SassyLassy Seeing the Trees and the Forest

It's a new year, so naturally in my world that means a new Pantone colour. This year it's Very Peri


image from Art News

which Pantone describes as ... a novel perspective and vision of the trusted and beloved blue colour family, encompassing the qualities of the blues, yet at the same time with its violet red undertone displaying a spritely, joyous attitude and dynamic presence that encourages courageous creativity and imaginative expressions.

I say let the creativity and imaginative expressions begin, and that is what I hope to find in my reading life and real life this year!

How it works in the real world (Lobelia)

Last year reading started to pick up again, but still only came in at 60 books.

Disappointingly, only 25% were in translation, as opposed to my usual closer to 50%

28% were non fiction.

By some odd completely unplanned coincidence, 11 books dealt with childhood from a child's point of view, everything from Beside the Ocean of Time to Notes from Childhood. Who knows where these kinds of synchronicities will take me this year?

Photo by Edward Burtynsky: Oil Bunkering #1, Niger Delta, Nigeria 2016 (Detail)
from David McDonough's Art Blog

There's been more and more serious writing lately about the natural world. Looking at some of the titles I've been adding to my want to read list, many of them relate in one way or another to this realm. The natural world is changing so quickly it's difficult to keep up, but every bit of learning helps. As a horticulturist, it's something important to me. I'm hoping for a book a month in this area.

In other reading, I'll definitely be part of the Reading Globally group again. I'm looking forward to the Victorian reading here in Club Read. Also in Club Read there's the tribute to rebeccanyc, and I'll be reading from that list as well. The Viragos group has a series of themed reads this year, one per month, and I'll be joining in there too.

Lots to choose from there - we'll see what actually happens.

Happy New Year--I'll be following along with your reading again this year.
I have Beside the Ocean of Time on the TBR shelf--maybe I should move it up?
And serindipitously my husband gave me a periwinkle colored nightgown for Christmas this year. I have no other item of clothing in that color, but I do like it.

Happy New Year! I’ll be following along as usual. I always enjoy your Pantone post. This year’s is definitely in a color palette that I love.

Happy New Year and nice color palette. I'm looking forward to following your reading, especially Reading Globally and from the tribute to Rebecca.

So, is that cornflower blue, or Iris blue? hmm. And, of course, I'm following your thread.

Happy New Year, and I look forward to following your reading, as always.

Looking forward to your reading this year. I randomly saw something about the Pantone color on the news and thought of you!

Happy New Year! Always love your Pantone colour toppers - particularly love this colour in the natural world. I have to rein myself in from purple flowers in the garden centre each year or I'd have nothing else in bloom.

Look forward to your insightful reading this year.

>11 AlisonY: I imagine that would be lovely, actually. My mum's house is on a corner so the side garden has been set aside for all white flowers/plants.

Hi SassyLassy!

I'm all for more purple flowers this year (I'm planning on more color in general in my garden, so that works). I love the Pantone theme!

>5 arubabookwoman: Beside the Ocean of Time is one of those seemingly simple books that lures you in. In some ways it made me think of The Summer Book in that way, although the stories are nothing the same. Read it when the world is too much.

>6 NanaCC: >7 Linda92007: It's good to see a versatile colour like that. I read somewhere that this is the first time Pantone has created a new colour for its colour of the year. The others were already in the formulary.

>9 labfs39: You know I'll be following your reading too.

>10 DieFledermaus: I kind of like that idea!

>11 AlisonY: Your climate would be similar to mine, and given the huge range of purples from earliest spring right through, you could indeed have a dedicated colour garden. If it was good enough for Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West, why not?!

>12 ELiz_M: Classic and peaceful. Does she have any night blooming plants?

>8 dchaikin: Just for you!:

Nothing like the Texas Bluebonnet, but

Blue Cornflower, Centaurea Cyanus - this particular seed stockist describes cornflower blue as "the bluest blue in the flower kingdom"



I think the blue of irises can be deeper than that though, more like this Japanese iris, which does have some purple in it, just like periwinkle


image from Bluestone Perennials

Irises have an amazing range of blues from really pale with just a tinge, to almost midnight.

>1 SassyLassy: Fabulous colour - it almost seems to change tone as you look at it!

>1 SassyLassy:, >2 SassyLassy: That color is stunning. I wonder if there are any indoor flowering plants with an identical color, or a similar one.

Happy New Year, Sassy!

Happy New Year Sassy. I love blue flowers.

>14 SassyLassy: thanks. : ) Cornflower is closer, but, it seems, not exactly right Veri Peri

Happy New Year!

>1 SassyLassy: Of course "veri Peri"! Had the bathrooms completely renovated in the fall, had the guest bath done with beadboard wainscotting in....periwinkle! a favorite color of mine (I have so many faves!). One of the veri peri flowers I have in the front garden is flax....


Looking forward to following your reading this coming year.

Periwinkle is one of my all-time favourite colours. If you want more, here's a link to my Periwinkle Pinterest board: https://www.pinterest.ca/nickelini/periwinkle/ (I also have an Indigo and a Cerulean board, and several dedicated to various purples. I like colour).

One of the hydrangea bushes in front of my house has wonderful periwinkle flowers.

>20 Nickelini: Love that periwinkle Pinterest board! You are so on trend with that Pantone colour of the year.

>14 SassyLassy: All those blue flower pictures are giving me that itchy wallet feeling I get in the garden centre in spring.

>16 kidzdoc: Violets work really well indoors, and will give you a good blue purple colour range.

>19 avaland: I love phlox. This summer when I was looking for some, I didn't take account of the very broad local accent of the person in the nursery. When I asked where the flax was, she directed me to phlox. It would still get you some of those colours though.

>20 Nickelini: That's a beautiful Pinterest board. Does your hydrangea change colour?

>21 AlisonY: That itchy wallet feeling has steered my recent acquisitions from books to plants too much lately. Thank goodness for those TBR piles!

First book of the year - Usually I start my year with some kind of mystery just to get that all important first book down quickly. There weren't any lying around, but this book in the holiday pile seemed a likely substitute toward that goal.



Dante's Indiana by Randy Boyagoda
first published 2021
finished reading January 3, 2022

Prin* is a lost soul following a devastating terrorist attack. This is not a novel full of blood, gore, and drama though. Instead, it is a wonderful satire on twenty-first century American life.

Until the attack, Prin had been a professor in Toronto, researching the role of marine life, particularly seahorses, in Canadian literature. Hardly the background for a Dante expert. However, he managed to get himself hired as just that by an American firm building a Dante theme park in Indiana. There's a crazy mixture here of unbridled capitalism, religious fundamentalism, and rust belt sociology: all targets just calling out for humour.

Problem: You only have two buildings.
Solution: That's perfect - Heaven and Hell

Q: What about Purgatory?
A: Well that's too complicated for a society used to thinking in polarized terms. A bit too Catholic and foreign too.

There was lots of fun here, and it was a good start to a year that may just turn out to feel like Groundhog Day.

_______________
*Prin seemed too close to Pnin to be an accident, so I looked up dchaikin's review of Pnin, and found another bumbling professor who loves his wife and children. Pnin has been added to my list to read this year.

>23 SassyLassy: Added to the Wishlist. I also liked Pnin a lot.

>23 SassyLassy: I love the quote!

>23 SassyLassy: I too liked Pnin, plus I lived in Indiana for five years for grad school. I think this one must go on the wish list.

>23 SassyLassy: dante and Nabokov references! Fun review. What about Purgatory…

>23 SassyLassy: 1 Book. All it took was one book to make me go and look for new books. Why do you always do that? :)

The library does not have it (yet?) but if it shows up I will grab it. Meantime you reminded me that I still had not read Pnin or don't remember it anyway - I think I may have read it at some point but... (see - plural "books" - 1 book added 2 to mine...) and the library does have that. So on its way it is.

PS: Fun review. Obviously. But it is like a minefield in here... :)

Happy New Year!

>28 AnnieMod: I really want to read Pnin sooner than later. I'm shooting for this year—if you want to do a buddy read, Annie, let me know.

But it is like a minefield in here
Picturing you stepping gingerly around a broad plane of half-buried books...

>30 lisapeet: Well, I am picking Pnin from the library this Saturday although I doubt I will read it next week (too many other books on my dance sheet) - but as it is short(ish), I will probably get to it later in January (no reason to think that I won't be able to renew it if needed so not bothered to consider the 3 weeks so it can wait a bit longer if needed and if you want to grab a copy?).

Well see - if I was just stepping around them, that would be easy. I try to excavate them and read them while still on that broad plane... ;)

>31 AnnieMod: I have a copy, and am just looking for a good excuse to actually dive in. So let me know when you do, and I'll see if I can read along.

>32 lisapeet: Keep an eye on the What you are reading thread if I forget where I was supposed to post about it - I try to post before starting books (except for the ones I read in an evening like the novellas I had been reading...) :)

Greetings! Finally checking in on your new thread. As I am red/green colorblind, I have always been a big fan of blue in all its many shades. Sometimes I can even discern purple (blue & red) from dark blue!

Anyway, happy reading in 2022. I'll look forward to following along. Cheers!

>34 rocketjk: I have a slight blue/green, so understand completely! Makes life difficult with colour coding on schematics.

>33 AnnieMod: I should check the 'What are you reading' more often. I would be interested in reading Pnin too.

It occurs to me that I should add a place for books seen in others' threads that I might want to read. I sometimes forget this list is here, but for now:

Le Tour du monde d'un épicier by Albert Seigneurie raton-liseur
Things that Are: Encounters with Plants, Stars and Animals by Amy Leach wandering_star
Edward VI: The Lost King of England AnnieMod
England's Boy King: The Diary of Edward VI, 1547 -1553 AnnieMod
Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy Cariola
The Genius of Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate baswood
I Will Never See The World Again labfs39
China in Ten Words by Yu Hua AnnieMod
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows by Ai Weiwei rocketjk
Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair nickelini

FICTION

A King Alone by Jean Giono nickelini
By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah AnnieMod
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine labfs39
Frog by Mo Yan automatic recommendation
Last Words on Earth by Javier Serena AnnieMod
The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi labs39
Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke AnnieMod
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi AnnieMod

>36 SassyLassy: I'm honoured to be the first one populating your list!

>32 lisapeet: >33 AnnieMod: >35 SassyLassy: I loved poor Pnin

>38 dchaikin: Yeah. You are the reason I realized I want to read the book (or re-read - whatever the case may be). ;)

>39 AnnieMod: 🙂

Pnin goes on the list.

Latest book by a longtime favourite author



Foregone by Russell Banks
first published 2021
finished reading January 7, 2022

Leo Fife, a renowned documentary film maker, was dying. Malcolm MacLeod, a former student of Leo's, had assembled a film crew in Leo's Montreal living room to film the final interview. Whose idea it was is a moot point; for Leo it's an opportunity to define himself and his work for posterity; for Malcolm it's a way to seal his won reputation as the designated successor.

Malcolm was ready with twenty-five prepared questions. It soon became apparent though that Leo was having none of it. Seated in his wheelchair in the darkened room, Leo started talking. Forget his film exposing the secret American testing of Agent Orange in Canada. Forget his film about the bishop caught at the Ottawa airport with a computer full of child pornography*. Leo wanted to right back to his childhood in a working class commuter town near Boston.

He was adamant that his wife Emma be in the room sitting behind him throughout. What followed was Leo's life story, recounted to the camera as a confession to his wife. He would not be dissuaded.

The pain and his memories - regardless of how befuddled and distorted they have been made by the drugs that are supposed to wage war against his cancer and mask his pain - are the only evidence he has to prove that he has not yet died. His pain and his memories confirm his ongoing existence. He needs no one to witness his pain. No one can. But his memories cannot exist unless they are heard and overheard.

Is it a betrayal of their life together? Is it true? Is Leo's life built on betrayals of friends, family, and the country he and sixty thousand others left during the Vietnam war?

Banks's writing here is visual, like a film. He does a masterful job of balancing Leo's perceived memories with his present day terminal self, and the voracious demands of the film crew. At more than eighty years of age, this may well be Banks's meditation on his own mortality. This is the tenth book of his I've read; it may well be his best.
________________________

* Both these scenarios are true. The bishop's name has been changed in the novel.

>42 SassyLassy: Russell Banks is one of my favorite authors too. How did I not know he had a new book out? Great review, and I'm off to see if my library has the book!

>42 SassyLassy: The only Banks book I've read is Continental Drift and I just didn't care for it. I've been meaning to try one or two more of his novels, though.

>43 arubabookwoman: I thought the same thing when I first saw it - "How did I not know?"
Hope your library comes through.

>44 rocketjk: Continental Drift was the first one I read too, and it sent me looking for others. Maybe Affliction might be worth the try.

>45 SassyLassy: "Maybe Affliction might be worth the try."

Is that novel as dark as the movie that was based on it? I thought the film was excellent, but, wow, immersing myself in that world via a novel is a tough sell! I was wondering what you thought of The Darling, though.

>46 rocketjk: Maybe even darker! Maybe even Leonard Cohen dark. I am a big fan of dark though.

The Darling was another one I was considering suggesting. This might give you an idea of whether you will like it, but don't go beyond the first three paragraphs as there will be spoilers further on: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/02/featuresreviews.guardianreview20

>47 SassyLassy: Thanks! I'll give that a look soon.

>42 SassyLassy: great review! Noting.

>42 SassyLassy: thanks, I knew nothing of Banks, now I'll keep my eye out to learn more. What is it about him makes him a favourite of yours (happy to be directed to anything missed in prior threads/years)

>42 SassyLassy: I enjoyed your review of Foregone. It's a reminder that I have some catching up to do with Russell Banks, who is also one of my long time favorites. Although there are a few of his more recent books that I have yet to read, in my opinion Cloudsplitter, his fictionalized account of the abolitionist John Brown, is his masterpiece. I found the portrayal of the relationship between John Brown and his third son, Owen, who also serves as the book's narrator, to be particularly compelling.

>50 tonikat: What is it about him makes him a favourite of yours ?

This may be a longer and more rambly response than clarity would demand, but most of all what appeals to me is his characters. Banks's main characters are often that truly unfashionable group in the literary world: older alienated white males from places few have heard of. These men are usually from anywhere along the eastern seaboard from Florida into Canada, or around the Great Lakes, or in the Pacific Northwest, in rural areas or factory towns. They are the kind of men who work predominantly in extractive occupations: logging, fishing, and mining, although factory work and construction may be there too.

