the opening description of the court case but you start to settle back into your chair expecting little in the way of surprises.

But if there is one thing that Nemirovsky is an expert at it is character and as she starts to peel back the history of Gladys Eysenach you start to be introduced to a rather extreme woman. Someone who starts out in the court accused of shooting dead her young lover this is not quite as open as shut case, from a reading perspective, you might have expected it to be after the first chapter.

A review will follow soon...

Le Tour

Aside from literature there are a couple of things about France that are well worth investigating. One is of course the food and the other is the passion the country has for cycling.

The Tour de France is a three week cycle race that spans the country and is not just a great advert for cycling but the country as the elite riders glide through some of the most wonderful scenery as they clock up the thousands of kilometres.

There are plenty of books about cycling that you can read and one I managed to get through was Geoffrey Wheatcroft's history of the Tour, Le Tour, but as with most things one of the best ways to enjoy it is to watch and get drawn into the action.

This year's race starts on 2 July and coverage should be on ITV 4 as well as online. Do dip in and take a look as it's something great to watch.

Proust looms large

If you think of the two words French Literature then it's almost impossible not to have the name Proust turn up fairly quickly into those thoughts.

Credited with writing that summons up every atom of the memory and imagination he is also responsible for intimidating a fair few readers with the length of time it takes to commit to reading Remembrance of Things Past. The first volume is a great introduction to Proust.

My thoughts about Rememberance of Things Past, from a while back, can be found here:

Part One
Part Two.

It's also putting in the famous madeline quote just to remind you of what people get so excited about.

"Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called ’petites madeleines,’ which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory–this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal.

Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?"

book review: Holiday in a Coma by Frederic Beigbeder

"Slowly but surely, five o'clock has reluctantly come round.
Boredom breaks on the horizon with its disappointed yawns. It is the emollient hour, the hour of turpitude. Couples and livers have been serenely self-destructing; now it is time to put on a brave face. At 5 a.m. all that remains in a nightclub are the apoplectic losers and in dolent idiots who know that whater may happen, they have little chance og getting anything up."

If ever a novel came with a beats per minute register it would be this one. Not just because the action is set in a night club but because of the pace.

Things start slowly introducing the reader to the world of Mar Marronier, an advertising executive, who knows all the best people and is invited to all the best parties. Tonight he is going to meet an old friend who has gone to Japan and made it big as an international DJ at the opening of a new club in Paris.

Hour by hour you follow Marc through the experience of attending the opening at the club Shit and of his antics. The pace speeds and slows depending on alacholic intake of Marc and the manic behaviour of his drug fuelled friends.

But what strikes you from quite early on is that this is a shallow world where name dropping, drug taking and putting on an exhibition are all key to making a name for yourself. Being original and a thinker is only good if you can use that in a public way to court attention and followers.

Marc, who steers clear of drugs most of the time, gets drunker and displays the classic signs of boredom. Irratable and increasingly tired he manages to offend ex girlefriends, friends and strangers as he wanders from bar stool to dance floor with the odd break outside to breathe in the atmosphere of an early Parisian morning.

Just as you start to despair that Marc is as shallow as the rest his wife emerges from under the human wreckage of the dance floor to illustrate the what really matters is a real love that most of the others in Shit are desperately struggling and failing to find.

For a story that can make you laugh as well as despair it's one that sums up perfectly the shallow celebrity obsessed age that most of us are trapped in.

Thoughts at the half way point of Holiday in a Coma

Having waded through Gide, which has a very pre-war turn of the last century feel about it, the reading choice has switched to something a lot more contemporary. Holiday in a Coma by Federic Beigbeder is as far away from Gide's world of meetings over tea in the drawing room as you could get. But the sense of fraud, facades and failed love that pervades The Counterfeiters is just as evident here.

The first novel in this two-book volume, follows Marc Marronier, a rich, trendy and well connected advertising executive who has been invited to the opening of the must-go-to openning of a new nightclub in Paris. His old friend is behind the opening of Shit and so he heads off to renew that relationship and to rub shoulders with the glitterati.

