Tuesday, 8 January 2013

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

This is one of my favourite novels by Charles Dickens and I never tire of it. It is the story of Pip and how he comes into a fortune from an unknown benefactor. We follow him from his early life under the care of his tyrannical sister and her gentle husband to his life as a moneyed young gentleman in London.

Probably the most famous character in the book is Miss Havisham. Jilted on her wedding day she sits, years later, in the rags of her bridal gown while mice devour her wedding breakfast which still sits upon the table. She is not a comic character like many of Dickens' grotesques, it is difficult to feel sorry for her because she is so imperious and fierce. She's like a spider unknowingly caught in its own web.

My favourite character in Great Expectations is Wemmick, the chief clerk at the firm of solicitors which dispenses Pip's money. Taciturn and professional to a fault when in the office, at home he is a kind and sensible man, and a good friend to Pip. His home in Walworth is one of my favourite homes in literature. It is a tiny cottage which Wemmick shares with his father and it is embellished with all kinds of novelties (such as a moat!) which Wemmick constructs in his spare time. It is a happy, homely place and Pip is made welcome there.

I think that each part of Great Expectations is perfectly weighted. There is just enough comedy, just enough mystery, just enough peril. Another reason I like this book is that it is lacking is simpering women. I love Dickens, but if I could change one thing about his books it would be to get rid of the weak, simpering girls. Miss Havisham might be mad, Estella might be cold as ice, but at least they don't simper. And Biddy seems like a sensible sort of woman.

This is a book I will return to again and again.

Friday, 4 January 2013

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

It's more than twenty years since I last read Wuthering Heights and I found on re-reading it that my feelings about it have changed. There will be some spoilers ahead for those who haven't read the book.

My main surprise was that I had completely forgotten how early in the book Cathy dies. The whole of the second half is without her. The story is grimmer than I remembered, unremittingly grim in fact, nothing good ever seems to happen. Also, in my mind Heathcliffe was one of the triumvirate of great romantic heroes, along with Mr Darcy and Rochester. Actually he is a man that any sensible woman would go to great lengths to avoid.

What I had remembered correctly is how powerful Emily Bronte's writing is. In the front of the Penguin Popular Classic edition that I have, there is a 'Biographical Notice' by Charlotte Bronte. In it she describes finding a volume of verse by Emily;

I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me - a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they also had a peculiar music - wild, melancholy, and elevating.

I can't say that I felt particularly elevated after reading Wuthering Heights, but I certainly think that the words 'wild' and 'melancholy' could be applied to it. Charlotte also describes Emily as 'not a person of demonstrative character' and I find it quite moving that this quiet person poured out all this forceful emotion, anger and passion into her poetry and her novel.

There are passages which really pull at the heartstrings. I was particularly affected by the scene in which young Linton is left in the care of his father, Heathcliff. We know that Heathcliff only wants him  to exact revenge, and that the poor child will have a terrible life. Nelly Dean accompanies the frightened little boy to Wuthering Heights:

Having no excuse for lingering longer I slipped out, while Linton was engaged in timidly rebuffing the advances of a friendly sheep-dog. But he was too much on the alert to be cheated: as I closed the door, I heard a cry, and a frantic repetition of the words:
'Don't leave me! I'll not stay here! I'll not stay here!'

I'm not sure that this is a book I'll go back to. Jane Eyre I could read over and over again, but not this one. It's too unrelenting and raw to be a really enjoyable read for me.

Wednesday, 2 January 2013

The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie

For this mystery we're back at a house we've visited before, Chimneys. Lady Ellen 'Bundle' Brent and
 her father Lord Caterham are no longer living there, they have rented it to the industrialist Sir Oswald Coote. The Cootes are having a house party (one at which the guests seem better known to each other than to the Cootes) and a guest is found dead in his bed.

Bundle Brent returns to the house, she is a friend of all the guests at the house party, and she decides to investigate. There's no Poirot in this one, but there is Superintendent Battle, who Bundle goes to see for information and advice. I like Superintendent Battle;

What I'll do for you, Lady Ellen, is this. I'll just give you one little hint. And I'm doing it because I never have thought much of the motto 'Safety First'. In my opinion all the people who spend their lives avoiding being run over by buses had much better be run over and put safely out of the way. They're no good.

Another person who was at the house party is killed, and Bundle and her friends are getting drawn into a very dark game.

I always enjoy reading an Agatha Christie novel. I missed Poirot slightly in this one, but a good read all the same.

Sunday, 30 December 2012

Reading Plans 2013

I've decided to make an effort to reduce the size of my TBR pile in 2013 by taking part in the TBR Pile Challenge hosted by Roof Beam Reader. The twelve books I have chosen from my TBR pile are as follows:

Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
And Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Captain James Cook: A Biography by Richard Hough
Lanark by Alasdair Gray
Time's Legacy by Barbara Erskine
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
The River King by Alice Hoffman
The Harsh Voice by Rebecca West

All have been on my TBR shelf for more than a year, as per the rules of the challenge.

At the beginning of this year I chose six books to re-read because I felt I was never making time to go back and revisit books I have enjoyed. I felt it worked well, so I'm going to do the same this year. The six books I've chosen are:

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett
Amanda & the Eleven Million Mile High Dancer by Carol Hill
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
The Quincunx by Charles Palliser
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

I haven't done very well with the Challenges which I signed up for in 2012 and I think the main reason for this is that I haven't been organised enough. So in 2013 I am going to set up a reading list at the beginning of each month and hopefully in that way I can keep on top of things.

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

Dead Scared by SJ Bolton

This is a book I received through Goodreads and the first one I have read by SJ Bolton. I have heard good things about her, so I was looking forward to it.