Banks knows these men, knows their language, their habits and their work. He knows they are self-sufficient, but worn down by time, poverty, lack of education and ill health. Relationships are difficult. Drug abuse, divorce, and alcoholism happen in their lives, not necessarily to them, but happen nonetheless. That may be what makes many of his novels so dark. However, Banks seems able to look at these men straight on, without pity but yet with an understanding that too few people are willing to give them. He is able to make them as >51 Linda92007: says "compelling".

>51 Linda92007: That's one that's on the TBR. I bought it some time ago, moved, and then moved again. I do know where it is now though, and so I can read it now! I'm not sure that John Brown will fit into my response above in this post, but there are books of his that don't. Looking forward to it.

>49 dchaikin: Keep Banks in mind.

>52 SassyLassy: thanks, I'll look out for these men

>51 Linda92007: >52 SassyLassy: Cloudsplitter was one of the most recent books by Russell Banks I read (several years ago now), and it had languished on my shelves for quite a long time, primarily because it's a chunkster and because it's historical fiction which I don't read a lot of. I liked it, but I think it's atypical of his other works.
The most recently-published of his books I have read is The Lost Memory of Skin which I liked a lot.
I was able to check Foregone out of the library, so hopefully I will read it in the next few weeks.

>52 SassyLassy: after this post, I certainly will.

>53 tonikat: Oddly, I haven't encountered any of these men in the UK, in real life or in fiction. That doesn't mean they're not there, but I think if they were, they would at least have fictional representatives. Help me out here someone if you know of any!
There is a theory that their ilk is connected to the North American idea of the frontier, of going off and living your own life beholden to none. Somewhere along the way this idea failed, and disillusionment and worse set in.

>54 arubabookwoman: I think it was the historical fiction aspect that stopped me from reading it, so happy to see it worked for you.

Just found this on npr's website about The Lost Memory of Skin:
You've got to hand it to Russell Banks: He's certainly not writing with an eye to please readers or to be taken up by book clubs across the land. Lost Memory of Skin is not aiming to be a "crossover" literary stealth hit. If you're going to read it, you're the one who will have to "cross over" to Banks' world, and it ain't very pretty on his side of the social divide

This is another one I haven't read, but is in the house somewhere. Glad to have two more on the TBR pile, as I'm not sure how many more there will be.

>55 dchaikin: It'll be interesting to hear the view from your part of the world!
____________
I'd also mention Denis Johnson and Robert Stone as writers who know these individuals.

>56 SassyLassy: Lost Memory of Skin is the only Banks I've read. Coincidentally, it was for bookclub.

I have quite a few of Banks’ novels and I’m not sure I’ve read any of them. I should fix that.

Over in the Victorian Tavern, there are currently two read alongs: David Copperfield and Lady Audley's Secret, both excellent reads, but completely different fare. I've read each several times, and have just finished my latest reread of David, so thanks to AnnieMod for setting them up and prompting me to reread once again.



David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
first published in serial form May 1, 1849 to November 1, 1850
this Oxford edition published 1999 based on the first one volume edition
finished reading January 23, 2022

The basic plot of David Copperfield is well known. There are many reviews documenting it on LT, so this won't be another. Instead, it's my thoughts on how the novel has changed for me over the years through five readings.

My grandmother gave me an older Oxford edition when I was nine years old, just a little older than David was when he was sent to school and then to the factory. I saw the world through David's eyes. I would have been duped as he was duped. If David worshipped Steerforth, I would too. When he spent time in Mr Peggotty's boat, I compared his room to my own little room at my grandmother's when winter storms howled in along the Clyde. Uriah Heep was repulsive, but for no reason I could pin down. Mr Micawber was a hopeless buffoon. Barkis was a one liner.

My first reread was at thirteen or fourteen. My focus was that of a girl in her early teens. I wanted to think there would be someone to love me as David loved Dora. Em'ly was interesting, but a hopeless case, and Agnes was just too goody-goody. She should never have been the second Mrs Copperfield. For that matter, David should never have remarried.

The third reading was about ten years later, this time from a strong feminist perspective. Betsy Trotwood, a favourite through all readings, shone out. Unsurprisingly, Dora was reduced to zero. Agnes advanced based on her life of study. Little Em'ly was seen as the victim she was.

Reading number four was a summer read; the kind where you want something familiar to carry along. This time, context and setting played a much larger part, especially as seen through the very real plight of the Micawbers. Mr and Miss Murdstone came into focus more, rather then just being summararily dismissed as evil.

This fifth reading was every bit as enjoyable as the first. There was no motive for the read other than the pure pleasure of it. Dickens has been acused of padding, but I couldn't see any story line which could have been left out without detriment. I was struck by the adult David, looking back at how his"undisciplined heart" had led him through his early life. Now he was a disciplined adult reflecting on his life, and the earnestness, the diligence, and the discipline he had acquired were well earned.

In his introduction, Andrew Sanders says ‘In many ways the novel is a key text of mid-Victorian civilization, a text in which the self fashioned hero is redefined for a post-Romantic generation. Shorn of his solitary quest, of military enterprise, and of religious zeal, if not of his earnestness, the modern hero is now required to find his field of action in the professional, domestic, and the social spheres.’ David certainly managed that, but best of all he did it while remaining open to all.
___________

The cover portrait is Portrait of the Artist's eldest Son, John Charles by John Constable, 1830

>59 SassyLassy: Wonderful review, Sassy. Thank you for sharing your experiences of reading David. It's so interesting how our understanding and appreciation of books change over time.

Thank you for the great essay about your experiences with David Copperfield.
I first read it when I was fairly young (college I think, not as young as your first read). When I finally reread it about 9 or 10 years ago, I specifically noted how insipid and simpering Dora was and how much it bothered me that David married her. I hadn't noticed that at all on my first reading, perhaps because at the time (late 1960's) feminism was just taking off, or perhaps not being as widely read in the Victorian classics I thought that was just the way all females were then. I'm enjoying this 3rd read now, but I'm only through Chapter 16 at this point.

A fifth reading very impressive. Getting something different each time you read makes it worthwhile re-reading a favourite book. I have been avoiding David Copperfield all my life and it looks like I am still avoiding it as I have got stuck at chapter four. Is this one your favourite Dickens?

>59 SassyLassy: i haven’t read anything five times, or even three. Enjoyed your post and your five perspectives.

>59 SassyLassy: How interesting! It has only been in recent years that I have purposefully re-read full books. A second read does sometimes bring a whole different level of understanding, but it has never occurred to me to think about why that is. Well done!

>59 SassyLassy: Thanks for sharing those experiences.
I have never read David Copperfield, plan to join the read along but shying away those 800 pages or so. Your review makes me rethink this and I might finally decide to open this book.

Great review. I'd planned to join the group read of this but I'd a lot of library books out that I needed to get through. I will get to it one day, hopefully.

>59 SassyLassy: One of my favourite books Sassy, and on the pile for a reread this year maybe.

Thanks all

>60 labfs39: >61 arubabookwoman: >62 baswood: >64 Linda92007: Whenever I hear conversations around "desert island books", I always think of what I would like to reread most. After all, imagine if you select x book you had always wanted to read, and it turned out to be a stinker! Choice wasted, when you could have had an immersive reread!
I like Linda's description of a purposeful reread. I do try to do one or two every year. Unfortunately my favourite rereads are all really long! I don't think the time spent necessarily takes away from new things I could be reading though.

>65 raton-liseur: >66 AlisonY: There's still time to jump in! It didn't seem like a really long book (even though it is). I was trying to read other things at the same time, but kept being drawn back to David. I hope you get to it soon.

>67 Caroline_McElwee: I guess it's a favourite of mine too! What else is on the reread pile?

>63 dchaikin: If you were going to reread something, what would it be? I'd be really interested in how it would go for you.

>68 SassyLassy: 63 dchaikin: If you were going to reread something, what would it be? I'd be really interested in how it would go for you.

Listening intently...

This is the mystery/thriller/... that would normally have been my first book of the year, but it hadn't come in yet.



Slow Horses by Mick Herron
first published 2010, 10th anniversary edition published 2020
finished reading January 24, 2022

Imagine a special office where all the screw-ups in your large organization are put out to pasture. The people who slept with the wrong person, lost a critical file, just plain lost all drive; all condemned to a future worklife of meaningless tasks. Now imagine if this place was for failed and washed up MI5 intelligence officers. Such a place was Slough House.

The occupants might think that six months or a year of workplace rehab listening to endless useless tapes looking for that one nugget of gold that would put them back in favour was their temporary sentence, but the truth was they were just supposed to get fed up and quit. Nobody ever got back.

Slow Horses is Mick Herron's first book in his Slough House series. In his introduction to the tenth anniversary edition, published in 2020, he speaks of how his publisher dropped him after its initial publication. He thought its plot-strand concerning the resurgence of the far right ridiculously unlikely, and that reference to ...Britain leaving the European Union showed how out of touch I was with contemporary politics.

Herron though was on to something even though it took seven years for the book to become a best seller. Maybe passages like this helped:

The various PJs who'd so far been present - the urbane, the bumbly, the vicious, the cruel- melded into one, and for a moment the real Peter Judd peered out from the overgrown schoolboy, and what he was doing was what he was always doing: weighing up who he was talking to in terms of the threat he posed, and assessing how that threat might be cleanly dealt with. "Cleanly" meant without repercussion.

Recognize anyone?

This will be a fun series to follow when light reading is needed.

>70 SassyLassy: Yes, this is a great series! (I've read the first three)

I'm all caught up on the Slow Horses series and I have loved them all. I sure hope there's another one in the works.

>42 SassyLassy: Great review of the Russell Banks'. I came across that recently and entertained the idea of reading it, but talked myself out of it (too many books bought in Dec & Jan).

>59 SassyLassy: Loved your relationship with David Copperfield and how you have kept track of each reading. I wish I had done the same for a few books.

>68 SassyLassy: Far too many Sassy. December/Jan had 4 rereads: Howards End, The Great Gatsby (41st reread, I read it every year), A Month in the Country and The Remains of the Day.

>73 avaland: I think you would like it. Maybe the library? I know that book buying thing too well, although I have been restrained lately as I like to buy them in person.
What books would be on the "keep track" list?

>74 Caroline_McElwee: Great rereads all. I love that idea of a yearly reread. The closest I've come to it is a period when I would reread a Dickens novel every year.

edwinbcn has started a thread about the natural world, and I thought I would try for one book a month.



Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya by Jamaica Kincaid
first published 2005
finished reading January 28, 2022

Jamaica Kincaid was asked to do something, anything she would like, anywhere in the world. That's the kind of fairy godmother wish most people can only dream about. However, this fairy godmother came in the guise of National Geographic, so Kincaid knew her wish would come true. Her side of the transaction would be to write a book about it. Among Flowers is the result.

Kincaid's first thought was to return to China with her friend the botanist and plantsman Dan Hinkley. She had been there with him in the late 1990s collecting seeds.* Hinkley's suggestion was that they go to Nepal instead, seeking the seeds of every plant lover's Holy Grail, the Himalayan blue poppy. In October 2002, the two of them met up with the Welsh plant hunters Sue and Bleddyn Wynn-Jones in Kathmandu. Then it was a short flight to Tumlingtar and the beginning of their three week trek.

Kincaid's view of life is seen in terms of how the world relates to her, not in terms of her relation to the world. This can make her seem like a difficult travelling companion at times when conditions aren't up to her standards, or when she doesn't feel like doing some of the more tedious work.

On October 13, our day off, I lay in my tent reading. Sue, sick with a cold, dutifully got up and cleaned the seeds that Bleddyn and Dan had collected. I wasn't very interested in this since none would survive in my garden.

On the other hand, this focus does allow her to see and describe things others just might pass by.

It takes a brave person to portray herself as a whining, dawdling, neophyte, and I wonder why this is the persona Kincaid chooses to adopt here and elsewhere. After all, no one walks north eastern Nepal's mountains with their drastic elevation, weather and terrain changes without being more than everyday fit. Photographs of her on the trip bear this out. Kincaid is also knowledgeable about plants, even if she's not particularly interested in those that won't thrive in North Bennington, Vermont.

All this aside, she has written an engaging account of this trip. She realizes the irony of a fiercely anti colonialist black woman employing porters and cooks to take down and set up camp each day, to deliver hot water and tea to her in her tent each morning before she gets up. There are difficulties along the way. Leeches swarm campsites requiring regular body inspections. Maoists who sound more like Naxalite thugs control passes, and later access to a local airport. There are also moments of joy, seeing plants that could never be encountered outside a trip like this.

I would have liked to know more about what seeds the botanists did take back to their respective homes, but although that may have been the point of the trip, it isn't the point of the book. Most of all Kincaid is able to articulate that disconnect travellers often experience between the immersion in the daily routine of their trip, and the daily routine going on back home without them. She speaks of the idea that's what foreign to you is everyday to the people who will keep the daily routines which seem so novel to you, even when you are home resuming yours. She laments the effect of the idea that a journey starts to end as soon as you arrive.

This is the second book of hers I have read, both nonfiction. While I struggle with Kincaid the person, and sometimes Kincaid the author, making it difficult to write about her work, I do like what I have read by her so far.

___________________________
* see essay in My Garden (Book)

Rheum nobile part of the rhubarb family, one of the plants Kincaid wanted to see and succeeded in seeing on her trip
This plant can reach 2m in height



image from Encyclopedia of Life

Hooker and Thomson were the plant hunters who first brought the plant to European attention in 1855



illustration from the same expedition
image from Wikipedia

>76 SassyLassy: I have been wanting to read Jamaica Kincaid's My Garden for some time, but it doesn't seem to be available at a very reasonable price near me, and my local library don't have it. But your review of Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalayas has made me more interested to read it. Which of her other non-fiction have you read?

>77 SassyLassy: I love rhubarb. What a nice pie one can cook with such a plant! We just have a few "ordinary" ones in our garden...

>77 SassyLassy: Amazing, looks like a red carpet dress.

>77 SassyLassy: - Gorgeous pictures! It does sound disappointing that she didn't include information on all the seeds that they collected--that would have been interesting. I'm not sure I'll read that one, but I should read something else by her since I really liked Annie John.

Just catching up, Sassy. I enjoyed your comments about David Copperfield. I’ve only read it twice, but it is one I will read again. Oliver Twist was one I read several times as a tween. I’m hoping to read one of Dickens this year that I haven’t read. Maybe A Tale of Two Cities?

And I love the Slow Horses. I’m reading Joe Country now.

