Harriet Devine's Blog

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien

I was extremely curious to read this novel. It's decades since I read anything by Edna O'Brien, who is now in her eighties, and I remembered little about her writing except that I'd enjoyed her early novels a great deal. This one is the first she's published for ten years, and I came to it completely cold, having read no reviews and having little idea of what it was about. I did know that O'Brien's novels generally focused on the lives of women - 'women who lose themselves in love', as an early Paris Review interview puts it. And yes, certainly we encounter one of these in the novel - beautiful Fidelma, trapped in an unsatisfactory marriage to a man twenty years older, disappointed by the demise of her once successful boutique, and longing more than anything to have a child. Fidelma lives in a small rural village in Ireland, populated by much the same people we'd have encountered in O'Brien's earlier novels, though life here has moved on and there are now grand country house hotels and fake Irish cottages to entertain the tourists. But the villagers themselves retain something of their traditional simplicity, and thus are quite unable to know what to make of the charismatic foreigner who arrives with the intention of setting himself up as a holistic healer and sex therapist. That last bit very soon bites the dust, but the healing takes off to some extent, and even a nun (admittedly a feisty and untraditional one) goes to him for a startling treatment involving hot stones applied to her naked back. Dr Vlad manages to win the confidence of most of the villagers - memorably rescuing a dog that has got trapped in a rabbit hole - but most of all he attracts lonely Fidelma, who hopes he can give her the child she has always desired.

All this is interesting and appealing, and thus far you could say there are no real surprises. But that doesn't last long. Very soon we discover that Dr Vlad is not what he pretends to be. He is, in fact, a wanted war criminal, responsible for untold numbers of appalling atrocities in his native Bosnia. He is discovered and arrested, and now the novel swerves off into a passage of such horrific brutality and violence that I was quite unable to read it. Suffice it to say that Fidelma is radically damaged both physically and psychologically, and as soon as she is able, takes herself off to London for a life of initial homelessness followed by desperately dead-end jobs in which she encounters many dispossessed and lonely people, many of them migrants escaping from even more desperate lives and conditions. Indeed to a large extent it is the life stories of these people - a louder echo of the ones we heard from the staff of that posh Irish hotel - that come to dominate the second half of the novel, though we never lose sight of Fidelma as she struggles and suffers, even visiting the war crimes tribunal in Holland and having a sad and unsatisfactory meeting with the imprisoned Vlad.

So this is a real rollercoaster of a novel. We have the softness, beauty and innocence of the Irish countryside, and of course of Fidelma herself, contrasted with the brutal realities of what the world outside holds. In fact it's clear that the novel is emblematic of life itself in the present day - so much love and beauty still exists to celebrate and enjoy, but every day we are assailed by evidence of more cruelty, more atrocities, more people who show a complete disregard for truth, honesty, openness, more terrible crimes committed in the name of a fanatical set of beliefs about what is right. The book is one of great humanity, showing enormous sympathy for the stateless and dispossessed. It's impossible not to love and sympathise with Fidelma, even when it becomes clear that despite everything she would like to believe that something genuine and of real value existed between herself and Vlad - and this despite her full knowledge of his true nature and of the depth and horror of the crimes he has committed. Even Vlad himself, deceitful and wholly in denial, remains a complex figure, his undeniable charisma and ability to do real good seemingly reminiscent of those of Rasputin in imperial Russia.

I can't exactly say that I enjoyed this novel - it was a tough read in many places and indeed as I said there were bits I had to skip. But it's a book I won't forget in a hurry and I'm very glad to have had a chance to read it.

 

Harm Done by Ruth Rendell

I'm having my own small Ruth Rendell fest at the moment -- see my recent review of The Veiled One and the thing I wrote for Shiny Extra. I got interested in Harm Done when I was writing that, as it shows Rendell in her most socially concerned mode. Of course the novel has its fair share of mysteries and murders, but there's much food for thought here too, and overall the novel is very critical of society, or society as it was when the novel was written in 1999. It would be great to say that things have changed since then, but I'm afraid if we did say that, to would probably be to say they have changed for the worse.

