Horrible Histories

I love history. I was my third favourite subject at school (after English and Drama), I did it for my A Level (along with, you guessed it, English and Drama) and am a massive massive fan of historical fiction (especially when it is on the telly, thus combining English, History and Drama, at which point I promptly pass out in glee).

I was also very fortunate to be born in just the right generation to appreciate possibly my favourite series of non-fiction books of all time; Horrible Histories by Terry Deary. Starting with Terrible Tudors, these fun and easy to digest reads navigated the events of the period using cartoons, short snappy poems and jokes, including 'horrible' facts such as how people died, diseases and cures that were used to treat them, and what people ate and use to wash and cloth themselves with. I was recently introduced to the TV series currently showing on CBBC, which is a sketch show covering all the books and if you haven't seen it, do because it is the best children's show since Maid Marion and deserves the multiple accolades it is receiving.


As an adult, I love how I have discovered historical fiction, from being wussy and romantic Georgette Heyer style nonsense to literary classics. This week I've been reading Wolf Hall by Hilary mantel and I would recommend it highly. I know the Tudor period has been done to death, but it really is an excellent book about one of the founders of capitalism, Thomas Cromwell, who was Henry VIII's advisor,who came from 'nothing' at a time when aristocratic blood meant everything. The book covers the first 45 years of his life, and I eagerly await the next installment. Meticulously researched it was a pleasure to read from a semi-Tudor-buff's perspective. The best thing about reading historical novels for me is going 'ooo that's so and so from that other book I read', or when an event that you have studied occurs you get a little warm feeling from already knowing all about it.

Other historical novels I would recommend include, obviously, the Shardlake series, which is just so good I can hardly speak, and the historical novels of Rosemary Hawley Jarman, especially Crown in Candlelight. Of course, one can't mention historical fiction with out saying 'Philippa Gregory' in the same breath, but I'd read Alison Weir above her (sorry, sorry!) as I find Weir's characterisations of royals a lot more interesting. Though I have to say Gregory's The Queen's Fool is one of my fav beach books. Whatever you do, though, do not read The Wise Woman as
I did nearly fall asleep about a third of the way through (and the first few chapters are so good as well!).

Through book club I've discovered Karan Maitland, Company of Lies and The Owl Killers are both great (though the ending of COL disappointed me, and the rest of Book Club massively so be warned) and Carola Dunn, who write the Daisy Dalrymple books you may have noticed we all have a slight obsession with at the moment, but are so good, witty and entertaining, as well as thought provoking and full of historical (1920s still counts) nuances that really make you think ab out the past being a another country and how differently they do things there.

And last but not least, Forever Amber. Oh God Forever Amber. The story of a illegitimate, beautiful women growing up in the time of the Restoration, who starts out the adopted daughter of a poor country farmer and ends up the mistress of Charles II, I was given my mother's copy of the book when it was re-printed sometimes in the early naughties and she treated herself to it and I just love it. It is approximately four inches thick, but you are so incredibly engrossed for the entire thing that you whizz through it. I've lent it to about four other people, all alas women, and each one has come back with the same tired expression of 'Oh God Forever Amber'. No One Can Put This Book Down. Read It. Read It Now.....

This month I've also been reading America Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, which has made me angry, engrossed and, like We Need To Talk About Kevin, absolutely terrified. Good stuff.

Happy Reading!
BookElf xx

Middle Class blah blah blah

When I was a teenager, one of my favorite authors was Deborah Moggach, author of many books including Tulip Fever, Seesaw and, my favorite, Close Relations. Close Relations is a 'family drama' following the lives of the fair to affluent Hammond family, builder-dad Gordon, his wife (very much in that order I'm afraid) and their three grown up daughters Louise, Prudence and Maddy. The daughters all have their own agendas and hidden problems, and yet still manage throughout the book to apparently have to people in their lives outside of those they are either sleeping with, or related to. However, the book is warm, funny, rude as anything (there's a threesome that came as quite a surprise to my 14 year old self, and was also the first threesome shown on UK telly when it was adapted). It s a really really great read if you like your family sagas, and well written enough for a decent beach book with substance.

The reason I was reminded of this book was because of my choice of 'holiday' reading this week, when I planned to do little more than sit in my father's amazingly beautiful garden, let it all hang out and read about four books a day. I was donated about 50 more books to the Traveling Suitcase Library on Saturday (thank you Laura!) and obviously went through them all first, to see if there was any I could plow my way through before Sunday, in order to have more books to recommend. I won't be.

I came accross Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother. I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time when it came out and thought it sensationally good. It made me weep a little bit, and gain more understanding, or at least want to gain more understanding, about autism, asperger's and the issues surrounding these conditions. I thought the writing was so good, he captured the voice so perfectly and it was justifiably a best best best seller, really popular in my work library.

