Harriet Devine's Blog

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

Although I don't get deluged with books from publishers like some bloggers I know, the occasional surprise package does plop through the door and it's always exciting when it does. This one appeared unannounced and I knew absolutely nothing about it or its author, though I have since realised he wrote The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, which I had heard of though not read.

If you have read that, you will know that it is a detective novel with a twist -- the detective is a ten year old child, Flavia de Luce. In this, the second in the series,Flavia reappears, now aged eleven. If you think a child detective sounds like a pretty far-fetched idea, you haven't met Flavia. She lives in a crumbling country house with her two horrible older sisters Daffy (Daphne) and Feely (Ophelia), rides an ancient bicycle called Gladys, and spends a good deal of time performing complex experiments in her Victorian chemistry laboratory. Precociously brilliant, she is always streets ahead of the adults she has to deal with, though also sometimes both delightfully naive -- she isn't quite sure what a love affair might actually involve -- and occasionally vulnerable -- Daffy and Feely enjoy reducing her to tears by telling her, quiite untruthfully, that she is an adopted child and does not belong in the family at all.

At the start of this novel, Flavia encounters a most unusual couple, who end up in the village after their van has broken down. The man is Rupert Porson, a famous puppeteer (though Flavia, who does not have a TV, has never heard of him), and his companion and assistant Nialla. As the van will take several days to mend, Rupert agrees to put on a puppet show in the village hall. But during his performance of Jack and the Beanstalk, a shocking murder takes place, and it is up to Flavia to solve it. In doing so, she uncovers an extraordinary and complicated web of inter-relationships and when the truth is finally revealed, the facts about an earlier tragedy also come to light.

The novel is set in 1950s England and extremely convincingly so, I thought, despite the fact that the author is Canadian -- you can read more about him and his books on his website. There's a wonderful set of bizarre characters and the solution to the mystery is just oblique enough that I didn't guess it. But what really makes this novel so outstanding and enjoyable is, of course, Flavia herself. Good fun -- give it a go!

Blackout

Some time ago I reviewed Sam Mills' young adult novel The Boys Who Saved the World, an impressive young-adult thriller about a group of teenagers who are convinced a classmate is a terrorist and decide to take action, with devastating results. I am happy to hear that the novel is now being made into a film -- you can see the trailer here -- and I was even happier to be offered Sam Mills' latest novel for review. 

Blackout, also aimed at the young adult market, is set in a terrifying dystopian future. Terrifying because, though we are never told exactly when the novel takes place, it is clearly not many years on from our present. So this is a recognisable world in many ways -- kids still play with gameboys, watch TV, and read books. But -- and here is one of the main cruxes of the novel -- the books they read have all been censored. Teams of Rewriters are employed to purge the banned books of anything that might incite rebellion or impure thinking, so anyone caught reading the original versions of novels such as 1984, Lord of the Flies or Harry Potter will be taken off and brainwashed into the government's version of right thinking. It's also a world in which public hangings are regularly held in Trafalgar Square, subversive kids are held in The Institution where they are subjected to brainwashing techniques designed to make them conform, and schools issue pupils with Good Behaviour Pills whose effect is to dull the brain and bring about a state of false euphoria.

Stefan, the young narrator, is sixteen when the book begins. He lives alone with his father, a kind, liberal-minded bookseller. But soon after the start of the novel his Dad makes the decision to hide a radical Muslim writer in their house, and when this is discovered, the police come and Stefan finds himself alone, having to fend for himself in a shocking, confusing world in which nothing is as it seems and no-one can be trusted. His adventures, and his search for the truth, make up the rest of this exciting, disturbing novel. Many important issues are raised here -- the powerful effect of literature, the dangers of fundamentalist religion, the responsibility of a people for the government they end up with. This is a novel which manages to be both enthralling and profoundly serious and thought-provoking. Highly recommended.

The Oxford Literary Festival

I've been living in Oxford for just over six months now, and I have to say that scarcely a day goes by without my rejoicing at having made such a successful move. My heart still lifts when I see views like this, and there is so much to do here that is really enjoyable. All this past week Christ Church -- you can see its famous 'Tom Tower' with its pale green roof just left of centre -- has been the venue for the Oxford Literary Festival, and I have been to several really good events. At the beginning of the week I listened to Helen Rappaport talking about her latest book, Beautiful For Ever, the story of the notorious Madam Rachel who made a fortune from 'enamelling' the faces of Victorian women. A great talk, and sounds like a great book though I haven't read it yet. A few days ago it was Rose Tremain  being interviewed by Joanne Harris  about her latest novel, Trespass, again so far unread but definitely on the TBR list -- that was good value, two excellent novelists for the price of one. Yesterday was a real treat -- at lunchtime it was the turn of the amazing PD James, who spoke wonderfully about Barbara Pym. Baroness James is a few months away from her 90th birthday and how truly admirable she is -- radiant, calm, intelligent, altogether delightful. Finally, in the early evening, there was a lively discussion between the novelists Victoria Hislop, Anita Mason and Adèle Geras. That was fun, especially as I am lucky enough to know Adèle, who pops in here from time to time -- she was looking amazingly svelte and elegant and it was really good to see her. So all in all a terrific week. And now I have to clean the house.

Woman Writing

 

A few weeks ago I showed you a self-portrait by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (11 April 1749 – 24 April 1803), and here is another. At least I think it might be also a self portrait, though in fact it is called Portrait of a Woman. It was painted in 1787, and in any case it is a very charming painting. If I was going to write a book about women writers of the 18th century I would like to have this on the cover. I'm not, though once upon a time I did consider it. I do have another book that I am very keen to get going on -- it's a while since I wrote anything and I'm feeling decidedly itchy to start again. I think my idea is a winner, but I need to convince a publisher to agree with me. Wish me luck!

The Hand That First Held Mine

There are some books that leap up and grab you by the throat straight away, and others that creep up on you slowly but end up taking just as firm a grip.  Maggie O'Farrell's The Hand That First Held Mine came into the second category, at least for me.I was certainly disposed to like it, and I was intrigued by the double narrative form -- two women, two stories, with a fifty year gap between them -- but it took a little while for me to get completely sucked in. My goodness, though, once I did I literally could not put it down, and actually finished it at 2 am, not a time of day I am usually to be found with the light on. 

So why did I like this novel so much? For many reasons. Of course the usual one applies -- I got caught up in the characters and their lives and wanted to know how they would develop. Also there is a mystery at the heart of the novel, and you may know that I really love a mystery. Above all, though, I was drawn in by the twin stories, so far apart in time but clearly linked in some way, though even when the realisation dawns that there is going to be a link it is not at all apparent what it will be, and I guessed wrongly a couple of times. I also loved the evocation of London, my home town and somewhere I know very well. In the story of Lexie, who leaves a dull home in Devon for a "technicolour" life in London, the Soho of the 1950s, inhabited by intellectuals and artists who frequent  after-hours drinking clubs and run struggling small magazines is made extraordinarily vivid. In the contemporary strand of the story Elina, an artist, has come to London from Finland. Her part of the narrative is set in north London, close to Hampstead Heath, and she pushes her tiny new-born baby around streets I could almost see for myself. And, although the stories are set so far apart in time, there are reminders from time to time of the way the locations of the 50s have been transmuted in contemporary London.

This is a novel about motherhood, with all its pleasures and its agonies -- the intensity of feeling that links a mother with her new-born child is amazingly well evoked. It's also a novel about love, and about memory, how it can be suppressed and how it can be reawakened. It is a serious and thought-provoking novel, and sometimes very sad, so much so that at one point it made me cry. But, at the very end, there is optimism and the promise of happiness and of resolution of old pains and old scores.

If you would like to see an excellent short video of Maggie O'Farrell talking about The Hand That First Held Mine, which beautifully evokes the Soho of the 1950s in lovely black and white images, you can do so here!

It must be spring because...

...in the spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, said Tennyson -- and so, it seems, does a young frog's. I've had some evidence of this today. First of all, today was the start of the Oxford Literary Festival, and I went along to Christ Church (or, technically, to Corpus Christi) to hear the eminent Professor Stanley Wells talk about his latest book. Now, though the prof is best known to some people as the husband of Susan Hill, he is of course one of the country's greatest experts on Shakespeare. And his latest book is called Shakespeare, Sex and Love. This was the sort of occasion that makes me very happy to have moved to Oxford -- it managed to be both learned and racy, in the nicest possible way. I know rather a lot about Shakespeare, having been more or less raised on him, so there were not many surprises here, but it was so enjoyable to be able to sit back and wallow is some good, clear-minded, highly intelligent arguments. If you'd like to see Prof Wells talking about the book for yourself, you should be able to do so here.

It's been a rainy day and not very springlike in appearance, but this afternoon I wanted some fresh air so I went for a walk in the park across the road. As I meandered along I saw a young man stop and peer into the rather murky little stream that runs alongside the path. When I caught up with him I asked him what he was looking at, and he drew my attention to a spot a few yards further up. As I got closer I heard this extraordinary sound, a sort of bubbly croaking, and noticed that the water seemed to be alive. Of course closer inspection revealed it to be an absolute mass of frogs, busily engaged in just the kind of activities the prof had been so learnedly discoursing about, though these were directed at producing frog-spawn, of which there was already a great deal. It was quite a sight. Tennyson could have included something about it all in Locksley Hall, but he just concentrated on the birds (who were singing their heads off this afternoon):

    In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
    In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

    In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
    In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Woman Painting

 
This self portrait by the Flemish painter Caterina van Hemessen was painted in 1548, when she was 20 years old. It is not only the earliest known self portrait in oils by a woman painter but also the oldest self portrait by an artist of either gender to include an easel. She seems to have become a successful artist and painted many commissioned portraits. Good for her. You can see more of her work here and here.

Travels With My Aunt (Reprise)

Finally at the end of Simon's Greene for Gran month, here's a reprise of what I wrote about this novel three years ago.

Not content with joining one book club I have now joined a second one, very different in character from the first, though they both happen to meet in the same pub. The first is small and select and meets downstairs, and the second proves to be large and lively and meets upstairs, though luckily on a different night. It's so large, in fact, that it functions a bit like I imagine speed dating -- there are several tables of people, and after a while the groups get disbanded and moved around. That's the theory at least -- I didn't see much of it going on, though I did move once rather early on.

I've been joining book clubs for much the same reasons most people do, I suspect -- first of all I've only been living in Oxford for six months so it's nice to meet new people, but above all it's good to be made, or at least encouraged, to read books you might not otherwise read. I was almost the only person at either of my tables last night to have read any Graham Greene before -- a couple of others had read Brighton Rock and I read The Quiet American not long ago, and blogged about it here. But I'd never even heard of Travels With My Aunt. I really loved it. I haven't read enough of GG's novels to judge for myself but I'm guessing it is uncharacteristically lighthearted, though it does touch on some serious issues.

The novel is narrated by Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager in his fifties. To say that Henry has lived a quiet life hardly encompasses the crashing boredom of his everyday existence in suburban Southwood, tending his dahlias and conversing with the Major next door. He has never married, and the only woman in whom he has had even a stirring of interest has moved to South Africa. But all this changes when, at his mother's funeral, he meets his Aunt Augusta, "dressed rather as the late Queen Mary of beloved memory might have dressed if she had still been with her and had adapted herself a little bit towards the present mode". Aunt Augusta is in her mid seventies, but, as her brilliant red hair suggests, has never lost her joyful, expansive approach to life. She insists on dragging Henry with her to London, where he meets Wordsworth, a large middle-aged black man who, she says, "attends to my wants" (in every imaginable sense), and who proves to be both devoted and highly jealous of possible rivals in Aunt Augusta's affections. Soon Henry finds himself travelling -- something he has never done in his life -- first to Brighton and later to Paris and to Istanbul on the Orient Express. Along the way he gradually learns about Aunt Augusta's extremely chequered career, encompassing among other things running a church for dogs in Brighton, working in various brothels in Paris and Italy, and being the mistress of a variety of shady but colourful characters. Also along the way Henry learns to broaden his own closed mind, smoking pot for the first time on the Orient Express and aiding Aunt Augusta in some currency smuggling operations. In the last part of the novel Aunt Augusta has moved to South America, and Henry joins her there for some more mind-expanding adventures...

Really this seemed to me like a bildungsroman -- a novel of education or of growing up. Yes, Henry is in his fifties but he has never really lived. Travel is said to broaden the mind, of course, but Henry's mind is also broadened by his relationship with Aunt Augusta, a relationship that opens him up emotionally in unexpected ways.

Graham Greene was a traveller himself, and a member of MI6. Here's something he wrote about the experience of travelling:

There is so much weariness and disappointment in travel that people have to open up — in railway trains, over a fire, on the decks of steamers, and in the palm courts of hotels on a rainy day. They have to pass the time somehow, and they can pass it only with themselves. Like the characters in Chekhov, they have no reserves — you learn the most intimate secrets. You get an impression of a world peopled by eccentrics, of odd professions, almost incredible stupidities, and, to balance them, amazing endurances.

A very enjoyable read. Do try it.

Two Women

I saw this intriguing painting, by one Andrew Loomis, on a blog I like called Old Paint and thought I'd share it with you. As AL was an illustrator, perhaps this was a book cover or illustration? Makes you want to know what's going on, doesn't it!

The Children's Book

It's been a shockingly long time since I last wrote on this blog -- and one of my excuses, apart from pressure of work, is that I was reading this very long book. I must say at once that I am not a fan of AS Byatt. That is to say, I have only ever read one of her novels, the famous Booker-winning Possession, and I really did not like it. Cries of horror and amazement are usually heard when I say this, but the fact is I found her pastiche Victorian poetry and prose really really irritating. So I have never read any of her other novels. But when I read about this one I was really intrigued, though not being very quick off the mark when it comes to new books it's taken me a long time to get round to it.

So what was it that made me think I'd like it? Partly the period in which it is set, which is one that appeals to me and about which I know a bit -- it starts at the end of the 19th century and goes through to the aftermath of the First World War. I was also drawn in by the fact that one of the central characters is based on Edith Nesbit, one of my all time favourite authors, whose biography, by the late great Julia Briggs, revealed some fascinating facts about her unusual home life. And, of course, I loved the cover.

And did I like it? Yes, with a few reservations, I did. I think it is certainly a remarkable achievement. If I call it a family saga, which in truth it is, I don't mean to saddle it with the kind of rather lowbrow associations that might spring to mind. I'm tempted to say think War and Peace, which is the only novel I've read that compares with this in the large number of characters spread between a number of connected families -- I wished Byatt had included a cast list to refer to. Bohemians, artists, radicals, members of the Arts and Crafts Movement, many of them lead unconventional lives. Adultery is rife, children are fathered out of wedlock (several by the same man), families suffer from child abuse and incest. The adults, generally, despite their supposedly advanced ideas, have made a mess of their private lives. The main interest, though, for me at least, was the children of the various families, how they grew up and how they were affected by the peculiarities of their parents' lives and beliefs. I was particularly drawn to Philip, who, discovered as a young boy hiding in the bowels of the South Kensington Museum, proves to be a potter of astounding skill and artistry, and to his sister Elsie who walks from the Potteries to Kent to find him and comes to lead a fiercely independent life of her own, finally finding a path to follow that allows her to use her considerable intelligence. I liked Dorothy, too, who desperately wants to study medicine in an age when that was still a great struggle for a woman, and for whom the discovery of her real parentage does much to transform her life and her own sense of self-worth. As for the family of Philip's employer, the potter Benedict Fludd, so much damage has been done here that it is remarkable that the family survives at all. If I say that Fludd seems to be based on Eric Gill, you may know what I mean (though the Wikipedia link will not tell you). 

Being a novel by Antonia Byatt this contains, as you may expect, a great deal of erudite research. I know some people have found this overwhelming but on the whole I was rather seduced by it. There are wonderful, rich descriptions of art works and ceramics, of clothes and parties, and the historical background is extremely full and fascinating. But -- here come the reservations -- I was still annoyed by Byatt's pastiches. There was far too much, for me, of Olive Wellwood's fairy tales, which I started skipping fairly soon,  and I was very bored by the long descriptions of the staging of her play. And, towards the end of the novel, I was unimpressed by Julian Cain's poems written in the trenches during the First World War. As in Possession, this just seemed to me like Byatt showing off. But overall I have to say I found this extremely enjoyable and I was sorry when I finally got to the end.