The Sunday Read: One Day by David Nicholls

It starts with a fling; a hazy one night stand between two vague acquaintances on 15^th July 1988. The room is filled with the smell of smoke, the pair are hungover, and it’s the day of their graduation. They lie in a room with half-empty wine glasses, condoms and left-over joints surrounding them, and casually speculate about the future, about where they’ll be in twenty years’ time. It’s hardly a scene from Romeo and Juliet, but perhaps it’s a modern day romance, of sorts. Or perhaps not.

We revisit Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew on St Swithin’s Day every year for the next two decades, and we are shown how their lives entwine, how their friendship develops and - ultimately - how experiences shape and change them, for better or worse. And all this with a powerful injection of wit; take Dexter’s colleague who only speaks in capitals and whose favourite phrase is “WAHEY!”, for example, and Emma’s comedian boyfriend Ian, a head-in-hands unfunny man, whose face reminds Emma “of tractors” and who walks around the house in his “tracky botts”.

One Day is much-praised for its unique narrative concept; a structure which, with credit to David Nicholls, does not become wearing at all. The real charm, though, comes from the characters - their realness, their plausibility: because everyone knows an Emma Morley, or a Dexter Mayhew. A free-spirited, independent, working-class lefty who takes herself and her views on literature and politics very seriously and has a grudge against the world; and, the polar opposite: a handsome, popular and apolitical womaniser from a wealthy family who wants “to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random it would be a cool photograph”.

And this is the beauty of this book; it is the authenticity of the two main characters, moreso than the unusual structure, the humorous prose or even the twisting plot, which lingers long after the last page. In creating characters we can all relate to, in some way at least, the impressively observant One Day not only appeals to any reader in some way, but offers something deeper.

Indeed, although disguised as a laugh-out-loud coming-of-age drama with a hint of romance and rather a lot of sex, drugs, brilliant characters and wild parties, David Nicholls has, again, done what he does best; as with Starter for Ten, he’s taken a powerful message about today’s society - about prejudices, class barriers and regional divides, about loneliness and bright-eyed youthful aspirations succumbing to middle-aged acceptance - and has interwoven it so subtly in the text that you could reach the end without realising that what he has to say goes deeper than the comedic and, at times, touching, journeys of the protagonists.

In creating characters the reader can relate to, Emma and Dexter’s friendship becomes a microcosm of society and the opportunities we each have, the paths we take partly through choice and partly through compulsion. The novel begins with the pair leaving university as supposed equals, both with a degree and both with the idea that they can do anything they want to. Fast forward to 1991, though, and with Dexter living in a glamorous London apartment and working as a TV presenter after travelling the world for two years while Emma is a waitress in a cheap Tex-Mex restaurant and struggles to pay the rent, and some of what Nicholls wants to portray becomes alarmingly clear.

But it is not all serious; indeed, it’s hardly serious at all: it is secretly deep, with a read-between-the-lines kind of subtlety. This is a book, really, about friendship, about love, about the ups and the downs of life, and about coming-of-age in modern Britain - and it makes for a funny, addicting and actually quite profound read.

The Sunday Read: Mistress of Rome by Kate Quinn

I’ve been debating whether to review this one for a while. To review this book means me revealing, quite publicly, my weakness for a particular genre - namely historical, romantic fiction. No, I hasten to add now, not the Mills and Boon kind of historical fiction, but real authentic, richly described historical settings mixed with strong characters and good storylines - and, inevitably, there’s some sort of romance in there too, although this isn’t something I necessarily seek out. It may not be the hard-hitting, high-brow stuff with political and philosophical undertones and layers of symbolism that I (perhaps rather annoyingly) usually read, but it has to be said, I love historical fiction for its relaxing escapism - and, while Philippa Gregory has made it ‘ok’ to like historical fiction, I don’t often admit to reading much of the genre beyond that. But when I saw Mistress of Rome on the shelf, I knew that, as someone who loves Roman history, I had to read it…

~

Thea is a slave girl from Judea, a tough and strong character who serves her master’s daughter, an obnoxious young girl of a similar age to the teenage slave, named Lepida Pollia. We learn about her life as a slave girl first, and then we see her visit the arena to see the latest, most popular gladiator in the city - Arius. Nicknamed “The Barbarian”, Thea ends up having a chance and forbidden meeting with the gladiator at a dinner party hosted by Lepida Pollia and her family (…can you see where this is going by any chance?)

