Baswood's books - well - part 2

Thomas Nashe - The Unfortunate Traveller or The Life of Jack Wilton.
Thomas Nashe - Terrors of the Night.

Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller reads like pulp fiction, unfortunately for Nashe it was written at a time when there was no market for it. Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) was an Elizabethan playwright, poet and satirist who had made his name as a pamphleteer. His previous publication was Christ Tears over Jerusalem published 1593 in which he imagined that Jesus Christ is looking down on Jerusalem and weeping to see the moral corruption that will lead to his crucifixion: a moral text which comes across as a fiery sermon to the unchristian. The Unfortunate Traveller by contrast has no moral compass, but is written in the style of a picaresque novel and delights in the escapades of a rogue: Jack Wilton, who barrels around Europe, in his attempts to get rich quick and enjoy himself as much as possible along the way.

This is a radical work that hardly bears any relation to anything I have read previously in English Renaissance literature. It is radical in the sense of the readers at which it was aimed and one wonders if those readers existed at the time, because it did not sell particularly well. Nashe had already shown that he was a writer whose colourful language and striking metaphors could enliven many a dull text, but in The Unfortunate Traveller he not only throws the kitchen sink into his work, but he makes it subversive. It is rapacious, grotesque, voyeuristic and transgresses almost every known genre of popular fiction of its time. It could be compared to the carnivalistic writing of Rabelais, but by anchoring his story in an historical setting Nashe adds realism and cruelty to the mix.

The story is episodic in nature and starts with Jack Wilton loosely connected to the entourage around Henry VIII campaign in France. His merry pranks and swindles and the onset of the sweating sickness result in him leaving the campaign as quickly as he could and he arrives in Munster to witness the merciless massacre of John Leiden's Anabaptist faction. He meets Henry Howard Earl of Surrey the famous poet and courtier and they become travelling companions. They exchange identities in order that the Earl of Surrey can travel incognito and in Rotterdam they hobnob with Erasmus and Sir Thomas Moore. Henry Howard is searching for his beloved Geraldine and they travel to Italy meeting Cornelius Agrippa on the way. Various plots and subterfuge result in the two companions being imprisoned for fraud and they are only saved from execution by the intervention of the famous satirist Pietro Aretino. Jack watches Henry Howard compete and win a jousting tournament before leaving with Diamante a beautiful courtesan. In Rome Jack barricades himself in an upstairs room and watches through a gap in the floorboards the protracted and violent rape of Heraclide by the bandit Esdras. Jack is accused of the rape but escapes to search for Diamante who he finds enslaved by the Jew Zadok. He gleefully watches the horrific execution of the Jew. Jack and Diamante travel to Bologna where the violent Cutwolf catches up with Esdras and shoots him in the mouth. Jack watches yet another brutal execution of the proud Cutwolf before fleeing back to the English encampment and reflecting on the dangers of travelling.

The novel starts with Jack and his clever swindles rather in the style of Robert Greene's conny catching, but soon takes a darker turn with the descriptions of the sweating sickness. The horrific massacre of the Anabaptists and the execution of John Leiden starts the trail of violence that will eventually lead to rape and murder. Along the way we are entertained by a sort of throwback story of Knights jousting in a tournament with Nashe supplying voluminous satirical descriptions of the knights attire. He also finds time to attach a couple of sonnets supposedly written in the style of Henry Howard. The reader is never far away from the next violent incident, but the rape of Heraclide is monstrous and we are in the realms of violent pornography. The executions that follow are gruesome and it is the feel of being a voyeur through Jacks eyes that makes these scenes so evocative.

Nashe knew he was writing something different, something new and in his dedication to the Earl of Southampton he describes his work as being in a clean different vein. He goes on to address the Dapper Monsieur Pages of the Court asking them to enjoy the wit and hear Jack Wilton tell his own tales. Perhaps the satire and the realistic descriptions of the violent events did not appeal and the work was largely forgotten until the late nineteenth century. It was rediscovered and is probably as popular now as it ever was. It can be read free on the internet in glorious modern English courtesy of Nina Green at the oxford-shakespeare.com website. Perhaps not great literature but let Nashe have the last word:

All the conclusive epilogue I will make is this, that if herein I have pleased any, it shall animate me to more pains in this kind. Otherwise, I will swear upon an English chronicle never to be outlandish chronicler more while I live. Farewell, as many as wish me well. June 27, 1593.

A five star read if only for its daring to be something different.

Terrors of the Night is more typical of the work of a pamphleteer and while first trying to frighten the reader with the idea that spirits, fairies and other unknown beings inhabit the air all around us, it then goes on to say something about dreams. In Nashe's view dreams are the waste material circulating around our minds when we are asleep and are not significant in forecasting our future.

Perhaps Terrors of the Night could be brought on by reading his The unfortunate Traveller just before bedtime.

Five stars? Terrific review and context. Reading Mantel Cromwell - many of these names and events come up. It seems he was a touching some of the highlights of an era.

Rex Stout - Curtains for Three
Published in 1951 the three novellas that make up Curtains for Three featured Stout's famous detective Nero Wolfe. The first Nero Wolfe story was published in 1934 and the last appeared in 1975 and so this book contains stories that were well set in the groove of "locked room" mysteries. Each of the three stories feature a singular murder and all the possible suspects are introduced early on and the entertainment for the reader is to try and figure out who is the guilty party. These type of detective mysteries are proving as popular today as they were in the 1950's which is borne out by the success of the British TV show 'Death in Paradise' which is in its 10th series with two more in the pipeline. There is very little if any violence, the murders are committed "off screen" as it were and much of the tension is created by solving the mystery.

It helps in a series like this to have characters that are a little different and Nero Wolfe is certainly that. He has his own peculiar eccentricities: he hardly ever leaves his New York Brownstone building, he is grossly overweight, he has a daily schedule that involves spending time with his collection of orchids and meal times cannot be interrupted. He runs his detective agency from an office in his house and all the legwork is done by his employee Archie Goodwin. It is Archie that narrates the stories. Nero Wolfe does not suffer fools gladly and sometimes treats his employees with little respect. He succeeds in solving the mysteries by carefully interviewing the suspects and threatening cajoling or bribing them to get at the truth. Rex Stout puts over these stories with a feel for 1950's streetwise language, which doesn't spill over into the hardboiled language of someone like Dashiell Hammett or James M Cain. Nero Wolfe seems to lack a sense of humour and his pride goes before him.

This was my first reading of a Nero Wolfe story and I was thoroughly entertained. I even got to successfully pick the guilty persons for the first two stories, which probably means I watch far too many detective programs on the TV. Rex Stout writes in an easy flowing style, but this is 1950's America and women are treated typically as of that period. There are no female helpers in the Nero Wolfe household. 3.5 stars.

Armadillo - William Boyd
"Mud doesn't stick to people like us" says the chief executive of a successful insurance firm. He has all the right connections of course and probably the underlying theme in Boyd's novel is the class system when "Britain was on the make" in the late 1990's under the new Labour Government. Boyd's novel uses substantial doses of irony to make his points, but his irony is whimsical never straying into satire and so at the end of the novel one is left with the feeling that "it all worked out well enough in the end". A biting satire of the class system it is not.

Lorimer Black is an insurance loss adjuster and the novel opens with a routine visit to the owner of a factory who has made an insurance claim. Black is a little put out to find the owner has hung himself from a beam in his office. The police are called and Black feels himself under suspicion. From this moment on Black is playing catch-up as the mystery deepens: why had his boss sent him to this meeting when he had done all the preliminary work himself and why was his next job; a £27million claim way above his normal price bracket? Black's world begins to fall apart as he seems to be being manoeuvred into being some sort of fall guy. Along the way he has to deal with physical assaults from enraged customers and from the husband of a mysterious woman with whom he has fallen in love. His upper class colleague at work is sacked perhaps because of his part in the 27million deal and clings to Lorimer like a leech when he is thrown out by his wife. Lorimer has stretched himself financially and bought an ancient Greek helm for more money than he has in his bank account, just at the time when he has fallen out with his boss at work and is due to be sacked. Oh! and for good measure one of his clients is a famous rock star who is being sued for cancelling a string of concerts. London in the late nineties, when there is money to be made and those in the know are manoeuvring to grab what they can.

Lorimer Black is an honest hard working likeable guy, relative to most of the people around him and this is the hook that Boyd uses to draw his readers into the story. Lorimer Black is a sympathetic character, he is good to his family, he helps his friends when he can, but is hard enough to play the game in order to make himself rich. The mystery surrounding him and his own upbringing becomes more clear as the novel progresses and Boyd does a good job of explaining the work of a loss adjuster and the value of the insurance business in the modern world. It is the nefarious goings on around Lorimer that keep the pages turning and the light touch of the author who introduces a series of characters who are larger than life: the femme fatal, the overbearing boss, the upper class twit, the crazy rock star. If all this wasn't enough, Lorimer suffers from sleep deprivation and is undergoing some sort of dream therapy treatment. There is a lot going on, and it would take a far larger book than this one to resolve all the loose ends and Boyd is not interested in doing this. Boyd is playing it all for laughs and it is amusing enough. Nothing too deep, but Boyd does not insult his readers intelligence and has written a fast paced novel that revels in its South London locations. A good entertainment even if it feels a little old fashioned and so 3.5 stars.

>4 baswood: William Boyd gives me difficulty. He used to be one of my favourite contemporary authors, but his writing took a change somewhere after Any Human Heart. It started to feel as if he had found a successful formula and was going to stick with it. While he is still humorous and entertaining as you say, and Armadillo was that, it seems something has been lost from the days of Brazzaville Beach and The New Confessions.

He may be shifting politics somewhat. I was disappointed when he signed the 2014 Guardian letter against independence, something that did probably unfairly colour my view of him. Now I see he has signed the Europe for Scotland letter.

I do like your review.

Another Stout convert? Very satisfactory.

>1 baswood: Fantastic review. As Dan mentioned, there are a lot of parallels to people covered in the Cromwell trilogy. Sounds like a great read.

Looking Backward: 2000-1887 - Edward Bellamy
"In 1889, a new political magazine in Boston described plans for an American Revolution of 1950.” Denouncing the “wage slavery” of the Gilded Age, the writers proposed to abolish capitalism and turn the economy over to the people. But this magazine had no connection to the Communist Second International which convened that summer in Paris, and its contributors were hardly members of the industrial proletariat. Rather, they were middle-class reformers who had been radicalized by a work of fiction: Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward, published the previous year.

Probably no cultural work was more responsible for pushing public opinion to the left in the Progressive Era. Decades later, Erich Fromm called Looking Backward “one of the most remarkable books ever published in America,” and William Dean Howells observed that it “virtually founded the Populist Party.” In 1935, when the philosopher John Dewey, the essayist Edward Weeks, and the historian Charles Beard were asked to list the most influential works of the previous half century, they all put Bellamy’s novel in second place, just after Karl Marx’s Kapital. And it was not just appreciated by an intellectual elite — Looking Backward was the third best-selling American book of its time." (Internet site placesjournal.org)

Bellamy's novel and I suppose it can just about claim to be a novel: there is a love story within, was a success. In the United Stead alone over 162 "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up to propagate the books ideas. In the novel Julian West a young entrepreneur suffers from insomnia and after a succession of sleepless nights he turns to a doctor friend to put him in a trance to help him sleep. The year is 1897 and when he wakes up it is 2000 and the world is a different place. The United States has become one large socialist state, one of many in the world. He finds himself under the protection of Doctor Leete and his family and the good Doctor takes it upon himself to ease Julian into his new life in the year 2000. Boston has become a beautiful city in an Utopia based on Marxist principles. Much of the book is taken up with Doctor Leete showing Julian around the city paying particular attention to how the new industrial society functions. Doctor Leete does not spare his opprobrium for the society from which Julian sprang and sets out to educate his new charge. Here is an example:

"I suppose," observed Dr. Leete, as we strolled homeward from the dining hall, "that no reflection would have cut the men of your wealth-worshiping century more keenly than the suggestion that they did not know how to make money. Nevertheless, that is just the verdict history has passed on them. Their system of unorganized and antagonistic industries was as absurd economically as it was morally abominable. Selfishness was their only science, and in industrial production selfishness is suicide. Competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the secret of efficient production; and not till the idea of increasing the individual hoard gives place to the idea of increasing the common stock can industrial combination be realized, and the acquisition of wealth really begin."

