Holiday reading

After the high thrills and spills of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I returned to the relative tea cake safety of Agatha Christie with Death in the Clouds (a Hercule Poirot Mystery). In capable hands with Agatha and her charming gentleman Hercule, evil is often tempered with a touch of romance and a (ahhh) happy ending.

Then on to another well loved author, Banana Yoshimoto, 2005, Hardboiled, Hard Luck, translated by Michael Emmerich. Faber and Faber. Dreamscapes, ghosts, reminiscences, hospitals and strange travels.

I was used to this scene by now, though from time to time I would still see it in my dreams, and somehow the shock I felt on waking was much worse than what I experienced when she was actually lying there before me. p93

Peter Carey, 2009, Parrot and Olivier in America, Hamish Hamilton.

Two characters travelling from revolution era France to America. One a youthful nobleman (Olivier) sent away on the pretext of studying American Prison system, the other an older man engaged to serve him (Parrot). The exchanges between the old and new worlds and the two main characters give the narrative full scope to tell their stories. Parrot and Olivier chafe against each other and through their disagreements and assumptions create a comedy of the bigger events that happen to and around them; democracy, love, courtship, the good life. Happenings are told in at least two overlapping non linear voices. The book is populated with glorious characters. The slipperiness of their names for each other is joyful. Lord Migraine, indeed...

Therefore, in company with a fishwife and a press of burghers, I strolled out on the jetty and peered into the mist and coal smoke which had democratically arranged its factions in stripes of brown and white, the whole illuminated most tremulously. From this spectral effluence appeared the Phoenix, looming high, klaxon loud. On the starboard side, as it drifted silently toward the dock, stood what might have been the emblem of America: frockcoated, very tall and straight, with a high stovepipe hat tilted back from his high forehead. I thought, This is the worst vision of democracy - illiterate, hard as wood, overdressed, uncultured - with that physiognomy I had earlier observed in the portrait of the awful Andrew Jackson - a face divided proudly in three equal parts: hairline to eyebrows, eyebrows to nose, lips to chin. /In other words, the face of one who will never give any weight to the wisdom of his betters. To see the visage of the president is to understand that the farmer and the mechanic are the lords of the New World. p275

Anita Desai, 1977, Fire on the Mountain, King Penguin.

As she passed the Tibetan shawl sellers who had spread out their bright, cheap woolen ware on the street, she looked at their babies and puppies gambolling together in the middle of the road with a fine carelessness that she envied. There was a zest about them, a warmth of life's fires burning brightly in their shabby, grubby bodies... p 136

A Woman in Jerusalem

A.B. Yehoshua

translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin. Halban . London. 2006

After reading 'Friendly Fire' by the same author I've been looking forward to reading his earlier books. This one covers slightly similar territory; the almost metaphysical ramifications to life and terrorism in current day Israel. People are overcome with powerful unexplained emotions; snappy, moody and hysterical (in a really good way). Hysteria with subtlety and beauty.

"That's love's secret" the weasel continued as the vehicle slowed to take the hairpin bends. "There is no formula. Each person has to find the secret for himself. That's why Eros is neither god nor man. He's a daimon, thick-skinned, unwashed, barefoot, homeless, and poor - yet he links the human to the divine, the temporal to the eternal..."p.157

Curriculum Vitae

Yoel Hoffmann

translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole. A new Directions Book. 2009

She was always right because by nature a woman is better constructed. She's music and she's the musician, and the man is little more than the person who stands at the musician's side and turns the pages. [section 23]

I've forgotten who the Huguenots were ( I think they were French Protestants). But without a doubt they clung to the earth so that Suzy Ortal- Kipnis could study them. [section 67]

Memoir in snatches mixed with imagination passages. Rambling in parts, other times clear and funny. Imagine Marcel Proust as a Zionist writing Habuki.

Housekeeping Vs The Dirt

Nick Hornby, 2006, Believer Books

Finally read a book which ended a spell of being tongue tied. Nick Hornby writes a series of magazine columns about reading; what he bought; what he read; and what else happened in his life. A funny mix of mundane and reflections on reading. He likes to read and he also likes music, soccer, drinking and somehow in an amusing way works all those interests into columns. The charting of how one book liked or otherwise leads to the next seems familiar.

