The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Armin

If ever there was a book that the words ‘delightful’, ‘charming’ and ‘blissful’ were invented for, this is it. If you are feeling sad, if you need a lift, if you want to read something that will leave you feeling like you’re lay, face upturned to the sun, in a field of soft-scented flowers, bees gently buzzing and not a care in the world this is the book for you. It is a drop of golden sunshine in bookish form. Really.

The Enchanted April begins with Mrs Wilkins, drab and lonely in her London club, rain pouring down outside, wind beating the windows, reading an advert in the Times. The advert reads:

“To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine. Small medieval Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let Furnished for the month of April. Necessary servants remain...”

Something about the advert captivates her, and she’s not alone as merely moments later she notices Mrs Arbuthnot also reading the Times, also with a wistful look of longing in her eyes. Surprisingly, unexpectedly, the pair forge a deal to rent the castle in spite of any possible objections their husbands might raise (to the point of lying about the trip). And husbands they do have, and unhappy marriages to boot.  

But it turns out that they can’t afford the castle by themselves so they advertise for two companions. They receive only two notices of interest: Mrs Fisher, an aged dusty old lady with a ‘stick’ (which takes on quite a character of its own, that stick) and Lady Caroline Dester, a women so desirable that any effort she makes to seem unwelcoming or churlish translates immediately into a kind of graceful charm which is both compelling and irresistible and results in much ‘grabbing’ from which she greatly desires to escape.

This motley crew descend upon the castle in the beautiful San Salvatore, each desiring much the same thing: peace, quiet, space to think and unfold. Each carries their own store of unhappiness. For Mrs Wilkins, Lotty, it is a shameful desire to escape the domination of her husband, in whose presence she feels useless to the point of awkwardness. It is Lotty who first throws of her former self; whereas before she had been quiet, awkward and shy at San Salvatore she becomes happy, open, blossoming, she says what she feels and she feels immensely. Mrs Arbuthnot, Rose, is hiding from a marriage which has become estranged on account of her intense religious devotion and her shame at her husband’s profession as a writer of scandalous memoirs. Rose desperately wants to reinvoke the love she shared with her husband in the early years of their marriage, before the sadness of a miscarriage, but doesn’t know how to come back from the coldness of their separation. Lady Caroline Dester desires to escape the ‘grabbers’ and think about the meaning of her life, passing judgement that somehow her life until that point had been ‘tawdry’, whereas Mrs Fisher merely wants to sit and think and remember the great people she had known in her youth, the likes of Ruskin and Keats, whose impact on her life had never been surpassed.

Not surprisingly, the castle at San Salvatore, in its beautiful surroundings, works its magic upon all the women, bringing them peace and happiness and resolution. The storyline isn’t challenging and the resolutions convenient, but none of that matters. What matters is the delightfulness of the prose, von Armin’s lightly comedic touch, the wonderful description of sunshine and flowers and the feeling that most British people share, that a good holiday in the sunshine can cure all ills. The characters are at times ridiculous (especially Mr Mellersh-Wilkins) and their behaviour almost caricaturish, but the way they are presented makes you love them. Like here where Lady Caroline (also known as ‘Scrap’ reflects on her flight to San Salvatore and what it meant:

“Her mother had been distressed at her departure. It was such an odd thing to do, such a sign of disappointment. She encouraged the general idea of the verge of a nervous breakdown. If she could have seen her adored Scrap, more delightful to look upon than any other mother’s daughter had ever yet been, the object of her utmost pride, the source of all her fondest hopes, sitting staring at the empty noonday Mediterranean considering her three possible sets of twenty-eight years, she would have been miserable. To go away was bad; to think was worse. No good could come out of the thinking of a beautiful young woman. Complications could come out of it in profusion, but no good. The thinking of the beautiful was bound to result in hesitations, in reluctances, in unhappiness all round. And here, if she could have seen her, sat her Scrap thinking quite hard. And such things. Such old things. Things nobody ever began to think till they were at least forty.”

There are many beautiful descriptions of flowers (Elizabeth von Armin also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel called Elizabeth and her German Garden which chronicles her own extra-marital affair with all things leafy and petal-laden) and sunshine and gorgeous scenery. But it is Love that permeates this book. Love with a capital L. How Love can free people from their fears, how it can complete them. It is a lovely book, a hug in paper-form and if it doesn’t leave you smiling, well, you’ll just have to read it again.

The Enchanted April receives a sunshiny 10 out of 10 Biis.

Oh, and there’s also a movie which is also very, very good and cheering with a wickedly good cast.

 

Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman

I am a bookaholic, I think we’ve established that. I find it hard to imagine a life without books, a life not being surrounded by books. E-Readers horrify me, their clinical un-bookishness, their empty, soulless, paperless, unfeelingness in which you can carry around an entire library and yet, for me, the very fact that I can’t carry around my library gives me a fuzzy-warm feeling of security. Wherever I am, whatever book I am carrying with me, I know that my library is waiting patiently for me at home. Books on every surface, that’s me. And of course I know that e-Readers are a boon to many, not least of which to those who live in climates that eat paper alive, but not to me. Not to me. I am a covetous bibliophile. My children can grow up and move out but my books are mine until I die.