>78 SandDune: I was lucky enough to find both My Garden (Book) and Among Flowers locally in two different used book stores, both books in what appeared to be unread, even unopened condition. When I read them, I noticed that they had both belonged to the same person, as her name was inside. Apparently they had been winter reading in Florida.
These two are the only books by Kincaid I have read. Of the two, I preferred My Garden (Book), as the essay style format gave more focus to each segment. I say format, as they are not truly essays. I guess for preference it would depend whether you were more interested in hiking or gardens.

>79 raton-liseur: Rhubarb is never ordinary! I love it too. There are so many different kinds. The best one I ever had was given to me by someone whose father had a dairy herd and it came from his pastures. My current ones also produce well, and luckily there is a local source of excellent aged manure, not to mention lots of seaweed.

>80 Caroline_McElwee: Amazing, looks like a red carpet dress So true - that really made me laugh! Then I spent some time contemplating the fabric and structural requirements, so thanks for the fun.

>81 DieFledermaus: Maybe I should try her fiction. I'd also like to read The Autobiography of My Mother.

>82 NanaCC: A Tale of Two Cities sounds like a great choice. I'm due for a reread of it too. Maybe we could do it at the same time.

_________________

Just because I love pictures of plants, here is one both Kincaid and I would love to grow, but I am about one full climate zone out, and she is about two and a half. Lucky you if you live in Washington State or southern BC. I do know of one in a sheltered garden down the road, but it has lots of special protected places. This is Gunnera manicata common name Giant Rhubarb although it is no relation to the rhubarb family. It is also know as 'dinosaur food' as it grows to 2m. Warning, it will be invasive when planted in favourable circumstances.



image from gardeningknowhow.com

>83 SassyLassy: I love that plant too but it's far too big for me garden. They have a lot of it in Cornwall but I don't recall seeing any near where we live.

>84 SandDune: Cornwall is kind of a magic place for plants.

_______________________

Noting that this is my 11th Thingaversary.

Happy Thingaversary!!

>83 SassyLassy: When we redid our garden in Seattle about 10 years before we moved we included a gunnera next to a fountain we installed. It did very well and was still thriving when we sold the house. We told the grandkids it was "dinosaur food" (and I believe that was its common nickname around there). I dearly miss my garden.

>83 SassyLassy: So that's what the plants with the giant leaves that I see on my noon walks are....

>59 SassyLassy: Like everyone else, I enjoyed reading about your different reactions when rereading this novel. I recently reread The Lord of the Rings and it was similar - very different to my first readings of it, both because of my age, but also because times have changed so much.

>77 SassyLassy: Beautiful, these look amazing!

>83 SassyLassy: My next door neighbour has this plant in her garden. She offered to give it to me as it's absolutely massive and too big for her space but I couldn't think of an obvious place for it in my garden. It's intriguing, though, and certainly huge.

Envying all those people with Gunnera in their lives, even if only in another place.

>87 arubabookwoman: It is very difficult to give up a loved garden. I've had this happen a couple of times, but the upside is that you can start all over again in the next one: new challenges, new light, new climate zone, and then there are the new weed varieties and new predators! The downside is that there is never a long view back over what has been done.

>89 MissBrangwen: There should be more rereading done. The Lord of the Rings would be a good book for it I think, but I have never read it (yet) so may be well of base there.

No plants here, indeed a totally different and difficult topic, which is what has taken me so long to get around to posting about it. As the Translator's Note discusses, how to use language around it (echoes of Bob Dylan).



Phenotypes by Paulo Scott translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn 2019
first published as Marrom e Amarelo in 2019
finished reading February 1, 2022

Simply put, phenotypes are the outward expression of genetic characteristics.

In 2012 the Brazilian government, in an effort to increase enrolment in post secondary education, set up a quota system for people of black, brown, and indigenous heritage. The problem for the system was that many Brazilians could claim some ancestry in one or more of these groups, no matter how white they might appear. Identification based on self reporting only would not work, so a system was needed to establish eligibility.

This is how we meet our protagonist, 49 year old Federico, nominated along with eight others by no less a personage than the President of the Republic to sit on a commission to develop an Appeals Authority. This authority would be aided by software which the commission was to develop; software which would determine who was eligible for a quota, and in which group, based on measurable characteristics rather than self identification. When the commissioners learned the details of their project, objections were fast and furious.

Alternating with this over achieving group activity, is the story of an event in Federico's teenage years. He might be a successful policy wonk in Brasilia now, but his life back in working class Porto Alegre had given no indication this would be the case. There he had had one advantage though; people took him for white. On the other hand, they took his bother Laurenco for black, no matter how much the children protested that they were brothers. Kids on the street, like kids anywhere, interacted in terms of their own identities.

Possibly the only way to make sense of this novel is to just read it, for any description is bound to offend someone. Translator Daniel Hahn provides an excellent discussion of the difficulties of translating what he calls "tonal valence", based on history, culture, and power structures. That means ... a word like 'mulatto' has good historical reasons for being quite different in Brazil or Portugal, and, for example the US.

Hahn's Portuguese, like Scott's, is Brazilian Portuguese, which differs widely from the Portuguese of Portugal. Hahn says

For the purposes of this novel, Brazil's cultural-linguistic particularity is especially striking when talking about race, and when talking about talking about race. That conversation is central to the book, and was something over which as a translator - and not least as a white translator - I knew I needed to take the greatest care.

Complicating his translation is the fact that the same language, in this case English, is used differently not only in different countries, but in different communities within these countries. The book's very Portuguese title, Marrom e Amarelo, brown and yellow, used to describe the brothers, would not work in English translation, given their English connotations, which are not at all the same as the Brazilian ideas.

All this aside, the novel is at once a satiric look at governmental and nongovernmental policy making, and the more serious story of how the past can come back to haunt, all wrapped up in a well worthwhile insider's look at Brazil today.

_________________

more reading on the background:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/world/americas/brazil-enacts-affirmative-acti...

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/jun/08/race-fraud-how-college-quota-...

>92 SassyLassy: Wow, those articles were eye-opening. I had not heard of the Brazilian policies before. Great review.

>92 SassyLassy: This sounds very interesting - and tricky, but it looks like the translator was quite sensitive to the book's issues, and wasn't afraid to write about his process, which I like!

>76 SassyLassy: Great review! "Kincaid's view of life is seen in terms of how the world relates to her, not in terms of her relation to the world..." I thought this interesting....

Fabulous photos! (very nice to come upon on a somewhat dreary day as we wait for the next snow storm.

>92 SassyLassy: Another interesting book! I have read little from South America in the last few years (perhaps longer). I always enjoy hearing about your reading :-)

>93 labfs39: Brazil seems to be one of those places where the things you read about and see in films never seem quite real, except they usually are. I have enjoyed what little Brazilian fiction I have read, almost all of it reenforcing that surreal quality.

>94 Dilara86: Tricky indeed - Hahn covered it so well. I was terrified to try writing about it! However, it's always good to be reminded that not everyone subscribes to the same canon of thought, and looking at language through the eyes of the speaker can impart far more than criticizing it through notions of how it should be used.
I have just started a Natalia Ginzburg book, a memoir, and she alludes to the same problem in using her father's language.

>95 avaland: I think Kincaid's way of looking at life is what makes her writing interesting, but it can get tiresome, making her a good essay writer, but a more protracted book length format would drive you to one sided discussions with her in definitely frank language!

I always love including photos, and that succession of eastern seaboard storms this winter definitely calls for some joy. So just to tie Brazil and flowers together, here is the national flower of Brazil:



The Tecoma chrysostricha, known as the Ipê amarelo (there's that amarelo again) and here is a close up of the flower:

Already I'm getting seriously behind on books read posts.



The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
first published 1911
finished rereading February 5, 2022

"I've stolen a garden", she said very fast. "It isn't mine. It isn't anybody's. Nobody wants it, nobody cares for it, nobody ever goes into it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already; I don't know. .... They're letting it die all shut in by itself."

The Secret Garden was definitely a hands down favourite of mine when I was a child. Earlier this month, someone made reference to how much she had loved it and how it had influenced her, so I dug it out to read again.

The image Burnett had painted in my mind has always stayed with me. Who could resist a search for a secret forbidden garden? What child wouldn't be thrilled to discover it behind a high stone wall with a locked oak door hidden by ivy; a wall over which flowering fruit trees arched their branches, and birds flew freely?

That had always been my memory of the book. Rereading it now, I was struck by how much the novel is really about three children. Possibly, as a child, it seemed unremarkable to me; after all, books were full of children.

Not only were there children in the book, but these children had lives of their own, unlike so many ultra supervised children today. Nine year old Mary Lennox, "... as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived...", had been sent from India to live with her uncle in Yorkshire after her parents died. Mary rattled around his estate without focus, left largely to her own devices by the household staff, while her widowed uncle travelled far and wide to forget his grief. In echoes of Jane Eyre, Mary would hear screaming at night. She would eventually discover a bedbound cousin, Colin Craven, every bit as spoiled as she.

The third child was Dickon Sowerby, a child of the moors, who knew all the secrets of plants and animals; a child capable of looking after himself and the world around him. Together, this unlikely combination brought the long neglected garden back to life, and in doing so Mary and Colin came to life themselves.

This is definitely a child's book, albeit a "chapter book", but it is one which has left its mark on generations of children. It may seem old-fashioned to new readers, but that doesn't take away from the message.

While I will never be able to create a true secret garden, I have spent years trying to create hidden gardens. The lure of a wooden gate in a tall hedge or wall will always entice me.

>97 SassyLassy: Wonderful review of a book I read several times as a child and a decade ago with my daughter. There are some lovely illustrated editions out there.

>97 SassyLassy:: Great retrospective on one of my favorite childhood books, and one I have given to many young female relatives. I do wonder what their experience with it was. I've recently thought about re-reading it, and you may have inspired me to it.

>97 SassyLassy: I was disappointed with The Secret Garden as a child because I wanted something like The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. More. Magic. Please.

But then I read it in my 30s and loved it. And the 1993 movie was a family favourite when my daughters were young. It's such a gorgeous film.

>97 SassyLassy: What a wonderful revisit of what was a long ago read for me. Thanks for posting it!

Catching up. Enjoyed your reviews and all the botany and flowers.

>69 labfs39: >68 SassyLassy: >63 dchaikin: If you were going to reread something, what would it be? I'd be really interested in how it would go for you.

Saw this but I don’t have a good answer. I don’t reread much, as I always imagine it as hours of lost time on a new book, yet I tend to enjoy rereading. Thinking aloud, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Heroides and Dante come to mind. And Shakespeare, who is rereadable. And i want to reread The Faerie Queene. More recent stuff is tricky as I no longer seem able to take to a single book. Morison’s Song of Solomon wants a revisit. Cormac McCarthy’s second book does too - Outer Dark - which laid the path for all his fiction. But I don’t think either would do on, say, a deserted island. Wish I had read something harder to understand, more impossible to pin down, and yet still enjoyable.

Loved The Secret Garden too. I enjoyed watched the film adaptation with my kids when they were younger. It's not the best film I've seen, but you know when you just love the book...

>98 labfs39: >99 janeajones: >100 Nickelini: >101 avaland: >103 AlisonY: It's good to see so many people loved The Secret Garden too.

>100 Nickelini: The Little White Horse is not a book I know, but if there's magic, then I should get acquainted. I also didn't know there is a film made of The Secret Garden.

>102 dchaikin: Wish I had read something harder to understand, more impossible to pin down, and yet still enjoyable.
Nothing like nineteenth century Russians to fill that need!

February's Victorian Novel:



Villette by Charlotte Bronte
first published 1853
finished reading February 21, 2022

Lucy Snowe, the narrator of Villette, is one of Victorian literature's more unusual protagonists. True, she is an orphan, alone in the world, and forced to make her own living. However, unlike say Miss Young from Deerbrook, or Margaret Oliphant's Hester, Lucy presents herself as disagreeable, judgemental, and bigoted, never fearing to add a certain tone of righteousness to her opinions by way of justifying them.

Lucy had started life well enough, and had a well to do godmother, but life forced her out on her own through largely undetermined circumstances. Resolving to look only forward, she left England behind and wound up in Villette (Brussels) where she obtained a position as a governess for the children of a boarding school proprietor, Madame Beck. She was soon promoted to English teacher. Both positions came about through the firing of the incumbents.

Mme Beck, a highly competent woman in her own right, is the foil against whom Lucy reveals herself. An ardent anti-papist and a strict disciplinarian, a woman as cold as her name, Lucy's first person narrative never stops criticizing the world of this Catholic school, its perceived superstitions, and the lack of academic rigour for the students. Lucy herself was not much older than the senior girls, yet the gap could have been decades given the lack of connection with them. In her eyes, her role was like that of a missionary among these unenlightened Europeans. Only one student stood out, and Lucy used her as the epitome of all that was wrong with young girls.

Such dissatisfaction with life slid into downright melancholia over the course of a school vacation spent in the deserted school. Driven by desperation, wanting to speak to someone who would listen, the rigid Protestant Lucy went to confession, precipitating a mental and physical health crisis. While Lucy denied her mental turmoil, to others who knew her it was obvious.

There follows traditional Victorian linking of characters from the past, but Lucy is not always reliable in her presentation. Things she knew before, which would have figured into her calculations, are hidden from the reader, only to emerge much later. Lucy controls the narrative this way in the same way Mme Beck controls the people around her through her constant spying, something Lucy knows and does reveal.

This Penguin edition has an excellent introduction by Helen Cooper. She puts the novel into its historical and cultural context. Lucy's future is left somewhat ambiguous, although perhaps only to those Victorian readers, including her own father, who wanted Lucy to lead a traditional life. Bronte, who was no traditionalist herself, had difficulty with Victorian expectations, and Villette can be read as her navigation of this world.

_____________________________

A note on the notes:

Although this edition is well supplied with notes, some of them seem gratuitous. It seems difficult to imagine that anyone taking on this book would need a note to tell them that Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Glasgow are major Scottish cities (Chap XXVI #8). Imagine a note stating Atlanta, Des Moines, and Philadelphia, cities of equivalent size, were in the USA. However, "Acknowledgements" tells the reader that the editor worked with students at SUNY Stony Brook "to help me identify those passages and words which needed notes for a wider readership" than "British readers".
While giving the editor credit for good intentions, I am gobsmacked that university students would need to be told this.