A Spot of Bother's blurb sounded promising- Katie's wedding is causing problems within the family, she doesn't know if she wants to marry him because he has 'stranglers hands', the mother is having an affair, the brother hasn't come out as gay to his family, the father has found a cancerous lesion. I thought, great, easy, yet poignant. I can have a good cry and feel warmth and family joy at the end when it all works out, and these books always do.

How wrong I was. I spent the whole seven hours it took me to read the 475 pages of the novel (as opposed to the month it took me to read the 600 pages of Nelson Mandela's biography) feeling exasperated, bored, and full of bile. The reason? Its just so snobbish!. Whether Haddon was trying to show how ridiculous being "middle class" is I don't know, but thats basically all I got from this book. The husband-to-be isn't a serial killer, he's common. And from the North. This makes him some how unsuitable for a woman who speaks French and whose family own a piece of land big enough to have a marquee in it. Territorial racism aside, I wouldn't have minded if Ray, the strangler, had been portrayed as common by the author, but he wasn't, or at least not any kind of common I know. He was just, well, blah. Like every single other character in the book. Even the father who is slowly loosing his mind (in such an unrealistic and unsympathetic way I couldn't believe I was reading the same writer who made me sob so much at the boy and his dad touching finger tips because the boy is afraid of hugging in The Curious Incident) was just plain boring. The affair, and the gay son, because you can't have a book about being middle class without covering the basics of adulatory and homosexuality, were silly and unconvincing, and could have been cut altogether with no detriment to the frankly woolly plot.

The whole book was a complete waste of my time, and would have been better if he had cut out 300 pages, focused on the father's fear of dying, and done a theme based, rather than saga-plot-driven piece on being middle class and middle aged, which would at least have been interesting.

What annoyed me the most was the amount of reviews being so complimentary, and they amount this book sold. If you want to read some middle class blah about how dreadful it is to have loads of money and be really close to your family, read Close Relations, because its just so much better.

This month I have also read The Witches of Eastwick, which is just so good my head nearly exploded with joy, and loads of Daisy Dalrymples', because I could.

Happy Reading!
BookElf
xxx

Psycho Killer, qu'est-ce que c'est

Strangely, for a summer that should surely be made of entirely superfluous 'beach reads', where drippy Modern Women find there feet and stand up to their philandering husbands/ bosses/ bank managers etc etc ad naseum, the last few books I've read have been very intense.

I am blaming this entirely on my friend B. B knows about the Book Lust (poor chap had to live with it for a couple of years so knows more that most!) and that I cannot say no, unfortunately, neither can they. So when eight Mills and Boons turned up in a a skip outside B's house, and I get a text saying 'I've got a present for you'...well you can see where this is going.

'The Highland Barbarian' by Ruth Langan was great fun for a couple of days train read. Predictably inflammatory heroine Meredith's father and betrothed are killed by the evil Barbarian Brice, who of course kidnaps her, storms of to his castle and reveals that he is actually not evil, and was set up, they fall in love and have lots of tender yet solid hanky panky on some furs. What really stood out for me in this incredibly researched and historically accurate tome was the guest appearance of non other than Mary Queen of Scots- for what historical romance is complete without a guest appearance from our favourite French hussy?

After this diversion I had to read something "serious", and what more so than Orange Prize winner and massively best selling 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' by Lionel Shriver.


Now I have to say, *This Review Contains Spoilers*, because its absolutely impossible to talk about WNTTAK without mentioning somewhere the main plot of the book, a mother's worries and concerns over her teenage son, Kevin, who has killed 9 people in a high school massacre in 2000. The mother, Eva, is writing to her estranged husband, Franklin, about her life from before Kevin's birth, when she was a jet setting business woman with a very successful publishing firm, to the present day, living in a small house near the prison her son is incarcerated in and working part time in a travel agency with a mixture of boring office types who flit from one piece of semi-topical water cooler banter to the next, their normality in stark contrast to Eva's infamous son's.

This book is absolutely fantastic. Although the writing style of the letters is rather "done", Shriver puts a fresh twist on it by making her narrator both competent, eloquent and thorough, but at the same time admittedly incredibly unreliable. Unlike The Long Song by Andrea Levy, which I have also just finished, this device does not appear 'tacked on' but an intrinsic part of the content, and vital to the success of the book in that it really makes you think.