Doctor Leete goes into some detail as to how the new wealth creation system works and the biggest divergence from Marxist thought is as to how the world finally came to its senses and how it got there. There was no revolution, no struggle; under the old capitalist system the companies and organisation had become so large that the only way that they could increase wealth was to morph into one large socialist state. Once this process started there was a snowball effect and everyone embraced the concepts of egality and fraternity.

Unlike many other Utopian novels I have read this one is based on logical thought and there is no fly in the ointment. Julian's worst nightmare is that he would return to the Boston of 1897 especially as he falls in love with Doctor Leete's daughter. It is really not much of a novel more a book of ideas, but ideas explained with practical examples that are easy to grasp. Some readers might find it over long at more than 300 pages and of course confirmed subscribers to our capitalist society will not be swayed by what they read. The fact that Bellamy's predictions were so totally wide of the mark did not stop me thinking "if only he could have been right" I would have been more than happy to live in Bellamy's utopia and so 5 stars.

There was no revolution, no struggle; under the old capitalist system the companies and organisation had become so large that the only way that they could increase wealth was to morph into one large socialist state.

I think this is where the utopian logic (AKA "I dreamt up this fancy thing") breaks down. Reminds me of South Park's underpants gnomes: first, steal underpants, second, ? ? ? ? ?, third, PROFIT!

But I love Bellamy too so won't make fun of him. :)

By the way, under the "odd connections" rubric--the main character in Dreyer's Vampyr was played by a young aristocrat whose family hated his lowbrow jobs, so he adopted the name and is credited as "Julian West".

>3 baswood: I LOVE Nero Wolfe, and I wonder if everyone does.

>1 baswood:
Great cover!

Olivier Norek - Entre Deux Mondes, Olivier Norek
Olivier Norek is an interesting author and personality: a Captaine in the judicial Police of the Seine-Saint-Denis who has taken an unpaid sabbatical to further a career as a screen writer and novelist. His work features the police force as one might expect and he brings to the table experience and inside knowledge. Before joining the police he volunteered to work with the Pharmaciens sans Frontiers and participated in the provision of materials used in refugee camps in theatres of war and later spent two years in the French army. Between 2013 and 2016 he wrote three successful crime thrillers, before collecting critical acclaim for his 2017 novel: Entre Deux Mondes.

The Jungle is the name used for the refugee camp just outside the town of Calais on the north coast of France. It was an unofficial camp (but tolerated by the French Government) filled with refugees who were waiting to get across to England. The vast majority were dependent on the people smugglers or their own efforts to get across to the promised land of the Youké. These were the people who lived between the two worlds; stateless, fantoms almost, not quite of the earth and not quite of the heavens. The Jungle was in existence for an 18 month period between 2015 and 2016 and at its peak it was home to 10,000 people. It was a no-go area for the police and various communities: Afghans, Syriens, Egyptians, Ethiopians, Sudanese and others, fought to gain the upper hand. Conditions in the camp were poor and it was only the various aid agencies, who could get a foothold inside to provide some relief. Norek has based his story around life in the Jungle. A Syrian member of the rebel secret police (Adam) is waiting for the arrival of his wife and child who are in the hands of the people smugglers. Bastien is a new lieutenant in the Calais precinct who strives to make inroads into the lawlessness of Jungle. There is a mute Egyptian boy used as a sex object by the Afghan community who may have information on Adam's family and there is a wanted Daesh recruiting officer who is of interest to the French secret service. Norek makes a good job of weaving these strands together into a police thriller. It is fast moving and the characters are sympathetically drawn.

If the story sometimes stretches credibility then the descriptions of life in the jungle makes brutal sense. The Calais police while not wanting to enter the jungle have to uphold the law outside of it and so the nightly battle to stop the migrants getting onto the lorries heading for the ferry terminals, is played out as a tactical match between the migrants and the police. Violence erupts at flash point moments and the running battles are vividly described. Norek gives his characters good back stories and so there is plenty of room for strong female characters, both as family members of the police officers and also as aid workers in the Jungle. The desperation of the migrants some of whom face impossible odds to get across to England is never far from the storyline and the transient life in the Jungle which is ruled by the largest communities is a battle for survival. Nobody wants the Jungle, nobody wants the refugee camp, the town of Calais is facing financial ruin because of the destruction of its tourist trade, the police force are hopelessly undermanned and cannot get to grips with the life in the camp. An impossible situation which sweeps up many innocent victims and an air of desperation hovers over this novel making it a riveting read. Norek does not overdo the violence and his sympathies are with the victims. This novel provides a birds-eye view of another world that most of us would be thankful that we are not a part of, but the reality is sometimes too close for comfort. A four star read.

>12 baswood: You sold it to me... I am not a thriller/crime novel reader, but this one seems really above genre boundaries. And the photo you put caught me unprepared. I thought it was a photo taken in a refugee or displaced camp in Kenya, Ethiopia or Sudan, but no, it's France (the way the person walking in the middle of the photo is dressed should have given away the location, but I did not see her at first).
France (and other European countries) are very good at criticising African countries who can't manage properly refugee camps on their land, and can't meet international standards for attending refugees, but we are clearly not better.

Anyway, thanks for this gloomy (yet necessary) review. I think I heard about this book when it was first published, but did not care about it. After reading your review, I'm likely to read it soonish!

>12 baswood: I was about to add Entre Deux Mondes to my WL but unfortunately it does not seem to be available in English (at least in the U.K.), although it is in several other languages, and my French is definitely not good enough to read a full-length adult novel. It really ought to be available in English, to counter the constant demonisation of refugees that we see amongst certain sectors of the U. K. population. But then the demonisers would never read it ... I notice as well that Olivier Norek is one of the writers on Spiral (Engrenages), one of my favourite TV series.

>13 raton-liseur: It is difficult to believe that a refugee camp like the Jungle existed in France, but Norek makes it an uncomfortable reality. Not enough Tolérance in this world I am afraid to say.

>14 SandDune: I am also a fan of the street credible Engrenages policier series. Unfortunately there is no english translation that I am aware of at the moment for Entre Deux Mondes

>12 baswood: Great review. I'd be interested in reading an inside journalistic account of The Jungle perhaps even more than a novel on the topic.

Just back from a Vacation and I am glad I did not read this one on the beach.



William Styron - Lie Down in Darkness
William Styron's debut novel published in 1951 looks backwards rather than forwards. It is a depressing social history of an upper middle class Southern American family trapped by religion, alcoholism and an inward looking viewpoint that not even the atomic bombs of the second world war can shake them from their downward spiral. It is a long and exhausting read because Styron lays on the neurosis in thick wads of writing that veers between an omniscient point of view and a stream of consciousness technique. My main criticism of the book is that he attempts to pack in too much into this novel, but there is no doubt that he succeeds in creating an atmosphere of cloying dysfunctionalism that damages everyone associated with the Loftis family

The funeral of the Loftis family's daughter Peyton provides the narrative platform for the story, mainly told in flashbacks. Helen Loftis mother of Peyton is too depressed to go to the funeral and her estranged husband Milton pleads with her to stir herself out of a seemingly terminal lethargy. He only manages to invoke a stream of invective that threatens to re-ignite the embers of an underlying family tragedy. Milton himself is barely able to function and the funeral cortège is beset with mechanical failures as the old funeral vehicles struggle to cope with the heat of a summers day in the State of Virginia. Styron uses Milton's point of view to tell much of the early story. He is typical of his social set in that he relies too much on alcohol and the Country club social whirl to get him through life, but his life is more challenging than most. His first born daughter Maudie was born crippled and mentally retarded and she sucked up all her mothers love and devotion. His second daughter Peyton starved of her mothers love turned to Milton for affection. She developed into a beautiful teenager who soon learn't the art of seduction and her relationship with Milton bordered on the incestuous. Milton becomes an alcoholic and he encourages Peyton to drink along with him, meanwhile Helen turns back towards the religion of her upbringing, using her local pastor and friend: Carey Car for psychological help. Milton Loftis dominates this book his characteristic weaknesses seem to add fuel to the fire of the wrath that is inherent in his family. His dependency on alcohol, his perverted need for Peyton and his struggles with Helen who holds the purse strings. He is Styron's best creation.

The day of Peyton's funeral brings back the tragic incidents of the Loftis families existence and we see these through the memories of Helen and Milton. There was the death of Maudie in a clinic which Milton missed in a drunken haze while searching for Peyton who was intent on following a hedonistic life of her own, there is the relationship of Milton with his long suffering mistress Dolly and there is Helen's psychosomatic illnesses and a search for redemption through religion. There are flash backs also to Peyton's own tragically short life, whose own estrangement from her family seemed to have set her on a course for her own destruction. There are also periods of attempted reconciliation between family members, but the jealousies and the inability to forgive, result in a hatred that pushes them further apart.

Styron has created a family group against a historical backdrop of a Southern American town between the world wars. The town to all intents and purposes is segregated. The family members all refer to the black community as nigger town and they employ black women and men as servants and gardeners. This is an accepted fact of the backdrop to the novel. The involvement of America in the second world war impinges on peripheral family members, but the self centred individuals of the immediate family hardly give it a thought. The introspection is intense and the main characters cannot lift their heads out of their inborn prejudices. The halting procession of the funeral cortège seems to reflect the Loftis families own stumbling path to destruction. The novel ends with the black community celebrating a riverside baptism, their own particular religious enthusiasm contrasting with the crabbed religious belief of Helen Loftis. It is perhaps the only positive note in the whole book.

There is little doubt that Styron's aim was to create a literary novel and his observations and descriptions are redolent of how the reader might imagine a Southern American town and its middle class society: from the writing of someone like F Scott Fitzgerald. However his books were describing an America some 20-30 years earlier and Styron's characters do not seem to have moved on from that. Even the decrepit automobiles of the funeral cortege seem to belong perhaps to another era. This is why the book gives me an impression of looking backwards rather than forwards. Styron perhaps has nothing new to say, he is more interested in re-dressing the past and he does this at some length. Towards the end of the novel there is a long stream of consciousness section which portrays the last days of Peyton's short life and it is a sort of tour de force, brilliantly carried off, but it could quite easily belong to another novel. In its defence it does however fit in with the destructive, depressing and somnolent atmosphere of all that has gone before and brings the story to a logical conclusion. Reading this novel was like taking an unpleasantly warm bath in someone else's misery and I was pleased to be able to put it down, even if the experience was intoxicating at times. 4 stars.

Shakespeare's handwriting ?

Sir Thomas More: A play by Anthony Munday and Others: revised by Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and William Shakespeare.
As the title suggests this Elizabethan play underwent a complicated history of production and although a fair copy was eventually made by Anthony Munday, apparently it never made it onto a London Stage. Although many hands were involved the actual finished item (if it was ever finished) reads very well indeed. Claims have been made that it is one of the best of the Elizabethan history plays and the form in which it can be read today demonstrates that it is stage worthy: ie that it would work well enough without major adjustments. In addition to this there are three pages of the manuscripts that have been confidently identified by some, as being by William Shakespeare's own hand and these seem to be the only pages of a manuscript written by Shakespeare that have come down to us. All this points to it being a bit of a mystery as to why it is not better known.