So imagine the pleasure to discover this wonderful little book about a woman who loves books, if you can comprehend the idea of this, EVEN MORE THAN ME. It is rare for me to encounter someone who loves books as much as me, but in reading this small volume I discovered that perhaps I’m only an average bibliophile after all. Perhaps in the world of book loving, I’m a mid-ranker. And I’m ashamed (only a little, and perhaps equally a little proud) to say that it raised a kind of competitive book-loverishness in me. I found myself measuring her against me, and sadly found myself wanting.

But that’s enough about my bruised ego, let’s talk about the book. It’s dreadful...no, just kidding. Any book that speaks so lovingly and exploratively about the art of loving books was bound to be worth a read. In Ex Libris Fadiman shares, though the course of 18 short essays, her musings on the challenges and art of reading. She talks about the terror of inter-mixing libraries (I have never done this; my husband’s science fiction books are squeezed into whatever tiny space I allow them, usually hidden behind a pile of books that are ALL MINE), of the difficulty of deciding which duplicate volume to remove, the impossibility of not-proof reading, the compulsion to read anything including catalogues, the pleasures of reading aloud and the dreaded question of how best to store your books whilst addressing the necessity to always have one within easy reach.

Each chapter addresses a different aspect of book reading. No doubt different readers would have different favourites, but the one that really struck home to me was a chapter called “Never do that to a book” which addresses the question which splits readers right down the middle: is your love of books courtly (i.e. you treat books like articles of fine art) or carnal (you practically devour your books, write on them, bend their spine, rip pages out, etc)? Now I will confess, here and now, that I am a courtly lover of books; the idea of writing on a book horrifies me. Never have my books seen highlighter pen or markers. The idea of ripping out chapters after you’ve read them, as Fadiman’s father did to make the volume lighter and easier to carry, makes me sick to my stomach. Fadiman, however, sees it quite differently; she sees her connection to the book as physical and temporal and the idea of picking up an old volume and discovering the notes of her much younger self is part of how she connects with the books that she reads. She literally ‘loves them to pieces’, and whilst my instinctive inner book-lover screams at the idea of it, I can see what she means. The other night my daughter came to me and asked me if we had any copies of The Chronicles of Narnia she could read. I led her to my seven ancient volumes, yellowed, faded and a little loose-leaved. I passed them to her with shaky hands and asked her, as calmly as I could, to treat them carefully; they are old and fragile and precious and easily broken. Then she opened up The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and there, on the first page, in the top left corner, in tentatively pressed pencil was my name and my address, written to claim ownership of these precious articles when I was around nine or ten and reading these wonderful books that had been handed down to me. When I saw my shaky (but frankly neater than it is now) handwriting in the cover, it meant something to me. So whilst I’m not about to get out the Sharpie and scrawl all over my signed copy of The Goldfinch, the idea of writing in books, of loving them to pieces has become a lot less abhorrent to me.

What is lovely about this book is how Fadiman shares both the joy and frailties of book loving; there is a lot of humour in her writing, and a kind of intimacy as she uses her personal experience and anecdotes to show where excessive book-loving can lead. It is a funny, quirky and enlightening book which has made me think a lot about the way I read and what it means to me. It made me want to pick up a book and read to my kids again (apparently they’re never too old, though I tried it this morning and after about 6 lines my daughter took the book from my hands and put it carefully back in the bookcase, a meaningful look in her eye), or perhaps read as a family. When we recently visited the Harry Potter experience for my daughter’s birthday, I read extracts from The Tales of Beedle the Bard in the car on the way home, and it was weird but also kind of interesting, and little different, really, to listening to the radio. This book has helped me to appreciate, and in some ways deepen, my life-long love of reading. It is life-affirming and a blessing, and an absolute pleasure to read.  

Ex Libris receives a bookish 9 out of 10 Biis. 

The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna

I wanted to write a review that did justice to this wonderful book, but I fear I just don't have the skill. There are books which are fun or entertaining to read, there are books that create new and unfamiliar worlds that make us think, there are books that are clever and funny and there are books that tell stories so sensitively and with a kind of loving care that feels feather-light that it is almost like you are watching it unfold right in front of you. This is one of those stories. Ostensibly it is a story of a man rebuilding a house that had gone to ruin in his village. Yet it is much more than that. It is a masterful piece of story-telling, a lesson in how great fiction can be beautiful, sorrowful, stirring and devastating, leaving you feeling that a window in the world has been opened and unsure whether you wish it was still shut. 