Yes, no matter how it’s described, the opening few chapters seem like a predictable cliché - and it would have been just that and nothing more had it not been for a few saving graces that encourage the reader to work past the predictability to discover some powerful, twisting plotlines further into the book.

One of these is Thea herself. She is a strong heroine, a little foolish but determined, and while she may be again a little clichéd, she has a convincing edge to her character. Thea has had a hard life, and she is a product of all that she has experienced, which get quite delicately touched upon throughout the book. And then there is the book’s opening scene, which make this a different read to your average historical fiction; we see Thea, crouched over a bowl, cutting her wrist to make herself bleed, to comfort herself and regain some control over her world. Yes - this book just got quite interesting, at least in terms of the subtleties of the character of Thea.

And so throughout the first half of the book, we see Thea and Arius develop a clumsy, intense and actually quite touching relationship; and then the book twists and turns as they are separated by a jealous Lepida Pollia who wants the gladiator for herself and decides that if she can’t have him, Thea certainly can’t - well, of course, any good romance would demand that the characters have to undergo the pain of forced separation, so that’s no great surprise. We watch as the years go on and Thea becomes Athena, a singer to and then Mistress of the cruel emperor Domitian, who slowly destroys her soul and sanity. And all the while, of course, she longs for her lost love, Arius, and wonders if there can ever be a way out of the life she has been sucked into.

Not an intellectual read, no, but I don’t want this to seem a negative review at all; I enjoyed this book, and it exquisitely described the city of Rome in such vivid detail that I actually could half believe I was there. Thea seemed, albeit a little clichéd, believable in the main, and just so eminently likeable that I wanted to know what happened to her; add to that Arius, an enigmatic character who, although deserving of more individual attention than he was given, was intriguing throughout.

There were negative aspects of the book, of course - the predictability at times, and in particular the character Lepida Pollia, who was thoroughly unlikeable and one-dimensional, portrayed without a flicker of a redeemable quality. But, in general, this was an atmospheric read; captivating and easy, reading Mistress of Rome is something akin to a guilty pleasure - great fun, not entirely serious or meaningful, but addictive and ultimately feel-good.

Would I recommend this book for anyone after a serious read? Not particularly; it is well-written, enjoyable, but there seems to be little meaning beyond the last page. I read this book on holiday, managing to absorb all 529 pages of this book, cover to cover, in around 48 hours while relaxing at the poolside - I just couldn’t put it down once I’d started.

My conclusion: read this for a healthy dose of escapism, a dash of romance and some beautiful descriptions - don’t expect much more than that, and you’ll find a very enjoyable read in Quinn’s Mistress of Rome.

4/5

The Sunday Read: Room by Emma Donoghue

A young girl kidnapped, repeatedly raped by her captor, and imprisoned in a modified garden shed. It’s hard to imagine a more grim start to a book, and certainly the narrative situation that you find yourself placed in hits hard from the very first page. But then, so it should - inspired by the case of Josef and Elizabeth Fritzl, this a story of desperation, of near-insanity and a deep exploration into the effects of abuse combined with a lack of freedom; and this is a book which utterly deserves its Man Booker prize nomination.

With such a hopeless and disturbing subject matter, Room could easily have been a step too far; a subject just that bit too uncomfortable to face for 400 pages. Donoghue, though, approached her seventh novel from an interesting perspective that made it all the more intriguing and, ultimately, haunting: it was narrated by the kidnapped woman’s five year old son, Jack.

And what a narrator he is. Guiding the reader through the entirety of the novel, Jack brings a heart-breaking viewpoint to the desperate situation that the voice of ‘Ma’, the only other human he has ever spoken to, would have struggled to have done to quite the same effect. And this is not because Jack has suffered at the hands of his captor more than Ma, no; this is because through Jack we see what it would be like never to have known freedom, and that is a concept which has a potential to seriously disturb any reader.