The play based on incidents in the life of Sir Thomas More falls fairly neatly into two parts; depicting his rise to power and then his dramatic fall and execution. The intense anti-foreigner feeling expressed in the first part of the play more than echoes the anti immigrant convictions of the majority of people in The UK, in America and in Europe today, perhaps it's topicality is one aspect of it's failure for being considered for a serious modern revival. Governments today are still shy of appearing as out and out racists, while at the same time encouraging their people to be so. In Henry VII's England the people of London rioted against the foreigners living in the city, they lived in enclaves that were seen to have economic and social advantages over the native population. In the play this comes down to an incident where foreigners are forcibly taking food from a London artisan, who is not deemed worthy enough to appreciate the delicacies and then also taking his wife into the bargain. Preachers at Spitalfields encourage the anger against the foreigners and it is Thomas More's intervention when he was an under Sheriff that persuaded the rioters to return to their homes. Thomas More is knighted and he becomes chancellor to king Henry VIII. This part of the story is skilfully conflated by the authors and there follows a scene midway through the play where Sir Thomas is entertaining dignitaries at his London home and provides a troupe of players to provide the entertainment. This play within a play entitled "the marriage of wit and wisdom" provides a sort of hiatus in the proceedings. It is included to demonstrate the wit of Sir Thomas, because the troupe are a player short and Sir Thomas himself offers to play a part. The final two acts of the five act play, show More's fall from power when he refuses to sign the articles that make the King the supreme head of the church. This part of the play shows Sir Thomas as a martyr to his faith. Going to his execution with equanimity joking to the last and confident in himself and his family. It is poignant but without actually saying so points to the king as merciless and a villain.

Sir Thomas More was one of the few Elizabethan plays to be based on recent history; Elizabeth I was Henry VIII 's daughter and so it was no surprise that the play would run into censorship problems and it is well documented that the Master of the Revels Edmund Tilney; became involved and sent the original copy back for rewriting. Anthony Munday was a fierce anti-catholic involved in priest hunting and so it would seem that he would make the necessary adjustments, but although some were made, Sir Thomas More is still very much the hero. Perhaps then it was never politically suitable to be played during Elizabeths reign. It might be more ( the play is full of puns) appropriate today with its anti foreigner messages.

Act scene iii is the portion written in Shakespeare's hand and contains the speech of Thomas More that quells the riot. It certainly gives no quarter to the rioters, reminding them that they are the kings subjects, under his protection and reminding them that they owe allegiance to the king. More is able to convince them to desist, because he is seen as an honest man and one who does not necessarily wish to take revenge on the common man. The writing does not particularly stand out from all that has gone before or all that follows, because the writing is of a good standard throughout. This modern spelling edition makes for an enjoyable and entertaining read for anyone interested in Elizabethan drama.

I read the Revels Plays edition edited by Vittorio Gabrieli and Giorgio Melchiori, which proves to be an excellent guide for the interested reader. The introduction, painstakingly yet fairly precisely takes the reader through all the amendments and interventions to Anthony Munday's fair copy. It surmises on the date order of the amendments and the probable reasons as to why they were made. It is an excellent example of its kind, holding the reader interest and giving food for thought on possible additional reading or enquiry. The notes that appear on the same page as the text are detailed and support the information given in the introduction. There are appendices that show amendments that were never included and also details of the source material that was used. It really is an excellent package and enhanced my reading of the play, which is one where the history of the production is as fascinating as the play itself. All in all a five star read.

Julian Barnes - Arthur and George.
I find Julian Barnes a clever thoughtful writer who can adapt to various writing styles. Of the four books I have read by him my favourite has been Flaubert's Parrot where Barnes' love for things French and his well researched background on the life of Gustave Flaubert shone through. Arthur and George is in a similar vein to his Flaubert book in that it takes as its basis an historical event involving a famous author: in this case Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and fleshes out the story by imagining the thoughts and actions of the characters involved. The author adds his own perspective to the events and so the reader is treated to his informed views of his subjects and these must ring true for an enjoyment of the book. It all worked pretty well for me.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously took up the case of George Edalji, who had written to him claiming he was the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice. George had been convicted of maiming animals in and around the village of Wyrley in Staffordshire. He had been sentenced to 7 years penal servitude, but had been released after serving three years. George was a working solicitor and the son of the local vicar, he was of Indian descent and being a shy man kept himself to himself. He seemed to have a watertight alibi for the charge in question and much of the evidence against him was circumstantial. This is the only known case where Sir Arthur used his skills as a writer of detective fiction to research and re-investigate an actual criminal offence.

Julian Barnes introduces his two main subjects by providing a biography of each in alternate short passages. The reader has to wait for well over half the book for the first meeting between the two. Barnes by this time has fixed the contrasting characters firmly in his readers mind. The rich, successful, gentleman adventurer that is Conan Doyle and the slightly repressed unambitious solicitor scraping a living in the Midlands that is George. Two men who have little in common socially, but come together, because one of them writes to the other and finds a recipient whose interest and humanity is piqued by an injustice. The reader is well aware of the events in George's life by this time, especially the circumstances that have led to his conviction. Barnes takes the readers through George's trial almost point by point. If the aim of this passage is to stir up in the reader a sense of injustice, then the amount of detail used tended to numb the effect for me. The writing is prosaic and this would be my main criticism of the novel, Barnes is so intent on explaining why things happened he does not always spark emotion in the reader. It is if he is writing a Victorian Detective novel.

Arthur and George held my interest, but only just. I felt that the novel was overlong and there was too much detail. Perhaps because he had chosen such an unemotional character in George this was necessary and because Conan Doyle strove to uphold gentlemanly values at all times this made both his characters; too one dimensional. I found myself yearning for something to shake these people out of the ruts that had been chosen for them, however as this novel is based on historical facts this was not going to happen. I found myself wondering if these events warranted such a biographical approach and so 3.5 stars.

>19 baswood: Yes, my experience was similar — I remember thinking it was one of those books where the contents don't actually add anything to what we already know from the synopsis.

>19 baswood: I’ve seen both the T.V. adaptation and read the book Arthur and George and I think it’s one of the unusual occasions where I enjoyed the adaptation more. Apparently, after the events of the novel George Adalji moved with his sister to Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire, which is where I worked before retirement, and lived there until his death.

La Maison des Anges - Pascal Bruckner
Pascal Bruckner has been identified with a new group of philosophers who broke away from Marxist thinking in the early 1970's. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's writing, particularly The Gulag Archipelago had an effect on what they described as the worship of the master thinkers of the left. They came to believe that these comprehensive systems of thought led to oppression, be it of the left or the right. It is no surprise then that Bruckner's novel published in 2013 is to some extent a critique of western society grounded in the streets of Paris France.

Antonin Dampierre comes from a bourgeois family and two events in his early young life have left scars that cannot be healed. The first and most important of these was as a young man of twenty travelling across an alpine pass alone in his car in mid winter. The car breaks down and he must find shelter from the cold. He finds an inn; closed for the winter, but manages to persuade the ancient female proprietor to let him stay. He is shown a room upstairs and soon falls asleep. He is awakened by the old woman coming into his room; she gets into his bed and lays on top of him, he is pinned down and does not know what to do. He falls asleep again only to find that the old woman has died and he crawls out from underneath and makes his escape. The second incident occurs when he is working as an estate agent in Paris. He is awaiting the arrival of some very rich clients outside a luxurious apartment that he hopes to sell. Just as their chauffeur driven car pulls up at the kerb side, two very drunk homeless men come barrelling down the road. One of them stops outside of the street entrance to the apartment and vomits over the doorstep. His clients agree to look at the apartment but they no longer have an interest and soon leave. As a furious Antonin leaves the apartment the tramp is lying propped up in the doorway and he grabs Antonin's leg. Antonin kicks him and keeps on kicking him until he is dead. He hastily flees the scene waiting then for a call from the police. Nothing happens; he has got away with it. Two things are thus revealed about Antonin: he has a hatred of old or destitute people and has a violent temper. He hatches plans to rid Paris of the homeless destitute people littering the streets and finds himself volunteering to work in a refuge for the homeless, so that he can carry out his murderous schemes.

Antonin's close association with the destitute brings forth all sorts of emotions, on the one hand he bitterly despises them, but on the other hand he comes to grudgingly admire their ability to look after themselves. Pascal Bruckner's novel takes the readers down amongst the homeless and their bitter struggle to survive. We see them through Antonin's eyes and so the worst aspects of their existence are brought to life. It is no surprise that Antonin finds himself sinking down among them and for him it becomes a question of sinking to the bottom, before he can get some sort of redemption.
The novel literally takes the reader through the streets of Paris and the catacombs and sewers that run beneath it: to another world barely glimpsed by most people. Bruckner is careful not to make this seem a fantasy world and real personalities like Bono of the group U2 and Christopher Hitchings: the American critic, find themselves included in the general debate about homeless people. Another theme straddling this novel is the tribal nature of the destitute, the groupings into nationalities that were a feature of the last french novel I read, which was Olivier Noreks's Entre Deux Mondes.

The central story about the fate of Antonin Dampier is a good one and holds the book together. I found the descent into the world of the misery on the streets of Paris pretty good for my soul, but Bruckner's point that some can survive, albeit usually at the expense of others is a fairly hard dose of reality. Of course the question of homeless people in the big cities and what if anything can be done, is outside the scope of this novel, but Bruckner sets the background for such a debate. A four star read.

Bruckner is a despicable dinosaur conservative; there's nothing "new" about any group he belongs to--old white men who can't get to terms with their own irrelevance after a lifetime of being coddled and fawned over as important "intellectuals" in the echo-chambers of the French white male cultural and political institutions.

And he's in no way special. It's been entertaining to watch (well, I say entertaining--it would be if we weren't talking about these pathetic shits on a planet undergoing ecological disaster) over the last decade or so, people like that making the final steps in crossing over to the fascist, white- and male-supremacist side. Onfray, Brice Couturier, Finkielkraut etc. etc.

>23 LolaWalser: Tell it like it is !

>24 baswood:

Absolutely, have I ever not? :) I presume you're aware of Bruckner's books about how nothing is due to the ex-colonies, Islamophobia doesn't exist, or the newest one about the plight of the white male, unjustly "scapegoated". So far so ordinary for the legion of rightwingers harping for decades about "political correctness"... but then it became a little less ordinary when he and a gaggle of other French men posing as public intellectuals attacked sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg with all the violence of a gang rape... and it ought to have become evident to all what sort of people they are. The sort that can't STAND the idea that anyone but their clones deserves respect--women are for fucking, blacks and Muslims for labouring, gays for ridiculing etc.--in short, they parse only their own avatars as people.

For an account of the attacks that includes mentions of some other participants, like Laurent Alexandre, medical doctor who nevertheless grossly insulted a neurodiverse teenager, see for instance:

Mais pourquoi Pascal Bruckner déteste-t-il Greta Thunberg? ("Why does Pascal Bruckner hate Greta Thunberg?")

Here is a study of some of the online attacks on her with a discussion of those notable French men: Internet contre Greta Thunberg : une étude discursive et argumentative

Besides Bruckner and Alexandre, Onfray comes in as one particularly dedicated to tearing down a teenage girl. It's hard to tell what enrages them the most about her--that she's so young, that she's autistic, that she's "unfuckable".

On that last point, it's worth mentioning (especially since all the named defended him) the tweet by Bernard Pivot, another French cultural/mediatic star, in which he said Greta scares him, not being at all like the Swedish girls of his youth which he and his pals knew to pursue because they were--reputedly--less strait-laced than French girls. In contrast to those lusty Swedish babes of fantasy, Greta was "scary". Nom de dieu!

Pivot was 84 when he tweeted that bit of crap, and perhaps one really can't expect someone of that age to start demonstrating a sensitivity they never had. (Let's recall it was he who invited openly paedophile Gabriel Matzneff multiple times into his show, including the time, in 1990, when the only woman present, Denise Bombardier, expressed disgust at Matzneff, getting in turn called a "connasse" and told she needed slapping--while Pivot did nothing.) The worthwhile point, however, is to depict the atmosphere of the French society that created and nurtured and lionised these men. Because it is the dispelling of that atmosphere that has galvanised them into this climax of vileness we are witnessing.

Michel Onfray is now openly in cahoots with Éric Zemmour, France's Rush Limbaugh:

Éric Zemmour et Michel Onfray unis pour dénoncer l’islamo-gaucho-narco-féminisme des Verts

If memory serves, it was Bruckner who came up with "islamogauchisme", the most idiotic slur ever, if we demanded of slurs to make any sort of logic. In short, it stands for nothing more than the desire of its users to be rid of both Muslims and leftists. Feminists (and ecologists, as in the linked article) included gratis, of course.