The book runs at 100 miles an hour with the images, verbal assuaslts launched by Marc and his friends all speeding up as the music and the drugs kick in. But rather than feel blinded by the names and superstar status of those around him Marc instead becomes morose and starts to amuse himself in ways that alienate him even further from those around him.

Good stuff and looking forward to the ending...

Un grand choix

If you think about the great names in French literature there is a good smattering across both 19th and 20th centuries. In the 19th century you get to enjoy the likes of Gustave Flaubert and his Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education, Balzac, Guy de Maupassant and Bel Ami and Stendhal The Red and the Black.

But move into the 20th century and you come across some of the biggest names in modern literature with Albert Camus, Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, Jean-Paul Satre and Francoise Sagan to name just a few.

One of the great things about choosing to read a bit of French literature is the deep well you can draw from and hopefully some of the above names, which have appeared on this blog before, will be reappearing either later this month or sometime in the future.

book review: The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide

This book might perhaps suffer in terms of pace in the first half but once it gets going it moves towards an end which seems to come almost abruptly when it does arrive.

The main theme of the counterfeiters which comes from the title of the book that the writer Edouard is writing also plays out in real life with a ring of boys being used to palm off counterfeit coins through Paris. But the sense of fraudulent feelings and actions pervades the book. Some characters come across as so prepared to hide behind a facade that you never really get to know them.

But intertwined with the sense of fraud is the theme of coming of age. This is both in the practical sense with Bernard and Olivier leaving school and becoming men but also in the way that even some of the oldest characters are clearly still learning who they are and adapting to circumstances.

The story starts with Bernard discovering that he is illegitimate after he breaks into his mother's bureau and discovers letters not intended to be seen. That idea of damaging secrets that is introduced in that moment remains throughout the book. Grandfather's secretly writing to their grandsons, barristers carrying around letters from their mistress and in the most extreme case a woman, Laura hiding her pregnancy by Olivier's brother Vincent from her husband.

In one sense this is about two families and two particular sons from each family - Bernard and Olivier - charting them as they take their first strides into adulthood. They dream and aspire to great things but have great vulnerability that allows others to help or exploit them. They fall in love easily, bruise easily but by the end of the tale learn that home can often be a comfort rather than a prison.

Throughout the book there are questions about writing that are thrown up as Edouard struggles to get to grips with The Counterfeiters. He faces his arch enemy, the celebrated writer of the moment Comte de Passavant, who seems to treat writing as a hobby and success as a given. The differences between them highlights the danger with feeling too much and not feeling anywhere near enough with Passavant left with an inflated reputation but little in the way of friendship and love.

Gide also uses an Eric Morecambe style voice to the reader revealing that he has struggled to like some of his cast of characters and giving the signpost to the second half of the book. That voice is at first slightly unusual but becomes increasingly familiar and as a device works fairly well.

There were moments when you wondered where this was going but by the end there is a sense that although the counterfeiters don't always get caught they suffer justice in the form of loneliness, guilt and in the case of Vincent the man who left Laura pregnant and fled overseas, it can leave them without much of a sane mind left.

French holidays

In the spirit of sharing my memories of the country that is the focus of my reading this month let me just share a couple of reflections on holidays in France.

The last few years I have holidayed in Northern Brittany enjoying the sleepy seaside towns inbetween trips to the larger and some might argue uglier cities like Saint Malo.

What I like about France is the sense of space, the determination in the villages to keep the 24/7 lifestyle so dominant in London at arm's length and the quirks that come from being in a culture that is incredibly proud of its own heritage.

Sadly most of the time, at least on the campsite and occasionally on the beach, the voices you tend to hear are British but you do get to hear French being spoken, get to breathe in the atmosphere and enjoy and notice the differences with Britain.

A confession

I have to confess something that is becoming increasingly difficult to hide: I'm a prude. When it comes to the moment in a book when it becomes steamy I tend to find it as difficult to get through as I once did when that sort of thing came on the TV when I was a teenager and my parents were in the room.

I'm not sure where this prudishness comes from. For a while I consoled myself with the belief it was because the writing in some cases was poor when it came to sex scenes. But the truth is that even when there isn't a problem with the writing, although that seems to be quite rare, I struggle.