The story begins with Duro, a solitary man who lives on the outskirts of the quiet Croatian village of Gost (rhymes with ghost), who observes some newcomers moving into the ‘Blue House’. The Blue House has gone to ruin over the years, hasn’t been lived in for some time, and the presence of the newcomers is something of a surprise. It is not long until Duro visits to find the English family who have taken over this abandoned house: Laura and her son Matthew and daughter Grace, an absent, busy husband, who plan to develop properties in Croatia for rental or onward sale. Duro, a handyman, agrees to work for the family, helping to restore the house to its former glory.

The town of Gost has its ghosts, however, and it’s not long until the newcomers’ presence starts to bring this to the surface. As he restores the house, Duro begins to uncover his own memories of events which he had buried in the past. A mosaic is uncovered under the plaster, a fountain in the garden too, both of which the family help to restore, bringing Duro’s adversary, Krešimir the house's previous owner (who Duro reveals had 'no right' to sell it), protesting from the village. It soon becomes apparent that there is a shared history and a shared enmity between Duro and Krešimir which centres around Krešimir’s sister Anka who is mysteriously missing. Then there is Fabjan, the owner of the Zodijak bar in town, who Duro enjoys annoying and who appears later, somewhat menacingly, hanging around in the darkness outside the Blue House. It is apparent that something has happened in the past, something terrible, and that terrible something brings menace into the life of the new family in the Blue House.

Duro makes for a fascinating character. He is a builder, a restorer, he befriends and both helps and protects the new family, welcoming them to Gost. There is a strong hint of attraction towards Laura, a disinterest in her husband who visits rarely, respect for Grace whose awkwardness and perceptiveness he uncovers quickly, a certain disinterest in Matthew who he sees as somewhat lazy and undisciplined and yet he teaches him to shoot and takes him hunting. In this way Duro works his way into the hearts of the family.

But Duro is a hunter, and though his actions seem kindly and friendly it is evident that he has an agenda and his agenda is unsettling the village and putting the family at risk. His restoration of the Blue House has as much to do with his relationship with Anka as helping the family. It is Grace, the perceptive one, who notices the disparity between what Duro says and what he means, what he shares and what he is withholding. Eventually it is with Grace he shares his story.

Underlying all of this clever book is the terrible events of the Yugoslav wars, the ethnic cleansing and the ways in which neighbours can turn against each other. Duro has his ghosts, as does everyone in Gost, and in a way he uses the presence of the newcomers to bring those ghosts to the surface.

It is an excellent book. It is hard to describe how truly excellent it is. As I was reading, the sense that the book was building to something terrible, a terrible event in all of their histories, heightened the tension but this tension was juxtaposed against fields filled with flowers, beautiful scenery, the burgeoning friendship between Duro and the family. In this way Forna uses contrast with skillful accuracy: the beauty of the scenery is contrasted with the bodies you know are buried within it, the kindness of Duro contrasted with his hunter's instincts and quiet vengefulness. Yet it is also a story about restoration, we follow Duro restoring the Blue House and his restoration is loving, and yet it is more than the house he is restoring. It is the memory of its occupants that he is bringing to the surface, bringing them back as a punishment, both for himself and for others. He restores the house to its former glory, and through this seemingly innocent act shows how hard it is for people to move on. In this way Forna explores how difficult it must be for communities torn apart by civil war, especially a civil war with the brutality that was experienced in this region, to rebuild, to go forward and forget the past.

The conclusion of the story truly left me reeling. I knew it was building to something, and in the end it didn’t go where I expected but I still felt hollowed out by it. I won’t share it here, I wouldn’t want to spoil the story (because you really must go and read it) but it was sad and horrifying and emotionally stunning.

The Hired Man is a wonderful book. It has an engaging story, with complex characters hiding from (or running towards) a devastating history from which they can never escape. What is brilliant about it is how Forna distracts you from the terrible undercurrents with a diverting surface story. On the one hand it is gentle, the story of a man sensitively restoring a house which had gone to ruin. On the other hand it is a story of horrific violence. The fields of flowers disguise the landmines and buried bodies, just as Forna's beautiful words draw your eye unflinchingly towards a crime that many wish to remain hidden.

And for the record, I am glad this window has been opened, however much I wish that the real-life events which underpin this story had never occurred.  

The Hired Man receives an awed 10/10 Biis.     

Ten dead female writers everyone should read

I don’t know if you’ve heard, readers, but 2014 is the year of reading women. Yea-ha! It’s about time. And how rotten that it takes the likes of Twitter to highlight the under-representation of women in the literary world. I’ve said it before, so won’t labour the point, but there is an inherent sense in the literature that there is ‘fiction’ and ‘women’s fiction’. There are books that are ‘universal’ (e.g. written by men and about things that interest men and thereby everyone) and books that address ‘women’s issues’ (e.g. not of interest to men). Or put another way, half of the population take an interest (or perhaps are forced to take an interest) in the other half, and half of the population don’t. It seems to me that the latter half are losing out.