Apologies for not being more orderly in presentation--I've been following these clowns for years so there is a lot of material but nothing I bothered to systematise. In short, there is a visible group of aged and ageing white men in France deeply disturbed by the social changes that have shown there is nothing "normal" nor eternal about white men being in charge of everything forever.

Thank you for all the information and the links - it was all news to me. There I was in my local library browsing the shelves and the cover of Bruckner's book attracted my attention ...................... I must obviously be more careful in my choice or I will get a reputation as some kind of fascist. I will not be reading Le Sanglot de L'homme Blanc.

The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth - Anonymous
A Knack to Know an Honest Man - Anonymous
Two popular plays from London stage of 1594 both of which have connections to Shakespeare, so much so that there has been much critical study to see if he had a hand in either of them. Neither of them claim much evidence of his genius, but both would seem precursors of plays that have safely been attributed to him.

The famous Victories of Henry the Fifth seems to be a template of Shakespeares Henry V and follows the same broad pattern. The first part describes the young prince Henry as a roustabout in London associating with criminals and committing robberies, with the character of Sir John Oldcastle being an earlier version of Shakespeares Falstaff. The play turns at the death of Henry IV when prince Henry becomes king and accepts his new responsibilities and brings to the kingship his prodigious energies in leading England to its famous victory at Agincourt. The play is fairly pedestrian, but might have owed its success to the part of the clown Derick, which tradition has it, was played by the famous comedian Tarlton. There is some conjecture that Tarlton may have written parts of the play himself, anyway he was such a personality on the Elizabethan stage that he only had to make an appearance and he would cause the audience to laugh. Tarlton died in 1588 and so while the play was entered in the Stationer's Registers in 1594 it is clear that it was written some years earlier: the version I read was in prose rather than blank verse which also points clearly to a play that was probably being staged some ten years earlier.

A Knack to know an Honest Man was also entered in the Stationers Registers in 1594, but the version that has come down to us was probably cobbled together from an actual stage performance. It is not divided into acts and scenes and there are no stage directions, the text is apparently not in a good state with some parts missing. It has a complicated plot, but there is evidence that it may well have been at one time a well produced play that was more popular than most. It is written in blank verse, but is fairly uneven and points to being a collaboration of sorts. The action takes place mostly in Venice where nobles and merchants strive to appease the iron rule of Corrodino the Duke of Venice. The play starts with two members of the nobility Sempronto and Lelio fighting after Lelio accuses Sempronto of seducing his wife. Lelio appears to kill Sempronto and flees the city fearing retribution from the Duke. However Sempronto is nursed back to health by the hermit Philip and takes on a disguise as Penitent Experience. Servio the uncle to Sempronto takes advantage of Leilo's absence to sequester his property while Fortunato the Dukes son, has plans to seduce his daughter Lucida and his friend the senatot Marchetto has eyes on his wife Annetta. Brisheo father to Annetta organises a guard on Leilo's house and Fortunato and Marchetto are beaten off, but Brisheo must now also flee the city. It is the task of Sempronto as Penitent Experience to heal all the wounds and make honest men of the various combatants. It is only the merchant and money lender Servio who is beyond being an honest man. Venice, and a recalcitrant money lender like Servio could have been an inspiration for Shakespeares Merchant of Venice.

Neither of these plays would warrant serious consideration today, but are interesting because both were popular in their time and so 3 star reads.

Galaxy Science Fiction - January 1951
Galaxy was a monthly science fiction magazine published from 1950-80 and aimed to become a leader in it's field. In the 1950's it paid the highest rates for contributions and so naturally attracted some important writers in the genre. It aimed to be a little different from other magazines with an intention of widening its appeal to more literary readers. The early magazine covers were an example of this, they wanted to show clearly that it was a science fiction magazine, but one "that you were not embarrassed to hold. Early editions of the magazine can be downloaded onto a kindle for a few euros and I chose to dip into the January 1951 edition.

The magazine became famous for publishing stories by established writers in the genre and the January 1951 edition has stories by Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon and John D Macdonald. In the case of Sturgeon and Macdonald their stories were worked up later into separate publications and so the magazine gave the authors a sort of trial run. In the case of Issac Asimov he published the first eight chapters of his novel Tyrann the remaining chapters would be published in subsequent editions. Asimov changed the title of his novel to The Stars like Dust when it was published in February 1951 and I read it a couple of years ago. The eight chapters take up nearly a half of the magazine and unfortunately it is not one of Asimov's better efforts; it is full of clunky dialogue and cardboard characters and so I did not feel inclined to read it again. A very short story followed called Dark Interlude by Mack Reynolds and Frederic Brown and the least said about this the better. I hope it was meant to be a satire.

Things improve immeasurably with Theodore Sturgeon's; Rule of Three. A story about aliens who exist as three parts of a whole who infiltrate hosts on earth. Their aim is to stop the expansion of humans into space, but to do this they must get their three hosts to work together. They must put together a sort of menage-a-trois among some jazz musicians and intellectuals that are chosen as hosts. Sturgeon does a pretty good job of describing the interrelations between a woman and her two would be lovers all inter-spiced with the music of jazz. It has a more adult feel than most of the stories from this era. Made to Measure by William Campbell Gault also deals with relationships and a scientists attempt to create the perfect wife. This story is best forgotten: the stupid sexism is poles apart from Sturgeons more interesting story. John D McDonald's Susceptibility also has an alluring female at the centre of the story and although it is not difficult to see where this one is going after the first few pages it is well enough written and not offensive.

There are some book reviews, but these are not encouraging when the reviewer Groff Conklin states at the start:

"The pickings are slim this month: three books, one of them not science fiction and another a minor effort by a major author make up our quota"

The final story: The Reluctant Heroes by Frank M Robinson ends the magazine on a high note. It describes conditions on the first lunar settlement when a handful of scientists are living in cramped conditions, sealed away from a hostile environment. They must spend eighteen months working on the moon because of the expense of launching a rocket with a relief team. One of the scientists must remain behind to show the new team how to work and survive and no amount of money will persuade one of them to do another eighteen months. A nice conundrum that doesn't shine a good light on human behaviour.

A mixed bag as you would expect from such a magazine and I was unlucky to choses one which featured a story for half its content that I had already read. I would be tempted to put another edition of the magazine on my kindle, but would avoid parts two and three of the Asimov story. 3 stars.

>26 baswood:

Oh, ha! I think that was an early breakthrough of his (telling enough in retrospect), I forget what the newest is called.

I'm reading through my great pile of olden sci-fi too. Just started an anthology edited, oddly, by no other than Edmund Crispin, the mystery writer. Somehow I didn't think he'd be an enthusiast of the genre.

Nuit d'ivresse en Castille - Jean-Pierre Alaux & Noel Balen
This one is from the series: Le sang de la vigne (the blood of the wine).There have been 25 books published and this was number 18. It would appear that they are part detective story, part food and drink and part patrimoine de france. A winning combination for me although this story takes place in the Rioja wine district of Spain.

Benjamin Cooker born half English and half French is every inch a fastidious frenchman: a wine maker and expert adviser from the Bordeaux region. He and his assistant Virgilie have travelled down to Las Espadas Cruzadas to advise the owner on french wine stock that could be successfully grown in the Rioja region of Spain. Also present on the estate is Christophe Coussou another wine expert who specialises in Marketing. Poor Christophe loses his head in the electric gates and a murder enquiry gets under way. Benjamin was suspicious of the role of Christophe and undertakes his own enquiry with Virgilie doing the legwork. All is resolved at the end of the day with Benjamin able to provide some useful information to the police.

The novel is more detective story than anything else, but like Donna Leon's books on Venice the food and drink is described in loving detail. I have spent a little time in the Rioja region of Spain and this book does not quite capture anything like the essence of the area, perhaps the other books in the series which concentrate on wine regions of France are better in this respect. I did enjoy the more technical details of wine making that are sprinkled throughout the book and the characters love of food and wine. There are a few historical details to give the book a little substance, but if the characters are anything like me, then when I visit a chateau I am more concerned with getting to the taste the wine. I would get itchy feet if someone like Benjamin launched into a long story when I hadn't got to the wine room. There is a time and place for everything.

There is a time and place for this book, preferably when a bottle of wine is to hand. Light entertainment it might be, but I was hooked and so 3.5 stars. I will try some of the others in the series.

>12 baswood: This sounds fascinating. Have I not been paying attention, or are you reading more in French these days?

>31 RidgewayGirl: I have joined my local french library

>32 baswood: Excellent! The moment when I realized that there was a very nice public library just a few U-Bahn stops away was two weeks before we moved back to the US.

>32 baswood: And another book from the library



L'homme promenade - Jean Broustra
Jean Broustra is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who stopped working his medical practice in 2007 and his book L'homme promenade was published the year before. It may well have come from one of his patients dossiers (although I am sure it did not) because it deals with a man who suffers a breakdown and is both paranoid and suffering from depression. The book takes the form of diary entries, letters and doctors notes, and charts the story of Maxime Duroc who suffers a mental breakdown and is treated in hospital by Doctor B Antarev a member of the society de Psychopathologie.

We meet Maxime in hospital and discover that after a period of delirium he has lost his memory of some key events, leading up to his hospitalisation. He has kept diaries and we learn about him from his journal entries, but there is a gap of a number of days and his doctor suggests that he concentrate on trying to complete his diary for those days. The doctors idea is that reading and thinking about the entries before those missing days could help the process. The doctor even suggests that he could help by transcribing some of the entries, a method that pushes the boundaries between patient and doctor, also between story teller and ghost writer. Maxime definitely has issues. He lost his left arm in a road traffic accident and now works as a parking meter attendant. He has an idea of being a writer and has a lifelong grudge against his parents who stopped him from going to college. He has become more reclusive, still living at home he has recently moved into the loft for more privacy. He cannot stand the sight of his mother, his father died some years earlier and Maxime was late for the funeral.

For most of the book we see the world through Maxime's eyes through his journal entries, but perhaps tidied up by doctor Antarev. Once his character is firmly established his story lurches into those crucial four days before his breakdown and it is a world of delirium, he appears to be stalked by a woman in black stockings, his new girlfriend Brigitte wants to go to Venice and after a night of love making, he finds himself driving towards the coast perhaps on his way to Venice. The novel then takes up a story of mysterious meetings, attacks on the beach: Maximes delirium causes him to mix reality with nightmares from his own paranoia and sometimes he repeats himself, changing the story.

Following the journal entries which takes up the majority of this short novel, there are notes on the case from Doctor Antarev and also a letter to his professional society where he raises questions on his own part in the story. He asks himself if his interventions were justified. Seeing the story from different sides, raises issues that might trouble professionals and patients involved in psychiatry, but the story pretty well stands on its own anyway. The novel consisting of shortish diary entries and changes pace for the period of Maxime's delirium, which I enjoyed. An intelligent thoughtful book which works on different levels. A four star read.

Elizabeth Taylor - A Game of Hiding Seek
Picking a year: just over halfway through the 20th century (1951) and reading as many publications in that year as possible, has introduced me to many authors that I would not otherwise have sat down with. Elizabeth Taylor's; A Game of Hiding Seek was a surprise and a delight to me, almost from the first page. It was her fifth novel; she had first been published in 1945 and so was well into her stride by 1951. The subject matter and the quality of her writing style of this novel would appear to be typical of her work. She writes about the middle class, she writes about England particularly the countryside and she writes about relationships from a woman's point of view, all this I gathered from a sympathetic introduction by Elizabeth Jane Howard on my kindle edition.

The plot is a simple one; describing a love affair almost a love infatuation from the point of view of Harriet. She and Vesey spend many of their summer school holidays together in their native England as children and then as young adolescents during the period between the two great wars. Their families were closely connected, but it was Vesey who came to stay with Harriet until their fifteenth year, when Harriet's mother decided that is was no longer a suitable arrangement. Vesey was a difficult schoolboy, a little out of step with his compatriots. He did not make friends easily, he could be a little spiteful and did not settle down to work at his studies. Harriet seems to have been just the opposite, but she fell in love with Vesey, who was always inclined to do something to upset the grown ups. Harriet loses contact with Vesey and in her twentieth year marries Charles a well set up man, some fifteen years older than herself. She can never quite forget her first feelings for Vesey although happily married to Charles. She has caught sight of Vesey once or twice at formal family gatherings, but it is 20 years later when she has her own fifteen year old daughter that Vesey intrudes into her life and so starts the second part of the novel and where Taylor's writing really takes off.