This book made me reconsider my wish to bear children. I am currently not a mother, but as a fertile hormonal twenty something it would be wrong of me to deny the thought of tiny feet had not crossed my mind with some seriousness on the odd occasion. This book genuinely terrified me. Shriver's depiction of a clever, successful woman with whom I could in some way identify (she too over thinks everything, loves Victoriana and world travel, considers herself fairly liberal-at least more so than her quite frankly boorish and boring conservative Death-Of-A-Salesman husband (hate Franklin, hate him)), and how her world collapses with her inability to bond with her child, her child's strange tendencies towards to psychotic, and her frustrations about the lack of support available from others, especially her useless husband, who does not believe her when she complains about her son's behaviour, made for many sleepless nights considering the reasons I want to have children, and whether they are good enough. Eva has her son because she has reached a stage in her life when she feels she should have one. I do not want to get to that stage, I want to have a child out of love for it, because it would make me 'complete', thought whether that is morally right is looking increasingly ambiguous. I also do not want a child with a man I 'love' who then turns up to be as useless and pathetic as Franklin, which could quite easily happen. This genuinely terrifies me, and Shriver has brought all these semi-repressed feelings to the top of my head, using as simple a form as fiction. What an achievement.

Eva is complex and fascinating, she explores very deep emotions openly as possible. Although the book has received some criticism from some mothers that, as a woman who does not have children, Shriver has no 'right' to write about parenting so disparagingly, I believe that she is quite insightful. This is the sort of book I wish my mother was alive for, because you really want to ask 'did you feel that with me? Was I that awful?'. I will definitely be recommending this book sparingly, as if you are pregnant, planning on being so, or easily swayed into reconsidering life choices by fiction then this book is not the one for you. It is a very worthy prize winner, because its so well written, although it did take me about 100 pages to really get gripped by (a lot of other reviews say the same thing, its definitely worth bending the 50 page rule for). This book has really got people talking, and if you are wanting a book to liven up your office then I'd say lend it round your colleagues because it definitely will. I wish almost it wasn't so literaray, as the eloquent style may put off people for whom discussing the themes and events of this book might be really important and empathetic.

Ten out of Ten. Full Marks. Just be warned- it will change you.

Happy Reading!

BookElf xx

Oh go write a poem about it...oh wait, you did!

***WARNING CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS about a book you should actually read because, and I know this is gonna sound weird when you read what I've said about it, because I've kind of ripped it apart, it is not that bad and you should (if you're a quick reader, as there are so many other books that are better) read it. In case you don't care what happens in White Oleanders by Janet Fitch, read on. If you do you have been thusly warned***

Stream of Consciousness has a hell of a lot to answer for, in my opinion. Sure, it’s clearly brilliant and marvellous and the best thing ever, allowing the writer to be more expressive and poetical in their language, and as a prime example of the paradigm ‘show, not tell’.

It is also responsible for a host of books that use elements of this initially modernist approach in their post-modern writing, some more successfully than others. ‘The Other Hand’ by Chris Cleave, for example, incorporates real time thoughts and actions of the character Little Bee in a close-to stream of consciousness style first person narrative. I know that as a book club we have been much divided over this particular book, but I thought that Cleave pulled a very difficult style (in a completely alien voice to his own as well) off superbly. I read the book in a night, and would (and have) recommend it highly.

Then there are the books I am currently in the process of dragging my way through. White Oleander by Janet Fitch is the massively popular coming of age novel that was chosen to be part of Oprah’s Book Club in 2000. If you look online there is review after gurning review that basically gets on its knees and begs for this book. People gush endlessly about the ‘daring use of language’ and the ‘poetry’, how Astrid, the epoch’s narrator and ‘heroine’ speaks for a generation with her narcissistic, wishy washy and quite frankly dull never ending ramblings chronicling her life from the age of twelve, when her equally boring and self-centred mother Ingrid is imprisoned for the murder of her former lover. Astrid’s tale follows a seemingly never ending trail of neglect and abuse as she goes from one foster home from another. To say that her life grows ever more tragic is untrue, it jerks around like a puppet (I hope to God that’s the narrative device that Fitch was hoping to achieve, because it’s the only one that bloody works) showing how the state’s care for vulnerable people is bad at best, and catastrophic in most cases. Not only is our vapid heroine shot at by her foster mother, she is also starved, beaten, abandoned and made to watch over a suicidal woman. She is also a part-time prostitute and sleeps with a much older man at the age of 14, presumably learning from the example of her self-obsessed narcissi mother.

Astrid is from the ‘whatever’ school of heroine. I wouldn’t be surprised to find her in love with a 107 year old vampire in the sequel, except that she ‘doesn’t let anyone touch her’ (they’d be freaking perfect for each other. Fan fiction alert I think). She is clearly disturbed by her upbringing with her mother (who I just want to punch in the mouth), but follows the typical teenage try-hard way of falling hugely in love with unsuitables, drinking, smoking, having crushes on the woman next door, being alternatively embarrassed and obsessively clingy to her foster parents (a rag-tag mix of undesirables, most of whom would probably be on some sort of List in this country) and caring/not-caring about her looks (she’s absolutely stunning, but gets hideously mauled by some dogs about 200 pages through. Because nothing insanely tragic had happened for the last half hour). I know that there is some contention towards this, because, you know, teenagers are sooo important and no body understands and all that but your know what, none of this is new! All teenagers do this (all teenagers where I grew up anyway, I’m sure there is certain places around the world all teenagers would read this bollocks and laugh hysterically. You think this is tragic? This? I’ve been sewing jeans in an airless windowless hovel for the last fourteen hours and you’re complaining because the art on your state-sponsored young adults’ institution isn’t expressive enough? Ha!). All teenagers are surly and think the world hates them, and want to be remembered for their art and think up long winded boring sentences that go on forever and make no sense to anything but themselves and their far-out friends that clearly are the best thing ever because no one else will ever understand the pain of my so-called life. Man. But with more flowery adjectives in it.