He refers to everything in the room in the singular - not because he is linguistically delayed (in fact, quite the opposite), but because he has only ever seen one of any object - and so he speaks of Bed, of Blanket and of Rug. He and Ma do have a TV set, but, to Jack, everything he sees there - from Dora the Explorer to war documentaries - are ‘TV’ only, and belong in his mind to some kind of cruel, parallel, pretend world. He doesn’t think, even for a moment, that anything exists out of Room, equating ‘Outside’ with Outer Space; and he doesn’t believe that anyone else is real or exists apart from him, Ma, and the man he names ‘Old Nick’ - their captor.
Jack doesn’t know what it is to have choices, variation or, indeed, any kind of freedom; and it is that, and his growing realisation that the world contains more than just Room, that turns the book from an intriguing concept to a haunting read.

Narrating from Jack’s point of view also makes dealing with Old Nick, their captor and Jack’s biological father, particularly poignant. Jack, of course, views the situation at first with a childish acceptance, tinged with apprehension; he speaks of being shut away in Wardrobe at night, hearing the Beep Beep of Door and hearing Bed creak, and then: "I always have to count till he makes that gaspy sound and stops." Old Nick certainly does disturb Jack - but, it has to be said, no more than the wrong kind of vegetables at dinner does, for example. Because for Jack, of course, this is normality; and what would have made the read unbearable and grotesque from Ma’s point of view makes it, although not quite, almost so from Jack’s too, because of his faithful acceptance that this is normality; this is the only life that he has ever known.

Of course, it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that, as with the Josef Fritzl case, the captives finally escape mid-way through the book; and here we then see through a very confused five-year-old’s eyes as Outside, a world which existed purely in TV, suddenly becomes a bewildering reality.

Donoghue’s novel can perhaps best be described as a claustrophobic read; it leaves you gasping for freedom from Room itself, and then just as overwhelmed by the sudden extreme freedom of Outside - a feeling which Ma herself struggles to come to terms with after seven years of captivity.

In as much as Room is an examination of freedom, it is also an intimate portrayal of mother-child relationships; it is only because she has Jack to care for that Ma has managed to hold on to some semblance of sanity; it is only because she longs for him to have some kind of normal childhood that they have a strict daily routine of exercises, reading, meal-times and bath-times. Jack is the only thing that means anything to Ma in the world; although they never explicitly say I love you, it is imprinted in their every word and every gesture.
More than freedom, these two characters need each other; and so, ultimately, Room goes one level deeper than showing the importance of freedom; it shows the importance of strength and capacity of love in the face of adversity, and of the tests and tortures - such as removal of freedom - that can be survived through strong, loving bonds.

A claustrophobic and seemingly realistic portrayal of what it must be like to experience a true lack of freedom, Room is a powerful and profound novel, narrated exquisitely, and one that, beyond its recent hype and accolades, offers a unique viewpoint which will leave you feeling affected by the story long after the last page.

5/5

~

The observant of those among you will realise that it's actually Monday I'm posting this, and not Sunday - sorry about that, but it's been a hectic week and a hectic weekend and this is the first chance I've had to write a review. Still, I hope you like it! Back to Sunday next week.

The Sunday Read: Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

I didn’t want to read Birdsong; in fact, I’d deliberately avoided it for quite a while. Books that I seem to love the most are ones that no one’s really heard of, no one’s talking about, and no one’s telling me that I must read - and Birdsong is a classic case of the complete opposite. Hype brings with it heightened expectations even before reading the first page, and this always seems to mean that I’m left with a huge sense of anti-climax after reading the last.

Birdsong, though, is different: it is truly breath-taking. From the first line you find yourself captivated, drawn in to authentic descriptions of French rusticity and to characters so perfectly described it’s difficult to believe they’re not real: Stephen, a young English graduate sent out to France on a work placement, the French family he begins the novel by staying with, and, later on, the World War I soldiers, some who briefly feature before brutal deaths, and others who linger a little longer and tragically deteriorate in all senses of the word.