The manners and mores of English country life is brought vividly to life by Taylor. Harriet is conscious of fitting in, she has made a good marriage from a financial point of view and buckles down to making Charles as happy as she can. Harriet's mother was a suffragette and had been imprisoned, but to Harriet this seems like another lifetime and not hers. She works hard for her husband and her family, but still cannot forget Vesey. The subject of the book is a love affair, the sort of affair that many readers at the time would have been able to identify/sympathise with: that love affair that seems to fly in the face of all that is comfortable and expected, a love so deep that cannot be forgotten and springs back into life sometimes quite unexpectedly. Taylor does not pass any judgements on her characters, she lets their lives flow just edging their story along in a way that really does feel quite natural.

This is not a modern forward looking novel, it seems steeped in the times in which it was written, remembering that the first part of the book covers a period between the wars. In the early 1950's middle class people still had servants or companions, fitting in, getting back to some sort of normality after the war, was what many people wanted. Taylor captures this atmosphere perfectly for me and I was entranced by some of her writing and her characters and so a 4.5 star read.

>35 baswood: Glad you liked Taylor — there are a lot more excellent novels where that one came from. And she's had quite a revival lately, so they're not hard to find. Did you pick up the Brief encounter references?

>36 thorold: Yes. It made me hastily google the date of the film because I had in my head that it was very early 1950's. I was quite surprised that it was from 1945.

>35 baswood: Great review - I've not read anything by her and I do enjoy books from that era, so I must add some Taylor books to my wish list.

>38 AlisonY: I've read one of hers—In a Summer Season—which I liked, though it isn't super memorable five years later (then again, what is?). I have a few more on the shelves, and I definitely want to get to them. They seem like they'd be nice palate cleansers in between denser reading.

Jean Carrière - Un Jardin pour L'Éternel
Jean Carrière was a french author who won the Prix Goncourt back in 1972 after the publication of his novel L'Épervier de Maheux which was translated into 14 languages, but apparently not English. He had published more than 20 books many of them novels and Un Jardin pour L'Éternel appeared in 1999 towards the end of his life. After the fame that goes with winning France's greatest literary prize and a family tragedy, he suffered from depression and took himself out of Paris to spend the later part of his life in a small village in the hilly region of Cévennes. He was a friend and secretary of Jean Giono and it is unsurprising that the real character in his novels is the french countryside.

The novel's setting is in the commune of Saint-Laurent in the Cévennes during the first world war. Pierre-Ézechiel has just returned from the horrors of the trench warfare missing the lower part of one of his legs. He has survived an operation in a field hospital, and has discharged himself as soon as possible to return home, where he intends to make himself a wooden stump. His faith in God has been shaken by the war and he is anxious to find his peace and get back to his roots in the countryside. His wife and daughter had died before the war and his son looks after the farm; he cannot settle to anything and his friend the mayor of the commune suggests that he use a strip of land on the other side of a hill, now almost forgotten. When Pierre-Ézechiel sees the valley he is astounded by the beauty and discovers a micro-climate and also some stone walled paths now overgrown. His faith in God restored he sets about clearing the site and finds that his energy and strength have returned. He will dedicate his work to the Éternel his word for God. Pierre-Ezechiel begins to see the Éternal in everything he does and together with the discovery that the valley was the scene of a massacre of protestants during the religious wars fires him to accomplish work that astounds the few people who witness it. He becomes obsessed with the valley looking for more projects and distances himself from his family, just finding time to make the two hours journey on foot to get back for his sons wedding. As the years pass he becomes ascetic, withdrawing from the life of the commune and builds himself a shack in his valley, surviving the harsh winters that keep him snowbound. However it is impossible for him to live his life without interference from others and his physical and mental powers begin to fail.

Jean Carrière is at his best when describing the harsh beauty of the landscape and also his portrait a man whose obsession with carving out his own path through life, with an unshakeable faith in what he is doing. The picture that emerges of the rural commune and the changing of the seasons is keenly sensitive. In my opinion he also manages to enlist the readers sympathies for a man whose severe lifestyle is of his own making. The success of this novel depends on the author being able to summon the power in his language to plunge his readers into the rurality of the life and times of an ascetic, escaping from the horrors of war and to a large extent he does this. It is a book that took this reader to another place and one that I could understand. A four star read.

C'est pour ton bien, Delperdange - Patrick Delperdange
C'est pour ton bien can be translated as 'for your own good' and when Pierre smacks his wife Camille in the mouth with a clenched fist at the start of this novel, the irony of the title is not lost. They have been married for a couple of years and Camille has just fallen pregnant and it is the first time that Pierre has been violent. When it happens again she packs her bag and walks out, but Pierre is able to force her to return home when he cuts off her money supply. This year in France there have been a number of headline cases in the news of extreme violence against women in the conjugal home. It has reached the proportions of a national scandal, but like other national scandals it is soon subsumed by other news items; for example France's Olympic team are winning medals in Japan. Delperdange is not concerned with Pierre's violence, after all he is going through a difficult period at work and so who can blame him for hitting his wife.

The story involves a jewellery robbery that went wrong; the owner of the store; Camille's father was shot. Camille then a young adolescent was the primary witness and her evidence sent the perpetrator to jail for 20 years. Her brother who is in dispute with her, over the family inheritance and a down and out man, who believes he is responsible for the botched robbery have stirred Pierre's interest in a possible scheme to make some money. Camille is the victim of all this male aggression, which comes as no surprise. The plot works itself out in a reasonable fashion and Camille manages to escape from her husband and her brother, but maybe only temporarily.

Delperdange is a Belgian author who specialises in crime fiction, he has also written for the young adult, and graphic novel market. I was not expecting anything wonderful when I took this off the library shelf and I wasn't disappointed. This is nothing more than an average crime fiction novel and so 2 stars.

Marcia Burnier - Les Orageuses, Burnier

"Meuf, meuf, MEUF respire................"

This short but dense novel tells the story of a small number of young Parisian women who have been raped and who band together as an ad-hoc support group, who then take matters into their own hands. Although they take action against the men who have violated them, this is in no way a vigilante/revenge comic book of violent reprisals. It is a novel that steers well clear of any voyeurism and concentrates on the hurt, fear and powerlessness of women who have no resort to official justice.

The novel focuses mainly on two women in a group of severn: Mia is the organiser, she has the dossiers of the women who have been violated, she has attempted to go through official channels, but the difficulty of finding any path through the legal system has turned her towards a support group. She has not recovered from her own trauma and her journey from Grenoble to Paris is described as a voyage of fear, fear of eye contact, fear of her feelings of shame, fear of being approached, with the Paris metro being the worst part of the journey. It is an effort almost a trial to endure the daily life of going about ones business, which so many people take for granted. She meets with and leads her band of women, who have rucksacks filled with cans of spray paint on a visit to one of the men who have violated one of their number. It is a carefully thought out expedition and when the man opens the door of his apartment the girls put a foot in the door and burst past him. They restrain him and then set about spray painting his apartment and possessions, making sure he knows why they are there. They commit no violence against him and are soon back outside in the street making their escape. As an act of reprisal it briefly curtails the rage that all the women feel and the euphoria of fighting back satisfies the individuals, some more than others.

Lucie from her behaviour is perhaps the most damaged of the group. Like all of them her violation preys on her mind and in her case she can hardly function, she is suicidal and it is only when Mia reaches out to her and takes her for a weekend to the seaside that she finds some stability. This finding ones place after the trauma of rape is one of the main themes of the novel. It effects all the women in the group, they are not the same people as they were before the event, they have lost their compass and they are angry. It is an anger against the perpetrators, but also an anger against the system that allows them no justice.

The ad-hoc nature of the group is reflected in the writing of the author. The short chapters bring in some details or some references to the lives of the women, they also act as flies on the wall of the meeting places, where issues are discussed: political, social and personal. It is a loose grouping held together by the expeditions undertaken, although only a couple of these are described. This is the first novel by the author and sits in the publishing house directed by Isabelle Cambourakis, which she has named Sorcières. Burnier's book published last year is contemporary in style and content and the 33 year old author has raised issues that may point to some support for the estimated 94,000 women in France in a similar position while making uncomfortable reading for some men who might get to the book. I was glad I picked this one off the library shelf and so five stars.

Terrific review. I'm off to see if that's translated to English.

The Sorcières publishing house sounds interesting too.

Saul Bellow - Humboldt's Gift
Bellow may well have enjoyed writing this novel, which at the slightest opportunity veers off from its story line to comment on the state of the world (in this case the city of Chicago), but in my opinion it is not so enjoyable to read. It is sprawling, repetitive and the philosophy at times is hokum. There are passages of brilliant description, there are wry commentaries on the state of the world and there are some interesting characters, but the storyline is as much hokum as the philosophy, which does nor sit well in a novel that aims for mid twentieth century realism. The novel won the 1975 Pulitzer prize for fiction and so it must have wowed the critics back then, however I think it flatters to deceive.

The main protagonist is Charlie Citrine. He is an author, dramatist and essayist who is approaching 60 years old. He has had a big stage hit and earned a lot of money, but more important to Charlie is the debt he thinks he owes to Von Humboldt Fleischer. Humboldt had emerged back in the 1930's as a brilliant young poet and had made a name for himself in the academic world. He later nurtured the young Charlie Citrine, when his own star was fading. Humboldt died in poverty after spending the later part of his life in mental institutions. Currently Citrine is being sued by his ex wife Denise, and has fallen in love with Renata who is considerably younger than him and is spending money that he can no longer afford. He has also been trying to launch a new literary magazine which has taken another large chunk of money, with a partner who everybody but Charlie thinks is unreliable; he loses money in a poker game to a local hoodlum and gets given the run around, and it is at this crisis point in his life, he learns that Humboldt has left him a legacy.

Citrine is an honest man who always sees the best in people, but is fair game to those more ruthless than himself. He thinks deeply about his work and his own worth. He would much prefer to find time to think about the world, than get involved in money making schemes, but his weakness is women or more fundamentally his ability to fall in love, without much thought for the consequences. He is a celebrity in the literary world who is in danger of being ruined by his ex wife and her lawyers, his girlfriend, his business partner and a hoodlum, but is determined to remain true to himself and his ideas.

Citrine is a believer in anthroposophy which is a philosophy developed by Rudolph Steiner, that postulates the existence of an objective, intellectual, comprehensible spiritual world and so at the age of 60 many of his thoughts turn to what will become of him, when he dies. There are some longish passages in the book that edge around this theory. The rugged world of the capitalist west is out to do Citrine down, but women cannot resist his charm, there are the lawyers that are lined up against him and the intellectuals that fail to see his merits. Saul Bellow was himself an advocate of anthroposophy and one gets the distinct feeling that Bellow would like to be or perhaps even is Charlie Citrine and so we get great gouts of Citrine/Bellows view of the world. This confuses the story of Humboldt's Gift to such an extent, that by the time the story gets moving and after all the literary and philosophical references have been wrung out of it, this readers eyes had glazed over to such an extent that I really didn't care anymore.

There is a decent and amusing story in there somewhere I am sure, but Bellows heavy handed literary and philosophical references left me cold. After re-reading one of those passages I concluded that a good proportion of it was not worth the time spent on it. Too much paranoia for me and so a three star read.

Philip K Dick - Time Out of Joint
Time Out of Joint is now recognised as the first science fiction novel by Philip K Dick that explored the themes that many of his later novels would take further. It is a noticeable break from his earlier efforts of pulp fiction and was published in 1959. It was not an immediate success, his breakthrough novel was Man in the High Castle which won the Hugo award for best novel in 1963. The themes that Dick introduced in his writing like: the nature of reality; how ordinary people have their lives unravel around them, all is not what it seams and characters who are made aware, that there are forces at work of which they are totally ignorant, psychotic events threaten their existence and delusions or surreal images menace their grip on reality. It can be powerful stuff and Time Out of Joint was the first step along this road.