The chief theme that runs through the novel is that of what we now call spousal abuse. Wexford's older daughter is working as a volunteer in a safe house for abused women, something which she finds extremely upsetting, as most of her time is spent on the phone, listening to stories of unimaginable horror. By chance, though, Wexford and his team are brought into contact with a woman whose husband regularly subjects her to horrific physical punishment. At first he finds this hard to believe -- the family is wealthy, the husband is extremely pleasant and charming and appears to adore his wife. But when the facts emerge, they are truly terrifying. The reason the police get called in is that the youngest child, a three-year-old, disappears, and they have to investigate what seems at first to be an insoluble mystery.

Added to this, the local estate -- an unpleasant and deprived area -- is in an uproar after a convicted paedophile has been released into the community. Having 'paid his debt to society', he has moved in with his daughter. Old, shrunken, completely bemused by life on the outside, he sits silently all day long and never goes out. But the rebellious elements on the estate are up in arms about his presence, and some very ugly riots take place, one of which results in the death of a police officer. But, as Wexford reflects, how would we feel if a convicted paedophile moved in next door to our children or grandchildren?

It must be said that Rendell takes a very dim view of the estate and its inhabitants. Often drunk, quarrelsome, adulterous, and completely lacking in morals except of a very superficial kind, these people really show a picture of Britain at its worst. Many of them are weak and ill-informed rather than bad, but they are easily led, and the ringleaders have no problem in whipping up a mob mentality.

As for the wife-beating husband, this raises shocking issues too. Wexford's initial disbelief is more than mirrored in the parents of the abused wife, who take the view that she must be doing something to deserve it, and reprimand their grandchildren for lying when they reveal some of the things he has been doing to their mother.

So this is a painful but rewarding book to read. I did find myself ahead of Wexford several times as he seemed a bit slow to guess what was going on, but of course I had more information than he did. A dark novel, but an excellent one. 

Ruth Rendell R.I.P.

 

I only just caught up with the news of Ruth Rendell's death on 2 May, and was sad to hear it,  but glad that by chance I had read one of her 1980s Wexford novels only a week ago. She was the first contemporary crime novelist I ever read, and I never got tired of her wonderful, often disturbing novels. I thought I'd repost my review of The Veiled One from a few days ago (see below) and am planning to write something about her for Shiny New Books. Meanwhile here's a link to her obituary in the Guardian.

 

 

If you were to visit my house and see the piles of books waiting to be read and reviewed, you'd probably think the last thing I needed to do was pick up another one. But that's just what I did a couple of days ago when I happened to be lurking the the vicinity of a shelf of giveaway books. I've always admired Ruth Rendell, though I've tended to gravitate towards her Barbara Vine novels, maybe having the idea that the Wexford ones were a bit more conventional and thus less interesting. But if this one is anything to go by, I couldn't have been more wrong. Yes, it is certainly a police procedural on one level, but what goes on it it is fascinating, or I found it so.

The Veiled One starts with the discovery of a body in a shopping centre car park. Wexford and his second in command Burden start to investigate, but almost at once Wexford is out of the picture, having narrowly escaped with his life after a bomb blew up his daughter's car. So the investigation falls into the hands of Burden.  Now, what you need to know about these two men is that they are complete opposites in almost every way. Wexford is literary, intelligent,  intuitive, liberal, where Burden is rational, conservative, unimaginative etc etc. I suppose these things are always present in all the Wexford novels, though it's a while since I read any of them, but here they really are the mainspring of what happens in the plot. Left to himself, Burden decides fairly quickly that he knows who the culprit is, and starts an increasingly intensive series of interviews in the attempt to get a confession. But for a start he has got it all completely wrong, and if that wasn't enough, the man concerned is mentally extremely wobbly, and gets pushed further and further over the edge by the process, with ultimately disastrous results.

So, a good deal of what kept me rushing back to the book every time I had a spare moment was the excitement of the plot -- if the prime suspect didn't do it (and Wexford, when he recovers enough, is certain that he didn't), then who did? I thought I'd been very clever when I found myself a step ahead of Wexford on one important clue, but that led me down a blind alley anyway, though I can't explain further, obviously. The denouement took me by surprise, anyway, which was very satisfying. But watching Burden tying himself in knots, pouring scorn on the well-meaning psychotherapist who tries to explain the delicate state of mind of the interviewee, and gradually, too late, coming to understand what transference means and finally, probably, never being able to forgive himself for the disastrous results. On one level, perhaps the contrast between Burden's crassness and Wexford's sensitivity is a bit crudely played out, but I didn't mind.

