Nicholas Royle (1)

Mother: A Memoir is a book that immediately intrigued me. I love to read stories of 'ordinary' people, who often have lived the most interesting of lives.

Nicholas Royle writes of his mother primarily. It is around her that most of his narrative revolves. But he also writes of family life, both immediate (his parents, himself and his younger brother) and a little wider (aunts, cousins, grandparents and so on). It is the devastating 'loss of her marbles' that starts Nicholas's remembrances of his mother, and from there we hear about her younger life, working life, married life, and family life.

Royle himself says that the memoir 'makes no pretence at being comprehensive, chronological or orderly' and it definitely is a series of random snapshots and memories of his mother at various times. This works fine for me as I rather enjoy reading in a non-linear fashion but it won't suit readers who like to read in chronological order. Royle's writing style is very poetic in style, maybe a little too much for my personal tastes. He's a Professor of English so way above my intellectual level, but I cannot deny that his writing is graceful and sensitive.

What shines through is his immense love for his mother, the way she cared for him, indulged him and his brother in whatever they wanted to do. Alzheimer's robbed not only Kathleen of her marbles but also Royle of the mother he knew and the reader cannot help but empathise. I very much enjoyed the photographs interspersed throughout the book which, although the narrative would have managed fine without them, did complement the author's account perfectly.

Mother: A Memoir is a moving and thoughtful read of the love of a son for his mother and his lifelong respect for her.… (mehr)

Lily Lynch and Stephen Osmer are your archetypical fashionable couple; she is an artist and he is a journalist and critic and they are heavily involved with the glamorous arty people of London. Osmer likes to write confrontational stuff about all sorts of subjects, including about an author and critic both called Nicholas Royle. Silas and Ethel Woodlock have retired to the Sussex coast to spend their final years near the sea, but what they had not taken into account is how much noise and distress the gulls would cause them. At a loss for things to do in retirement, Silas takes up creative writing and starts to think that he might have found something that he could enjoy.

When he finds his first short story ‘Gulls’ in a book called Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories About Birds, he is not very happy. In fact, he is livid, absolutely livid, because the story has been attributed to an author called Nicholas Royle. Woodlock knows it is not Royle’s as it is the same as the manuscript that was left in a pub several months earlier after he had passed it to Ethel to read. Woodlock finds out where Nicolas Royle lives and in a moment of fury, decides that he needs to go and talk to him about this. He arrives mid-way through a party and lets rip at Royle before events take a much sinister turn.

There were parts of this novel that I liked; the way that the Woodlock’s fitted each other well, but were unsettled by the move to a new area. In real life, there are two authors called Nicholas Royle, who are frequently muddled and I liked the way that he has picked up on this and made it an integral part of the book. I liked the short essays called Hides, but it really jarred as it didn’t fit in with the novel and I am not quite sure why the conclusion of the novel is in the final essay. It is ok, but not fantastic.… (mehr)

It has all the virtues of Culler's Very Short Introduction except extreme brevity. By far the best introduction I've read so far that breaks 120 pages. Not useful only for classes that require students to know a particular set of data at the end; for those, a more 'traditional' approach, one divided by critical schools rather than by topics, would be most useful. Unfortunately.

Like the Klages and Lynn and Culler, B and R are clear as heck; unlike the Klages, B and R always come back around to reading particular texts (even some Chaucer! in Middle English!); unlike the Lynn, B and R never dumb things down.

Highly, highly recommended to all readers who read more than how-to manuals, and even, perhaps, for them.

UPDATE, Nov. 2008: Now that I've taught this, I'm much more aware of its limitations. 100 pages in my students groaned every time some version of the suspended law of non-contradiction showed up. "Let me guess, this is both X and not-X? How astonishing!" By the end of a month or so with them, they became a cautionary tale about biases: what would they have emphasized had they not been doctrinaire poststructuralists but instead Marxists? Feminist? Postcolonialists? Phenomenologists and Ethicists?… (mehr)

Wow, what does one say of this? I've spent two days trying to come up with the words for a proper review that sufficiently reflects the complexity and charm of this slim volume, but I'm afraid my muse has deserted me; or rather, has been humbled into awed silence by the erudite extravagance of Prof. Royle's mesmerizing monograph. That, and I'm still trying to figure out the ending :-)

I suppose Quilt qualifies loosely as a novel, in the sense that it has characters (really just the two), time more-or-less flows forward in linear fashion, and the author shows a grudging nod to such plot niceties as beginning, middle, and end. However, it's also free-association stream-of-consciousness poesis, in which the writer gives full rein to his obvious infatuation with ontological wordplay.

The book starts out as a reasonably coherent if lyrical tale about a man dealing with his father's demise, but quickly develops a Kafka-esque quality as the protagonist waxes weird on the philosophical and theological import of...wait for it...stingrays. As it happens, I have a thing for sharks and their compressed cousins myself, so was delighted by the professor's unexpected dive into the philological murk of our subconscious substrate; however, crafty readers hoping for allusions to actual quilting will be much surprised, as mantuas are masked by mantas, and purls passed over for pearls.

Four stars, for reminding us that syntax is our servant, not master, and that words were created expressly to share thoughts, feelings and dreams which could not otherwise be communicated simply by pointing to rock, and grunting.… (mehr)