Ragle Gumm who had been decorated for his service in the second world war has settled down in a quiet American town, living with his brother and his bother's wife. He is making a living by winning a daily competition in the local paper and has become something of a celebrity. The competition involves plotting the location of a randomly generated item in one of over a thousand locations. Ragle does this by charts, records and graphs that he works on and updates every day. He has won the daily competition over a two year period. A young couple (Mr and Mrs Black) have recently moved next door and Ragle is starting to feel constrained by the Blacks constant overtures of friendship, but he becomes attracted to Mrs Black and worries that an affair will interrupt his work and would cause trouble with her husband. One day Ragle while sitting on a bus feels the world dissolve around him, his fellow passengers appear as skeletons, this only last for a minute, but he is profoundly shaken. He becomes paranoid about Mr Black and after yet another unwelcome social visit he runs out the backdoor jumps in his car and drives off. He soon finds himself on an unfamiliar dangerous dirt road in the dark and has to abandon his car, he sees the lights of a house ahead.......................He must get help because he needs to be able to post his entry for the competition the next day and there is work to do.

Dick manages in the first part of the novel to create a scenario that is just about believable, there is something not quite right about the world that Ragle and his family inhabit, for example there is television, but no radios, and there is something off kilter in Ragle himself. It is a mystery with an overlay of menace that works well. When the mystery starts to unravel as Ragle pushes for answers to his dilemma; Dick holds back the information skilfully enough to keep the reader entertained. The resolution, even if was too fantastic did not disappoint this reader.

Philip K Dick's novels have been the subject matter for many films and Blade Runner is the most famous, but apart from Man in the High Castle, this is the only other novel from him that I have read. This is an early example of his work and I was impressed. It now appears in the S F Masterwork series and I would rate it at four stars

Je m'en vais (I'm gone) - Jean Echenoz.
Jean Echenoz post modernist novel published in 1999 won the prestigious prix Goncourt and so I expected to read something a little different at least. The story felt like a mixture of an adventure, mystery, mid life crisis ( man's mid life crisis of course) a crime story with some black humour thrown in and so everything but the kitchen sink ( I have checked and there was no kitchen sink mentioned). What was different was the style in which it was written.

It is the story of Felix Ferrer an art dealer and sometime artist with a gallery and studio in Paris. He walks out on his wife and family and moves into the studio part of his gallery. He has an eye for the ladies and is soon involved with his mistress and a neighbour, but he needs something more. His assistant in the gallery feeds him some information about a ship carrying works of art lost in the ice pack of the North Pole. Ferrer is interested and when he discovers the location he sets off to find the ship. Obviously no experience of travelling in the artic is required and Ferrer's trip is a success, he even manages to sleep with the female nurse on the boat that takes him to the Arctic circle and an eskimo woman inside the artic circle. When he gets back to Paris his treasure is stolen and the creditors are moving in on his gallery. The story moves along at a fair pace and there are a couple of twists in the storyline that hold the interest.

Jean Echenoz tells his story in an omni-present style. It is as though he is telling his story orally. There is no room for conversations between the characters, the charm of the book is in the sheer delight of story telling. This oral style means that the author can go off on a tangent just as he remembers some detail or other, or he can question his characters motives, or he can wonder what the results of any actions might be. It is not a matter of intruding into the story: a technique used a century and a half ago by William Thackeray in Vanity fair, but of making the authors views seem part of the story. It can be confusing to read, because it is not always clear immediately who would have said or thought the thing that is expressed, but Echenoz pulls it off most of the time. He writes as though he is seeing things through the eyes of his characters and so we get details of life aboard an ice breaking boat or the dilapidation of the border post between France and Spain. Of course as in many French novels that I have read recently, it helps to have a street plan of Paris.

This is an entertaining novel that probably tries to be too many things at once, but I enjoyed the ride and there was always something of interest. I rate it as 3.5 stars.

Enjoying your journey of reading books published in 1951. A few years back I undertook a project to read a number of books published in each year of my life, starting with 1950, the year I was born. I am now up to 1953.
Glad you discovered Elizabeth Taylor. I've read several of her books, but my favorite is still the first I read, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (which was made into a good movie).

Marguerite Duras - Des Journées Entières dans les arbres
This is a collection of short stories published in 1954 fairly early in the long writing career of Marguerite Duras. The title story of nearly one hundred pages could be classed as a novella. In each of these works Duras is stretching herself to create something a little different and she succeeds in creating an atmosphere, although the shortest story Boa is the leat successful because while the longer stories develop and build the stories with their different styles, Boa is over all too quickly.

Des Journées dans les Arbres tells of an elderly woman journeying to visit her son. She arrives by aeroplane and is met by her son and his partner at the airport. The son hardly recognises his mother and this is because she has aged tremendously in the long time that they have not seen each other. The story is written as a conversation mainly between the three protagonists, and it quickly becomes apparent that the relationship is a difficult one. Jacques has been the black sheep of the family the only son who has not made money and been successful, he feels resentful and his relationship with a prostitute Marcelle is on thin ice. They live in a small three roomed apartment and the mother has to cope with fairly squalid conditions while trying to recover her health after the flight. The conversation is not easy and the visit to a nightclub where Jacques and Marcelle work as dancers/hosts becomes an ordeal for all three of them. The story was adapted and made into a film which Duras directed and it also enjoyed a run as a stage play.

Madame Dodin takes us back to between the wars and perhaps a popular subject of some writing in France; a Parisian concièrge. Madame Dodin is in her sixties and is indulging in a war with the tenants of the apartment block over the collection of refuse. It is her job to wheel out the communal bins every day, but she complains bitterly because the tenants do not throw away their rubbish everyday, saving it up so that the bins become very heavy. Madame Dodin makes sure she wakes them all up when she drags out the bins in the early morning. She has a confident in the concierge next door but also with the roadsweeper Gaston, who stops by every day on his rounds. The story turns towards Gaston who at first takes pride in his job, but becomes increasingly disenchanted. Madam Dodin an equally unhappy person confides in him and it becomes evident that there is something between them. This story develops from a fairly lengthy description of Madame Dodin's situation and gets right under the skin of the protagonists, building in confidence as it moves along.

The final story: Les Chantiers is the most experimental. A young man on holiday in a hotel notices a girl leaving to go into some woods. He misses dinner to meet her when she returns to stare at a building construction site across from the hotel. They speak briefly and for the remainder of the holiday the young man watches the young woman. Confident that she will eventually come to him. The story is told from the young man's perspective and his inner belief that the young woman will eventually notice him.

The stories have a climax to them of sorts, but the resolutions if there are any are open. There is an undeniable power, almost mystic in a couple of them; sexual attraction is an underlying theme of the final two and they are worth reading. Difficult to grasp at times as Duras searches for inner motivation, but the stories unfold and stay in the memory 4 stars.

À l'abri du sirocco - Domenico Campana
This short novel was translated from the Italian into French by Claude Bonnafont and was to hand at my local library. I could not help thinking back to stories by Boccaccio as I read through this tale of love and lust. It is set in Sicily during the second world war when Il Duce was still ridding high as leader of the Fascists, but this is not a political novel. It is a love story with a bit of intrigue and nicely put together.

Rosalia and her young husband who live in the poorer district of Palermo receive a letter from an advocate. When they get around to open it they discover that they have been left a Palace in the will of a member of the aristocracy. There are few strings attached and the palace comes complete with staff, neither Rosalia or Vicenzo have any knowledge of their benefactor Prince d'Acquafurata. At first they think it is a joke, but the advocate persuades them that it is for real and they move in. The haughty Salvatore is the head of staff and he immediately makes Rosalia uncomfortable. He discourages her friends and family from visiting and makes Vicenzo so jealous he tries to strangle him. The police interview Vicenzo, but do not take the enquiry much further especially as Vicenzo has joined the army and has been posted to Africa. Rosalia is left alone with the elderly Salvatore in the large palace, and he has designs on her....................

The novel ends with the allied assault on Sicily, but there are still two short chapters of explanation following the discovery of a journal after a suicide. While the explanation ties up the loose ends, it would have been better incorporated into the action. The narrative could have been developed further, but it is what it is and I enjoyed the story with its underlying theme of sexual desire. 3 stars.

>49 baswood: That sounds interesting... She had been on my radar for awhile - maybe I should finally read something by her.

Hervé Le Corre - Derniers Retranchements.
Searching for a book by a french crime writer in my local library, certainly restricts the choice, as most of the crime/thriller novels seem to be translations of American or English authors. The library is not very big, but there are four or five shelves given over to "policiers". I was pleased however to find something by Hervé le Corre who is a genuine french crime writer with a number of books in the genre published under his name. He was born in Bordeaux in South West France and Derniers Retranchements is a collection of ten short stories which all have a provincial town feel about them. You do not need a street plan of Paris to be able to follow the action.

I do not know if Le Corre's usual style is to write in the first person, but he uses this point of view for the majority of these stories, which vary in length from a few pages to a couple which are of novella length. He takes the point of view of the criminal and many of the protagonists are ordinary people who are pushed or fall into criminal activity due to circumstances. There are no professional criminals and the police if they appear at all take secondary roles. Typically the protagonists are people forced out of work, or those in reduced circumstances who must do menial tasks. Le Corre has sympathy for these unfortunate souls who not only have to deal with difficulties in making ends meet, but also have to deal with family and/or partnership issues as well.

In "Se taire" a parent discovers that his adolescent son has been involved in a horrendous crime which involved the the torture of an elderly woman. He attempts to confront the older men involved, to try and understand how his son got involved, but only succeeds in alerting the police which leads to problems in his own family. In L'arrestation qui vient a factory worker becomes involved in a plan to occupy his place of work which leads to locking in the managers, who are planning redundancies. A chance word alerts him to the fact that one of these managers may have had an affair with his wife. He leaves the factory to discover the truth and violence inevitably follows. "Dernier jour" is quite different from the other stories in that it takes place in the countryside where two elderly people are struggling to survive after some unnamed catastrophe has stricken the world. Two young people arrive at their house only too pleased to commit the barbarous acts that are needed to survive. The other stories are shorter, but again are concerned with the circumstances of people pushed to commit acts that seem the only way to resolve impossible situations.

I enjoyed these stories that mostly have the qualities of a real 'slice of life' feel to them, they are almost like extended reports of criminal activities that you might read in the local paper. Le Corre manages to humanise the situation without losing the gritty feel of his stories. I will be interested to read one of his full length novels and so four stars.

Ray Bradbury - The Illustrated Man
Published in Great Britain in 1952 this collection of short stories still manages to surprise the reader with its variety and buzz of new ideas, new to the 1950’s that is because other writers have mined these stories to create stories of their own. The stories fit into the loose genre of Science fiction, but there is very little science: Bradbury is more concerned with the psychological effects of life and incidents in the future. In Kaleidoscope he imagines a rocket torn apart in space and the surviving crew members space suited and in radio communication drifting towards their very individual deaths. In The Veldt a rich family indulge their children with an enhanced virtual reality room that takes over their lives. In The Other Foot a black community exiled from Earth await the arrival of the first white man to visit them in twenty years. In Marionettes, Inc a man invests in a robot that can replace him as and when he wishes allowing him the freedom to slip away to indulge himself as he wishes.