This novel was published in 1988, and it's stood the test of time extremely well. I've really got to get back to what I've started thinking of as the set books now, but I'll be on the lookout for more Wexfords -- might even actually pay for one.

Weightless by Sarah Bannan

Well, I know it's only April, but I can confidently tell you that this is going to be one of my favourite books of the year. And, like Wolf Winter, which I was telling you about recently, it was an almost random pick to use my reviewers credits on Audible. I started listening to it with little or no knowledge of what was awaiting me, though I've since read Victoria's review in Shiny 5, and her interview with the author in the BookBuzz section. 

There's so much to talk about and so much to admire in this debut novel. Yes, it's about teenage bullying in small-town America, but it's what Sarah Bannan makes of this theme that sets the book apart. Briefly, the novel is set in the (fictional) town of Adamsville, Alabama, more or less in the present day. The action takes place in and around the local High School, and is narrated -- in what may be a first -- in the first person plural ('We') by a group of three girl pupils. More on this later. As the story begins, the girls are sitting in the baking summer sun, watching the cheerleaders perform, and commenting on everyone's appearance, clothes, weight and hairstyle. Then they spot someone they've never seen before -- a new girl.

It's important to remember how weird this was -- a new girl coming to our town -- how unused to it we all were. And not just us: our parents, the teachers, the coaches -- them too. Adamsville wasn't a place that people came to. It was a place you were from, where you were born, where you were raised, where you stayed.

Carolyn Lesser is not only new, she is beautiful, clever, and friendly. And at first, everyone tries to be friendly with her, to help her to fit in -- and, of course, to find out as much about her as possible. Facebook is a great help here, and everyone shares all the information they can acquire by text, including the photos the girls take of her bathroom when they are invited to her house. But things begin to go wrong when Carolyn starts dating the gorgeous Shane Duggan, up to now the property of lovely (though now slightly overweight) cheerleader Brooke Moore. Soon the tide of opinion has started to turn against Carolyn, ugly gossip begins circulating, and the final tragedy seems almost inevitable. 

So what's going on here? We might start by thinking about the title. Weight is certainly a theme that runs through the novel. All the characters are obsessed with it, and girls are admired for their thinness. Brooke has gained pounds in the summer vacation and has started a regime involving bulimia. Carolyn, whose slender body is a source of great envy and admiration, proves to have a daily chart pinned up by the weighing machine in her bathroom. But there's another element to weightlessness too. Every year there's a balloon festival in Adamsville, and the girls get to go up in one and look down at the people below -- we see this happen twice, once near the beginning and once in the epilogue. The first time, they take pleasure in being able to observe the goings on -- they see Carolyn, holding hands with Shane, a piece of useful information to add to the list. A year later, they are wiser, more self aware:

This was as it had always been, us together, ready to rise into the air, weightless....

We looked down at the ground and saw it all change in front of us, people blurred into colours, the ground blurred into shapes. From where we were, the ground started to make sense, appear complete, under control. We were at a distance from it and could only see what we needed to see. From here, we thought, if a car crashed, you wouldn't hear it, and even if you did, it would look like a toy, it wouldn't be real. From here, we couldn't distinguish the adults from the children, the new buildings from the old, the pools from the ponds. We liked it up here, we knew this, to be at a remove from things, to be out of touch, out of control.

I hardly need to tell you that this has a relationship to the position the girls have taken throughout the novel -- they 'could only see what we needed to see'. They have deliberately distanced themselves from the events they have seen passing before their eyes, refusing to get involved, not allowing themselves to make connections or to pass on information which could, perhaps, have prevented the tragic developments.

I've seen people compare the 'We' narrators to a Greek chorus, but they are more than that -- they could almost be said to be what the story is really about. Bullying happens, and not just in small town Alabama, and people often know what's going on but don't want to get involved. So, although these girls do not have distinct separate personalities (or probably because of this) they stand as a terrible representation of what happens if you choose to keep yourself 'at a remove from things'. 