Indeed, the novel’s first real strength must be its characters. Stephen Wraysford is consistent, determined, strong, and yet has a touching vulnerability and a yearning desire to love - which we see so exquisitely in the first hundred pages - that makes him a man that you want to befriend, that you want to travel with, concerned about, through to the end of the novel and beyond. And it is easy to see why Stephen loves Isabelle, the wife of the French businessman with whom he is staying; exuding glamour, French sophistication and yet a deep sadness and longing, the married woman and the younger single man are captivating, and their developing relationship must be one of the most erotic pieces of writing you could hope to read. Hazy, rushed, lustful and desperate, in the details of their intimacy these characters become even more realistic, and it is an uplifting moment when they eventually elope to begin a new, happier life together.

Of course, this is a war novel, and so any happiness that the couple have must be short-lived; discovering she is pregnant, Isabelle suddenly leaves, and so begins the rest of the book, where we journey with Stephen and his unfaltering desire and longing for the only woman he has ever loved, but expects he will never see again.
Their love is stifling, intense and giddy, but makes for an excellent opening; ultimately, it is from having seen Stephen’s vulnerability that it makes it all the more painful to then watch him harden through his suffering year after year of war.

Indeed, six years later we re-join Stephen, now an officer in the British Army, placed in the trenches to face the Germans over the vast expanse of No Man’s Land. It is here that the book, after a brilliant opening, really tightens its grip: this is a story of brutal death, of injustice, of gruesome trench warfare and of, most tragically, the loss of hope.

Faulks wasn’t in the trenches, but his repugnant prose makes you believe he was; as we journey day after day and year after year with Stephen, the trenches become ever more realistic, until you can almost hear the bullets whistling past your ears on the battlefield, and all but smell rotting corpses, witness scattered body parts and total destructions and hear the desperate cries of fallen comrades. This is a tough read, of that there can be no doubt; at first, there is complete shock; next, repulsion, to the point where you almost want to put the book down and retreat from it, hoping you’ll forget every gruelling description you’ve just read. And, finally, as it goes on and on and Stephen and his ever fewer surviving comrades lose more and more of their innocence, hope and humanity, and look upon death as expected rather than feared, this ebbs away to sadness - a deep sadness that touches a spot where few other books really can; a sadness that remains beyond the last page.

And yet, the real effect of this book is felt in moments of reflection after reaching the final page. A few generations ago, many of my relatives fought in this war, and, although we learnt about World War I at school, and about the terrible conditions in the trenches, nothing quite brings it to life like Faulks’ heart-breaking depiction of Stephen and his comrades in the midst of it all. Faulks has made it real, and, with that, allows the reader to end the book with a deeper, more personal respect for all the men who fought and lost their lives.
This, truly, is a book that will change your life; that goes beyond hype and beyond the last page to grab a permanent hold on you.

And, reading this book around the time of Remembrance Sunday last year, while in France visiting a friend, I found myself pausing midway through a particularly unbearable description of a battle to look out at the peaceful countryside around me. I tore myself away from the noise of devastating warfare to the present day, and to the tranquillity and freedom of modern day France. And, looking at the peace around me, painfully reminded by Birdsong of how so many gave their lives to maintain it, I silently, again and again, thanked those who died fighting for us all to be free.

5/5

The Sunday Read: The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Have you ever seen a book with black-edged pages? I certainly hadn’t, until I spied The Gargoyle on the shelf. A blood red cover with black-edged pages and a burning heart on the front, it certainly appealed to me, and even more so when I read the blurb. A mix of romance and adventure, reality with a hint of reincarnation thrown in? As someone who can't resist time-slip novels, I was walking out of the shop with The Gargoyle under my arm before I knew it.

It was only when I got home and googled the novel that I became aware of the immense hype surrounding it. Comparable to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient? Author receives a seven-figure advance salary? Oh dear. I can’t stand hyped-up novels - more often than not, they tend to fall a bit flat for me, as my expectations are always too high - but I was determined not to let that put me off this book. And, I have to say, I’m glad it didn’t.