The stories are rarely longer than fifteen pages and yet it is enough time for Bradbury to immerse the reader in his tales. For example in The Long Rain an expeditionary force are trekking through the forests on Venus where it never stops raining. In Usher II an individual prepares traps based on the stories of Edgar Alan Poe to strike his own revenge on the book burners. This is the second collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury that I have re-read and while ‘The Martian Chronicles’ had a certain music and colour to them that linked the stories; The Illustrated Man has a linking device of a tattooed man whose body is overdrawn with pictures of the stories in the book, but in the end this is neither here nor there as Bradbury soon looses interest in any linkage. There is however a consistent quality of ideas behind this collection and a style that is clearly that of the same guiding hand. In short these stories are still a delight to read and one of the best collections from the 1950’s and so five stars,

>48 arubabookwoman:

Here is my list of Books published in 1951 that I have read with my star ratings:

La Colmena The Hive by Camilo Jose Cela 4
The Devil in Velvet- John Dickson Carr 3.5
My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier 4
Air Bridge - Hammond Innes 3.5
The Loved and Lost - Morley Callaghan 4.5
The Grass Harp and other Stories - Truman Capote 3.5
The Beetle Leg - John Hawkes 3.5
Spartacus - Howard Fast 4.5
The Sea Around us - Rachel Carson 4.5
Hangsaman - Shirley Jackson 4.5
Le Hussard sur le Toit - Jean Giono 5
From Here to Eternity - James Jones 4
The Second Scroll - A M Klein 5
School for Love - Olivia Manning 3.5
Night at the Vulcan - Ngaio Marsch 3.5
Night Runners of Bengal - John Masters 3.5
Les Enfants Tristes - Roger Nimier 3
The Blessing - Nancy Mitford 3
The Cruel Sea - Nicholas Monsarrat 4
The Conformist - Alberto Moravia 5
Nones - W H Auden 5
A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell 3
Cairo to Damascus - John Roy Carlson 4.5
The Age of Longing - Arthur Koestler 5
Journey with Genius (D H Lawrence) - Witter Brynner 4.5
Rain on the Pavements - Roland Camberton 4
Mémoires d'Hadrien - Marguerite Yourcenar 5
Fires on the Plain - Shohei Ooka 5
The Log from the Sea of Cortez - John Steinbeck 4
Curtain for Three - Rex Stout 3.5
Lie Down in Darkness - William Styron 4
A Game of Hiding Seek - Elizabeth Taylor 4.5
Les Rivages des Syrtes - Julien Gracq 5

AND The Science Fiction
The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury 4
Rogue Queen - L Sprague De Camp 3
Ice World - Hal Clements 3.5
The Lovers - Philip Jose Farmer 3
The Blind Spot - Homer Eon Flint and Austin Hall 2.5
The Green Hills of Earth - Robert A Heinlein 3.5
The Puppet Masters - Robert A Heinlein 3.5
The day of the Triffids - John Wyndham 5
Time and Again - Clifford D Simak 3.5
The Disappearance - Philip Wylie 4
People of the Talisman - Leigh Brackett 3
Gather, Darkness - Fritz Leiber 3
The Haunter of the Dark and other stories - H P Lovecraft 5
The stars Like Dust - Isaac Asimov 2
Beyond Infinity - Robert Spencer Carr 3
Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Lewis Padgett 3.5
Galaxy Science Fiction January 1951 - various 3

That makes 50 books in total and I plan to carry on until my star ratings get to a consistent 3 or less. (that might happen soon with the science fiction)

The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh - edited by Agnes Latham
It is a happy coincidence when two separate reading projects come together in one book, and even more happy when the book is as good as this one. The book was edited by Agnes Latham and was published in 1951; the subject is the poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, many of which were thought to be in circulation during the period 1587- 1592. The dating of Raleghs poetry is difficult as none of them were submitted for publication; he has been called an amateur poet (but not by Agnes Latham) because he probably never intended that they should be read outside the group of courtiers surrounding Queen Elizabeth. None were printed during his lifetime and they were not collected after his death. They appear in various later collections and many have been dubiously attributed to Ralegh by those editors. They were of course written in manuscript form and when these survive, the authorship can be guessed from examples of the handwriting, although a knowledge of the professional scribes would be extremely useful.

From the poetry that has been collected and attributed by Agnes Latham; Ralegh is clearly not an amateur poet in the sense that his work is incompetent or inept. It could also be argued that they are not un- professional, because poetry to some extent was the lingua franca of the Elizabethan court and Raleghs poems were professional in the extreme. He was after favours from the queen and inept or incompetent poems would not have cut it. His poetry was admired by his contemporaries and he had something of a champion in his corner, the great English poet Edmund Spenser. There does also seem to have been a rush by later editors to attribute poems to Ralegh and this maybe because Ralegh's poems speak more clearly to contemporary readers. They can burst out from their courtly confines; putting personal feelings ahead of aesthetic sense. The reader catches more than a glimpse of the man behind the poetry and for that reason it is useful to know some of the history of the man himself.

After a brief introduction Agnes Latham launches right into a potted history. He owed his position at Elizabeth's court through his intelligence, his zeal and his ability to play the power games that were a feature amongst Elizabeth's entourage. It was mostly about pleasing and doing the Queens bidding and of course providing entertainment for her majesty, the courtiers vied to become among her favourites and Ralegh without the benefit of a powerful family succeeded in becoming captain of the Yeoman of the guard, with much access to the queen herself. His other exploits as an adventurer, discoverer, coloniser and spy, do not seen to have provided him with much inspiration for poetry. His poetry was all about providing a proxy love to the virgin queen and then expressing regret when it was all over. Ralegh's career as a courtier was almost over by 1592 when he fell out of favour and attempts to get back in the queens good graces were unsuccessful. He threw himself into the discovery of new lands with a voyage of exploration to Guiana perhaps with thoughts of buying his way back into the court.

Agnes Latham attributes 41 existent poems to Ralegh, but some of them are hardly more than epigrams. In a separate section of notes she provides details of her sources for each of the poems, sometimes with short comments on the subject matter and perhaps an attempt to place the poem along the time line of Ralegh's life. Ralegh was a translator and like all good authors of the time, intent on plundering earlier sources for inspiration, and where this is obvious Latham provides a copy of the original work. Latham does not skate over the difficulties in editing the poems and one can only admire her energy in researching the originals, because for some of the more popular poems there are plenty of alternative versions. By far the longest poem is 'The 11th: and last booke of the Ocean to Scinthia' and Latham says:

"I have not attempted to interpret difficult passages. Neither careless scribe or meddlesome printer come between reader and the text, which is, so far as I can reproduce it, what the author wrote. The problems are simply problems of interpretation; matters for the most part upon which a reader prefers his own opinion to any one else's. The meaning in several places is very dark and I cannot claim that I am more enlightened than another"

Well I can vouch for the fact that this is a difficult poem. Fortunately perhaps the previous ten books are non-existent, apart from Ralegh there is no evidence that anybody had read the previous books. Perhaps they were never written, the subject matter is a sort of homage to Queen Elizabeth with a more popular title being 'The ocean's love for Cynthia'; Cynthia being Queen Elizabeth. Perhaps even Ralegh shied away from writing ten volumes in praise of the Queen. The poem is not without interest, as there are some good passages.

Latham refers to some of the poetry as being very dark and certainly as Ralegh started his fall from grace his poetry becomes melancholy and even a little bitter. He was not frightened of writing what he felt, and because of the political nature of the poems he shied away from publication. There are some good love poems, there are plenty on the subject of the wiser adult looking back with envy on his youth and ageing and death never seem far away.

This is an excellent publication for anyone that wants to get more up close and personal with Sir Walter Raleghs poetry and a five star read.

This is one of the most famous poems
The Lie
BY SIR WALTER RALEGH
Go, soul, the body’s guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant.
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What’s good, and doth no good.
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others’ action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by a faction.
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition,
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate.
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending.
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust.
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honor how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favor how it falters.
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in overwiseness.
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention.
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay.
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming.
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it’s fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity;
Tell virtue least preferreth.
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing—
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing—
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab the soul can kill.

Emmanuel Carrière - Un roman russe.
I have never read a book quite like Carrière's Un roman russe, the book's title leads the reader into thinking it is a novel when in fact it is an autobiography of a three year period in the life of the author. Sometimes written in the first person sometimes in the second person, with extracts from other works that Carriere had published; a letter to his mother rounds off the enterprise which also includes attempts to learn the Russian language and a lullaby to someone else's baby. The book can certainly play with the readers head and all the time this reader was wondering about how reliable a witness, is Carrière: especially when talking about the size of his cock. A well renowned author writing about himself may try and disguise the egoist in the process: Carrière cannot be accused of hiding his light under a bushel, as the most important person in Carrière's world is Carriere himself. This may be difficult to avoid if much of what you are writing about is an analysis of your feelings, however some readers may find this so annoying, that they cannot engage with the book, I found my patience stretched at some points, but in the end I enjoyed the journey.

There are a number of things going on in Carriere's life (if there were not the book would be a little boring). He is in a new and erotic relationship with the girl of his dreams, he is trying to come to terms with the unspoken shame in the family of his maternal grandfather, who was probably shot for collaboration with the Germans in 1944: his mother a successful politician seems to avoid any discussion on the subject. He has become interested in an Hungarian patriot who was captured by the Russians (again in 1944) and spent over 50 years in captivity before being repatriated. He travels to the village of Koltelnitch to find out more with a small team and involves himself in the life of the village, with a view of writing a book or making a film; he makes three or four trips. He has also been commissioned by the newspaper Le Monde to write a novella and he chooses to write an erotic piece based on his own experiences with his girlfriend. This unsurprisingly does not bode well with Sophie his new partner who says to him.

"It is the fault in you because you have never been capable of seeing anything, but your own point of view"

Carrière does not flinch from putting across his own point of view, which more often than not is based on his own selfish needs. He does not ask for the reader's sympathy, as he explains the way he feels during his tempestuous relationship with his partner and his difficult relationship with his family.

The sections of the book are interwoven skilfully to form a coherent narrative. I particularly liked the descriptions of life in the poor Russian village, the fear of the people living under a regime where people can disappear, and the struggles of the author's team in making headway with their investigation. The characters that emerge are drawn from real life and there is another story to be told that makes the journey worthwhile. The difficulties and emotional drain suffered by Carriére in his relationship with Sophie, which seems to be based on sexual attraction and not much else is also well drawn. The extract from his erotic novel, which caused some criticism from the newspaper's own critics, would have been better left out of this book in my opinion and did not encourage me to seek it out.

It may be difficult to look beyond the ego-trip that is undoubtedly part of this book. Carriére is not self effacing and Sophie's criticism of him is strikingly apt. The raw information and evidence of his thoughts and actions are there for all to see and the fragility of his wants and needs can be gleaned from his prose, which never lets him down. He tells it all like he thinks it is and as readers we can piece together a fascinating exercise in autobiographical writing. He does not ask us to like him, but I get the impression this book may have served some sort of purpose for the author and it dragged me along with it - 4 stars.

Sandrine Collette - Et Toujours les Forêts
Dystopia, Post-apocalyptic call it what you will, but novels of this kind must portray a world that the reader can understand, or even better to feel, to be successful. Although I struggled to believe in the world before the cataclysmic event, that changed everything in Sandrine Collets book, I had no problem with the world that she created afterwards. In addition her focus on a particular isolated families' situation had an intensity rarely found in novels of this type.

We first meet Corentin hanging from his mothers stomach and when he is finally born he is an unwanted child. He is dumped onto his grandmother who lives in a small hamlet surrounded by forests. She raises him in the ways of the forests and when he is old enough he moves on to a large town where he goes to college. During the time of his upbringing the world is suffering from climate change; getting hotter. He becomes a member of a loose society of students who make a home for themselves underground to avoid the heated climate. This saves them from the fire that destroys the planet and which lasts for days. Only those students who wait patiently for the fire above them to burn itself out survive and when they finally emerge they separate immediately to search for their families. Corentin goes back to the forests to find his grandmother and her latest charge - the young woman Mathilde. They had been working in their cave under the house and had survived. Everything on the surface of the planet had been burnt in the inferno, including all the people. The dust from the ashes had obscured the sun and the world had plunged into a near permanent winter. Nothing would grow.

Corentin moves in with the two women and explores the local village in search of food and they start to wait out the catastrophe. However two years on and nothing has changed, they live in a grey/blackened world only alleviated by the snowfall. Mathilde has no love or feelings for Corentin, but they drift together with the need to create something: a family, Mathilde gets pregnant and then suffers horribly in bringing twins into the world. Grandmother Augustine dies after this horrendous confinement, but Mathilde recovers and the two young people are left to make their way in the new world.