Thoughts at the half way point of The Counterfeiters

Having set up the small cast of characters Gide starts to interweave their stories shaking the tree and dropping seeds throughout that could grow into fairly major story lines or alternatively could get shirked off. part of the experience of reading this is not knowing quite how the story is going to develop.

The other feature of the writing that you start to enjoy is the way that Gide treats the reader as someone that is able to follow the story without the need for a great deal of hand holding. So the voice of the narrator occasionally turns towards the audience and he explains that certain details are really not worth going into or lists the main features of a character to minimise the break in the story.

Love is at the heart of the story but so is the question of deception. The main characters are playing their cards close to their chests and as the reader gets more of an insight into what is happening things are being set up where the masks are going to be forced to slip.

At that moment Gide's talent as a writer should shine through because otherwise the good work done so far will have failed to get the climax it deserves.

More soon...

Thoughts at a third way through The Counterfeiters

Because this is a fairly dense book, not just in terms of pagination but the style, it seemed like quite a good idea to do thoughts in thirds.

It is also a book that takes the reader into some difficult territory with an Uncle falling for his nephew and that sense of the illicit and disturbing is coming through in the first third and is perhaps the one strand of the story that is less appealing than some of the others.

In terms of subject it reminds you of Proust with a more limited character list. Concentrated on the social world of a couple of rich Parisian families the story starts with a illegitimate son of a judge discovering the secret and leaving home. Bernard chooses to head to his best friend Olivier as soon as he leaves home and as a result through a couple of 15 year old's you are given an insight into the two families.

As Bernard chooses to break away he becomes an informed observer to the affair that is being carried on by his friend Olivier's brother Vincent and watches from a distance as Olivier's uncle Edouard arrives in Paris.

You sense that the relationships between the two families, at different levels, and the coincidences that often happens through previously unknown friendships will become more interesting.

A post on the second third then a review will follow...

Encounters with Gide

As I set off reading Andre Gide's The Counterfeiters thought it might be handy to remind myself and the small band of readers of this blog of my previous encounters with Gide.

His writing can wander into the philosophical and religious territory but he is a brave writer that is prepared to tackle difficult and interesting questions. He is also a very honest writer using the editor's preface to confess to faults in his books and in the case of Fruits of the Earth to poor sales.

Here are the other Gide books I have read over the past few years:


Strait is the Gate











The Immoralist













Fruits of the Earth

book review: Taking it to Heart by Marie Desplechin

"The effort of paying them so much attention had worn Granny out. Her face had crumpled and her eyelids had begun to droop, her expression had grown increasingly vague. They left, waving out of the car windows, at once sorry and relieved. Granny waved farewell from the kitchen window. She looked like a princess locked in a tower by a witch, condemned to watch the world through a narrow arrow slit. They had left her exhausted by conversation and wanting to return to her anxious silence."


This collection of short stories takes you into the minds of various female characters and into the lives of several Parisians all with a search for happiness in common.

One of the ways they look for contentment is in the arms of a lover but often that ends in failure but with them almost pre-programmed for love they continue to search for replacements. Most of these characters have children but they stay firmly in the background most of the time. The children seem to be a physical reminder of previous relationships and failures to find lasting love in the past.

But beyond love, which is clearly a dominant theme, there are observations here about the difficulty some women have on finding an identity post-motherhood and post divorce. In Haiku the story follows someone who has never found love and as a result getting married is not only a dramatic change to her personal circumstances but also liberates her from a pigeon-hole her friends have placed her in.

Other stories that stick in the mind include the title one, Taking it to Heart, telling the story of a brother and sister who are going to visit their grandmother. Her experiences include the war and seeing some of the terrors and she has imparted this almost obsessional frankness about death. The events of the war still cast a long shadow and as the old woman herself prepares for death it is her legacy of horror stories that lives on particularly strongly in her grand daughter.

Having read through the stories the sense of a strong voice emerges and can be heard in each story through different characters. Desplechin manages to get the balance just right with the length and content with this stories and as an introduction to her writing it leaves you with a strong desire to go on and read Sans Moi, her novel also published by Granta.