The narrator, who remains nameless throughout the novel, is not the most likely of heroes. A beautiful, arrogant and misanthropic porn-star with a rather strong coke habit and a soulless existence, he is seemingly the result of a much-disturbed childhood blended with an equally as disturbed modern adult lifestyle, and bombards his way through the book with a sarcastic, scathing and cynical attitude. Foul-mouthed and ungrateful, you’d find it easy to really dislike him, if it weren’t for the fact that the poor man has suffered a horrific car crash and severe burns as a result, losing his pride and career along the way, as well as certain body parts which mean that a return to the porn industry is now impossible.
Davidson has no doubt done his research into burns victims and their treatments, and it is this which initially grips and disgusts the reader; it is a wearing read, exhausting and stomach-churning, in particular because of the narrator’s insistence on describing each and every treatment, peppered with memories of his childhood and crude observations on his old lifestyle, and the new one which awaits him.

Enter Marianne Engel. A gargoyle carver by trade and a psychiatric patient in the hospital where the narrator is being treated for burns, she visits him during his treatments, telling him stories of a time in 14th century Germany where they were, she maintains, lovers. As you may expect, our disillusioned and cynical narrator finds this all rather hard to swallow, but a strange relationship slowly forms between the characters nonetheless. Just as she takes care of him initially, so does he begin to take care of her after his recovery and as the novel progresses, it is hard to know who needs the support of hte other more and what will become of these two peculiar characters, debatably connected to each other by dozens of intertwined previous lifetimes, pulling them together once again.

And the lives are described in great detail; richly depicted and atmospheric, the reader is taken on a journey from medieval Germany, where Marianne Engel apparently cared for the narrator after he received horrific burns, to Japan, Iceland and Italy, in a mass of colourful descriptions and vivid action. It is these haunting depictions which undoubtedly make the book.

Aside from some amazingly vibrant descriptions, the writing tends to be a little disjointed (the recurring snake-in-the-spine analogy, in particular, does not work), although the characters are, at least, complex and somehow strangely plausible; Marianne Engel has a chilling dark side lurking beneath her too-good-to-be-true exterior, and the narrator himself even breaks out of his cynicism and negativity to mull over the works of Dante and give appropriately wry observations at times. No, these are certainly not one-dimensional characters, and any clunky writing can, with a little effort, be mainly overlooked.

Did these characters truly live together in different times? Are these personalities connected together for eternity, condemned to returning to each other over and over? These interesting questions are left mainly unanswered by Davidson, in a tactic which, even if deliberate, leaves the book feeling a little incomplete and unresolved.

It is hard to know how to rate The Gargoyle; it has all the imagination, inspiration and promise of an extraordinary novel, but ultimately lacks the high standard of writing needed to match, and so ultimately falls just a little short of the mark. Is the writing some of the best you will ever read? No; there are great characters and mesmerising period descriptions but these are interspersed with clumsy prose that can verge on being dull at times. But is The Gargoyle worth reading for its daring and captivating ideas, for its imagination? As a book containing concepts which, more than a year after reading it, I still find myself thinking of and wondering at, the answer has to be, undoubtedly, yes.

4/5

The Sunday Read: Cold Earth by Sarah Moss

Every so often, you find yourself picking up a book and wanting to read it not because you've heard the title before, not because you're drawn to the setting or the location, the genre or the style of writing, but just because the concept is so intriguing that you feel you just have to know more.

Cold Earth is one such book; a book that promises to be an apocalyptic tale about a virus sweeping over the earth while a team of people in a remote location cope with isolation and survival in the face of it all. I couldn't wait to start it.
A group of six archaeologists all assemble in the West Coast of Greenland to research lost Viking settlements; their team is led by Yianni, a professional archaeologist, who receives a large amount of funding for a dig to find out how medieval settlers, once present on Greenland, may have disappeared. He brings with him four archaeologists - two men and two women - and a further woman, Nina, his unrequited love interest.

And it is Nina who begins the narrative. A petulant and immature character whose only interest is Victorian literature (and certainly not the dig), Nina epitomises high-maintanence, and her introspective self-absorbed whines really do get rather old rather quickly. Of course, it doesn't help that she is the sole character to narrate the story until about a third of the way into the book; and by this point, with little to no mention of the deadly virus which one is assured is the focus of this 'apocalyptic' book, it's easy to begin to wonder whether it's worth the read after all; whether there's somehow been some awful mix-up between the published blurb and the actual content.