>105 SassyLassy: They must have been geography students! I often wonder about how anyone gets the idea of putting things like that in notes. Especially in the age of Google and Wikipedia…

>105 SassyLassy: I have owned Villette forever and never read it. Was it enjoyable reading?

>105 SassyLassy: A note on the notes I was amused by your note

>106 thorold:They must have been geography students! I actually laughed out loud. My daughter is a geography student

>104 SassyLassy: >100 Nickelini: Nickelini: The Little White Horse is not a book I know, but if there's magic, then I should get acquainted. I also didn't know there is a film made of The Secret Garden.

1. If you don't mind reading children's books, then I recommend you look for The Little White Horse

2. The Secret Garden has been filmed many times. I was talking about the most popular version from 1993. It had a Merchant & Ivory feel to it. Maggie Smith was fabulous as Mrs. Medlock, and John Lynch played Lord Archibald Craven. Beautiful film and a lovely soundtrack. I think I need to pull out my DVD soon. I haven't seen the 2020 version, but it looks worth checking out. Julie Walter plays Mrs Medlock and Colin Firth plays Lord Archibald Craven. Colin Firth also has a 2 minute part in the 1987 version where he played an adult Colin Craven. Derek Jacobi plays Lord Craven in that one.

Nice review. I am also (also!) planning to read Vilette this year.

>104 SassyLassy: There are also a number of ballet versions of The Secret Garden. The Sarasota Ballet performed Will Tuckett's version in 2014 and 2017: https://www.sarasotaballet.org/events/secret-garden-0

>106 thorold: Like >109 Nickelini:, I laughed aloud too.

>107 labfs39: Was it enjoyable reading? When I read Villette first as a young teenager, I was greatly disappointed. Only the ending had any impact. Consequently, unlike the case with other Bronte novels, I didn't reread it again until this year. This time around, although Lucy presents herself in a most unflattering manner, my adult self was able to see what she was doing, and to have a certain admiration for her passionate striving for independence as the novel progressed. "Enjoyable" is not quite the word I would use, it is a bit too calvinist for that, but it is well worth reading. There is even a touch of gothic in it.

>110 edwinbcn: I think you will find a lot in it given your background and connection to Victorian novels. I'll look for your review.

>109 Nickelini: >111 janeajones: All theses films sounds wonderful, especially given the casting. janeajones, thanks for the link. It is lovely.

And now for something completely different. If you are looking for more of Mo Yan's work, it can be found here in a Read Mo Yan group created by StevenTX: https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/13124/Read-Mo-Yan
The group had become dormant, but hopefully posting there earlier today will revive it. You can still read earlier posts there.



Frog by Mo Yan translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (2014)
first published as Wa in 2009
finished reading February 26, 2022

Frog has Mo Yan readers back in the familiar territory of Northeast Gaomi Township. Wan Zu, also known as Xiaopao, relates his aunt Wan Xin's story through a series of letters to his sensei abroad, a man who had visited the village, met Wan's aunt, and expressed interest in her story.

Mo Yan has said population growth is China's biggest problem. The plight of girls is inextricably tied up in it. Relating Wan Xin's story in this way allows him to cover decades of women's stories in the PRC, for Wan Xin (Gugu) was a midwife. Graduating in 1953, when the Republic was full of hope, Gugu set out at the age of sixteen to bring revolutionary ideas in politics and birthing to the county. No more straddling a pregnant woman's abdomen and pushing; now midwives would work in sync with their patients.

Possessing a highly desirable class background, Gugu's career looked limitless until a major setback in love. No matter, she persevered. Imagine the role of a midwife through China's Great Famine, when no children were born in the commune's forty villages for two years. The end of famine in 1962 saw the population boom, so that by 1965 it was proposed "One {child} is good, two is just right, three is too many". Gugu became the Party's local Family Planning proponent and enforcer. Vasectomies for men with three children were decreed, with Gugu performing the procedure. The Cultural Revolution would not be easy for Gugu as the men extracted their revenge.

Throughout the novel, Xiaopao is also relating his own story, and the everyday life of the township. It is here that Mo's humour emerges, balancing the horror that was to come.

In 1978-79 the one child policy was introduced. Families in the township sought potions that would ensure a male child or twins. Nothing Gugu could say would convince them their quest was in vain.

In 1983, when Steven Mosher wrote in Broken Earth of the enforcement of the policy, he was vilified as being overly dramatic. As seen by Mo Yan though, the reality was even darker. Gugu, a true believer, along with her helper Little Lion, carried out the forced terminations creating turmoil across the township.

The era of state capitalism and rampant corruption coincided with this policy. A new frog breeding enterprise started in the village. The corruption behind it is a major focus of the storyline. It's no accident that there is the imagery of an awful swamp both here and in Ma Jian's Dark Road. There are no happy endings in either book. Nobody emerges unscathed over the decades. Gugu created her own unique way of coping and atoning to herself for her perfectly legal deeds. Xiaopao attained a certain peace through his writing.

Written before Mo Yan controversially won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012, but not appearing in English until after, Frog appears to be the latest of his works in English. It doesn't seem to have the energy of his earlier writing. Perhaps the theme is just too awful. Nevertheless, for those who've been reading him all along, it's a worthwhile addition.

>113 SassyLassy: I read Red Sorghum years ago and liked it, so followed up with The Garlic Ballads. Wowzer, was that a tough read. I haven't been emotionally brave enough to read anything by him since.

>114 labfs39: Have you seen the film Red Sorghum? It was Zhang Yimou's first and the cinematography is beautiful. That was how I first came to read Mo Yan; I went out and bought the book.

I think The Garlic Ballads is my favourite of his books to date, (the ones I have read that is) even though, as you say, a tough read. Frog is definitely more gruesome, so it would be difficult to recommend a time or circumstance for it!

>115 SassyLassy: I haven't seen the movie, but I see it is available on Amazon Prime. I've added it to my queue. If Frog is more gruesome than GB, I'll avoid it for the time being. I'm trying to find less depressing things to read at the moment.

>113 SassyLassy: Not an author I was aware of, and I am intrigued.

Great review of Phenotypes, Sassy. I purchased the Kindle version of it last week, after it was chosen for this year's International Booker Prize longlist, and I'll read it soon.

>113 SassyLassy: great review. Sounds like an intriguing way to capture post-WWII Chinese history. I'm curious about Mo Yan, but haven't read anything by him yet. I have Life and Death are Wearing Me Out on the shelf, unopened. I swear I need to get passed the title, because just thinking about it makes me feel tired.

>117 qebo: Time to follow up!

>118 kidzdoc: Really interested to know what you'll think of it.

>119 dchaikin: Life and Death are Wearing Me Out is not a bad place to start. Parts of it are downright silly humour, part is PRC history disguised as everyday life so as not to get too didactic, part of it is great satire. Way back when, I put a review for it on its thread in the Read Mo Yan group, so that might give you a better taste of it.

The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West
first published in 1966
finished reading March 2, 2022

Never underestimate Rebecca West. After reading Frog (>113 SassyLassy: above), I felt the need for something less intense, but yet still entertaining. The Birds Fall Down delivered that and more, for it is a political and psychological thriller.

Eighteen year old Laura Rowan had no idea what was awaiting her when she accompanied her mother to Paris, to visit her Russian grandparents. It was just after the turn of the last century. The Boer Was had ended, and conflict was brewing in Russia, causing some Russians to leave their country for the west.

Laura's father was an English MP, her grandfather was a Russian count, a former government minister exiled by the Tsar for trumped up reasons. Laura's upbringing in London had encompassed both worlds, but she tended to think of Russians as somewhat superstitious, overly dramatic, not of the twentieth century. They did not behave like the English.

Despite his exile, Count Nikolai Diakanov was an ardent royalist, a staunch upholder of the Tsar, his actions, and the Russian Orthodox Church. Elderly and in ailing health, he exhibited some paranoia, convinced that agents of the Tsar would murder him. However, in social settings, he was able to keep this under control. His perfect secretary, Kamensky, did everything in his power to keep the Count's world running without the slightest aggravation for him.

Laura and her grandfather left Paris by train to visit relatives in northern France. On the trip, a shabbily dressed Russian entered their compartment uninvited. To Laura's surprise, the Count instantly recognized this man. He was Chubinov, the son of one of the Count's most trusted friends. The pair instantly began debating. It was odd, Laura thought, nearly all Russians who were anybody were brought up by English governesses, but they never seemed to have been taught not to argue.

As the conversation went on, they spoke of a man Gorin, each aware of his deeds, but viewing him from completely different perspectives. It became clear to Laura that both were involved in spycraft, although for different ends. Strangely to her, it was also clear that each respected the other's abilities. As Chubinov related his story, Laura had to adjust her thinking again and again. Hegel's dialectic had been explained to her in chilling detail with regard to revolution, and left to herself, she pondered. What was treachery and where did it lie?

This was a fascinating tale, based on a real conversation aboard a train a few years later, which West used in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. It was a conversation which had a profound effect on Russian revolutionaries, as it does here on Laura. Now I will have to read The Meaning of Treason.

__________________

The real conversation concerned Yevno Azeff one of history's most successful double agents, who was one of the Okhrana's most successful agents, as he was also a leading member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

>121 SassyLassy: The Birds Fall Down sounds fascinating. I need a Rebecca West every now and then.

>121 SassyLassy: That sounds fascinating and is a book that is totally unfamiliar to me. The only Rebecca West I have read is The Return of the Soldier, which I liked, but I have never sought out more of her books. Not sure why.

>121 SassyLassy: that Russian element really does seem fascinating, especially after all the Nabokov I just read, where he talks up Russian exiles and their relationship with English culture. Love your description of the conversation, by the way.

>113 SassyLassy: I haven't read Mo Yan, though he is vaguely on my radar. I love the cover of that one (she says shallowly), and I'll look into his work.

>121 SassyLassy: That does sound fascinating, and I hadn't heard of it, so thanks!

I read The Dark Road by Ma Jian several years ago, so I've ordered Frog from the library. I've never read anything by Mo Yan, but have both Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and Red Sorghum on my Kindle patiently waiting. I saw the movie Red Sorghum years ago and remember loving it.

>121 SassyLassy: Nice review of the Rebecca West!

Thanks all for the Rebecca West comments. Like >123 labfs39:, I don't actively seek her out, but I have several in various TBR hoards, and occasionally when looking for something to read, I pull one out. Then I'm always left wondering why I don't read more, but I suspect her style of writing is not one that leads to one after another after another. That's my rationale anyway, and it keeps some still in the pile for when I need them.

>126 arubabookwoman: Red Sorghum was a beautiful film. It was what led me to Mo Yan, as I then went out and found the book, and then more followed. The film followed the book quite closely.

>124 dchaikin: I don't know if you've read Under Western Eyes, but that same Russian exile world features there as well.

Well I seem to have been reading instead of posting, so time to catch up a bit. This is definitely not Margaret Atwood.



Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie
first published in 2019
finished reading March 6, 2022

Although Surfacing is only the second book by Kathleen Jamie I've read, she's already become one of my favourite essayists and guides to the all too often unseen world around us.

Starting in a cave in the West Highlands, a cave where bone sfrom a bear that lived 45,000 years ago were found, she contemplates the changes in topography since then. Ice ages have come and gone twice. the last one 10,000 years ago. In "the great scheme of things", are we living through "a warm bank holiday weekend" before the glaciers return, or will the earth continue to heat up as Jamie seems to believe?

What the retreat of ice and glaciers has revealed are traces of past cultures, surfacing after hundreds of years. Two of the essays here each capture a village recently revealed, but only for now, both under threat from coastal erosion and wind: Quinhagak Alaska, a village by the Bering Sea, the other a Neolithic farming community in Orkney. Jamie's explorations are usually in the north, "a place of entrancing desolation".

Jamie has been called the leading Scottish poet of her generation. Words and their meaning are critical to her. She contemplates a remark about the early Neolithic farmers, knowing they were only a step away from the wild:

I began to wonder what it might have meant to them then, back when 'wild' was a new idea. Did stories linger of a way of life before farming, before cattle raising and sheep? Did 'the wild' thrill them, darkly? Shame them?

Who were the people who lived in these places? What happened to them? These aren't new thoughts, but Jamie builds on them:

By now we number in our billions, have built mega-cities with instant global communications, and send spacecraft to explore unknown shores. We can live to be eighty, ninety, a hundred years old! You early farmers were a success beyond measure. But {now} millions shrink in poverty. Others build high walls and fabricate missiles. Sea levels rise, storm winds are bearing down on us. We are becoming ashamed of our own layer - plastic and waste.

There are other essays here, more personal, from Jamie's own life. How to bring the sound of your grandmother's voice to the surface? a trek to Tibet aborted at the border because how could you know about Tienanmen in a pre internet age? Later there is the death of her father. With each essay another layer is added to the accumulation of her own life, a life these wanderings are simultaneously building and revealing for her.

It's difficult to convey a sense of Jamie's rootedness and introspection, her connection to the earth and the wild, so the best thing to do is just read her and discover it for yourself.

"Grobust House' Westray, Orkney - Noltland's best preserved structure

image from The Engine Shed

Article on the dig here: https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/sands-of-time-domestic-rituals-at-the-links-o...

>130 SassyLassy: How interesting! I have been to Westray twice, but the last time was around 20 years ago and this is obviously a more recent discovery. I have been to the remains of Neolithic houses at Skara Brae, as well as the Knap of Howar on Papa Westray though, which is even older. Older than the pyramids apparently.

Another unexplainable long break from my thread. As before though, I am still reading.

One of the reasons for the break this time, is that I feel I never feel I can do justice to the writing of Ismail Kadare. Best to just jump in though to keep going forward. I am waiting for the day when this man wins the Nobel Prize in literature. Every year I am disappointed.



The Three Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson (1997)
first published as Ura me tri harge in 1993
finished reading March 7, 2022

The year 1377 was a troubling one for the people of Arberia in the Balkan Peninsula. The people of the town were used to crossing the Ujana e Keqe, the "Wicked Waters" by ferry, or by foot in times of low water. Although the boats and rafts were controlled by an unknown person from elsewhere, the system worked well.

It worked well that is until strangers arrived, offering to build a toll bridge over the river. They needed only the permission of the local lord, Count Stres of the Gjikas. These strangers represented a man without title, but a rich man nonetheless; a man who owned mines and highways. The Count quickly agreed to the idea, for his daughter was ill, and he needed money. The foreigners would buy the land and build the bridge, while the Count would receive an annual income from a tax on the profits.