Of course I know it is not that simple. Many men read and enjoy and share and promote books by women, and many women almost exclusively read books written by men. That’s the thing with gender issues, they’re never really straightforward or easy to resolve. But what is straightforward is that there are many, many, many wonderful female writers out there and they should be read. And they’re not hard to find either (you can find many on my blog, right here). Please read them.  I am prepared to beg (or nag. I am better at nagging).

So, continuing not to labour the point, I’ve compiled a list of dead female writers that everyone, EVERYONE, should read. And if you read the list and think ‘but where are the Bronte’s and Austen and Woolf and Eliot and Agatha Christie and Doris Lessing?’ that’s deliberate as I’ve assumed most people are already familiar with the more well-known female writers (though if you weren’t I’ve sneakily mentioned them anyway. Did you notice?). So, without further ado, here’s my list. Who would you add?    

Murasaki Shikibu

Did you know that the world’s first credited* novel was written by a woman? She’s worth reading for that accolade alone, but fortunately her one, ground-breaking novel is more than just that. The epic Tale of Genji is a Japanese classic, telling the story of the ‘shining Genji’, illegitimate and favoured son of the Emperor. If you ever wondered how long that feeling that ‘things just aren’t as good as they used to be’ goes back, this tale sites it at least some eras earlier than the 11^th Century. A beautiful and fascinating, and rather long, story that’s well worth the time it takes to read.  

Simone de Beauvoir

It always depresses me that the name Simone de Beauvoir is often followed by, you know Sartre’s girlfriend, because this remarkable women was much, much more than that. Perhaps most famous for her feminist critique, The Second Sex, which provides a remarkably detailed and quietly scientific overview of the problems women face in Western culture. However, for me the book that simply blew me away was the short but disturbingly powerful The Woman Destroyed which comprises three short pieces examining three women’s stories. There was something about that book that really woke me up, made me realise that it was not enough to know that the male-dominated culture made it more difficult for women to live successful and happy lives, but also women’s complicity within it made it less likely to change. In her work de Beauvoir presents the idea that women are responsible for achieving their own transcendence, for reaching beyond the limits society offers and grabbing more. She is, perhaps, the first true feminist, but don’t be misled into thinking that means her work is solely about or for women. Instead she is an insightful writer who belongs well within the Existentialist movement. Not on the sidelines, or behind her more famous partner.  

Elizabeth von Armin

Because The Enchanted April. If you can find a nicer, happier, lovelier, more wonderfully sweet and soul-cheering book anywhere I will eat my blog.

Sigrid Undset

Undset is a Nobel prize winning novelist. Do I need to say more? Well, perhaps it is worth mentioning her epic novel Kristen Lavransdatter, set in the 14^th Century, which follows the life of a women from a well-to-do family who defies social expectation and marries the man of her choosing...and breathe. What follows is a love story, a story of freedom of choice over social expectations, how following your chosen path can be difficult, disappointing and yet marvellous and rewarding. It’s a whopper, but stunning, absorbing and beautiful.

Iris Murdoch

They don’t refer to her as a philosopher without reason. Murdoch was a prolific writer whose work is peppered with ideas, concepts, musings, psychology all wrapped up, often, in an engaging story. My personal favourites include The Bell, The Unicorn and the marvellous Black Prince which is a fantastic example of the unreliable narrator. Her magnus opus, The Sea The Sea is still on my ‘to read’ list. Hopefully I’ll get around to it this year. Also worth checking out the biopic movie starring the wonderful Kate Winslet and incomparable Judi Dench.

Anais Nin

A long time before Fifty Shades of Grey there was Anais Nin. In fact that’s a poor comparison because there is NO comparison between Nin and the juvenile drivel that shall not be mentioned again. Nin is a writer with her self on her sleeve. Honest, passionate, self-aware, explorative, she gained fame writing short, erotic stories which have since been bound-up in two collections – Little Birds and Delta of Venus – which explore a vast array of erotic themes (and make for quite nicely titillating bedtime reading). Her famed interactions with Henry Miller are covered in her wonderfully biographical story Henry and June. An early example of life reflecting art, or art reflecting life, or something like that. An absolute pleasure to read.    

Angela Carter

Angela Carter, I think, was my first grown-up discovery. Her writing is voluptuous, her characters often unsympathetic and their relationships awkward and combative. My absolute favourite of her works is The Magic Toyshop, a terrifying coming of age story of poor spoiled Melanie who steals her mother’s wedding dress and destroys it, only to find her parents destroyed too. Orphaned along with her brother and sister, she is sent to live with her Uncle Philip, a man she has never met, his strange, mute, wife and her brothers who live together in a degraded part of London. Philip is a toymaker, the proverbial puppet-master, and they live above the toyshop. It is a dark and magical story exploring the terror of self discovery and the unexpected places love can be found.

For a great introduction to Angela Carter, try her short story collections – The Bloody Chamber and Black Venus. In them she reworks a number of well-known stories from a female perspective: Little Red Riding Hood, Dracula, Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots, but it is the richness of her language which is most memorable. This from The Bloody Chamber:

”Even when he asked me to marry him, and I said: ‘Yes,’ still he did not lose that heavy, fleshy composure of his. I know it must seem a curious analogy, a man with a flower, but sometimes he seemed to me like a lily. Yes. A lily. Possessed of that strange, ominous calm of a sentient vegetable, like one of those cobra-headed funeral lilies whose white sheaths are curled out of a flesh as thick and tensely yielding to the touch as vellum. When I said that I would marry him, not one muscle in his face stirred, but he let out a long, extinguished sigh. I thought: Oh! how he must want me! And it was as though the imponderable weight of his desire was a force I might not withstand, not by virtue of its violence but because of its very gravity.” 

Ah!

Marlen Haushofer

I’ve read only one book by Haushofer, The Wall, which is perhaps her most well known and boy did it stick with me. A quiet tale of a woman trapped inside a valley behind an invisible wall. She suspects that everyone outside is dead. Under this bubble she wrestles with survival as well as the downsides and benefits of being outside society. Alongside her daily trials there is an unknown menace; someone else is in the dome, a man she suspects, and whilst there is no direct interaction the presence of this unexpected and unpredictable third party creates a terrifying edge. It is a powerful book which reflects interestingly on the pressures of society at large, and the ways in which we are threatened and freed by being outside of it.

Tove Jansson

Well, it wouldn’t be my blog if I didn’t mention her at least once. READ HER. I can’t say it loudly enough. She’s amazing.

*I say ‘credited’ because it probably wasn't the first novel ever written, but is often cited as being the first. 

Ten contemporary male writers everyone should read

This list was pretty difficult to put together because actually I’m not that well informed when it comes to contemporary male writers. In point of fact most the male writers I really like are dead, which is a bit of a shame for me (but perhaps more of a shame for them). Plus I’ve been so heavily focused on unearthing those great contemporary female writers I’ve lost touch with the men. Perhaps that is something I will rectify this year (though I do have some fairly heavy reading goals already). Though I’m aware of some names floating around out there without having read them it would be wrong of me to pin them here as worth reading (though possibly they might be...they might warrant a quick mention somewhere). So I should qualify at this stage that some of the writers might be a little bit on the fringe, but I’ve read them and found them worth it and perhaps the list is better for not being comprised solely of the usual suspects.

So, without further delay, here is the list.  

David Mitchell

Before you get confused that’s David Mitchell the writer, not David Mitchell the TV personality. Made famous by the amazing Cloud Atlas, described, quite fittingly, as a Matrioshka doll of a novel. But it’s much more than that. It’s an experiment in form, it’s a showcase of Mitchell’s talent and intelligence, it’s fun. However, Cloud Atlas is not Mitchell’s only novel, neither is it his only great novel. To gain a full appreciation of his skill it’s worth reading through his work: the loosely biographical Black Swan Green, the eclectic and brilliant Number9Dream (I challenge you not to fall in love with the quirky loveliness of Goatwriter), the contemplative Ghostwritten (my personal favourite), the historical masterpiece The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet in which Mitchell shows both his joy and mastery of the English language. Mitchell has always struck me as a writer who lives in a globalised world, a fusion writer bringing together the East/West cultures into a new kind of vision. It is perhaps not too surprising to find he spent time in Japan and has a Japanese wife (who is not me, sadly), when the flavours of Japan spice his work so liberally. In many ways Mitchell is a writer of blending; he shows you the forms, sticks to their rules, then stitches them together in a way which shouldn’t work but it does. It always does. 

J M Coetzee

Quite a different writer, but a master all the same. Coetzee is sharp as the knife he cuts his characters with, his prose so clean you can see your face in it. His work is intelligent, insightful, often bleak. His characters are unlikeable (but I think we’ve established before that likeability is not a necessary trait). Where Mitchell is joyful, Coetzee is a surgeon – all precision and sharp light and cutting. I think you probably get my point. If you enjoy comforting reads then Coetzee isn’t for you, but if you enjoy work that is perceptive and intelligent, with an eye on the darker side of life and a slightly parable-esque edge to it, then he’s your man. Disgrace, his seminal novel, reflects post-apartheid South Africa with an unforgiving eye and is not without controversy. It is not an easy read, but perhaps an important one.  

Don DeLillo

I may be slightly influenced by the knowledge that Don DeLillo was a key influence for David Mitchell in his work, with Mitchell going as far as stealing entire lines for his novel Cloud Atlas (and crediting it, to be fair). My first encounter with DeLillo was less than auspicious. I read a novel called The Body Artist and I hated and slated it and swore it would be a long time before I read a DeLillo novel again. It was a couple of years later when I picked up a cheap copy of Cosmopolis, intrigued largely by the movie which was due to be out that year (and which I have never seen). I took it on a camping holiday and spent three short days completely altering my view of DeLillo. I was mesmerised. I read it once, then read it again. And again. I went back to passages, phrases like ‘meat space’, ‘the zero-oneness of the world’. DeLillo’s writing has a very transcendent quality to it, a rhythm that is like a chant or a prayer. It almost doesn’t matter what the words say, it carries you along on a dreamlike wave and you go with it. He has a way with dialogue which is simultaneously completely unnatural and yet authentic in a way that makes ordinary speech seem empty and worthless. He’s basically great. Read him.   

Tom McCarthy

Known for his Booker shortlisted novel ‘C’, Tom McCarthy writes from an avant gard literary tradition. He has written only a few books, but all of them pack a punch. My personal favourite, one that really sticks in my head for some reason, is Remainder. This is the story of a man who is hit by ‘something’ that has fallen from the sky, and as a result he has had to relearn to use his body. He is also awarded substantial sums of money in compensation. He discovers that certain incidents or ideas, and the repetition of them, have a strange effect on him and uses his money to make these happen over and over continually. Not surprisingly this spirals into something quite terrible. There is something strange and addictive about this book; it is one I have returned to more than once (perhaps scarily like the character in the book) and each time I’ve found it equally compelling. His other novels ‘C’ and Men in Space deal with much broader themes. There’s a nihilism to his work which may or may not be linked to his organisation the ‘International Necronautica Society’, explorers in the adventures of death.  

Haruki Murakami

Murakami. I have a mixed relationship with Murakami. He has written a lot of books, many of them excellent. He’s also written some duffers. He sits somewhere between populism and excellence and each novel that is released sits somewhere between them too. He is a writer worth reading, worth exploring. There is probably something for everyone in Murakami’s books. His protagonists are often lonely or loners. His books explore themes of isolation and self-discovery. There is often jazz, and a lot about food. There are cats and people that eat their heads. Philosophy, unexplained phenomena, suicide. Wells, a lot of wells. I was disappointed with 1Q84, largely on account of the male sexual fantasy drawing of the main female characters and the baggy plot which, with a careful edit here and there, would have been fantastic. Many people loved it, however. In my opinion, Murakami is much better in his older works, and at his best in his only factual work Underground which centres around the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo underground, largely through interviews with survivors, family members of victims and members of the Aum Shinrikyu cult that perpetrated the attack. Other great books in Murakami’s canon include The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, After Dark and Kafka on the Shore.

Cees Nooteboom

Now here’s another writer who barely drops a poor word. Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, also known for his travel works, has a small catalogue of extremely excellent works. The first of his I encountered, Lost Paradise, is a tiny but mind-blowing book that I read, read again and then again for good measure. Drawing on Dante’s Paradise Lost, it follows the interlinking stories of two people: a Brazilian girl who is gang raped and retreats to Australia with a friend, and an aging man, a writer, who goes on a retreat to find himself. It is a book about identity and angels, the wonder of the desert, and how we find ourselves in unsuspecting places. It is a book of pure beauty, terrifying and wondrous. Rituals is a quite different novel, following the fortunes of Inni Wintrop who in the opening pages hangs himself (unsuccessfully). It is a book filled with dark humour and unexpected people. As an introduction, you might want to try his book of short stories The Foxes Come at Night which is equally excellent (especially the one about the tortoise).

China Mieville

I’ll admit to having only read one of Mieville’s books and that one is The City and The City. I would like to read more. Mieville blends science fiction, horror, detective fiction and weaves his own magic around it, creating something quite new. The City and The City tells the story of a detective investigating a death which crosses from one city to another city, both of which occupy the same space. Is your mind bent yet? It will be. Mieville is a writer for the urban generation, setting his books in cities known (London) and unknown. There is no one quite like Mieville, he writes in an imaginative space, conjuring an alternate reality which is both strange and believable. He reminds me, I think, of what Ballard would be if he was writing now.

Simon Crump

This, I’ll admit, is my wildcard. Again, I have only read one novel by Crump but it is My Elvis Blackout and honestly I don’t think I’ve read a weirder or scarier or odder or more mind-blowing book than this in my lifetime. It’s bonkers. In it Crump presents us with an alternative Elvis or, in fact, several alternative Elvis’s. Yes, that’s right, the Elvis. Uh huh. Other cameo appearances come from Barbara Cartland and Chris du Burgh. Someone dies (everyone dies). It’s weird but brilliant.

Kazuo Ishiguro

Ishiguro writes such interestingly complex characters. His book The Remains of the Day, which is also an excellent movie, presents the perfect embodiment of mannered duty in the butler Stevens and yet it is a duty which is old fashioned and somehow wrong and which leads him to make terrible choices. Never Let Me Go is quite disturbing, again perhaps largely due to the complicity of the characters in their own situation. It is hard to discuss it without revealing too much. Like Mitchell, Ishiguro blends a kind of Japanese-ness and English-ness and creates, perhaps, the worst case scenario of both. A brilliant yet complex writer, hard to classify but well worth reading.

Nicholson Baker

There are two sides to Nicholson Baker’s work: the obsessive compulsive, detail heavy, mundane and yet not mundane, and then there’s the porn. It’s relatively easy to figure out which is which. The Mezzanine, for example, is the story of a man travelling an escalator having gone to buy shoelaces. Obviously that the obsessive-compulsive type. The Fermata is the story of a man who can freeze time and uses it to undress women and masturbate. That’s porn. What links them both is Baker’s distinctive voice which despite the mundane/porny theme of the books is charming and engaging and often very funny. Not to everyone’s taste, but definitely a unique writer with a unique voice, worth watching out for.

So that’s my list. I’m pretty sure there are some quite glaring omissions. You may note that Philip Roth makes no appearance, which is largely because Roth leaves me cold though I am aware many people think he is amazing. Martin Amis is another; there was a time when I liked Amis but that time is long past. He is another who has, I think, passed his prime. Will Self I haven’t read, neither have I read Karl Ove Knausgaard though I hear good things about him. Which writers would you add to my list? 

Reformation: reflections on a compulsive book hoarder

It is almost 2014 and, to mirror the tradition of the time of year, I’d just like to reflect a moment on the year that was 2013. 2013 will always, now, be known to me as the year I realised I’d become a compulsive book hoarder and decided to do something about it. Like many self-discoveries, this one has been a journey and a journey that has not ended and will not end until I do. I have hoarding compulsions. Compulsions are rarely defeated easily (and if they are it is more probable that they have simply been mis-described, exaggerated).

I have stopped buying books, or rather I have largely stopped buying books. I consider this a considerable improvement. I have given in, now and again. I am starting to recognise the key danger signs: a winsome look from my daughter (a future hoarder if you ever saw one, as the pile of unread ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ books is a testament to); days when I’m feeling stressed or harried and I wander into the bookshop for a moment’s respite amongst the shelves; the death of a favoured author (which is my key excuse...I mean reason...for buying The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing, which was really awfully good and a worthwhile buy). I will confess, now, to having bought several books in this past week. It was my birthday recently, and I was given some money with which to buy some books so I finally invested in The Story of the Stone, which I’m very much looking forward to reading. But that’s it. The money is spent. No more.  

I am starting to develop coping mechanisms, the most important of which was rediscovering the library which I remain ashamed to have forgotten. I must, at this point, take a moment to commend the absolute excellence of the Lancashire Library Service, which provides a brilliant service to the community. They have saved me several times from an impulsive purchase. Instead my first port of call is now always the library catalogue and I have been massively impressed at how quickly the Lancashire Library Service responds to a popular new book. Through them I have read most of the Booker nominated novels (those that I hadn’t already purchased before I stopped myself), Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (marvellous) and the fantastic Booker winner Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. The ability to reserve a book, even if I have to wait weeks for it, has been enough to assuage my urge. If there is one thing I have learned this year it is this: use your library. Even if only occasionally. They provide a magnificent service that helps so many people. At a time when they remain under threat, boots through the door will help to preserve them. They have books. They want you to take them.  

Re-reading is something I really want to work on next year. There are many books I would like to read again, and probably a small core of books that I would love to become a part of my being. Having whizzed through The Luminaries and The Goldfinch I would definitely like to read those two again (aided, I should add, by the kindness of a friend who gifted me with my own copies for my birthday). A Tale for The Time Being is another repeat I’d like to make, alongside other more established books in my collection: Lost Paradise and Rituals by Cees Nooteboom, The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter, The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, Remainder by Tom McCarthy, Ghostwritten by David Mitchell, Jane Eyre to name but a few. I could spend the whole year re-reading but I think I need to balance the re-reads against the unreads so my ‘to-read’ pile continues to shrink. And then there are the books yet to be. As always, my reading ambitions exceed my time and ability.

I haven’t read Proust. I read the first book of Proust and realised that if I stick to my pledge I may never buy another book again. I may simply be too young (not that I get to say that much anymore) or maybe I’m not of the right frame of mind, but I found his meanderingly pointless repetitiveness spectacularly unappealing. It doesn’t really matter now. I have learned so much about my book hoarding proclivities that I don’t think I need the barrier of Proust to prevent me. What I want to do instead is make sure that my buying matters, that it makes a difference. I am a proud subscriber to And Other Stories, a not for profit organisation that publish some amazing books on the back of individual subscriptions and I will continue to support this organisation (and encourage others to do the same) in spite of my commitment to hoard less. I would like to set aside a little money each month and allow myself a single purchase, but instead of buying from Amazon or The Book Depository or one of those other internet behemoths, instead I will head down to my local independent bookshop (Ebb & Flow in Chorley, which carries an excellent albeit small selection of books) and spend my money there. I feel much happier spending a little more but putting money into a local community business. There are so few these days, and my contribution will be small but hopefully valuable. Overall I intend to spend less on books, but make my purchases more considered and more carefully. I think that’s a reasonable goal, for the person who once bought 47 books in one go.

A touch of poetry: Mark Strand

You don’t hear of or see many people reading poetry these days; I guess it’s largely out of fashion. If you look hard enough you might catch the odd person admitting to reading some for school, or university, and then only sheepishly and rarely with an admission of enjoyment. ‘Oh, I read it because I had to,’ they’ll say. ‘It’s boring,’ or ‘I didn’t get it.’ They avoid eye contact, change the subject. I remember, once, telling someone I had an entire book of poetry and they looked at me, a quizzical uncertainty in their eye. ‘A book of poetry?’ they said. ‘Why would you read a whole book of poems?’ When I explained I owned many books of poems, it killed the conversation (thankfully, I should say).

Poetry, for me, occupies the same kind of space as music or art. It is something to be returned to, repeatedly, to be experienced as opposed to consumed. It is something that etches into me gradually, each reading bringing me something new and different. I am not too troubled by lack of understanding, which is not to say that I understand poetry naturally but rather I am willing to wait for understanding, in whatever form it takes, to seep into me gradually, over a course of weeks, months, years or decades. Or perhaps that understanding will remain forever out of my grasp, as is true of so many things. This does not trouble me. I do not need, or especially desire, understanding to enjoy or appreciate something. Perhaps understanding is a bonus, or not. Perhaps understanding kills the mystery. I do not find it strange that people read poetry, it only saddens me, a little, that so many do it so furtively and yet those same people might think nothing of listening to a song over and over until the beat of it sang in their veins and celebrating it.

It is perhaps because repetition, re-reading, is so much at the forefront of my mind these days that I got to thinking about poetry. Poetry, I find, benefits from multiple readings and often from readings that are separated by distances in time. Not just time, but also cognition. I am a different person now, have a different understanding and experience, to the me that read Boris Pasternak, so tentatively, at 18. I have mentioned this before, but there is something useful, marvellous even, in making that re-connection with the earlier versions of yourself. Through this we can learn how we have grown, yet remain the same. The me that reads poetry now is more confident than 18 year old me, but the gulf of understanding has not narrowed that greatly. This is both humbling and encouraging. It means that I still have space to grow, I must still seek and remain open. It means that in all my years of experience, I still have a way to go. I cannot assume that because I am older I know everything I need to know.

It was in this train of thought that I returned to the poetry of Mark Strand. Mark Strand, in case you have never encountered him, was once Poet Laureate of the United States, and writes poems which are landscapes or logical puzzles, which explore the connections between inner and outer self, our relationships with life and death. There is a lot of fun in his poetry, and much uncertainty. Some of his poems are extremely unsettling, and yet most are life-affirming, and over the course of the years (he has been writing for many, many years) there is a range of poetry such as it should suit just about anybody. For me, the focus has been on two collections: Darker and Selected Poems (Carcanet Press), largely because they are the two I own. If you want a taster of Strand’s poetry then the Carcanet Press book is a good place to start. Darker, however, is a collection you can seep yourself into and never have to come out. When I am feeling bleak, or uncertain, it is a collection I return to; I can lose myself in the tricky language, the linguistic puzzles and surprising precision. I can find myself again amongst the ‘Black Maps’, in the mysterious and surprising unravelling of truth within the questions he poses. I can laugh at his silliness, and the wit and wonder he displays in all of his work. My favourite poems, if it is possible to choose just a handful, are Black Maps, The Remains, The Prediction, My Life By Somebody Else. As a sampling, here is an extract of Black Maps:

 

“Black Maps

 

Not the attendance of stones,

nor the applauding wind,
shall let you know
you have arrived,

nor the sea that celebrates

only departures,
nor the mountains,
nor the dying cities.

Nothing will tell you

where you are.
Each moment is a place
you’ve never been.

You can walk

believing you cast
a light around you.
But how will you know?

The present is always dark.

Its maps are black,
rising from nothing,
describing,

in their slow ascent

into themselves,
their own voyage,
its emptiness,

the bleak, temperate

necessity of its completion.
As they rise into being
they are like breath..”.  

A full version of the poem, and a little more info about Strand, are available over at the Poetry Foundation website, which includes a sampling of his poems.  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mark-strand#poet

Strand’s poems have a modern, present feel although some of them were written over 40 years ago. There is something comforting about that, something wonderful. Perhaps it is Mark’s own words, from Seven Poems (also in Darker), that explain, better than I ever can, why poems are something to be returned to, over again, regardless of how uncertain they make you feel, how unsettling. Why poems are something which we should allow to become etched into our very bones, reminding us of what we know, which is nothing. Read a poem today, and then tomorrow. And next year when you’ve forgotten it all, read it again.

 

“I have a key

so I open the door and walk in.
It is dark and I walk in.
It is darker and I walk in."

Mark Strand (Darker, 1976)