But then at last, in a break from focussing on Nina's increasing insanity and hallucinations as she struggles to cope with Greenland, Ruth takes over, and things improve for the next third of the novel - well, at least somewhat. An upbeat American, Ruth is much more likeable as a character; but, unfortunately, her 100-page narrative is primarily used by Moss to describe Nina's hallucinations from the view of another character - hallucinations which are neither fully addressed nor explained in the remaining third of the book. Indeed, devoting more than half of the narrative to Nina's troubles just seems a little pointless; set the scene before introducing the idea of the virus and of isolation, yes, but is there really a need to spend two-thirds of the book scene-setting and dwelling on Nina's growing insanity, leaving just under 100 pages for the remaining four characters to rather suddenly describe the effects of the virus?

It has to be said, though, that when the virus storyline really kicks in, it's rather good; and, if you can resist the urge fifty pages before the end to skip to the last paragraph, you ought to be commended on your strength of character. Their internet connection breaks down, they hear of the virus, food runs low, and then the team are left, it seems, to die - and thus emerges an interesting few pages which say a lot about survival, about characters, and, if you're prepared to look deep enough, about something much deeper. It is, of course, spoiled slightly by the fact that Nina is back to narrate the final chapter, and I'm afraid that not even an intriguing twist could save me from the deep frustration that she should be left to finish the book, as she began it, when one of the other more interesting characters could, I'm sure, have offered more worthwhile insights.

I wanted to like this book. I really did, and perhaps if my only qualm had been the construction and preoccupation with Nina's character, I may have been able to conclude that the book was a very worthwhile read nonetheless. But Nina's character wasn't my only issue. The language was, perhaps purposely so, sparse, emotionless and hollow in places; some characters were overdeveloped while more interesting characters were hardly explored at all; the twist at the end really made little sense and was just a further source of frustration; and, for a novel which takes two-thirds of the narrative to set the scene, the location of Greenland and the details of the camp, surroundings and even the dig remained surprisingly unexplored.

It has to be said, Cold Earth was excellent in places - but I'm beginning to think my expectations were too high. It was billed as an apocalyptic, gripping novel which offers some real food for thought on issues of survival and the traces we leave behind, and I think I was hoping for a 28 Days Later-come-Lord of the Flies affair. Silly me, perhaps; it is most certainly not that. What it is, however, is an interesting piece of work which is perhaps purposely slow and frustrating up until the final fifty tense pages, which really do have something quite profound to say about themes of survival, love - and, in a deeper sense - society, and the nature of humanity beyond that.

And it is an incredibly short novel, Cold Earth - at a little under 300 pages, you can't help but think that if Moss had taken the time to extend the novel; to make the dull scene-setting with the rather dull case study of Nina's insanity a half or a third of the book rather than two-thirds, it may have made the novel into the gripping apocalyptic narrative it is billed to be.

A unique and interesting read, so much so that it's almost worth persevering through the first 200 pages for the intrigue of the final 100; almost, I'm afraid, but not quite.

2/5

The Sunday Read: Through the Lens

My book choice this week is actually more of a "look" rather than a "read" ;) There's not much to say, apart from what a beautiful book this is. The photographs are amazing; some of the best photography I've ever seen. Don't miss this book, it's a must-have.