Lacey Flint is a police officer who is working undercover, posing as a Cambridge University student. There has been a spate of suicides amongst female students at the university. The methods the women have chosen to kill themselves are highly unusual - one sets herself on fire, another decapitates herself. What the women seem to have in common is that they were struggling in some way, lonely or depressed, or having trouble with their studies. This wouldn't be unusual in suicides, but the methods and the number of deaths have drawn the attention of the police, who suspect foul play. Lacey's role is to act the part of a vulnerable student, both to find information about the women who have died, but also to possibly draw out the killer.

The only person at the university who knows Lacey's true identity is Dr Evi Oliver, a psychiatrist who runs a clinic at which the most recent victim was a patient. Evi seems to be being targeted by someone who wants to break her;

Evi stopped, willing the wind to soften so that she could hear the snigger, the scuffle of feet that would tell her someone was watching. Because someone had to be watching. There was no way these cones had blown on to the path. There were twelve in all, one in the exact centre of each flagstone, forming a straight line right up to the front door. 

I thought this was an enjoyable book, the short chapter helped to keep up the pace and I didn't know how it was going to end. I did wish that I had read the previous book in the series because I felt that I could've done with a bit more understanding of the relationships, particularly between Lacey and her superior officer, Mark Joesbury. But other than that, I enjoyed it.

I got a couple of new books this week. I visited a quirky gift shop in Stockton, Who Ray, which has a few shelves of second hand books. I picked up A Writer's Notebook by W. Somerset Maugham which is described as 'a fascinating glimpse into the life and mind of the man who wrote some of the greatest novels and short stories of this century'.

I also won a book! I won a copy of The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers in a competition from Harvill Secker. 'Over two hundred years ago Bookholm, the City of Dreaming Books, was destroyed by a catastrophic firestorm.' It looks like an interesting read.

Tuesday, 27 November 2012

The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling

This story begins with the death of Barry Fairbrother, a parish councillor in the picture perfect village of Pagford. His death leaves a space on the parish council, the 'casual vacancy' of the title. This is a tumultuous time for Pagford, they are finally within sight of getting rid of The Fields, a council estate on the edge of the village which comes under their jurisdiction. Many see The Fields as a burden, and its residents as an expensive drain on Pagford's resources.

No part of Pagford's unwanted burden caused more fury or bitterness than the fact The Field's children now fell inside the catchment area of St Thomas' Church of England Primary School. Young Fielders had the right to don the coveted blue and white uniform, to play in the yard beside the foundation stone laid by Lady Charlotte Sweetlove and to deafen the tiny classrooms with their strident Yorvil accents.

Yorvil is the local town to which The Fields will become attached if the vote is carried.

The election is the backdrop against which the story takes place. We see the arguments played out for and against keeping The Fields (Barry had been for keeping it part of Pagford). There is snobbery at work, there is fear of difference, it's easy to laugh at the pretensions of those who want to get rid of The Fields. But in the character of Terri Weedon JK Rowling presents us with a dilemma. Terri is a resident of The Fields. She is a drug addict, a prostitute and a thief. She's had two children taken into care, and the two she has at home with her suffer because of her neglect and chaotic lifestyle. I can recognise that Terri had a chaotic childhood and was neglected herself. I know that addiction is an illness. I can sympathise with her and think that she should be offered help. But, truthfully, I wouldn't want to live near her. So what do we do with the people who live at the edges of society, how do we help them, who is it who helps them? By setting her story in a small village JK Rowling brings the questions very close to home. It's not faceless bureaucrats making sweeping policy decisions. It's people like you and me deciding where we stand.

I really like the way JK Rowling captures the teenage characters in the book. While the adults are getting on with the election their children are dealing with problems of their own. Many of the problems are of their parents making. Krystal Weedon is perhaps the most pivotal character in the book. In a way she exemplifies everything Pagford fears about The Fields. She is loud, crude, haphazard, angry and disrespectful. But she is also protective of her mother, Terri. She loves her little brother and is determined to keep him from being taken into care. She is very upset about the death of Barry Fairbrother, who was a mentor to her and helped her believe in herself. With a bit of support Krystal could make something of her life, but now that Barry has gone who will give her that support?

JK Rowling is a great storyteller and I found myself completely drawn into this book. I thought it was thought provoking, and it left me feeling a bit sad. I'd recommend it.

Tuesday, 20 November 2012

A House Unlocked by Penelope Lively

In this book Penelope Lively uses her memories of Golsoncott, her grandparent's house in Somerset to discuss social changes in England during the twentieth century. Each chapter is titled according to items  in the house which Lively remembers, and these items are the starting point for the discussion. So, for example, the second chapter is entitled 'The Children on the Sampler'. It begins with a description of a fire screen which was embroidered by her grandmother, who was a very accomplished needlewoman;

It is formal and stylized, in the sampler tradition, with the house at the top and beneath it significant elements of the garden - lily pond with goldfish shimmering beneath the blue stitched water, dovecot with white doves, sundial, mole and molehill, frog, toad, dragonfly.....Below that is the stable block, horses peering from loose boxes, each named, and a row of prancing dogs beneath - Sheltie and Waif and Merlin and the famous Dingo, a real Australian dingo bought from London Zoo by my aunt Rachel. At the very bottom is a line of children. Not as you might think, grandchildren, but the wartime evacuees.

Lively then goes on to write about the evacuees who were billeted at Golsoncott, and more generally about the effect of the evacuation on the country. Other chapters cover the opening up of the West Country to tourism with the coming of the railways, the role of the church in rural life, and garden history, among other subjects.

Lively's references to her own family history have the effect of making the subjects personal and real, but she isn't sentimental about the past. I don't think I have read any of Penelope Lively's novels, and this book has made me want to seek them out.