And on my reading list

There's been a mini festival of Alain de Botton. What's not to like? He's funny, likes Proust, and is intellectually interested in love.

Kiss and Tell is an early novel (Macmillan 1995). Alain, in first person, is writing the biography of his girlfriend. A very biased history, based on Isabel's memories and shifting revealing of the facts. The author studies her writing, past, friends, cooking, as if she is the subject of an in depth biography. That makes her sound peculiar, whereas this is a fairly standard love affair and two quite ordinary people.

So many questions about this book. Is it non fiction. There are photos documenting the life story of Isabel. Is she made up? Or is she real, and how did she ever agree?

p233 Alain's best guess for a personal ad for Isabel...

Young, beautiful but doesn't usually think so woman, not used to filling in such boxes and thinks people who do should make friends with their neighbours, eats carrots at bus stops, tired of having maso-chistic relationships, loves gardening, good driver, bad at programming videos, prefers margarine to butter, flirts with the idea of throwing in her job every Monday (dull job, doesn't wish to be judged on it, so won't mention it, avoids the subject at parties, and suspicious of those who don't), quite tidy apart from the kitchen. Hates gherkins, gangster films, Milton, the Rolling Stones, putting out the rubbish bins on Tuesday, too many bones in fish, getting to bed past midnight during the week. Sometimes loves her parents, swimming, gossip, picking something big out of her nose, Bob Dylan, orange juice, Vaclav Havel, reading in the bath.

A.B. Yehoshua Friendly Fire. A Duet. 2007 Harcourt Inc

Heard the author interviewed on the Book Show. Set in current day Israel touching on the war and societal tensions this is mainly a story about a husband and wife who have been married for 30 - 40 years. Written concurrently from both points of view, like a duet. The wife goes to mourn her sister with her brother in law, travelling alone to Africa. The husband stays at home and continues his life and work, but finds himself made busy by the requirements of the wider family. I really enjoyed the characters in this book, they seemed real and flawed. The gentle symbolism is very deftly handled.

The White Tiger

Aravind Adiga. Free Press. 2008

To sum up - in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies.

And only two destinies: eat or get eaten up. p.64

Booker Prize winner. Involving story, painfully true, about life and death, horror and terror in the 'Darkness'- the poor half of India. Habits of servitude, anger and dependence, so easy to imagine, are aptly described and inhabited. Corruption of civilization, especially in politics is mercilessly noticed. 

The White Tiger is an (anti) hero, with a full range of emotions and motives. I felt pity, sympathy, almost kinship for him. An admirable writing achievement, for a murderer. Most of the characters are not good nor respectable. In their midst, we get to know the White Tiger well and he appears respectable. Although his conscience is not clear it is well examined. The pervasive ridiculous corruption around him, lends him a certain purity.

Clever use of repetition to highlight injustice. Key visual after controversial events, such as comparing the death by murder to that of untreated TB. Built like a legal defence of the White Tiger's innocence.

Sprays: A Collection of Verbal Touch-ups

HG Nelson, Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd, 2008

Speeches made by HG Nelson on various topics including; fashion, racing, Lachlan Murdoch's bucks night, debates about blokes being duds, and a keynote address at a local government seminar. The jokes are all sport talk, which really appeal to me for no obvious reason. The local government theme is called

Firecrackers, home slaughtering and sprinklers on Australia Day are the real stumpers confronting local government as they plough through a heady agenda of community renewal and sustainability. (How did he guess?)

So if you dud out tonight and ...leave a loser, pop into the room of mirrors when you get home and have a bloody good hard look at yourself. When you find the door handle and emerge tomorrow around 7am, be prepared to put in and become a local government winner next year. p98

The Pages

Murray Bail, 2008, Text Publishing Melbourne

Lovely and poetic in parts. Bit too clever or post modern or something. Emotions morph into landscapes, sunsets, and quiet farmers with landscape-like brows.  Severe and stark. That can be exactly what one wants sometimes...