So Weightless is really a novel of social commentary, and the picture it presents is a worrying one. When the girls say 'we couldn't distinguish the adults from the children', I think this resonates throughout the novel. The adults seem very immature themselves and are completely blind to the needs of their children -- and yes, these are children, fifteen and sixteen year olds, whose parents insist on churchgoing and preach morality, but have no idea what really goes on in their lives. The internet bears a lot of responsibility too -- impossible images of skinny women, the desirability of the latest fashion items, sexualised social  media, the ability to find out about people's lives and to communicate that knowledge with a few flicks of the fingers -- all these things have added to the mounting pressure on Carolyn and her classmates. Perhaps this makes it sound as if it might be preachy and moralistic, but believe me it is a fantastic read (or in my case listen) -- unputdownable and highly recommended.

Eat Pray Love

Here's a bookI never thought I'd be reading. I have in fact done my fair share of all these things during the course of my life, which is why I went to see the film when it first came out a few years ago. But I didn't like it, and it completely put me off reading the book. I picked it up just a few days ago when a friend who'd been staying with me left it in the house. And I found I liked it very much indeed.

Before I get into reviewing it, a little preamble. I have always tended to compartmentalise my life, which has been rather long and very varied. As a result, I have numerous friends, but they fall into different groups. So I have my theatre friends, some of whom I've known since my childhood because my parents were in the theatre. Then there are my academic friends, met during my thirty or so years in various universities, my blogging friends, most of whom I've never met but feel I know anyway, and people I've just got to know because we lived close by or were friends of friends. And then there are my meditating friends, many of whom I first met forty years ago when I learned to meditate and fairly soon afterwards became a teacher. Though I wouldn't say these groups never overlap, I've learned over the years that many of the non-meditators are not in the least bit interested in what I can only call the spiritual side of my life. It's fine if you tell them about the practical effects of meditation -- relaxation, clarity of thought etc -- but mention God and they all look very sour and scornful. 

So for me, reading this memoir was a rare treat. There can be few people who don't know about Elizabeth Gilbert's decision, after a messy divorce and a failed love affair, to spend a year doing three things on her own and just for herself. That meant Rome, to learn Italian and eat delicious food, India to meditate in an Ashram, and Bali to meet up with an ancient healer and of course finally, though not part of the plan, to meet a gorgeous Brazilian who she would eventually marry.

Liz Gilbert is a professional writer and journalist, and she writes in a delightfully readable way. But what I liked most about the book was her honesty -- about her own failings, her moments of unrealistic fantasy, her self doubt, her struggles to understand herself and to overcome the grief and rage that was a legacy of the unhappy past few years. If this sounds as if it might be grim, I can assure you it's not. It's often very funny, but also often very wise. Liz never pretends she has any answers, but she recounts her struggles to find them and the solutions that have worked for her without any attempt to preach. 

Obviously with my own background I was particularly interested by the middle section in which she stays in the ashram of an Indian female guru. Having done the same thing myself quite a few times -- though in a different ashram of a different guru -- this was bound to grab me. And having practised meditation for so many years it was fascinating to read of Liz's downs and ups in her attempts to get a grip on it all, the miseries of feeling like a failure at it, the agonies of dealing with all the stuff that got stirred up, and the rare but astonishingly wonderful moments where suddenly everything worked and the experiences were -- well, beyond words, really, though she manages to find some pretty adequate ones. 

It was interesting to read, on wikipedia, extracts from some of the early reviews of the book. Most critics seems to have been bemused and turned off by the ashram section ( "narcissistic New Age reading", "this silliness") but that's par for the course -- if you don't relate to that sort of thing, you're bound to feel like that. And yes, of course, as other critics pointed out, Liz was able to make this journey because she had a considerable amount of financial backing  -- one reviewer felt that it offered "no real solutions for the astronomically high tariffs—both financial and social—that exclude all but the most fortunate among us from participating". Well yes, but I suppose you could say that about any travel book, and that's really what this is, though some of the journeys are being taken internally rather than externally. 