The story is told by the monk Gjon, who in his capacity of translator and scribe, recorded not only the negotiations and details of the construction, but also the everyday happenings of the two years it took to build the bridge.

The work was accompanied by strange portents at home and abroad . They said that in a very distant country they were building a great wall. Plague had struck central Europe again. Worse, the Turks, a people even more threatening than the Slavs, were coming closer and closer. Their well chosen symbol had a certain deceptive but seductive power: Under its light, the world could be caressed and lulled to sleep more easily.

Bridges change life for everyone around, and the people sensed this would be the case for them. Fear and superstition mixed with real threats and real change. There were acts of sabotage in an effort to stop the build. A man was partially immured in the bridge: sacrifice or punishment?

Bridiges are not only material entities, they are potent symbols. The Three Arched Bridge, along with Ivo Andric's Bridge on the Drina and Omer Pasha Latas: Marshall to the Sultan portray small towns at crucial times of change, the kind of change that the people sense will affect not only their own lives, but their countries' futures. These people are not scholars or scientists, but they know this with a deep down knowledge that comes from myths and legends. The ability to portray these ideas in the context of Albania's history is Kadare's strength. They are the soul of his writing.

______________

edited to correct misplaced word

image from wikipedia

This map shows Arberia about 150 years before Gjon was writing, but still it illustrates the threats from all around.

>132 SassyLassy: I am waiting for the day when this man wins the Nobel Prize in literature. Every year I am disappointed.

Me too. After all, he has been nominated 15 times!

>129 SassyLassy: enjoyed this, of course. I can't remember if it is sightings or findings i have read. Whichever came first and I started the second but have most to read. And now there's this. She is very grounded in her approach, enthuses me.

And thanks for educta8ing me about Kadare.

We do miss you when you are away :-)

>132 SassyLassy: - Your very good review made me think I should try to dig out The General of the Dead Army, which is somewhere in the boxes. I also thought this one sounded really interesting, but when I looked in my library, I had already read it? Weirdly enough, I remember The File on H, Broken April and The Successor but not that one, even though I read the other three earlier.

>132 SassyLassy: written during the Yugoslav wars. Great review. Noting.

>132 SassyLassy: Hm, did not know that there is an English translation of this one. Nice review - need to track it down.

>134 labfs39: Good to see another supporter out there.

>135 tonikat: It makes sense to me that Jamie would be someone you would read. I like your idea of her being grounded yet enthusing people.

>136 avaland: I miss it too. Thanks.

>137 DieFledermaus: I haven't read The General of the Dead Army; you remind me I should order it. Similarly The File on H. It is one I didn't know about, so will have to lood for that too.The first is such a perfect Kadare title. It's good to hear there are more books out there, as I'm always afraid I will get to the end of his books (I'm at 7 now) and won't have any more to look forward to.

The first Kadare book I read was Broken April based on a review by the sorely missed Steven03tx. I read his review and ordered it immediately. It would be difficult to choose a favourite among the ones I have read since, but I suspect The Concert would be it. The Successor was a great one too.

>132 SassyLassy: True, I hadn't thought of that. Kadare never strays far from politics.

>139 AnnieMod: This translation was the first one I've read that was directly from Albanian into English. The other books of his I've read were first translated into French, which makes sense considering he lives in France, and then from French into English.

An antiwar classic, a book with echoes today, written almost seventy years ago:



Unknown Soldiers by Väinö Linna translated from the Finnish by Liesl Yamaguchi (2015)
first published as Tuntematon sotilas in 1954
finished reading March 14, 2022

soldiers are unknown and faceless to us. The cover image by Martti Mykkänen reenforces this. It has becomImagine being a little nation with a 1,340 kilometre border with Russia. That was the situation facing Finland on November 30, 1939, when the then Soviet Union bombed Helsinki in an act of "humanitarian aid", and invaded Finland. Three and a half months later, the Moscow Treaty ended the war with significant loss of territory for Finland, even though the Soviets had suffered their own significant losses in men and tanks.

That wasn't the end of the matter though. Encouraged in part by the poor showing of the Soviets, and the lack of Allied aid for Finland, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. The Finnish armies aided this effort by launching their own offensive across their border with Russia, after being bombed again. This would become known as the Continuation War.

This is where Linna's novel starts. The grizzled survivors of the Winter War had been sent home to plant, and a new crop of recruits had sprung up in the cleared battlefield. There they stood, bumbling into lines with a bit of difficulty: Mother Finland's chosen sacrifice to world history. After a year of training, word came to ship out - destination unknown. They found themselves setting up camp one mile from the border. The first objective was to cross the intervening swamp.

Linna wastes no time. People are killed almost immediately. This is no Vietnam "band of brothers" novel. This troop of machine gunners knows there are three ways out: death, dismemberment, or war's end. Barring any of these, they are there for the duration.

The cast of characters, and the characters themselves, change as people die and replacements arrive. Like soldiers everywhere, the men bicker. They mock their superiors and the government. They find ways of working around the rules. Some are there only briefly, others last much longer. No matter how long though, Linna is able to define each character, to make them real for the reader. He is aided in this by Yamaguchi's translation, which keeps regional and class distinctions intact.

Forests, swamps, brutally cold winters, hot bug ridden summers, unrealistic officers, lack of food, lack of equipment: there seemed little promise of anything good to come. They just hoped for food and rest. In the end, there was only defeat. What had it all been for?
__________

A note on the title: this is I believe the third translation into English. Earlier translators have used Unknown Soldier, possibly in the sense of tombs for unknown soldiers. However, I prefer the plural, as no one soldier can be representative of all, and it reminds us that most soldiers are unknown to us. The cover image by Martti Mykkänen reenforces this. It has become a classic in cover art.

__________

edited to add translation date

>141 SassyLassy: Great review, thanks. I read this book a couple of years back and found it very moving. My edition was printed in 1982 and, oddly, the translator is not credited. All we learn is that the book is "Translated from the Finnish" and that the English translation has a 1957 copyright. My 1982 copy was from the 4th English printing. My edition is titled The Unknown Soldier. On the other hand, the cover art shows a group of smiling soldiers marching off to their fates. Both covers are powerful, I think.



The introduction of my copy tells us, "In Finland, The Unknown Soldier has been bought and read more than any other single book except the Bible and the ABC; 345,500 copies have been published altogether, and it has been translated into 14 languages." This is as of 1982, I guess.

"Linna is able to define each character, to make them real for the reader."
Absolutely. I agree this is one of the great strengths of this novel. Looking around in my copy's introduction, I stumbled upon this quote from Linna: "I described a group of men that I tried to bring alive so that people could see just what had died."

You're probably aware that after the success of The Unknown Soldier, Linna went back in time, narratively, to begin a trilogy, Under the North Star, in which he goes back two generations and then traces forward the family history of Vilho Koskela, the main protagonist of The Unknown Soldier, as well as the social history of southern Finland and the bloody Finnish Civil War of the early 20th century. My wife and I took a vacation to Finland several years back, and in a big, beautiful bookstore in central Helsinki I was told by a helpful employee that Finns consider this trilogy to describe Finnish history and character very effectively. I found it to be a very powerful reading experience. As far as I know there's only been one English translation of that work, and the company that published that translation is by now out of business, but there are copies rattling around online. (They're pricey, unfortunately.)

There have been several movie versions made of The Unknown Soldier in Finland. I've seen the most recent one (2017), which follows the storyline and character development of the book very closely. According to what I read somewhere, this is the most faithful rendering of the novel of all the film versions that have been made over the years. My wife and I rented it for download and watched it a while back. It's quite good. Here's the film's Wikipedia page, in case you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unknown_Soldier_(2017_film)

"In the end, there was only defeat. What had it all been for?"
For me the most chilling line in the book (and the movie) comes towards the end when Koskela tells an officer that their defeat is imminent. The officer says, "If there is no hope, then we will fight without hope." And Koskela replies, "We've always been doing that."

>141 SassyLassy: >142 rocketjk: Great discussion of the Linna book. It's now on my wishlist.

>142 rocketjk: I do know of that trilogy, which with some vendors appears to be a quartet. As you say, it is definitely expensive, but I do check fro time to time. Maybe it's time to check again.
As to the film, apparently it was on Netflix for a while, but is no longer. I would like to see it.

I forgot to add the translation date above, so have rectified that now.

Your cover reminds me of some Chinese images I have seen, with stalwart PLA soldiers ready for anything!

>143 labfs39: I think you would enjoy it.

>140 SassyLassy: - I'll have to remember The Concert as a possible next Kadare after I finish The General of the Dead Army (although I need to dig that one out of the boxes). I was thinking about Steven03tx the other day--wondering which Club Read members might be interested in random French decadent stories and he was the first one that came to mind. Definitely miss his thoughtful reviews.

>141 SassyLassy: - This sounds really interesting--have never heard of this author before. Added to the list!

>140 SassyLassy: >145 DieFledermaus: Does anyone know what happened with Steven03tx? I enjoyed his reviews and conversation as well. I have 13 books marked as recommended by him, including the wonderful Jamilia which I read this winter.

I love maps and meant to add these to go with >141 SassyLassy: above:



Soviets and Finns on the last day of the Winter War



Territory lost by Finland in the Winter War



Front lines at ceasefire of the Continuation War, September 1944

________________

all maps from Wikipedia

Great maps! One thing neither the maps nor Linna in Unknown Soldiers make clear (at least I don't remember it from the novel) is that the reason Russia first invaded (the Winter War) was that they felt sure the Germans would be coming sooner rather than later and they felt they needed the extra territory of Karelia to successfully defend Leningrad. I believe they tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the Finns to let them have the territory without fighting. There are two or three passages in Unknown Soldiers in which characters speak of their motivation for enlisting for what became the Continuation War as the desire to "get Karelia back."

Another interesting (at least to me!) fact is that when the Russians agreed to the ceasefire at the end of the Continuation War, there were still German forces in central and northern Finland. The deal was, as I understand it, that the Russians would agree to stop fighting (i.e., to not overrun Finland entirely as I think by then they could have) but only if the Finns would take responsibility for getting the German army out of their country. The Germans were not willing to evacuate, so the Finns had to turn their guns on their former allies. The Germans, as they retreated north, executed a vengeful scorched earth policy, burning towns as they went. So there are very few buildings left from before WW2 in the north of Finland. I learned all this when I was in that part of Finland (although we never did get as far north as the Arctic Circle).

Just a note: I have finally got around to purchasing a copy of Blackstrap Hawco on your recommendation during that maritime conversation we had so long ago. Should be here in early June. Not sure when I'll get to it, but I will. Thanks again for your input. :-)

That's scary - I really hope you like it. It is dark with a D. That means the best time to read it is either mid winter when it all feels appropriate, or mid summer when there is relief all around!
I'll be getting to Newfoundland again in mid June, so hope to find some more writing there.

David Balfour: Being Memoirs of his Adventures at Home and Abroad by Robert Louis Stevenson
first published in serial form in Atalanta from December 1892 to September 1893
finished reading March 22, 2022

Readers of Kidnapped will remember that it ends with the farewell between Alan Breck and young Davie Balfour. Davie was off "with a cold gnawing in my inside" to claim his fortune and to find a lawyer to help Alan's escape from the country after the Appin murder of Colin Campbell. Alan was to keep himself safe in the hills while awaiting news of the arrangements.

Stevenson added in parenthesis at the end of that novel

Just there, with his hand upon his fortune, the present editor inclines for the time to say farewell to David. How Alan escaped, and what was done about the murder, with a variety of other particulars may some day be set forth. That is a thing, however, that hinges on the public fancy. The editor has a great kindness for both Alan and David, and would gladly spend much of his life in their society; but in this he may find himself to stand alone. In the fear of which, and lest anyone should complain of scurvy usage, he hastens to protest that all went well with both, in the limited and human sense of the word 'well'; that whatever befell them, it was not dishonour, and whatever failed them, they were not found wanting to themselves.

That was in 1886. The 'public fancy' must have wanted more than this brief assurance, for in 1892 Stevenson picked up the story once more in David Balfour. The last line of Kidnapped is The hand of Providence brought me in my drifting to the very doors of the British Linen Company's bank. However, despite his adventures with Alan, David alone in Edinburgh was as naive as when he first set out from the House of Shaws. The world of Edinburgh lawyers, bankers, and competing political interests threatened to prove too much for him, and consequently for Alan too.

That very first day, David was smitten with a young girl he saw following a prisoner through the streets. She went by the name of Catriona Drummond, for her real clan name was proscribed. David knew who she was immediately on hearing the name. As he got to know her, he found himself in a difficult position, for her father was in danger of being hanged on the one side, but on the other David was in Edinburgh to prevent James Stewart and the fugitive Alan from being hanged.

David set out for Inverary where James Stewart was being tried, hoping to clear the latter's name. After many adventures, he arrived while the jury was debating; not that there was any doubt whatsoever as to the outcome. As one of Stewart's lawyers put it: This is a scene, gentlemen, of clan animosity... There is nothing here to be viewed but Campbell spite and scurvy Campbell intrigue.*

What David learned of the workings of politics as he sat behind the scenes at the trial's conclusion and saw the aftermath, was how things work in the real world, that the process was not at all as good citizens would like to think. As he put it, I had had my view of that detestable business they call politics - I had seen it from behind when it is all bones and blackness; and I was cured for life of any temptations to take part in it again. A plain, private, quiet path was that which I was ambitious to walk in, when I might keep my head out of the way of dangers and my conscience out of the road of temptation.

This is where Part I of the novel, or the "memoir" ends. Stevenson has used that favourite conceit of Scott's, that this is written by David the narrator, "and now set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson."

While Part I was certainly engaging, Part II is somewhat of a disappointment. David set off for Leyden to study, but found himself trying to help Catriona's father, a truly despicable man. The aftermath of the '45 was playing out on French soil as well as in Scotland. It seemed the treachery would never end. David did learn the art of compromise, a skill that left him never feeling quite right. There is one more round of derring-do with Alan. However, then the novel ends in a happily ever after fashion, which seemed a bit of a let down.

_________
* In the Historical Note to the Penguin edition of Kidnapped, editor Donald McFarlan says: It was only through the intervention of John Stewart of Ballachulish... that James was given access to a defence lawyer...and then only at the roadside... when James was being transported ...under armed guard. The trial was held before three judges including the Duke of Argyll himself. Of the 'fifteen good men and true' in the jury, eleven were Campbells. After a show trial involving a mountain of perjured evidence, the jury returned an unanimous "guilty" verdict; unsurprisingly James was sentenced to be hanged... for the sake of 'the future well-governing of these distant parts of Scotland'.