The Sunday Read: The History of Love

The best single line of this book is undoubtedly the last - "He fell in love. It was his life". And, I suppose, that sums up the novel far better than I ever can in the following words here.
"The History of Love", as you might imagine, deals with love. Love between parent and child, brother and sister, friends and lovers. It was knowing this that made me pick up the book (what can I say, I'm an old romantic!), but what I wasn't prepared for was how wonderfully it was written. A really engrossing read, it's one of those books that you don't dare read on the train to work because you'll miss your stop, one of those books that once you've started, you just can't put down.
The novel centres around two characters, at either end of life and society; the first, Leo Gurksy, an old man with a weak heart who spent his youth growing up in Nazi-occupied Poland, and the second, Alma Singer, a fifteen year old girl searching for a book called that meant something very special to her now widowed mother. We follow Leo Gurksy as he dwells still on the love of his life, an adolescent affair which ended when his childhood sweetheart thought him to have died in Poland. After giving birth to their son, we learn that she married an American man and emigrated to New York, leaving Leo with an all-encompassing, never diminishing void in his life; leaving him such a desperate and lonely character that he often publicly draws attention to himself in order to assure himself that he still exists. And we follow Alma Singer, the teenager who scours the world to find a special book telling a story that she knows meant so much to her parents; after all, she is named after the lead character. Although desperate to comfort her newly widowed mother by finding the book, Alma continuously comes up against brick walls: no one knows where the novel is now. As the girl follows numerous leads, she eventually converses with the author himself, in a last-ditch attempt to find the lost book: and then comes a lovely scene, whereby Leo Gurksy and Alma meet, to discuss the book that he wrote for his love all those years ago.
Beautifully written, mesmerising and one of those stories you could read over and over again and take something new away every time, The History of Love is not one to miss. The characters are so real and vivid that you almost miss them after the end of the book, and the author, while often injecting some humour into the plot, offers the reader a poignant, inspiring text, telling of endurance, loneliness, emptines, passion, romance, and a timeless true love in all its forms.


Apologies for this being late this week - I've just got back to university, my courses are starting again, and life is hectic!

The Sunday Read: The Great Lover

The Sunday Read: The Great Lover, by Jill Dawson.

I'll be honest; the cover of this book is what initially drew me to it. Such a beautiful image, such a sense of freedom.

I didn't know much about Rupert Brooke before reading the book, and so this novel seemed like a perfect opportunity to explore this literary figure. A war poet, Brooke was often hailed as "the most handsome man in England", and was associated with charisma, gossip, wit and an ambiguous sexuality; he was romantically linked with both men and women, and several of them, before his death while on active service in 1915.

The novel focuses mainly on Brooke's period living in Grant-chester, where Brooke lodged for three years on and off, before embarking on a journey to Tahiti, where he is said to have fathered a child. It is this wonderful rumour which sparks a great starting point for the book; a letter is written from Brooke's apparent Tahitian child, seeking information about his years in Grant-chester. And so enter the wonderfully yet unrealistically named Nell Golightly; a fictional creation of Dawson's, she is a maid in the vicarage where Brooke takes his lodgings.

Brooke's time in Grant-chester is, by all accounts, eventful: losing his virginity to an old male school friend, pursuing several well-to-do ladies, rather a lot of naked swimming, and, one would assume, writing poetry - although this is an avenue rarely explored within the book.
And Nell Golightly, what of her? She is a bee-keeper's daughter; an orphan, with many younger siblings to look after, she is working at the vicarage as a maid. Strong, sensible - and yet, inevitably, she falls in love with Rupert Brooke, and he with her (bet you didn't see that coming); they manage a lot of naked swimming together, and even a quick kiss, amidst his string of other romantic encounters with wealthy young women.
I do appreciate that the author required a voice from which the reader could get to know the young Rupert Brooke, and a voice which, indeed, could write back to his supposed illegitimate child. Nell Golightly, though, who falls so quickly under his spell, loses her headstrong ability rather swiftly; I suppose she is impressionistic, and so we can forgive her that... but from her set-up in the novel, I would've liked to see her with a little more backbone, please.

But maybe I'm just being defensive of poor little Nell because I don't want to see her fall in love with Rupert Brooke.
Here's the thing: I'm not even sure I like Brooke. Arrogant, ignorant, so totally self-centred, he's overly idealistic and by half-way through the novel I wondered if he would ever take his head out the clouds and look around at real life (apparently not). He is surrounded by the Edwardian class system, beautifully and accurately portrayed by the author, and, indeed, if he stopped to look around he would find some very real and very depressing sights. Sadly, all he manages to pay attention to in this novel are his string of meaningless relationships, which the reader must suffer through, and it is a little disheartening to witness the continual hurting of poor Nell, so desperately in love with him, although at times one does wonder why.