And whilst we’re on the subject of language, having more that one word with three syllables in a sentence does not necessarily equate that said sentence with poetry. It isn’t so much the sentences that bother me; it’s the endless, endless use of metaphor. I wouldn’t mind if she had a theme and stuck to it, but it is literally like the author collected a random group of images or items that could conjure something up, put them in a hat and drew them out at random every couple of chapters, regardless of content. Thematically she jumps from the oleanders of the title to pearls, to wind, to angora wool, to lips, to guns, to God knows What. I tried to follow her logic in doing this but honestly could not be arsed. This book has provided some laugh out loud moments for me on the train this week, notably the line “Only worry you fall in love” he said, his voice like a hand between my legs”, which is just so Beginning Writing Semester One I felt like I should be taking notes.

I am enjoying this book, purely for its ridiculousness, the same way I would enjoy say a really whiney piece of Youth Theatre. I’m clearly far too old, boring and sensible to understand the brilliance of the writing and the creative ideal, but I really do not get all the five star reviews because even when I was seventeen and undeveloped I would have recognised this as vainglorious toss. I hope. Then again, looking back on some of my journals, maybe not! If you like Esther Freud, Virginia Woolf, Jeffrey Eugenides or Twishite then you’ll love it, and to be fair it does make you think about the state of youth in America. But I still think ‘Push’ is better.

This month I’ve also been reading the frankly brilliant debut by Jenn Ashworth, ‘A Kind of Intimacy’ that was sent to me in the post by my beautiful clever BSc sister (well done Bob! Proudness abounds!). Just fantastic, up there for debut of the year, definitely. She’s written a couple of others as well when I can get my hands on them I shall def by looking forward to it!



Happy Reading!

BookElf

Fannie Flagg, Tearmaker Extrordinaire

Feeling severally hormonal, having previously wept at the picture of the mummy oranutang kissing the baby oranutang better, yesterday was not good day to finish reading Fannie Flagg's latest book, Can't Wait to Get to Heaven on the train home.

I was inspired to read the book after watching the adaptation of Flagg's 1987 novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe with N last week. This is a beautiful film, of an even more beautiful book. Flagg's style is good ol' fashioned Americana (think Steel Magnolias meets, well Steel Magnolias I guess!), conversational, slightly saga-esque. If she were British, she's be writing about apple orchards and village greens (very much like the excellent and very readable Apple Tree Lean Down by Mary E Pearce), if she were Irish, she'd be a slightly more flippant Meave Binchey.

I have read four of her books, my favourite being Standing in the Rainbow, a sprawling tale of 50s Missouri, which carries on with the same characters from her earlier book, Welcome to the World Baby Girl (excellent story about the treatment of people of colour in America over the past 50 years, masquerading as a hard-working-girl-discovers-the-best-things-in-life-are-free-er). Set in Elmwood Spring, Missouri, a town which is just about as nostalgically twee as you can get, the book revolves around the family and friends of possibly one of my favourite characters, Neighbour Dorothy, who runs her own radio show from her sitting room. Flagg celebrates the richness of life (horrid cliche) and celebrates how hard-work, and an appreciation for the good times, makes for strong communities and friendships. Although the plot meanders along at no particular rate, a characteristic found in Can't Wait to Get to Heaven, you'd be surprised how affecting the style is, how much you fall in love with the characters (even the annoying ones) and how much you blub yourself silly at the end. Just like Steel Magnolias, in fact! (God that a good film I've not seen in a long time, N? Whatdaya say?)

Fried Green Tomatoes is probably her 'best' of the books I've read. I especially love her character Evelyn dealing with the menopause 'I'm too old to by young and I'm to young to be old'. Trouble is, I feel that way most of the time and I'm 25. And defiantly not menopausal. I may cry at samsung ads (when the dad is filming his daughter on the beach and gets that look in his eye which you just know means he doesn't see her as much as he wants...oh God I'm actually welling up as we speak), but its not for want of lady-mones. The film is just plain brilliant, and stars my namesake Jessica Tandy, so next time your having a girly sleepover, rent it. But make sure you have plenty of tissues.