>150 SassyLassy: Summer it is, then!

>151 SassyLassy: Excellent review on the Balfour book!

>146 labfs39: - Lisa, I actually did a little poking around in Talk--it looks like one day Steven stopped posting on his thread and his account disappeared--it sounded like he asked to remove his account. It's at the end of his thread here https://www.librarything.com/topic/192952#5231862

>151 SassyLassy: - Really interesting review--I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I didn't know there was a sequel to Kidnapped (which I haven't read, along with Treasure Island).

>146 labfs39: >153 DieFledermaus: I like the idea that Steven's last review was subtitled 'Off on a Comet'. I like to think that's what happened.

>153 DieFledermaus: Kidnapped is a perennial favourite of mine; for some reason left over from childhood I love those older adventure stories, probably because they were written for a wider audience.

>154 SassyLassy: 2015 was the first year of my own absence from LT. My life had gone catawampus, and I didn't even make a thread. Thank you for alerting me to the discussion, it was nice to see the concern expressed by our little community.

Even further behind in my posting than in >151 SassyLassy: above.
I felt the same way about writing about this next book as I did about reading it: delay, delay, delay, but now it's finally done.



The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
first published in 2011
finished reading March 23, 2022

Think back, if you can, to the literary world of 2011. It seemed you couldn't escape The Sense of an Ending. It was being written up everywhere, praised to the skies. It won the 2011 Man Booker Prize.

I don't normally respond to this kind of buzz, but when the novel came out in paperback a year later, I dutifully bought it. Still, something was holding me back. It was passed over in each scan of various TBR piles and shelves until this past winter, when I decided I had to give it a try or give it away. It turned out my hesitation had had some basis somewhere in my subconscious after all. It just wasn't a book for me, something that made me feel guilty for the flat feeling once I had finished it.

Where did my reading go amiss? After all, as all the reviewers said, this is a brilliantly crafted book. Barnes sets up his theme early on, with an end of term history class. Adrian Finn, soon to be off to Cambridge, gave the class a definition of history as ...that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

Years later, the narrator Tony Webster, who had been Finn's classmate and friend, had cause to look back at Finn and their relationship. The realization that your life and those of the people you know is not as you had imagined or remembered, the storylines you've woven are completely off base, hit Webster at the end with a devastating immediacy.

Barnes/Webster reflects You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?

A sober thought, a realistic and apt thought, one that certainly ties in with Finn's proffered definition, but for me it was delivered by the wrong person, one for whom probably nothing would change, despite such an insight.

>156 SassyLassy: Great review. Sense of an Ending was a so-so read for me as well. I have two other books by Barnes on the shelves. I would like to give him another try, because he is a good writer, that one just didn't grab me.

>156 SassyLassy: I've been contemplating just what is was that didn't connect about The Sense of an Ending. Webster is meant to be someone the reader isn't going to particularly like, and there are lots of good books out there with unlikeable protagonists, so that wasn't it. Maybe I read too many Victorians and I was looking for not only revelation, but also some kind of redemption!

>156 SassyLassy: Interesting and honest review (the best kind). I have an allergy to publisher hype.

>157 labfs39: >159 avaland: Thanks. Agreeing about publisher hype, and wondering if there is a finite point for superlatives. What comes next when that point is reached?

Well I've read other books between March and now, but for some reason, this latest one comes next.
This is one of the Q3 books for the Victorian Readalong. There are no spoilers here, but if you plan on reading it, maybe skip this post.



Lady Anna by Anthony Trollope
first published in serial form in the Fortnightly Review from April 1873 to April 1874, then in book form in 1874
finished reading July 10, 2022

What do you do on an eight week voyage from England to Australia? If you're Anthony Trollope, you write a novel. That novel was Lady Anna. Once again, Trollope addresses the questions of marriage, money, and class, separately and in combination. It's not a dry predictable drone though; there is humour here too, especially when he feels his characters are taking themselves too seriously.

The woman who insisted on calling herself Countess Lovel, had been abandoned by the Earl shortly after their marriage. She was subsequently thrown out of their home penniless, with her infant daughter. Worse, the Earl announced he already had a wife in Sicily , so that theirs was no real marriage.

The friendless Countess insisted for twenty years that she was the lawful wife and his daughter was the Lady Anna, much to the scorn of those around. The Countess was given shelter and money by the tailor Thomas Thwaite. Anna and young Daniel Thwaite grew up together and in their late teens became engaged secretly. Then the Earl died. His title went to a nephew. His huge monetary assets had to be allocated somewhere. The nephew's family naturally felt he was the rightful beneficiary; the Countess believed the Lady Anna was.

So began a battle with many twists and turns through the legal system. If the Countess's marriage had not been legitimate, the Lady Anna would be a bastard as most already believed, and would inherit nothing. If the marriage had been legitimate, the Lady Anna would be the rightful legatee when she came of age.

Trollope skilfully presents the lawyers' machinations on both sides, and presents a Solicitor -General who ranks as one of the best characters in the book for his admirable ability to be all things to all concerned.

If the Lady Anna was legitimate and an heiress though, how could she possibly marry a tailor's son? Daniel considered himself a Radical and would have nothing to do with the Lovel family, giving Trollope the opportunity to explore hereditary titles and wealth. Then there was the thorny question of whether or not an engagement could be broken, something that seemed to be alright for a man to do, but not for a woman.

Although Lady Anna is the title of the book, it is really the Countess who steals the novel. She is forceful, focussed, and relentless in her pursuit of what she wants. Lovel family politics were nothing to her. This was a woman with nothing to lose. How was it all resolved? - no spoilers here.

Sense of an Ending didn't work for me either. I've no idea why it was so over-hyped.

>156 SassyLassy: I enjoyed the book but found it a bit light weight.

>161 SassyLassy: Fab review!

>162 AlisonY: >163 baswood: Glad to hear others found it somewhat flat too.

>164 avaland: Join us in the Q3 read?

Inspired by encouragement from ELiz_M, another review - this next book is from rebeccanyc's Hope to Read Soon list.



The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and Its Cargo of Female Convicts by Siân Rees
first published 2002
finished reading March 29, 2022

One of the unforeseen consequences of the British defeat in the American Revolution, was a dramatic increase in the number of females awaiting trial or convicted in London's Newgate Gaol. True, there were other underlying reasons, like the recent concomitant rise in population and unemployment, but 1783 saw approximately 130,000 discharged soldiers return home.

These men needed work, so naturally females were displaced, and men employed in their stead. Then, in 1785, a tax was imposed on those households employing maidservants over the age of 15. Dismissed servants soon found themselves on the streets too. The Times reported in July 1786 ... upon a very modest calculation, not less than 10,000 have been added to the number of common prostitutes by Mr Pitt's tax on maidservants. By October, the newspaper was reporting an estimate to 50,000 prostitutes. Along with prostitution, shoplifting pickpocketing and theft were ways many women found themselves sent to jail. While many of the offences were capital in nature, growing public distaste for hanging petty criminals meant many crimes were downgraded, and the sentence was transportation. However, that same defeat by the Americans had also put an end to the transport of female convicts to that former colony. What to do with them all?

The British government decided one option was transportation to its new colony of New South Wales, Australia. The Lady Julian was dispatched in 1790 with differing records showing from 172 - 245 female convicts on board, ranging in age from 11 to 68. Siân Rees writes of these ... ordinary women who, by a caprice of fate, found themselves in extraordinary circumstances: rounded up on the streets of Britain, shipped across the world and landed at a dirt camp in an alien continent.

The crew and officers had the "right" to a female partner during such voyages. This sounds appalling now, but Rees argued that given the circumstances, some women actually competed for such roles. Women used to competing for everything saw them as offering a degree of protection and security. About thirty women found their voyage potentially easier this way; the rest found themselves lodged in the hold, where power struggles among them were inevitable.

Rees follows the women from their trials, to the voyage from London to Rio to Port Jackson, Australia, a voyage of 11 months. She documents the arrival in their new and frightening world. Throughout, she focusses mainly on five women for whom there is documentation. She also used the first hand account of the Scot John Nicol, the ship's steward and cooper. Nicol took one of the women under his protection, had a child with her, and claimed to have spent the rest of his life trying to find her again after the "distribution" of the women upon their arrival in Australia.

The Floating Brother is a fascinating glimpse into a particular world and time. There should be more books like this.

Another great review! I had that book, read it as an advanced reader copy....hmmm, before LT, me thinks (which is probably why I don't have it in my library)

>166 SassyLassy: I thought this was already on my wishlist, but it is now!

>156 SassyLassy: - Underwhelmed is the word that comes to mind when I think of this book. I really wouldn't remember what it was about, but I do remember wondering what all the fuss was about.

>161 SassyLassy: - Anthony Trollope is one of those writers whose books I haven't read yet, but I suspect I will love. And that's why I keep putting it off. It probably doesn't make sense, but I'm saving these books for the right time, whenever that may be.

>166 SassyLassy: - This sounds wonderful. I'll try to get a copy of that one.

>166 SassyLassy: wow, the past astounds me again.

>167 avaland: I was surprised to see it was 20 years or so since it was published. I guess it goes to show a well written book on an interesting topic never loses its interest.

>168 labfs39: I think you would like this. How did you hear of it? Until it showed up on rebeccanyc's list, I had not.

>169 Trifolia: Underwhelmed came to my mind too about the Barnes book.
I have only come to Trollope recently, probably discouraged by all those series he wrote, but now that I am reading some of the stand alones, that may change.
As with labfs39, I think you will like it.

>170 tonikat: That's what makes the past so fascinating! As I said above, I wish there were more of these quirky looks at it.

Well I've finally made it to April!

This next book had been in the TBR pile too long. It looked like a quick read, so I thought I would dispatch it quickly so I could make one more shelve or discard decision.



A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee
first published 2016
finished reading April 1, 2022

A Rising Man introduces Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee, another odd couple in the annals of police procedurals.

What makes this pair interesting, is the setting: Calcutta in 1919. Bannerjee is one of the first Indians on the Imperial Police Force, and faces outright racism from its colonial members. Wyndham is a veteran of WWI and Scotland Yard, just off the boat from England. Calcutta was a city of opportunity, but also, as Kipling said, a "city of dreadful night". Anger against the imperial power was increasing, as nascent independence movements found new vigour in the aftermath of the war.

As for the victim - he was an Englishman, aide to the Lieutenant-Governor, found outside a brothel with a note in his mouth saying No more warnings - English blood will run in the streets. Quit India!

Mukherjee depicts the dynamic between Wyndham and Banerjee well, as they get to know each other and learn to work together; the one learning the ways of a new country, the other all too aware of them.

This is a first novel for Mukherjee, who grew up in Scotland. His biography states he ...was inspired by a desire to learn more about this crucial period in Anglo-Indian history that seems to have been almost forgotten. Despite a few too many interjection of "Old Boy" (you know people who say this are usually unlikeable and more), perhaps a novice writer's error, he certainly conveys the era well, well enough to have Wyndham and Banerjee develop into a series.

>171 SassyLassy: Like you, I saw it on rebeccanyc's list, and the title prompted me to investigate. Then you listed it as a favorite Q2 read, and the title caught my eye again. Third time's the charm though. It's now properly on my wish list.

>173 labfs39: Here's hoping the charm works!

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
first published in bowdlerized form as a serial in Harper's New Monthly Magazine December 1894 - November 1895, then in book form in 1895, dated 1896
finished this reread April 13, 2022

Done because we are too menny.

Were there ever sadder words in a novel? They're not only sad, they're devastating at the same time, for they strike the reader like a body blow, one from which recovery can only be incomplete. I first read them in my early teens, and never forgot them, finding them just as powerful on the third reading as on the first and second.

Jude the Obscure is a difficult book, one full of unrelenting misery from which there is no escape. Hardy's aim in writing it was ...to tell without a mincing of words, of a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit; and to point the tragedy of unfulfilled aims. Jude Fawley did aim - his target a classical education. He studied and dreamed, walking miles just to gaze at the spire of Christminster (Oxford), his ultimate goal. Jude was a working man though, and Christminster didn't aim for such as he.

Hardy focusses on that deadly war and those unfulfilled aims, speaking of "the hell of conscious failure" and "the grind of stern reality", territory later explored by Arthur Morrison in A Child of the Jago (1896) and Robert Tressell in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1914).

Jude's downfall began with a wretched marriage to Arabella Donn, "a mere female animal", which ended in separation when Arabella left. Jude then fell in love with Sue Bridehead. While Arabella's early appearances fit a common enough story, it is the saga with Sue that allows Hardy to question whether marriage is a contract or a religious union. Marxist theory had said that there were basically three reasons for marriage: the inheritance of property, the inheritance of title, and religious belief. Property and title didn't apply to Jude; did religion?

Sue was Jude's cousin, someone his aunt had warned him against strongly. Jude was captivated by Sue though, even after she revealed she was married. Sue eventually left this unconsummated marriage for Jude. She tried to convince him through long discussions on religion that theirs should be a platonic union too. That only worked for so long. Children followed; the family slid further down into the morass with each child. Then came the devastating message quoted above, one that for many readers was unfathomable.

Sue moved on to another. Jude was left alone despite the reappearance of Arabella.

Hardy does not spare the feelings or the sensibilities of his readers. This is a brilliant picture of the conditions of the time. However, the book was received with such moral outrage that he never wrote another novel, saying ...the experience completely curing me of further interest in novel writing he could not write another. He wrote in a 1912 postscript to it ... that a marriage should be dissolvable as soon as it becomes a cruelty to either of the parties - being then essentially and morally no marriage. He also said that by then ...somebody discovered that Jude was a moral work, which "uncursed" the author.

This is how it should be read, as a moral work, as Terry Eagleton said, as a conflict between the ideal and reality, and an examination of the notions of duty and obligation.

_______________________

This book was my real life book club's book for April. We voted on a few titles for a classics selection and this one was chosen. Since I had suggested it, I was the one to lead the discussion. I was horrified to discover that many had stopped reading at that fateful quote, with still about 100 pages to go. The idea that the impact had been so awful they could not continue reading filled me with guilt. Should you read it, and feel compelled to stop, don't. Continue on, for by losing that last section of the book, much of Hardy's message is lost.