Anyway, I loved every minute of it, and it made me long to go to Rome, India and Bali, all of which I've been lucky enough to visit, though I'd hope not to gain 22 pounds from eating pasta, as Liz did,  and I doubt if I'd be coming back with a Brazilian husband. 

Anybody out there read it? What did you think?

Whitney R.I.P.

Best of 2011

When I went back through my year's reading I was struck by the fact that almost all the books I'd really loved had been written in the last century, and a very large number of them between 1939 and 1945. I cannot explain this in any way at all so I'm not even going to try -- all I can conclude is that this was a terrifically rich period for British fiction and I'm delighted to have discovered it. Because I've been loving it all so much I have read very little in the way of contemporary novels this year, but I'm convinced that even if I had read many more I would still have picked Gillespie and I  as my 'newly published' novel of the year. Click the links to read my original reviews.

BEST NON-FICTION

Has to be Helen Rappaport's magnificent Magnificent Obsession, which, as surely everybody now knows, tells the story of Victoria and Albert -- her passion for him, his death, her extraordinarily long period of mourning. Helen Rappaport has the happy ability to combine scrupulous historical research with a wonderfully lively and engaging way with narrative, so that this book is absolutely gripping as well as really informative.

 

BEST WW2 NOVEL

Impossible to choose just one here so there's a tie between three.

 Loving   

My first introduction to Henry Green, this great novel, published in 1945, was quite unlike anything I had ever read before, and I fell in love straight away. I find his prose style enchanting (though I gather it's not to everyone's taste) and the plot of this novel, set mainly in the servants' quarters of a large estate in Ireland, was a delight from start to finish. This is a book that I will definitely re-read soon.

 

The Slaves of Solitude 

And here we have Patrick Hamilton, another writer I discovered this year. In fact The Slaves of Solitude was not published until 1947 but it is set bang in the middle of the war and, for me, evokes wartime Britain better than anything I've read before or since. In June I said this was my book of the year so far, and though I've read things since I may have loved as much, it's still right up there in the rather crowded 'top of the list' space.

 

At Mrs Lippincotes

Equally evocative of the period is Elizabeth Taylor's 1945 masterpiece, At Mrs Lippincote's. Taylor is a writer I have loved for some years, and possibly this is my favourite of her novels so far. Witty and perceptive, with a serious undercurrent, I found it an absolute joy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BEST CONTEMPORARY FICTION

 Gillespie and I

What a great novel!  An unreliable narrator, a story that unravels slowly and brings many surprises, some laughs, some disquiet, some sadness. Captures turn of the century Glasgow perfecly. A real gem.

 

 

 

 

 

BEST CLASSIC CRIME FICTION 

The Blank Wall

A very classy classic. Not a detective story in the conventional sense, though there is a death early on. But more than anything this is a psychological thriller, focusing on an ordinary middle-class American housewife who finds herself swept away by events and feelings she is utterly unprepared for. Stylish and exciting -- a great read.

 

 

 

 

 

BEST CONTEMPORARY CRIME FICTION

The Hypnotist

I've been quite disappointed with most of the contemporary crime I've read this year, but I really enjoyed The Hypnotist. Not for the fainthearted, this is quite a scary novel but I thought it both intelligent and exciting, which is really what I want from this genre. 

 

 

 

 

 

BEST PRE-1935 FICTION

Another tie, I'm afraid. 

To the North  

This was the year I discovered Elizabeth Bowen. I'd read one of her novels some years ago but hadn't really 'got' her until I was alerted to The Heat of the Day by Rachel on Book Snob. I raved about that novel in my review but for some reason I have chosen To the North, another wonderful novel, to list here. She is not an easy writer to read, but so repays a bit of concentration. I am looking forward to reading more of her novels in 2012.

The Rector's Daughter

This lovely, delicate, sensitive novel is extraordinarily perceptive about human beings, the great difficulty they have in communicating their feelings for each other, and the terribly sad misunderstandings that result. I really loved it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunflower

This is a late entry and I haven't written my review of it yet, though I will be posting it soon. Rebecca West is a remarkable novelist whose celebrated Return of the Soldier I praised very highly a few years ago. Sunflower is an unfinished novel. It was written in 1925 but not published until the 1980s, for reasons I'll explain in my review. I simply had to add it to this list because I liked it so much.

