Harriet Devine's Blog

Girl Writing

Here's another girl writing -- painted by Harold Knight, and easily recognisable as his wife Laura, the celebrated artist Dame Laura Knight, who looks to be about the same age as she was in the picture I showed you last year. Lots more of his paintings here.

Parrot and Olivier in America

Years ago -- in 2007 to be exact -- I read and reviewed Peter Carey's Booker-winning Oscar and Lucinda. I absolutely loved it, and have been meaning ever since to read another of Carey's many novels. I did try his other Booker-winning True History of the Kelly Gang, but couldn't get past the dialect (or "dazzling act of ventriloquism" as the blurb calls it). Anyway, I finally made it, listening to this as an audiobook, which took a very very long time. This was partly due to the fact that it is a very long book, but also partly because it took me a while to get engaged with it. 

Parrot and Olivier in America is a book in two halves, or rather it is narrated alternately by the two protagonists. They are Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Barfleur de Garmont, a French aristocrat born in 1805, and John Larrit, nicknamed Parrot, a sometime engraver and son of a printer, who is 24 years older. These two could not be more different in every possible way, from their social status to their life experiences, and yet, by a series of complicated coincidences, they end up travelling together to America, with Parrot acting as secretary to Olivier, though actually paid to spy on him by his mother's lover.  

It's hardly surprising that initially, and for quite a long time, the two men dislike each other intensely. Olivier, a sickly, cossetted child, has grown into an effete, snobbish young man whose knowledge of the real world is more or less zero. Parrot, on the other hand, could scarcely have had a fuller life. It was the descriptions of his early childhood that really drew me into the novel -- roaming the English countryside with his loving, free-thinking father, living and working at a firm of printers who turned out to be secret forgers, being saved from almost certain death by the one-armed counter-revolutionary Marquis de Tilbot, ending up on a convict ship headed for Australia, and much more besides. But both men are changed by their experiences in the new world, and by the end they have come to respect, perhaps even love, each other. 

But that's really to over-simplify. Of the two it is Olivier who has the most learning to do, and he does it partly by means of the job he has been sent over to carry out -- to write an account of the prison system in America. This brings him into contact with many of the top men in the country -- brash, uncouth, very different from anyone Olivier has ever met before, but men who he comes in some ways to appreciate for what they are. Chief among these is Mr Godefroy, who takes Olivier under his wing and shows him round the country, and with whose daughter, the beautiful, liberated Amelia, Olivier falls desperately in love. But Parrot, too, after many a challenging adventure, really comes to his own in the end, forging a life and a career for himself that would have been impossible anywhere else in the world.

The novel is full of historical references, the most obvious of which is that Olivier is based quite closely on Alexis de Tocqueville, a French nobleman who did travel to America and did write a book about it. But there's also an allusion to the great engraver Audubon, whose famous book of American Birds is here engraved and published by Parrot's friend and employer, the ex-forger Mr Watkins, and probably lots more that I missed. I didn't find out about de Tocqueville till very late in the day, and frankly when I did it didn't matter to me in the least. Similarly, I've seen the accounts of Parrot's history being described as Dickensian. Well, who cares if they are. The book is a wonderful mish-mash of many disparate elements, and where they originated is not important. What has emerged is the product of Carey's wonderfully vivid and wide-ranging imagination, and it is not only enormous in its size but also enormous in its ability to give all kinds of pleasure, or I found it so, anyway. It's often very funny, especially when, as often, we see the same events described by both protagonists, who see things in very different ways. It's touching to see these two men gradually coming to a better understanding of each other, and very entertaining to get a glimpse of early 19th-century New York, where pigs run wild and cause havoc on Broadway, Times Square is essentially a sea of mud, and Harlem, where Parrot and his beautiful painter wife end up living, a small country village. The writing is wonderfully colourful and full of great descriptions -- a bunch of old ladies sitting in a dark parlour, "wetting their hairy chins with stout", sailors clinging to the rigging of a ship "like soft fruit in a storm". It's thought-provoking, and informative. What more could you want?

I'm not in a position to say where, on a scale of Carey's books, this one would fall. But as you can tell, I loved it and will read certainly be reading Carey again soon. Any suggestions?

 

Girl Writing

This is 'The Letter', painted in about 1906 by the French Impressionist artist Pierre Bonnard. She looks quite young to me -- I wonder what sort of letter she is writing?

 

The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell

I've been a huge admirer of Ruth Rendell for literally decades, so I was really pleased to be sent a review copy of this, her latest novel. And oh how I wish I could say I loved it. It's not, of course, a bad novel -- how could it be? Rendell writes so beautifully -- I'd be fascinated to hear a real linguist analyse her prose, which manages to be wonderfully simple and clear while simultaneously conveying an extraordinary sense of impending doom. And indeed there is much to admire here.

The central image is unforgettable -- a pair of severed hands enclosed in a biscuit tin and buried in some underground tunnels during WW2. The hands belong to a pair of illicit lovers -- we know this from the start, as we also know the identity of the killer, a particularly unpleasant person, as many of Rendell's villains are. But the action soon shifts to the present day, when we meet the central characters, all now in their late seventies, who we discover to be the very same children who played in those tunnels in the 1940s. This remains the main time-frame of the novel, though it sometimes shifts backwards.

Essentially, though a crime has been committed, and though, once the hands are rediscovered, the police are seeking the perpetrator, this is not really a crime novel. It's much more a novel about the lives of these elderly people, their memories, their past relationships, and the ways in which they interact with each other. And we soon discover that people in their late seventies think and feel pretty much exactly the same as people who are a good deal younger.  They feel unsure of themselves. They form new friendships or discover old ones. They fall in love, passionately and physically. Is this a surprise? Not to me, though perhaps it might be to some people. But of course they are also intensely aware of their own mortality, and several of them actually die in the course of the novel.

But what of the girl next door of the title? This is the beautiful Daphne -- still beautiful in her old age -- who was a bit of an outsider to the group of wartime kids, but proves to be central to the mystery in some ultimately very disturbing ways. I can't say more, but there are revelations at the end of the novel which many readers will probably find upsetting. 

So this is a bold novel, dealing with issues that are not much talked about. Why, then, am I not more enthusiastic? Well, for reasons that are purely subjective, I'm afraid. I simply could not warm to any of the characters, for a start. I know novels don't have to be full of delightful, admirable people, but it's nice to have at least one person about whom you really care, and I just didn't find one here. Also, I found it terribly depressing to read about these folks messing their lives up in old age just as they had when they were young. But hey, that might just be me. 

I imagine The Girl Next Door will be getting some very mixed reviews, though I haven't seen any yet, and I hope, and presume, that Rendell won't be at all bothered by the less positive ones. I also imagine it will sell well to everyone who loves her writing.  In fact I don't want to put anyone off, and I'd be delighted to hear from anyone else who has read it and disagrees with me. 

Shiny Giveaway Time

                                                                                                               

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I'm sure you know, Shiny New Books has a Facebook page. But maybe you don't know that if you "Like" our Facebook page, you will automatically be entered in a Prize Draw. The prize will be a choice from the books the editors have spare copies of. The two in the picture are included, but if you don't fancy either of them, just tell us and we'll offer you another option.

So -- what are you waiting for?

The Silkworm in Shiny New Books

I really enjoyed Robert Galbraith's The Cuckoo's Calling and was very much looking forward to The Silkworm. Would it measure up? Yes indeed -- I thought it a better novel, in fact.

Here's my review, newly posted on SNB's August inbetweeny.

Today is In-Betweeny Day

Yes, Shiny New Books today publishes issue 2a, or the inbetweeny. Although we are a quarterly magazine, there are books which one way or another have not quite made the deadline and so we add them to the relevant list. There are actually twenty-three new pieces for you to read, all helpfully marked as "New". 

There so much that's good in there I hardly know where to begin. But given the recent announcement of the Booker longlist, you might like to see the editors' discussion of it in the BookBuzz section, and you can accompany or complement your reading of that with a review of one of the longlisted books, written by Simon, our reprints editor, who hardly ever reads new fiction! 

 

 

Girl Reading

 

This painting is by Sally Storch, an American artist born in 1952. I've edited this post from yesterday as I was misinformed by a website that said she was a man. Of course she isn't, as a kind commenter pointed out below. In fact here is her website. She was influenced by Edward Hopper, as you can see.

Crossword Ends in Violence (5) by James Cary

This entertaining comedy thriller is (unfortunately for some of you) only available as an e-book. James Cary, the author, has described himself as 'a over-educated thirtysomething male who is slightly obsessed with the second world war'. He has won awards for his BBC comedy writing, which includes the successful series Hut 33. This is (I think) his first venture into fiction.

The plot is somewhat complex, as it whizzes back and forth between several time-frames -- the present day, eight years after the war, and 1944. The main character is John Fellowes, a crossword compiler, who, in between his obssessive need to invent clues for every unusual word he encounters, is trying to find out the truth about his grandfather, who seems to have been involved in the crossword clues which gave, or could have given, information to the Nazis about the forthcoming D-Day landings. With me so far? 

John has been shocked by the revelation that his grandfather might have been a Nazi spy, and sets out to prove that he was not. In this he is helped by his two colleagues Turner, a highly intelligent but embittered chess grandmaster and Overend, a brilliant but eccentric nerd, and by the lovely Amanda, an accountant from downstairs. All the characters are great -- a bunch of boffins, sure, but it's fun watching their minds work.

I have a good friend who is a crossword lover and occasional compiler, and I was constantly reminded of him by John, and by the many cryptic clues that are dotted through the text. In fact the whole book is structured like a crossword, with the modern chapters headed Across and the historic ones Down. I'm pretty hopeless about solving clues, though I can immediately understand the solutions once they are pointed out to me. But if you are the same, don't let that stop you reading this ingenious and entertaining novel. All will be finally revealed, I promise you. And of course if you happen to be a crossword buff, you will be in heaven. 

The Guardian did an interview with James Cary about the novel and all things crossword, which you can read here. In it he points out, among other things, that

 in the second world war – perhaps like no other before – boffins, linguists and general smart-arses could be put to good use, thinking creatively and laterally as well as scientifically.

True -- and fascinating.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me this copy.

The Outlander by Gil Adamson

The Outlander was published in 2009 -- 2007, even, in Canada -- how on earth did it pass me by? I suppose in those days I was reading mostly older fiction, and not paying enough attention to newly published stuff? Anyway, I finally caught up with it only because someone who is moving house passed it on to me. And oh how glad I am.

Gil Adamson, whose first and so far only novel this is, is primarily a poet, and if I say this novel is pure poetry, don't get me wrong. Yes, the writing -- the texture of the prose -- is very beautiful, but more than that, there's an imaginative sweep through the plot which is constantly breathtaking, page-turning, endlessly surprising. 

It was night, and dogs came through the trees, unleashed and howling. They burst from the cover of the woods, and their shadows swam across a moonlit field. For a moment, it was as if her scent had torn like a cobweb and blown on the wind, shreds of it here and there, useless. The dogs faltered and broke apart, yearning. Walking now, stiff-legged, they ploughed the grass with their heavy snouts.

The first paragraph really encapsulates what it is over-riding theme of the novel -- pursuit and escape. We don't yet know who is being pursued ('her scent') and won't find out till the third paragraph ('the girl') and finally the fourth: 

Nineteen years old and already a widow: Mary Boulton. Widowed by her own hand.

This is Mary's story -- 'the widow', as she is most often called. But, like those opening paragraphs, it slowly unwinds through the course of the novel. She's on the run, yes, pursued by two men, red-headed brothers, Large men, identical in every way, standing close by each other, not speaking. These are her husband's brothers, obsessively fixated on revenge. She's lost her baby and shot her husband, though the details of all this will emerge only gradually. Mentally, she is more or less unhinged by what she has gone through, has lapses of memory, see things and people that are not there. But somehow as the days go by, days in which it is surprising she has not died from exhaustion and hunger, she survives long enough to be rescued by a man as isolated and almost as strange as herself -- William Moreland, the Ridgerunner. William rescues her, feeds her, loves her, deserts her. Then again, by some extraordinary chance, she finds herself in a small mining community, living under the roof of the kind, odd, Reverend Bonnycastle, who is building a church for the miners with his own highly unskilled hands and who takes her in and shelters her until the next disaster strikes...

"Winner of the International Association of Crime Writers' Dasheill Hammett Prize", proclaims the cover blurb. Well yes, I suppose in a way this can be described as a crime novel -- a crime of sorts has certainly been committed. But I would never classify it in that way. Yes, again, it's a novel of pursuit, but more than anything I'd call it a novel of survival. Robinson Crusoe comes to mind -- there can be few readers of that novel who don't ask themselves how they would survive on a desert island. Here too you can't help measuring yourself against Mary and wondering how you would fare in the trackless wastes, with no food, no rest, and no idea where you are going.

Physical survival, then, certainly, but mental and emotional survival too. Mary survives through the kindness of strangers, most of them social outcasts, people from whom, in her previous life, she would have run a mile rather than speak to. But she discovers that love is to be found everywhere, even in the most unlikely places. And so yes, this is also a love story, of a heart-rending kind. And on top of all this, it is a real page-turner -- I kept wanting to skip forward, as it was almost unbearable not knowing how things were going to work out. I can't tell you that, of course, but if you haven't read it, I suggest you put it high on the list. 

I have numerous family connections with Canada, and am particularly fascinated by stories of how it was in the olden days -- The Tenderness of Wolves, which I also loved, could be a companion piece to this one. People forging lives in the great empty landscapes, the terrors of loneliness and the constant threats of the weather -- and the courage it took to survive all these. All of this is supremely shown in what I can only describe as a truly beautiful novel.

Have you read this yet? If not, why not? :)

 

 

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