For myself, once more I could see how rereads over time always offer new perspectives. Where once I had had some sympathy for the aptly named Sue Bridehead, as a sort of "new woman", trying to lead an independent life, she had never seemed the dominant character Hardy intended her to be. This reading, she did stand out as such, a foil to Jude. My attitude toward her changed completely. I now dislike her probably more than any other Victorian character. Even the loathsome Arabella's actions at least made some sense.

What hasn't changed, is my belief that this will always be on my top ten novels' list.

The view that inspired Jude:



Oxford High Street in the 1890s, from Psychogeographic Review June 2013

>175 SassyLassy: Great review. Thanks!

>175 SassyLassy: Wow, fantastic review. And I love the picture.

>175 SassyLassy: Agree with Lisa, great review. I read Jude a million years ago; loved Hardy

>175 SassyLassy: Well I think those book club readers who would not read the final 100 pages should stay behind in detention until they do.

Enjoyed your review. It is one off Hardy's novels I have not yet read

Great review of Jude. LIke you, I first read it as a young teen (15 years old--and it was the first Hardy I read), and that quote stuck with me for the rest of my life. I reread it again in my 40's, when, like you I chose it for my book club. Unfortunately, my 40's are long enough ago that I no longer remember people's reactions to it, or anything about the discussion.

>175 SassyLassy: Great review! Jude is one I’ve chickened out of re-reading for a long time. Maybe I should try it again, that sounds like an interesting way of looking at it.

>176 SassyLassy: Victorian Web has what it says is the actual photo Hardy used as a frontispiece for the 1912 Wessex Edition: https://victorianweb.org/photos/hardy/93.html

It’s a street-level view looking West down the High, taken from the middle of the road between Univ and Queen’s, roughly in the middle of your shot, which was probably taken from Magdalen tower.

The current Google Streetview shows that it hasn’t changed much since then, except for roadworks and buses: https://maps.app.goo.gl/zfSUK9hezsthUjwe7?g_st=ic

Just catching up here. That famous phrase from Jude the Obscure was probably the most gut wrenching line (and scene) I've ever come across in all my reading. One day I'll reread that novel, but not any time soon.

Thanks all

>180 baswood: Well I think those book club readers who would not read the final 100 pages should stay behind in detention until they do If only there was a way to convince them!

>181 arubabookwoman: Also my first book by Hardy.

>182 thorold: Thanks for those links. Interesting idea that Hardy used photographs for the Wessex complete set. I'd like to see the rest of the ones he chose.

>183 Nickelini: It is amazing how his writing and the mental images it provokes stay in your mind.

This next has been reviewed by several people lately, so my take won't be too detailed.



The Promise by Damon Galgut
first published 2021
finished reading April 16, 2022

How binding is a promise made to someone on their deathbed? Is it made in the true spirit of the dying person's request, or is it made merely to aid that person's passage from life? If it is the latter case, will the survivor even remember making it? If it is remembered, is there a need to implement it?

Two weeks before her mother died, young Amor Swart (note the name) heard her mother pleading with her husband to promise to carry out a request

Because I really want her to have something.
After everything she's done.
I understand, he says.
Promise me you'll do it. Say the words.
I promise, Pa says, choked sounding.

The exact nature of the promise and the recipient were unknown to Amor, but now, two weeks later, ...she finally understands who they were talking about. Of course. Duh

Being the storyteller he is, Galgut reveals neither the promise not the intended recipient immediately. Amor's father is vague when she reminds him before the funeral that he must keep it. I said I will... What are we actually talking about? he said. Not the most reassuring response, but not one that will dampen Amor's obsession to see it through.

It was 1986 in South Africa. Amor believed the promise was to give the family's black servant Salome ownership of the shack she had lived in for years. Amor's Afrikaans family dismissed the idea with varying degrees of scorn.

Over the next thirty years, Amor and her two siblings grew up and grew apart. There would be three more funerals over those years. Each gives Galgut the opportunity to introduce changes in the country into his narrative, as he recounts the life of each family member in turn. Hanging over each of these gatherings is the still unresolved question of the promise.

Some of these tellings are more successful than others, but then some lives are more successful than others. Galgut's previous themes of misfits and downright outsiders to their society are here once again, losing nothing by another exploration.

The epigraph to The Promise gives a hint of some of Galgut's people, besides being a wonderful quote in itself:

This morning I met a woman with a golden nose.
She was riding in a Cadillac with a monkey in her arms.
Her driver stopped and she asked me, "Are you Fellini?"
With this metallic voice she continued,
"Why is it that in your movies, there is not even one normal person?"

- Federico Fellini

>175 SassyLassy: Great review of Jude the Obscure. I still have not read any novel by Thomas Hardy (only a collection of short stories). Despite the quote, you bumped it up on my really-really-want-to-read list. (And I like the cover of your edition).

>185 SassyLassy: I also liked your review of The Promise. I read it a couple of months ago, and the angle you take is so different from mine that it is really enriching.
I focused on the obvious interpretation: how this book is an allegory of South Africa’s recent history, with the formal end of Apartheid and the struggle that followed (and is still going on) to make sure Black people do have their right acknowledged and acted upon. I did not really think about the story in itself and what the people experienced following this promise and how binding they consider it. Really interesting.

On AlisonY's thread, news that Hilary Mantel has died, so posting this from the BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-63007307

Great review on Jude the Obscure. Hardy really can tear the heart from your chest when he puts his mind to it.

Looking forward to getting to that Galgut at some stage. Sometimes I find his writing uneven, but generally the good outweighs the bad.

>175 SassyLassy: Great piece on Jude the Obscure; it's been decades since I read all of Hardy's works; it was a nice revisit.

>185 SassyLassy: I used to read Galgut...African lit had really exploded over the last 15 years, (which is my excuse for not reading more Galgut) Thus, I appreciate your review all the more:-)

Let us know how you faired with the hurricane. Scary. How did Nova Scotia fare?

How are things weather-wise with you? Here in Maine we had a ton of rain on Thursday, then cold and windy weather yesterday and today, but nothing like what you guys had. Hope all is well.

>190 avaland: Thanks. There are more of Hardy's books I haven't read for even the first time, so something to anticipate (look forward to might not be the appropriate phrase for Hardy).

It was actually you who started me on Galgut by sending me some a few years ago, so thanks.

>191 avaland: >192 labfs39: Thanks for asking. There was enough notice about Fiona to prepare, so by the time Friday afternoon arrived, the worst part was waiting for it. Then once it started, it became waiting for it to be over. I think this is the longest non snow storm I have experienced, well over 12 hours of 90km/h winds with higher gusts, plus 98mm of rain. There were winds clocked at almost 200km/h further east of us. The storm veered east at the last minute.

I always move my car to my neighbour's field when there is a storm, as I have huge 100+ year old trees beside my parking area. My trees survived, but one of his matching ones, planted at the same time as mine, was partially destroyed. However, a 10m+ cedar in a hedge of mine was cut in half, and the hedge now looks like a kid with a missing tooth. It will grow back though, no problem, not like the chestnut next door. I do confess to sleeping downstairs (those old trees again at the front of the house) on the floor for the duration, away from the windows.

People in our area were really lucky though compared to other parts of the province. Less than an hour's drive east, things change dramatically, with widespread power outages, hundreds of downed trees, crushed roofs and cars, and flooding. This storm had the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in Canada further east of us. There is absolute devastation in PEI where 95% of households lost power, Cape Breton, and western Newfoundland.

Luckily today was a gorgeous fall day through the region, so everyone could get started on the cleanup. The above areas still have states of emergency, and probably will for some time. Once again, we were incredibly lucky here, but then Dorian and Juan had done their bit in recent memory.

Thank you for the update. You were posting, so I was hopeful that the worst had missed you, as it did. Ever since living through Hurricane Michael in Florida in 2018, I get nervous whenever severe weather is predicted, and my heart goes out to our neighbors to the north who are dealing with Fiona and its aftermath.

Yes, thanks for your news. Glad you made it through okay. Wish we were closer and could come help....

>193 SassyLassy: glad to hear you are safe and well and good wishes for the clear up

>194 labfs39: >195 avaland: >196 tonikat: Thanks all for thinking of me.
The situation for people in other parts of Atlantic Canada is desperate. Cleanup and rebuilding of infrastructure will go on for months, and even years in some cases. So much to be done...

Here's another book read for the Victorian year, not that I ever need an excuse to read another book by Wilkie Collins. Like Lady Anna above (>161 SassyLassy:), this novel is about the mother, despite its title.



Jezebel's Daughter by Wilkie Collins
first published in serial form September 1879 to January 1880 outside London
finished reading April 22, 2022

On the third of September 1828, two women were widowed in two different countries. Neither the widows, Mrs Wagner and Madame Fontaine, knew their counterpart, nor had their husbands known each other. Nothing surprising in this, except Wilkie Collins is telling their story through his narrator David Glenney fifty years later, so the reader knows something is up.

Unusually for the times, Mrs Wagner's husband in London left her in full control of his businesses in London and Frankfurt. Mme Fontaine was left with her husband's debts, despite the fact that he had been a famous experimental chemist with university connections. Money and science, two of Collins's favourite topics; throw in Mme Fontaine's young daughter Minna, and the stage is set.

The connection was first made when Mrs Wagner's Frankfurt business partner, Herr Keller, sent his son Fritz to her London branch. Herr Keller felt Fritz had formed an undesirable attachment to none other than Minna. It wasn't Minna he objected to, but rather her mother, 'Jezebel', the Widow Fontaine, now accused of stealing highly dangerous experimental medicines from her husband's lab. The Widow Fontaine, however, was bound and determined that Minna should find the happiness she felt she had been denied, by marrying Fritz, no matter what it might take to overcome Herr Keller's objections.

Collins had worked with the bare bones of this story twenty years earlier in his play The Red Vial. It had been unsuccessful, partially because the format did not allow an exploration of the women's characters. The novel format made it possible to develop them. Here are two determined, intelligent, and focussed women; one using her talents to advocate for working women and institutional reform, the other using them to deceive and murder.

There is a third character here linking the women. Jack Straw, whose name suggested upheaval and uncertainty, had been released from Bedlam into Mrs Wagner's care in an effort by her to show what compassionate care could do. In a climatic scene in a death house in Frankfurt, he demonstrated the results of this care.

Reform and sensationalism were high on the list of popular themes in Victorian novels. There is no lack of either in Jezebel's Daughter. It was no accident that Collins made the Widow Fontaine a foreigner, feeding into domestic fears of the other, as well as worry in some quarters over the developing path of European science. At home, poison had a certain fascination in real life and in novels, one which Collins himself had explored in earlier novels. Here though, he had another goal as well. In a letter to his Italian translator, he said ...in 'Madame Fontaine', I have endeavoured to work out the interesting moral problem, which takes for its groundwork the strongest of all instincts in a woman, the instinct of maternal love, and traces to its solution the restraining and purifying influence of this one virtue over an otherwise cruel, false, and degraded nature.

While this might not be the image of woman today, whether Mme Fontaine found any redemption in the end is for the reader to decide. What isn't in doubt is that once again Collins has created a memorable villain.

>198 SassyLassy: I don't think I ever read this one, so thanks for the excellent review!

Last night the Toronto International Festival of Authors held and event in solidarity wit Salman Rushdie: Freedom to Write and Read: Standing with Salman Rushdie.

A review can be heard here: https://tunein.com/podcasts/Public-Radio/The-Current-p45724/?topicId=187059984

>199 avaland: I think it may have been out of print for some time. It seems that after its initial publication in one volume form in London, New York, and The Hague (all in 1880), it wasn't published again until 1995 by Sutton, and 2016 (my Oxford edition). The initial London publication continued until 1901.

Much as I am enjoying the Victorian Tavern, it is taking time away from books in translation. It seemed time to change that.



Flights by Olga Tokarczuk translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft 2017
first published as Bieguni in 2007
finished reading May 1, 2022

There are so many ideas that can be associated with the idea of 'flights'. After reading Olga Tokarczuk's Flights, my association would be flights of fancy.

Tokarczuk has the gift of being able to set her readers careening along: up, down, around, sometimes at great speeds, other times pausing, always leading them to the unexpected.

There are real flights here, on earth and in the air. There are metaphorical ones too, as people move through time, some right up the their very end. Some stories are taken up at intervals, appearing like a leitmotif as an idea flies in and out of our consciousness.

Elsewhere, there are penseés, dreams, and brief essays as Tokarczuk considers life and history in her own way. A delightful feature is the presentation of idiosyncratic maps, like the one of Nova Zembla in 1855, with a coastline full of whales and seals. Accompanying it is the tale of Peter the Great's purchase of a collection of anatomical specimens, and its ill fated sea voyage from Holland to Petersburg. The unfortunate captain for his failure to take care of the transport, was sent along with his family to the Far North, where for the rest of his life he organized little fishing expeditions and contributed to the drawing up of more detailed maps of Nova Zembla.

Flight can result in strange time shifts for the traveller. Are they gaps in time, time warps, or is time standing still? Consider:

IRKUTSK - MOSCOW
Flight from Irkutsk to Moscow. It takes off at 8:00 a.m. and lands in Moscow at the same time - at eight o'clock in the morning on the same day. It turns out to be right at sunrise, which means the whole flight takes place during dawn. Passengers remain in this one moment, a great, peaceful Now, vast as Siberia itself.
So there should be time enough for confessions of a whole lifetime. Time elapses inside the plane, but doesn't trickle out of it.

This may all sound disjointed, but there is a flow here that carries the reader along. Conversations with strangers who travel with you for brief moments, digressions to museums and conferences, fact and fiction, but throughout the underlying questions: Who am I? Where am I ?

Tokarczuk didn't make it to Newfoundland, but there they would have asked her "Where do you belong?" There they know we all belong somewhere, are rooted body and soul in our own particular world, no matter how far we have flown. For the rest of us, there's flight.

>202 SassyLassy: We read Flights in our book-club a couple of years ago — I enjoyed it a lot, but some people found it very disorienting. There was talk of going on a trip to visit at least one of her anatomical museums, but somehow we never did…

>202 SassyLassy: Very nice review! I like Tokarczuk's works (sooo many great authors so little time....)

>202 SassyLassy: Wow! That looks like something I'd love. I'm in a bit of a non-fiction swerve these days, but I've got to break out of that and attend to some more recent works of fiction.

Great review of Flights, Sassy. I still haven't read anything by Olga Tokarczuk yet, even though I own four of her books, including that one. I hope to read Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead next month, and The Books of Jacob sometime next year.

>206 kidzdoc: I want to read those two sooner than later as well.

I see I have already responded....