Save Your Library Posters

 

Thanks to Vulpes Libris for a link to this wonderful set of edited posters -- if you click the picture it should take you to the full set.

 

The Last Resort

I'm not a great reader of travel books, though there have been some I've enjoyed over the years -- any of Bill Bryson's come to mind, and I remember loving Old Glory, the story of Jonathan Raban's extraordinary trip down the Mississippi in the 1990s. This one, however, which is set in Zimbabwe, happened to arrive at my house more or less at the same time as an old friend who was brought up there, and who has been staying with me while his broken leg starts to mend. So -- if you can understand that rambling sentence --I thought it would be interesting to try it, not least because the book won the British Guild of Travel Writers' Best Travel Book Award last year.

But is it a travel book? I suppose it must be, as the writer does travel back and forth to Zimbabwe a number of times. But though he lives in London and then moves to New York, when he journeys to Africa he's returning to the country of his birth and visiting his parents rather than breaking new ground as I suppose travel writers traditionally do. However, that being said, of course he is breaking new ground in another sense, as Zimbabwe is no longer the country that he remembers from his childhood.  Zimbabwe, as any fule kno, used to be called Southern Rhodesia, and was a British colony before it became independent, and under the rule of President Robert Mugabe, in 1980. When Douglas Rogers' book begins, it is April 2000, and the media is full of the news that Mugabe has started to seize land from the many thousands of remaining white settlers. Suddenly Rogers' parents are no longer assured of the comfortable middle-class retirement they'd been anticipating on their large country estate. Of course they could have moved to England, as my broken-legged friend's father did -- but he'd come from there in the first place, while Rogers' father and mother could trace their roots in Zimbabwe back for many generations. 

Over the coming years Rogers visits his old home a number of times, and each time great changes have taken place. At first he is shocked by the deterioration of the house and grounds -- it seems his parents have ceased to care about keeping out the insects and frogs, and the vegetation is running wild. But on his next visit he finds everything looking much smarter again and it soon transpires that this is because his parents have leased out their collection of holiday cabins, once popular with backtrackers and tourists, to a shady operation which is running it as a brothel. On another visit he is invited to inspect his father's large and healthy crop of marijuana, while the bar which once serviced the holiday cabins is now frequented by dodgy politicians, soldiers, spies and diamond dealers.

Truly, then, though you might want to read this as a book about the political situation in Zimbabwe as seen from the inside, really it is a book about the survival of the human spirit -- or that's how I saw it, anyway. As the book ends, Rogers' parents, by now in their seventies, are still living at home and running a successful coffee roasting business. Long may they continue.

Save Our Libraries Day

Here's a not very good picture of my local library, which is about five minutes walk from my house, and is one of many that Oxford Council is now planning to close -- twenty altogether throughout Oxfordshire and six in Oxford itself. Philip Pullman wrote very passionately about this recently in the Oxford Times, and you can read what he said here. Of course nobody has taken any notice of this or of any of the other general outcries around the country. So today is a day of protests, and, if you live in the UK and it's not too late, you may find that your local library is holding one -- here's the link to find out.

 I use this library quite a lot and I am really happy to be able to do so. Of course it is not as well stocked as the Central Library, but I can order anything I like online from the Central  and then pick it up round the corner. And quite often I just go in there and have a browse. I've only lived here for about eighteen months and when I first moved in I was so happy to have the library there -- not just for books, but also for the fact that the librarians were so helpful and informative about the local area and its very interesting history. I'd be lying if I said it was usually packed out, but there are always people in there -- families and older people especially, I suppose, but certainly people of all ethnicities and all walks of life. Many of them will not be able to go into town to the Central, I'm really sure of that.

When I was little I really wanted to be a librarian because I thought they got to read books all day, which was my idea of heaven then as now. Like many people who have written about this today I have such good memories of going to the library as a child and the thrill of choosing my books. So this is all very sad. 

If you want to read some other peoples' comments on this, have a look at Random Jottings and Savidge Reads, two fine blogs that repay a visit any day of the week.