There are some beautiful moments in this book; the descriptions of some scenes are breathtaking, soft and romantic, and some tender scenes between Nell and Brooke, in which they discuss life's great mysteries and challenges, are truly touching; although a little unlikely, given their master-servant relationship, and his apparent attitude to the women in his life.

So now I know, apparently, a little more about Rupert Brooke. Is it a good novel, worth a read? Undoubtedly, if only for its poetic-like descriptions. But if Dawson's portrayal of Brooke is accurate, then I can't help feeling like I'd have been happier not to know about him. Enigmatic, charismatic, idealistic, yes, those are the stereotypes he carries; but after the novel I feel I can add arrogant, pompous and ignorant to that list - I'm afraid, not exactly redeeming qualities.

The Sunday Read: Christmas Acquisitions

I had a wonderful, successful, family-orientated Christmas period this year, in which I had two turkey dinners, six desserts, a lot of wine, champagne and malibu, and consumed at least half of my bodyweight in Lindt chocolate. Just as Christmas should be, then.

I was fortunate that everyone I gave presents to seemed to like them this year, and I was also lucky enough receive a lot of lovely presents in return. Aside from something camera-related and so exciting it deserves its own post, I unwrapped cosmetics, wooly socks, two adorable beret hats (one white, one black, both sequinned), two pairs of earrings and two necklaces, chocolate, a couple of gift vouchers... Oh yes, and a whole lot of books, including Spoken Here - Mark Abley; The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson; The Seeds of Speech - Jean Aitchison; Vanishing Voices - Romaine & Nettle and Through the Lens - a collection of some of the best-ever National Geographic photos.

And so with that, let me present you with my personalised definitive must-read list for (at least the first few months of) 2010:

• Dissolution - C. J. Samson
• The White Queen - Philippa Gregory
  
• The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson
• West of the Wall - Marcia Preston
  
• Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
• Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
• The Winter Ghosts - Kate Mosse
• The Call of the Weird - Louis Theroux
  
• Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood
• Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger
  
• Kommandant's Girl - Pam Jenoff
• Glamorous Powers - Susan Howatch
• Spoken Here - Mark Abley
  

The Sunday Read: The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite

Sunday Read for this week: The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite (Beatrice Colin).

This is an amazing book, and has recently seemed to gain a huge amount of accolade. I'd love to say that this is what drove me to read it, but in actual fact, I just picked this up in a bookshop on a whim. During the summer, I had a long commute to work of two hours each way, and I ended up reading every book I owned. I found myself with all of about five minutes in a bookshop before my train was due, so I quickly read the blurb, thought it sounded readable, and away I went with my shiny new copy of The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite.

Good thing I did! It turned out to be a fantastic read; one of those books that transported me away from my dull packed train to the seemingly wonderful yet depressing world of Berlin at the turn of the century.

The novel follows the ever-changing life of Lilly Aphrodite (such a wonderful name for a heroine), complexly juxtaposing desperation and poverty with glamour and fame. Although a work of fiction, the book is nonetheless historically realistic and offers the reader a highly plausible insight into the capital of Germany under the Weimar Republic. It was, by all accounts, a time of extreme hardship, which to the author's credit, Lilly's life reflects - she is raised in an orphanage, raped by wealthy employers, and spends much of the novel surviving on next to no food. While this admittedly could have made for a rather dreary read (indeed, at times it's hard not to feel quite depressed by the girl's desperate situation), the author offers the reader some light relief in its uplifting focus on Lilly's career, as she emerges as a glamorous and successful black and white film actress. Ultimately, it is with this increasing portrayal of her infamy in society that the novel begins to lose its sense of realism and probably its high level of impact upon the reader, but all in all this story offers a powerful message about growing up in a time and place which seems to be all too often overlooked in literature. Lilly grows up in desperately hard circumstances, and her story is predominantly one of extreme suffering, mixed with a passionate yet ultimately failing romance, and rather a lot of glitz and glamour. Beautifully written, this is really one of those books that you just need to read.