Save Libraries

There has been so much quite rightly written about the barbarity of the closure of libraries that I don't want to add much more to it other than to share some personal experiences.

I was introduced to libraries before I could read. In fact because no one picked up my bad short sightedness until I was four it's safe to say I went into libraries before I could even see properly.

The magic of libraries is something that having been seeded in me as a baby in a push chair has never left me. From the library in Blackburn where I first grew up to the central library and the local branch at Rock Road in Cambridge, the place I seek out after the doctor and local milk and paper shop on moving home is the library.

Although they might have been different they all had one thing in common - they allowed you to take books, often by authors you had never heard of, with enticing covers and for fun, books of all sorts, home for free.

If my children are denied that and the generations after them, then we will have lost something so profoundly important that it is almost impossible to predict the consequences.

Stalin once said that he thought ideas were more powerful than guns: "I would not let my enemies have guns so why should I let them have ideas."

Ideas, knowledge and an interest in life come from books and it would be a cruel person indeed who made moves to deny us all the chance to have those ideas.

Thoughts at the half way point of Taking it to Heart

This collection of short stories quickly establishes a voice - that of a rather world weary, victim of love, mother and a realist - that you can't help but liking.

Through the first few stories you are introduce to a woman with two men on the go who seems unable to decide her own destiny but has to be loved by someone.

Then there is the mother who ends up repeating her mistake of going on a boat to appease her partner. Both experiences mark the beginning of the end of her relationships.

Through out you get this voice that is telling you not only how difficult it can be to be a mother and lover but also indicating that there are rewards, hard earned they might be, out there for the strong woman who goes her own way.

A review will follow on completion next week...

book review: Count D'Orgel's Ball by Raymond Radiguet

Count d'Orgel was unable to perceive the reality of anything but what took place in public.

The themes of love and class dominate this tale of a destructive relationship between a couple and a young man they introduce into their circle of friends.

What starts as a joke takes a more damaging turn as the D'Orgels take the young Francois into the bosom of their lives and the Count, who has a problem expressing his feelings, fails to notice that his wife Mahaut is falling in love with the young man.

The book details a suffocating a rather futile world of rich people who seek pleasure above all else and find themselves empty in-between looking for the next thrill. As a result they perhaps fail to feel with the same depth that others do not knowing what real love is all about.

Having said that the Countess clearly loves her husband but there are suggestions that it is perhaps because of her background which was on the edge of society. For Count d'Orgel the only thing that really matters is the public life, the way people view him and the balls and dances he attends. When confronted with an awkward moment that requires introspection and deep thought he simply is not capable of it. He can act a reaction but not feel it genuinely.

Just as in the way you felt the world that Proust describes in Remembrance of Things Past was largely a hollow one this is the same. The French obsession with aristocracy and position seeps through the pages and you can understand why it was such an interesting subject for numerous writers to cover.

The ball that gives its name to the title marks the point where the unfeeling immaturity of Count d'Orgel reaches its height and leaves you in no doubt that these people are perhaps as damaged as any other but cocooned from reality with their riches and their limited social sphere, which keeps them in a bubble of wealth.

Bonjour, going French in February

The theme of this month is going to be France with a mixture of fiction and non fiction about France and by French writers. To kick things off there are going to be a couple of short books that should act as an introduction.

So this week will include Count D'Orgel's Ball by Raymond Radiguet and Taking it to Heart by Marie Desplechin.

The month in review - January

The month ebbed and flowed with a pace of reading that was rather on the slow side. That was probably due to the nature of the month. A return to work, the cold and the fatigue caused by getting back into the routine.

it was also the first month of trying something slightly different with a theme for the reading. The theme for January was Russia and saw a mix of Russian authors and books about the country. It included some big names in the shape of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy but also some other discoveries that were well worth spending time on.

Books read in January

The Islanders and A Fisher of Men by Yevgeny Zamyatin
2017 by Olga Slavnikova
Short stories and Prose Poems by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One Hot Summer in St Petersburg by Duncan Fallowell
Uncle's Dream and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Village by Ivan Bunin
Master and Man and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy