Harriet Devine's Blog

The Battle for Gullywith

My grandson George, aged 12, read this book and here is his review:

The Battle for Gullywith

Oliver Brown moves from his home in London to a damp old house in the country with his mum, dad and baby sister Lula.

Soon he makes friends with a girl called Kk.

Everything is going fine until strange stones with strange markings start to appear in unexpected places.

Soon Oliver and Kk find themselves on an amazing journey.

This is a magical book full of surprise and mystery.

It can be boring at times, but stick with it, for when the action begins you’ll find it hard to put down.

I recommend it to anyone with a taste for adventure.

7/10

Sunday Salon

I've just finished reading the book I had already started when I wrote last Sunday Salon, Patrick White's Voss. This is pretty slow going for me, but that's because I am on holiday in India. I also got sidetracked for a few days into reading a book I picked up in a guesthouse, David Baldacci's Simple Genius. I have had a bit of a love hate relationship with David Baldacci -- the first of his I encountered was called The Winner and I thought it was rivetting, but I tried another one recently -- The Camel Club I think -- and abandoned it very quickly as I did not get on with it at all. Simple Genius was OK -- very straightforward thriller narrative, which I did not find entirely enthralling but which I continued with because I liked the two central characters, ex-cops Sean and Michelle, whose relationship was rather fascinating. It was set mainly in a top-secret code-breaking organisation in Virginia and featured an 11 year old girl who was a mathematical genius. Those sound like a lot of great ingredients but I only liked it so so.
The same cannot be said about Voss, which is truly one of the most remarkable books I have ever read, and I have read a few. I want to write about it at length but will wait to do so until I get home. It's a book that really should be read at least twice I think to get the full value out of it -- as my experience was that I was so longing to know what was going to happen that I read it faster than I really wanted to and did not savour the writing enough. And though the story is fascinating the writing is what lifts this up to the level it is on -- really it is almost like an extended poem, but don't let that put you off if you don't like poetry! Set in Australia in the mid-nineteenth century, it is the story of two people, Laura Trevelyan, an English orphan who has been raised by her kind, conventional aunt and uncle, and Johann Ulrich Voss, a German explorer who has been sponsored to make a journey across the entire continent. These two meet only three times in all before Voss sets off, but an extraordinary, intense passion develops between them, which remains unrecognised until they have parted. A few letters pass between them, but in fact their real communication over the coming long months takes place on what can only be called a psychic level. Indeed a good deal of the novel takes place in the realm of the mind, the senses, the imagination, the soul. I've never read anything by Patrick White before but if this is anything to go by he is a truly great novelist. I'm now starting another novel by another great novelist, William Maxwell, The Chateau, which turns out to be set a few miles from where my house is in Normandy. So that will be fun. See you next week!

Another boy reading

This one by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805)

Rishikesh

This is where I am now and will be probably for a week or so. Right on the river Ganges in the foothills of the Himalayas. Just thought you might like to see a picture. More soon!

...and Women also Draw

Marie-Denise Villers, Young Woman Drawing, 1801

Sunday Salon: Delhi

Yes, fellow salonistas, I am in Delhi, on the first leg of a three-week holiday. I brought some books, needless to say, but have not read anything like as much as I would do at home. The only one I have finished was a classic Michael Innes detective story called Death in the Presidents Lodging. Written in 1936, it is I think one of the best of this highly intelligent writer's work. Innes, whose real name was J.I.M. Stewart, was an Oxford don, and often set his novels in university campuses. This one is quite brilliant -- one of the most complex, convoluted and ingenious plots you could possibly imagine. Briefly, the story begins with the murder of Dr Umpleby, the fairly universally hated President of the fictitious St Anthony's College. His body is dicovered in bizarre circumstances -- he has been shot in the forehead and his head wrapped in an academic gown, a pile of ancient human bones has been arranged alongside, and crude skulls scrawled in chalk on the walls. The number of suspects is very limited since the president's lodging is in a part of the college only accessible to those who have keys, about nine in all. But everyone, without exception, has a motive, and probably opportunity too. The young, well-born and highly intelligent Detective Inspector John Appleby is called in from Scotland Yard, and manages, of course, to work out the fiendishly complicated events which have taken place. This is the third Innes novel I've read in recent months and certainly my favorite so far -- but it really does keep you on your toes following the complexities of the plot and the relevance of the many literary and classical references. Highly recommended.

The other books I have with me are: William Maxwell, The Chateau, Rebecca West's , The Birds Fall Down, and a book by Patrick White, Voss, first published in 1959 and winner of the Booker Prize. I have never read anything by Patrick White before, but was impelled to buy this one as I started reading it over the shoulder of someone I was sitting next to on a train a few weeks ago and was instantly gripped. The quality of the writing is superb and the story intriguing and thought-provoking -- I'm about a third of the way in now and loving every minute. So I have a choice little selection, all of them among my favorite writers (as Patrick White has become one such now). I shall report back when I have finished Voss.

I'm off

on my travels again. May try to say hello to you all from time to time -- back in 3 weeks.

Which Winnie the Pooh character are you?

Something extremely silly to do. Try this test!

And here are my results. I am Roo, as it turns out:

You scored 12 Ego, 9 Anxiety,  and 11 Agency!

      

      

      "We  can't  get  down,  we  can't get down!" cried Roo. "Isn't it fun? Pooh, isn't it fun, Tigger and I are living in a tree, like Owl, and we're going to stay here for ever and ever. I can see Piglet's house. Piglet, I can  see  your  house  from here. Aren't we high? Is Owl's house as high up as this?"       

"How did you get there, Roo?" asked Piglet.       

"On  Tigger's  back! And Tiggers can't climb downwards, because their tails get in the way, only  upwards,  and  Tigger forgot   about  that  when  we  started,  and  he's  only  just remembered. So we've got to stay here for ever and ever--unless we go higher. What did you say, Tigger? Oh, Tigger says  if  we go  higher  we shan't be able to see Piglet's house so well, so we're going to stop here."

You scored as Roo!

ABOUT ROO: Roo lives with his mother and his friend Tigger. He is the youngest member of the Hundred Acre Wood, and loves to go along with his friends on their adventures - when Kanga will let him. No matter what happens to Roo, be it falling into the river, getting stuck in a tree, or being kidnapped by near-strangers, he enjoys ever minute of it. Roo isn't one to worry about such things. That's Kanga's job.

WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT YOU; You are a positive, fun loving person. You take life as it comes, and feel sure that everything will be all right. You can usually find a silver lining on every cloud.

It's lucky that your friends find you so endearing, because you do tend to lean on them a lot. You are not always very self sufficient. You tend to rely on the help of your family or friends when things get tough. You don't always take the initiative to do things for yourself. You feel like you can't do a very good job at these things, so instead you ask your more capable friends and family to help you. It's time you decided to stand on your own two feet!

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 0% on Ego

You scored higher than 33% on Anxiety

You scored higher than 33% on Agency

Sunday Salon

My reading week has been a bit peculiar, as I dragged myself with less and less willingness to the end of Dan Brown's Digital Fortress, more because it was there than because I was enjoying it. I am not going to say any more about this author, though. I then started a book I was really looking forward to, Maggie O'Farrell's After You'd Gone. Everyone in the world seems to have been bowled over by this novel as far as I can tell, so I started it enthusiastically. But it just didn't do it for me. Wrong mood, perhaps. It has been described as being structured like a pointilliste painting (ie very bitty) which is no doubt brilliant but slightly irritated me. It starts with a young woman, Alice, obviously in a rather wobbly state, getting on a train to Edinburgh, where she meets her two sisters. But minutes after she arrives, she goes to the ladies and sees -- something. What? We have no idea. But whatever it was, it flings her into a suicidal state and she races straight back to London and jumps under a train, though not quite fatally. Well, thought I, it must have been something pretty amazing, but there were so many pages to go before I was going to find out what it was. So I ended up doing something I have almost never done -- I turned to the end and discovered the secret. Then I put it back on the shelf and I do not know if it will ever come off. I then read a 1940 detective novel by the late great Michael Innes.  I think I have read  most of his, including this one, though not for a while. In fact this is not at all characteristic of his writing, being rather, in some ways, reminiscent of John Buchan's 39 Steps. Most of it takes place in the wilds of Scotland, and there are numerous foreign villains lurking about in unexpected places, lots of fake identities, and a  good deal of action in railway trains, rail trucks, and speed boats. It must have been written in 1939 as war is on the horizon but has not yet broken out. Fascinating historical read, then, and as learned as Innes always is, with poetry playing an important role in the solution of the mystery (Swinburne quoted, and misquoted, on a train sets the whole thing in motion). Great stuff.
I'm now reading a lovely Hesperus edition of Henry James, The Lesson of the Master. More on that soon.

Boy Reading

Now we have broken through the gender barrier, lots of good stuff awaits. Here is a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792).