I did enjoy the duality between philosophy (Erica) and psychoanalysis (Sophie). But women are hysterical or earthly passive. Love is a sudden alien surprise. There is (even) a rescue by a gallant knight character.

Erica comes to the country to study  the pages written by Wesley Anthill a self styled philosopher. Wesley's story is told interspersed through the present day story. Wesley's story would have been enough for me. There is a grand finale in his story revealed with great fanfare. boom boom ta da surprise! Shortly after his narrative ends.

Thinking about thinking gives Wesley and Erica headaches and gives the book a slow, plodding texture.

The Spare Room

Helen Garner. 2008. Text Publishing Melbourne Australia

Is this 'Monkey Grip' for ladies in their 60s? Instead of junky boyfriends and love, in this story the disturbance is by hippie friends with cancer and death. 

Helen cares for her bohemian friend with cancer. Nicola believes in all sorts of quasi medical miracles (vitamin c, cupping, electrode treatment). She refuses to face death, leaving that full sad knowledge to her carers. Carers become punitive mothers.

I really enjoy books set in Melbourne and look forward to the padding within the narrative for the scene descriptions. This story is set somewhere on the Broadmeadows line, near Moonee Ponds. The setting for clinic in Flinders Lane is so familiar. As is dinner at the Waiters Club.

Sparse elegant writing. Home life effortlessly described.

The morning was grey and gentle, with doves. p103

Dry

Augusten Burroughs, Sydney, N.S.W. : Hodder Headline Australia, c2004

Semi non fiction tale of a soggy addiction mess, rehab and relapse. Honest, even about less that noble impulses. Augusten is really hard on himself, perhaps with good reason. 

The alcoholic haze is well described and the love Augusten feels for all the paraphernalia of drinking; the bars, the low lights, the pretty jeweled colours in sparkling bottles, and how he has just too much time when he is not drinking. 

The observations about new york city life, advertising, even office politics are all pithily captured. The rawness and mess was revolting at times. Easy to read, gossipy, like a extended magazine article. Strangely, sort of, a love story. 

The library copy was heavily annotated, and the comments were an amusing side story. Someone identified closely with the troubles. I'm looking forward to reading his other books.

comfort reading

Sometimes I like the pleasant company of a well resolved mystery where everyone gets just what they deserve. And Footscray's Kerry Greenwood is better than most and sets this series in St Kilda of the 1920's. 

Phryne Fisher is everything one could possibly desire in a lady detective: smart, beautiful, brave and so very bohemian. The cast she is surrounded by are gems in their own right; the charming adopted daughters, crafty well brought up lady's maid, cool butler, superb cook, magician Chinese lover, communist taxi drivers and socialist lesbian sister. (hope I have not left anyone out) Phryne uses the cast around her as able assistants, leaving her the serious business of being glamourous and fabulous in the course of good works. 

Alexander McCall Smith's writing has been criticised of being twee and trite, but I don't care, I love being around his characters' daily wisdom. 'La's Orchestra Saves the World' is set during WW2 in country England. A sweet grown up romance. Yes, a romance, shocking! There is even that elusive thing - a measured subtle maybe even happy ending. 

Breath

Tim Winton

Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Books) Austrlia. 2008

Well, who knew where that was going? It (and i won't ruin it for anyone) is pretty tough subject matter to make believable / palatable. Poetic prose, as you would expect from Tim Winton.

I had a premonition about drugs from the magically appearing surfboards and the absence of work in Sando and Eva's life. 

Interesting use of retrospect. The man tells about his adolescence with some hindsight. The interior of the book is his youth and the grown up sections at the beginning and end are like book ends. I almost forgot his paramedic character when I was with Pikelet.

The theme  - the courting of danger and the need for increased risk - was thoroughly explored. 

Eva was my least favourite character. I'm still not so sure she was believable.  The reader only gets to know her as a love interest. 

The Enchantress of Florence

Salman Rushdie. 2008. Jonathan Cape, London.

The best book of the year so far. I love the story telling, the fantasy, the richness of the language. The stories are from the Mughal Empire and the Medici court in Florence in the 1500's, and ofcourse these meet. 

The story was completely untrue, but the untruth  of untrue stories could sometimes be of service in the real world, and it was tales of this sort-improvised versions of the endless stream of stories he had learned from his friend Ago Vespucci-that saved little Nino Arhgalia's own neck after he was found hiding under a bunk in the forecastle of the flagship of Andrea Doria's fleet. p.168

Something quarrelsome rose out of the story, a green stenchy wisp of discord floated up out of the tale and infected the women of Sikri, so that reports began to reach the palace of the bitter quarrels between previously loving sisters, suspicions and accusations, irreparable breaches and bitter estrangements, cat-fights and even knife fights, the bubbling of dislikes and resentments of which the women in question had barely been aware until the unmasking of Khanzada Begum by the foreigner with the yellow hair. p. 204

on love's end...

Love's banal declension through squabbling towards n end. p.280

on parenthood...

The emperor had experienced many feelings concerning this individual:amusement, interest, disappointment, disillusion, surprise, amazement, fascination, irritation, pleasure, perplexity, suspicion, affection, boredom, and increasingly, it was necessary to admit it, fondness and admiration. One day he understood that this was also the way  in which parents responded to their children... p.311

on nationhood and religion...

...because the Raushanai are the chosen people, destined by God to inherit the earth, so if they want to grab their inheritance a little ahead of time, who can say they are not entitled? p.314

Normally he was all languid  grace and fluid gestures. Today, however, he was almost flustered, as if the news he had to impart was bouncing around inside him and knocking him off balance. p.320

Heavenly Date

And other flirtations. Alexander McCall Smith. 1995. Canongate Books

Nine short stories just the right length for my train journey. 

McCall Smith writes with the smooth calm tone and the almost reasonable suggestions of a hypnotist. Sinister events presented ever so calmly. Creepily convincing.

Is housework a good thing?

Mary Lutyens, 'To be Young' Corgi edition 1989. First published 1959

Agatha Christie: an Autobiography'. Berkley Books 1996. First published 1977

Catherine Gildiner, 'Too Close To the Falls, A Memoir' Flamingo 2003

Elaine Dundy, 'The Dud Avocado'. New York Review Books, New York 2007. First published 1958

Winifred Watson, 'Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day' Persephone Books, London 2008. First published in 1938

Penelope Mortimer, 'About Time, An Aspect of Autobiography'. Penguin Books Ltd 1979

Have had a feast of biographies. The tamed chaos of life in hindsight is so endearing.

In this bunch the childhood memories of parents and the experience of motherhood; with nurses, governesses and boarding schools of particular interest. So different to the current divide of working/non working.

To know the poor education that women had and survived in the past, helps to put into perspective the school quest and waiting lists. Agatha Christie had almost no formal schooling and was considered slow witted in her family. Very funny description of her Steiner school by Penelope:

I wore my own clothes for a few days, while they diagnosed my temperament. The prognosis was red, for choleric. So I wore red smocks in the summer, and red jersies in the winter.. (p72)

Stranger still was the childhood of Mary Lutyens, the daughter of the famous architect father and a fervent theosophic mother; a childhood of pilgrimages, and waiting and practicing to be enlightened.

Domesticity- another area of interest.  Agatha, Sally Jay (Dud Avocado), Penelope and Delysia (Miss Pettigrew) avoid it and gain so much time. In the Dud Avocado, Sally Jay is outraged in being expected to cook/entertain: 

I tried to remember  one minute that whole weekend when Marion and I weren't either feeding people, or clearing up from doing it, or preparing to do it again. And presumably she never stopped doing it. But I could not see why just because she did, I should. I mean, here was I practically fresh out of the egg, everything was so new to me, and here was everybody telling me to stop drifting, and start living in this world; telling me to start cooking, and sewing, and cleaning, and I don't know what. Taking care of my grandchildren. (p144) 

Agatha can only cook souffles, Penelope can only cook toast and learns to make scrambled eggs.

The light reading - Dud Avocado and Miss Pettigrew was entertaining. Happy endings in both. I'm not giving anything away. Such different social norms before and after WW2. 