In a nod to your yearly Pantone post, my halloween costume this year is simply dressing is Very Peri tones and printing out a PANTONE color of the year sign to attach to myself.

In reading more about the color, I realized it wasn't really intended as much as the already existing periwinkle as a brand new color that is more blue with bright purple/red undertones. It's hard to find! And a very strange color! I will just do a mix of what I already own in periwinkle with some jewelry and nail polish/makeup highlights in the brighter tones. And maybe a scarf. Going to do a little shopping today to see what I can piece together.

>209 japaul22: Ah, that makes sense. It's really not very actual periwinkle. I haven't seen anything in that colour out there yet. I'd snap up a scarf if I saw one though, or anything I could wear near my face

>203 thorold: The idea of visiting some of those museums Tokarczuk so kindly listed for her readers would be quite an experience. I remember seeing an international exhibit at the Canadian Museum of History called 'The Mysterious Bog People' and all the controversy that engendered.

I can't say I found the book Flights disorienting, but on reflection I can see how that would be.

>205 rocketjk: Those non-fiction swerves are so enjoyable, but yes, you do wind up needing some fiction, recent or otherwise.

>206 kidzdoc: >207 lisapeet: I haven't read The Books of Jacob yet, so can't comment, but I would read Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead as a start before Flights.

>208 avaland: Hello again!

>209 japaul22: I love, love, love that idea. It would be wonderful to see the colour in a silk or taffeta that shimmered to give the idea of all the possibilities of Very Peri.

>209 japaul22: >210 Nickelini: Now that I think about it, they could have called it 'Veri Peri', as a nod to the idea of the true origins of the colour. It seems to me that the flowers of Pulmonaria have a mix of the component colours in individual florets, but not all together. Maybe if they blurred they would come close.



Pulmonaria angustifolia Johnson's Blue Lungwort, not to be confused with Johnson's Blue Geranium

photo by Patty Hankins - Beautiful Flower Pictures

I was spending a week in a university residence with the narrowest bed and thinnest mattress possible (the university was once run by nuns). This book helped alleviate the discomfort.



No Room at the Morgue by Jean-Patrick Manchette translated from the French by Alyson Waters, 2020
first published as Morgue pleine in 1973
finished reading May 7, 2022

Eugène Tarpon used to be a gendarme. Then one day he accidentally killed a demonstrator. Now he's a discredited former gendarme. Like everyone else in that sort of situation, he's set himself up as a private investigator, right there in his fifth floor Paris walk-up.

Nothing happened. Tarpon was all set to move back to his hometown in the provinces the very next day. Then, after an evening of heavy solitary drinking, a beautiful young woman turned up at his door in the middle of the night. Her name was Memphis Charles. Her problem was a roommate with a very recently slit throat. Why didn't she go to the police? Well, "There are drugs in the apartment and bombs in the basement."

All this sounds completely far fetched. However, if you think Dashiell Hammett and add in France in the 1960s, it beings to make sense in its own crazy way. Even the Palestinian terrorists and American gangsters encountered along the trail have a sort of "of course" tenor to them.

Manchette's writing has been styled néo-polar, which throws political situations and radicalism into the more traditional detective format. It's definitely entertaining, but should be read as a book of its time.

>212 SassyLassy: You had little space in your room so read No Room at the Morgue. I hope your university was not in Transylvania and you had to sleep in a coffin!

>213 raton-liseur: That's too funny - I hadn't thought of it like that, but quite apt!

Ooo, is this your intro to Manchette? I included him into my pantheon of faves relatively recently. In case it's your first and you're iffy about continuing, I'd suggest to go next for The Prone gunman, which I think is his masterpiece. (Caveat: I haven't read the English translation but I trust they find people who manage adequately dated slang and the like.)

>212 SassyLassy: I've never heard of néo-polar as a style classification. Interesting setting/setup, and a good review. I also thought No Room at the Morgue was a good manifestation of your cramped and uncomfortable pallet there...

>216 LolaWalser: It is the first one I've read. I have Nada kicking around somewhere, but will look for your recommendation.

>217 lisapeet: Néo-polar was a new term to me too, as was polar, its predecessor. Amazing what you find in Forewords.

I will say that in true university fashion, there was a desk and a hard backed wooden chair in the residence room. I usually sit in that kind of chair anyway (it keeps me awake), but the walls were blank and apart from a marvellous view, there was nothing to distract. I suspect I was the only person on campus without an electronic device.

I love it when you talk colors....

>219 avaland: What can say - they're my world!

Not only did I read this book twice this year, I bought it twice. The duplicate purchase was an error, the reread was not. When I sat down to write about it, I got so engrossed in it I just read it right through again.



Spring by Ali Smith
first published 2019
finished reading May 16, 2022, and rereading October 26, 2022

The first person we meet in Spring is Richard Lease, Doubledick to his recently dead mentor, muse, and just once lover. It's not spring at all, but autumn in Kingussie. The train he was waiting for was delayed and delayed again, but that's okay, as it allows time for reflection.

Switch suddenly to London, and the horror of an Immigration Removal Centre. This is where Brittany Hall (Brit, get it?) works as a guard. Rumour has it that there's a twelve year old girl who just charmed her way in through all the security checks, convinced those in charge to do a major cleaning, and disappeared. Except, she didn't disappear completely, for there she was waiting for Brit after work one day.

This magical exuberant child, Florence by name, had the ability to breeze her way onto trains, into buildings, and into people's better natures, creating a link with just about anyone she encountered. That's how Brit, the machine, wound up travelling to Kingussie with her, on the very ScotRail train Richard was so patiently awaiting.

There's so much in here. Could Rainer Maria Rilke and Katherine Mansfield have met in that Swiss hotel? There's Beethoven and metronomes; postcards from imaginary children; and "Charlie the Scottish Frenchman" who "fought the Government army led by his cousin Billy the English German".

Interspersed with all this are forceful denunciations of the state of the state, and the technology that runs / controls it, all couched in the helpful language beloved by websites:

We want to narrate your life. We want to be the book of you. We want to be the only connection that matters. We want it to be inconvenient for you not to use us. We want you to look at us and as soon as you stop looking at us to feel the need to look at us again...
We want your pasts and your presents because we want your futures too.
We want all of you.

There are few authors who could juggle all these threads over years and still be coherent, let alone throw in Brexit and its disastrous consequences for migrants. Smith's wonderful mastery of language and her ability to keep the narrative flowing, succeed remarkably.

Where is Spring itself in all this? A very robust force, it tells the reader early on None of it touches me. It's nothing but water and dust. You're nothing but bonedust and water.
Good. More useful to me in the end.

Even stronger:

Mess up my climate. I'll f--- with your lives. Your lives are a nothing to me. I'll yank daffodils out of the ground in December. I'll block up your front door in April with snow and blow down that tree so that it cracks your roof open. I'll carpet your house with the river.
But I'll be the reason your own sap's reviving. I'll mainline the light to your veins.

This is a force all its own despite the garbage, highways, cities and other detritus we cover the earth with. Spring is determined to reappear. What we do with it all is up to us.

For those who don't know it: Kingussie train station



Culloden where Charlie met Billy's army and much of the end of the novel takes place.



where they are

>221 SassyLassy: Very nice review. How connected is the seasonal quartet? Should they be read in order?

>223 AnnieMod: I've only read the first three. Summer is still to come for me - I guess I could have bought that instead of a second Spring!

Other than political themes, there is almost no connection among the books, so I don't think the order of reading matters much. However, I do like the order in which I read them: Autumn, Winter, Spring, which is their order of publication. I found it interesting that the quartet starts with autumn, the season of new year for so many, and continues from there. I really liked Autumn, am definitely lukewarm on Winter, and you've just seen how I feel about Spring. I'm looking forward to Summer. All have Smith's amazing use of language.

>221 SassyLassy: I've only read fall which I loved
Really want to read that one.

>224 SassyLassy: I like how everyone orders them differently. This was my order:
1. Winter
2. Autumn
3. Summer
4. Spring

I do think Summer should be read last as it does resurface characters from the other novels in the quartet.

>224 SassyLassy:, >225 cindydavid4:, >226 Nickelini:, >227 ELiz_M:

Thanks, ladies! Everyone had been gushing about her writing so I suspect it is about time for me to read one of hers... I will see if I can get Autumn next time I have an opening on my Holds list :)

>224 SassyLassy: I too really liked Autumn, but was tepid on Winter and stopped there. If your experience is any indication, I should continue on to Spring.

>221 SassyLassy: Fab review! I've only read some of her early stuff (oh, the problem of too many authors !)

It occurs to me that I didn't even get into the cloud imagery in art and language in Spring. There were just so many things there, but I mention it here as it shouldn't be ignored.

>225 cindydavid4: I hope you do.

>226 Nickelini: Interesting. I'm not sure I would have continued if I had started with Winter. I'll let you know how I order them once I read Summer. >227 ELiz_M: Good to see that comment about reading it last. I guess I just lucked into it.

>229 labfs39: Do continue on to Spring!

>230 avaland: I haven't read the earlier books, and am wondering if I should go back. I think the problem was my mulish tendency to not read books that everyone else is reading at the time, and she got so much press when she started that it just made me resist. I should get over that.

I have Autumn, Winter, and Spring—also missing Summer. I'll read the first three before getting the fourth, and I'm really looking forward to them since I read and loved Companion Piece.

Enjoyed your review and the quartet review. I started - and stopped - with Autumn.

When I read books set in the UK I definitely feel more inclined towards a more romanticised notion of sweeping English countryside and idyllic villages. I found Autumn to be gritty and spiky, putting me in mind of places across the UK where I've lived and worked which aren't particularly somewhere I feel like casting adrift to in a novel. Maybe it's that thing of looking for something different to what you know in a reading experience.

>234 AlisonY: gritty and spiky describe parts of Spring well, and I think that was part of the appeal. Somewhere around late C19 authors, or maybe some Edwardians, I leave aside that sweeping English countryside notion, as so much of it today I think is gritty and spiky underneath, despite the best efforts of Escape to the Country

Maybe it's that thing of looking for something different to what you know in a reading experience.

I do know that feeling of wanting something different, yet when an author does put you somewhere you know well, and does it well, I really like it. Denise Mina comes to mind.

It took the Victorian Reading Q2 to bring me finally to Elizabeth Gaskell. This book had been on the shelf for almost exactly ten years. It won't be another ten until I read another one by her.

I could have sworn I reviewed it back in May during the Q2 Victorian Read. However, it does not seem to appear anywhere, so here goes again. If I did review it before, that is lost and this was just written.



North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
first published in serial form in Household Words 1854 - 1855
finished reading May 21, 2022

There's a certain convention in many Victorian novels featuring a young woman of marriageable age. The reader learns her family background: class, property, relations good and bad. Then the central character herself emerges: appearance, demeanour, accomplishments, all are examined. Finally, the critical matter of possible financial settlements or lack thereof is discussed, often by nosy neighbours or relatives, for by this stage in the novel, the reader knows almost everyone.

Enter prospective suitors. Again, there is often a set pattern. There may be one higher in station, in which case manoeuvres will be required to arrange a match. Another may be completely unsuitable due to debts, drink, or background (Heathcliff); yet another may have substantial impediments (Rochester). Sometimes, the author may set up a character to appear unworthy of consideration, but who in the end is the true match (M Paul Emanuel). All that is left for the reader, who has likely picked the correct suitor by now, is to see it through to the end.

At first, North and South seems to follow this convention. Margaret Hale had lived with her wealthy cousin and aunt in London for the past decade. Now that cousin had married, and Margaret had to return home to the impoverished parish, "undoubtedly one of the most out of the way places in England", where her father was the vicar.

Margaret was not a conventional beauty, indeed, some found her "not beautiful at all... Her mouth was wide; no rosebud that could only open just enough to let out a 'yes' or 'no', and 'an't please you, sir'." Instead, she was "too dignified and reserved for one so young." The reader now has a good idea of the type of suitor Margaret would attract. In London, she had already attracted one; a man more than just suitable, an intelligent man with property who would succeed. Back at the lonely parish, this seemed out of the question.

Elizabeth Gaskell, Mrs Gaskell to her contemporary readers, now moved beyond the standard format. She used a fall in family fortunes to move the Hales much farther north to Milton. This fictional Manchester represented to readers all the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution. Margaret found herself confronting the perceived threats this new world presented to the established ways of life. An adept at conventional social distinctions, she now had to navigate how to deal with a rising and prosperous middle class, one engaged "in trade". Where and how did such people fit in? If they were to be accepted, did they retain any acquired status after financial failure? How about the workers in the factories which dominated the city? Did they have anything in common with the farming people of the placid agricultural south who also led a mind numbing existence? Those workers

...labour on, from day to day, in the great solitude of steaming fields - never speaking or lifting up their poor, bent, downcast heads. The hard spade-work robs their brain of life; the sameness of their toil deadens their imagination; they don't care to meet to talk over thoughts and speculations...after their work is done; they go home brutishly tired, poor creatures! caring for nothing but food and rest.

A walk out at one of the mills was the impetus for Margaret and Mrs Gaskell to work out these dilemmas, while Margaret's family's changing status had to be accommodated.

Yes there are suitors and misunderstandings, and yes, it's not difficult to guess the outcome. However, along the way, North and South brings the Industrial Revolution to life, and that alone is worth it.

>232 SassyLassy: Oh, you have that "mulish tendency" also. ;-)

>236 SassyLassy: Terrific review. I've been avoiding this one a bit, I think because I found Dickens' Hard Times portrayal of the industrial revolution quite bleak. Sounds like North and South is worth the time, though.

June was a terrible month for reading; I only finished one book. The upside is that this one report gets me through another month of catchup!

Earlier in 2022 I had started Mick Herron's Slough House series with Slow Horses. Lots of travel made this light read seem like a good time to follow it up.



Dead Lions by Mick Herron
first published 2013
finished reading June 15, 2022

A man without a ticket was found dead on a bus. What was it about this death that sent Jackson Lamb, chief at Slough House where all the misfits from MI5 work, out on a quest for details?

A Russian agent whom many thought was actually a myth may or may not be in London.

Down in the village of Upshott, there may be a whole group of sleeper agents, whose thoroughly English children are now young adults, ready for action.

Herron has lots of fun combining these threads. Lamb's dealings with the bureaucracy are enough to terrify anyone to whom he reports. The misfits at Slough House are beginning to develop personalities as the reader learns more about them in this second novel in the series. There's certainly enough that the third novel may just be my annual quick first read of the new year quickly approaching.