Penelope Mortimer's autobiography is so quickly readable, such grace in descriptions, toughness in opinions and a very steady gaze at her life. I'm reading the second part of the autobiography now and am loving the 6 children of 4 fathers, and 2 husbands. Like in all good sagas a family tree in included to help the reader along.

A long biography, like Agatha's, is interesting because of the knowledge she has about herself and what makes her happy. It's not fancy.

I was never good at  games; I am not and never shall be a good conversationalist; I am so easily suggestible that I have to get away by myself before I know what I really think or need to do. I can't draw; I can't paint; I can't model or do any kind of sculpture; I can't hurry without getting rattled; I can't say what I mean easily - I can write it better. I can stand fast on a matter of principle, but not on anything else. (p472)

Journey to the Stone Country

Alex Miller (2002) Allen and Unwin

Book group book. Grown up romance (in a good way). Begins in Carlton, Melbourne Uni academia and travels to outback Queensland cattle country. Observational language. Lifelike depictions of camping, swimming in cool rivers, mining settlements, moving cattle, and driving through dark country. Touches on indigenous and settler pasts and the sins of the fathers/ grandfathers. Plenty of symbolism; some a little clunky. About reasoning, clever thinking and the simple things in life. The loss and a return to a meaningful home. 

Howard's End - E.M. Forster

Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd. 1965, First Published 1910

I have read somewhere that this is one of Zadie Smith's favourite books. As I really like her books that's a good recommendation. At my library this has not been a popular choice for some time as it had to be taken out of the 'stacks' in the basement. 

The influence of E.M. Forster on Zadie Smith is noticeable. This is a cleverly plotted, closely described, personal story of a group of unlikely people brought together by chance/a house. Howard's End is a grand house and a magical presence. 

A tag team of characters smoothly move the plot along. Margaret is wise and in control of her destiny. Believable private lives and small hope and dramas. I'm making it sound like a kitchen sink drama; and perhaps it is but a refined and glorious one. 

Such beautiful writing, not at all dusty or stuffy. (not sure what I was expecting)

"She must show surprise if he expected it. An immense joy came over her. It was indescribable. It had nothing to do with  humanity, and most resembled the all-pervading happiness of fine weather. Fine weather is due to sun, but Margaret could think of no central radiance here." p174

Backlog

Have finished reading the House of Mirth. Deceptive title, I experienced no mirth and was so very disappointed with the ending. Literature of punishment. Lily  - a frivolous girl, not rich enough for her crowd, gradually punished. Shame hovers over her and kills her. She allows a friend's husband to invest some money for her. He tricks her and just gives her money, then has 'expectations'. At times felt like reading a bodice ripper of a bestseller - shallow intrigue and obsession with status, mean women, and alien like men. I liked the spinster 'do-gooder' Gerty living in a low ceilinged flat and doing good works. She was resigned to a 'dull face - dull fate'. In comparison with Lily not such a bad deal. The setting is turn of the century New York, Monaco, Nice and the Hamptons.

Deborah Eisenberg - Twilight of the Superheroes

published  2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York

Short story collection. Like poetry. Sombre and wistful in tone. Unpredictable and rich. People observed with zen like calmness. Hospitals, apartments, log cabins, siblings, partners, children; small and grown...Big events (9/11, gun sales) are held back on the periphery of the writing. Set in New York city and semi rural towns fringed with forests. Will be re-reading and reading others by her. 

"In any case, at a certain point as she wandered out among the galaxies, among the whirling particles and ineffable numbers, something leaked in her mind, smudging the text of the cosmos, and she was lost..." p.60 Some Other, Better Otto

The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton

Virago Press 1990. First published 1905.

A book group book. Was unsure about reading a book from this era especially about a woman heroine. Such poor choices in the time. So many types of servitude. Reminds me to be thankful for education and freedom and independence and all those lovely goals that the feminists worked (work) for. Not bad for a book to remind one to be thankful.

Set in New York. Beautifully written. Sparkling word use. Lily Bart is on the hunt for a living; a husband to support her lifestyle. So far (as of page 79) she is pursuing a complex courtship ritual with a prim collector of Americana, while enjoying the company of a slightly bohemian writer. Lily describes the courtship ritual as a complex dance that she could spoil with a single step.