Sandrine Collett tells her story in splashes of short prose. It is all about survival in an inhospitable world. Corentine and Mathilde's family get bigger, until Mathilde cries enough, there will be no more children. Her descriptions of the burnt forest and the humans anxious search for signs of new life, new growth; form the backbone to this novel. Collet's concentration on the nucleus of the family and its loveless central relationship provides an atmosphere of isolation and seclusion. The will to survive struggles to break through the enforced claustrophobia. A cold, depressing read, it may be, but with an undeniable atmosphere all of its own. I was pleased to look up from my reading to see the greenery outside my window. It felt good to keep ensuring myself that the planet had not burned. The novel won the 2020 Grand Prix RTL-Lire in France and I was convinced and so 4.5 stars.

>55 baswood: well, that was wonderful - poem and review. Noting this Raleigh collection.

I'm catching up, and encountering all these French titles, and they are all new to me. I'm most interested in this last one, but I would need a translation. Well, Marguerite Duras interests. In English I noted for myself A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor, who I haven't read. I would like to fix that.

>54 baswood: this 1951 list is impressive.

>18 baswood: Munday's Thomas More is excerpted by Signet as a source for one or more of the Henry VI plays. But The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth ( >12 baswood:) was not referenced by Signet in Henry IV parts I & II.

Anthony Burgess - 1985
Digging down through the list of unread books on my shelves; the next one to surface was 1985 which was published in 1978. It has the feel of something being cobbled together, probably stemming from a critique of George Orwell's 1984 which takes up the first hundred pages. Burgess then goes on to create his own dystopia, where he tells the story of Bev Jones' fight against the the unionised chaos of Britain in 1985. The publication is rounded off with an essay on "Workers language" and an epilogue.

First things first: I found the critique of Orwell's 1984 interesting enough. Burgess asks himself some simple questions and then answers them with plenty of wit and style. Orwell's 1984 was published in 1949 and while his vision of the world 35 years after he wrote his novel was not at all accurate, Burgess finds plenty of things that have pointed the way to how things still might turn out, remembering that he was writing in 1978 still six years before 1984. Perhaps he should have waited until 1984 to write his critique. Reading his extended essay now in 2021 seems pointless.

Burgess' own attempts to rewrite 1984 as 1985 are presumptive and disrespectful. It really is a piece of garbage, lacking in imagination and with an underlying whiff of racism, misogyny and elitism. The so-called winter of discontent of 1978 in Britain is the background. It is taken as the starting point for the trade union movement seizing power through strike action. When 1985 comes around the unionised closed-shop in Britain (renamed Tucland) controls the means of production; leading to chaos and an increasingly authoritarian regime. At the time of publication Burgess' book may have felt like right wing propaganda and reading it today feels like a bootless exercise. I soon lost patience with his essay predicting a Workers English and the Epilogue takes the form of an interview, where Burgess spouts more rubbishy thoughts about the immediate future. A book that may well have pandered to some elitist friends, but for me it is not worthy of being put in the second hand book collection box, and so out with the rubbish it goes 2 stars.

>59 baswood: Agree about 1985, it was a complete waste of time. The odd thing is that two years later, he came out with one of his best novels, Earthly powers. He was probably just better at off-the-wall imaginative fiction than he was at political analysis.

William F Temple - The 4-sided Triangle
I had this science fiction novel on my 1951 to read list, but it was actually published in book form in 1949, no matter it proved to be an entertaining read. This was Temple's first novel worked up from his short story, which appeared some ten years earlier. Terence Fisher directed a film version for Hammer Film Productions some two years later.

The story is told in the first person by Dr. Harvey who takes care of an extremely intelligent boy (Bill Leggat) who comes from an abusive family. Bill becomes something of a scientific prodigy and after meeting Robin Grant at University the two men work together to produce a successful duplicating machine. Along the way they have employed the beautiful free spirited Barbara and the team form the three sides of the triangle. Both men fall in love with Barbara, but she chooses Robin as her partner, but there is the duplicating machine standing by and it is pressed into action.

This novels strengths are not so much the science fiction, but some very good characterisation and a plot that kept me reading until the denouement. William F Temple captures small town England well and the class system that pervades everything. Robin comes from a rich family and is the natural winner in the contest for the love of Barbara, but his adherence to the culture in which he was raised always threatens to blow the relationships apart:

"They were so certain of their ideas of right and wrong, these people. They could be coldly logical in practical things, yet hopelessly illogical in things that touched their emotional springs. They would be aghast at the moral wrongness of using poison gas in warfare, but if the enemy used it just once they would with a burning sense of righteousness, drench him and his family with it, with interest......"

It is the moral issues that dominate this book, they to a large extent drive the plot. The science and the choices made by the protagonists are in the realms of fiction, but the moral issues that they face are not and this is where I think the novel succeeds. It does show signs of being padded out from a short story. Temple includes some scientific theory, along with some literary references and I wondered how much of this was featured in the original short story. This is a good, well written science fiction yarn and so 4 stars

>57 baswood: Nice review of Et toujours les Forêts. It hasn't been translated into English yet, but I noticed that the Kindle version of one of Collette's earlier novels, Just After the Wave, is on sale for $2.99 in the US and has been given good reviews here, on Goodreads and Amazon, so I just purchased it.

>62 kidzdoc: Hope you enjoy it Darryl

Daniel Pennac - Au Bonheur des Ogres
Daniel Pennac is a french author who earned the respect of the critics with his 2007 publication Chagrin d'ecole (sorrows of school), which is an autobiographical account of the early school days of the author. We have been studying his book in our french class and so when we next visited the library I found one of his novels; Le Cas Malaussène. However when I got it home and read the blurb on the back cover, I discovered it was a revisitation of an earlier novel: Au bonheur des ogres. I thought it a good idea to read the earlier novel first and so I downloaded it on my kindle.

The earlier novel features the family Malaussène and the main protagonist is Benjamin, who is the head of the family in the absence of his mother, who is away on an extended holiday and who will come back pregnant as usual. There are six children and all have different fathers. Benjamin works in a Parisian departmental store as a "Bouc Emissaire and anyone who has tried to return faulty goods to a big Paris department store may have some indication of what this entails: quality control, but with a difference. When a customer returns faulty goods to the reclaims office, Benjamin is summoned to the office and the manager says to the customer that the faulty goods are entirely the result of Benjamin's shoddy work. The manager then launches into into a tirade against Benjamin threatening him with the sack and reducing him to tears. It is at this point that the customers generally withdraw their complaint. When bombs start going off in the store then Benjamin is soon targeted as the scapegoat and is interviewed by the police. The novel then turns into a sort of detective story, with Benjamin's family, helping and hindering him to clear his name. It has many funny moments with Benjamin himself proving to be a good teller of stories.

Pennac is a good enough writer to include situations that show the downside of Paris society and the workings of the department store. References to Emile Zola's novel; Au Bonheur des Dames are not accidental. The humour is fairly black and the book certainly has a darker side. The situations are well worked through and Pennac avoids making the obvious wisecracks. The french is colloquial and there are instances of the author developing his own verlan, but this did not stop me being amused. (there is an English translation) 3.5 stars.

>64 baswood: Someone advised me to read that years ago when I was working in the Complaints Department... I'm glad you enjoyed it as well. The next two or three in the series were also worth reading, but I rather lost the will to live after Monsieur Malaussène. I don't know if it improves again with the most recent ones.

I had to look up "verlan" — I didn't realise that was a thing. Interesting.

>65 thorold: The use of the slang language "verlan" is not always easy for a non native speaker. It makes me wonder how much I miss in my day to day conversations with people around where I live. It would seem that some areas of France have their own verlan. I will probably be forever in the dark.

John Dickenson: Prose and Verse
This is a book edited by Rev. Alexander B Grosart and was published in 1878. The Rev Grosart in his introduction says that little is known about the Elizabethan author John Dickenson and there are very few surviving texts of his work. Apparently little has changed since 1878 as a brief search on the internet did not throw up much new information. There are three works by Dickenson in this volume

The Shepheardes Complaint
This is an eclogue - a pastoral poem in a classical style. There is nothing new here, but the poetry is lively enough.

Arisbas Euphues Amidst his slumbers or Cupids Journey to Hell.
This is a pastoral romance probably published in 1594. It is a a mixture of prose, sonnets, lyrics and elegies and tells the story of the exiled prince Arisbas venturing into Arcadia the home of the shepherds. He is found wandering and in distress by a shepherd (Damon) who takes him home to his rude but honest domicile where Arisbas tells his story. He had been betrothed to a woman by his father who he did not love and had since fallen in love with Timocleas. They had run away together and taken ship, but Arisbas had been separated from Timocleas and was now searching for her. Damon tells him that a very handsome young man had recently arrived in Arcadia and perhaps Arisbas should consult him. As in most romances of this type the young man proves to be Timocleas in disguise. She also has a tale to tell. There is also a story of Cupids journey into hell told very much in classical style in poetry and prose which was well known in the Arcadian community of shepherds. As an Elizabethan romance this works quite well.

Greene in Conceipt. New raised from his grave to write the tragique historie of Valeria of London
This is perhaps the most interesting of the three items, If only for the woodcut picture of the Elizabethan writer Robert Greene depicted as wearing his shroud. Greene had died some years earlier, but obviously his works were still popular, hence Dickenson's story supposedly inspired by Greene himself. It is told in prose form with the occasional poem and is very much in the style of John Lyly. It is a moral tale very much in keeping with Greene's oeuvre and moves away from the classical pastoral work of the previous items. The story could have taken place in Elizabethan London. It tells of a rich older man's love (Giraldo) for the beautiful much younger Valeria. There is much debate about an older mans lust for a younger woman and the dangers of a relationship between an older man and a younger woman. Giraldo is not put off by the pitfalls and weds Valeria. As the years pass, Valeria a shrewd young woman looks for romance outside of Giraldo's home and her exploits are revealed to Giraldo by one of his servants. One of Valerias admirers Arthemio takes Valeria into his house, but her expensive habits soon ruin them both.

These items point to a skilled writer, who although has nothing original to say proves to be perfectly at home in the styles of Robert Greene and John Lyly. As examples of the writing of the Elizabethan era they are competent and lively. However at the end of the day for the modern reader they are much of a muchness. 2.5 stars.

The woodcut of Greene is cool. Appreciate the lesson. I hadn’t heard of John Dickenson.

Richard Barnfield - The Affectionate Shepherd

Scarce had the morning starre hid from the light
Heavens crimson canopie with stars bespangled,
But I began to rue th' unhappy sight
Of that faire boy that had my hart intangled;
Cursing the time, the place, the sense, the sin;
I came, I saw, I viewd, I slipped in.

If it be sinne to love a sweet-fac'd boy,
Whose amber locks trust up in golden tramels
Dangle adowne his lovely cheekes with joy,
When pearle and flowers his faire haire enamels;
If it be sinne to love a lovely lad,
Oh then sinne I, for whom my soule is sad.

The opening two stanzas of this lyric poem could be said to place the reader immediately in a world of homoeroticism. It was published in 1594 when Barnfield was 20 years old and although it had some success, it seems to have suffered because of of its content. This first poem in the collection was subtitled 'The teares of an affectionate shepheard sicke for the love or the complaint of Daphnis for the love of Ganimede' It is Daphnis who is telling the story and he reveals that Queen Guendolen also has designs on the beautiful boy Ganimede. Queen Guendolen is herself being wooed by an older man but:

Now doth he stroke his beard, and now againe
He wipes the drivel from his filthy chin;
Now offers he a kisse, but high Disdaine
Will not permit her hart to pity him:

This seems all too much for Daphnis as he again thinks of the beautiful boy Ganimede and he gets more sensual:

O would to God, so I might have my fee,
My lips were honey, and thy mouth a bee!
Then shouldst thou sucke my sweete and my faire flower,
That now is ripe and full of honey-berries;
Then would I leade thee to my pleasant bower,
Fild full of grapes, of mulberries, and cherries:
Then shouldst thou be my waspe or else my bee,
I would thy hive, and thou my honey, bee.

The poem then becomes a lyric of all the good things that Daphnis has to offer Ganimede in his attempt to get Ganimede to come home with him and live in his sheepcote. He offers him all the beauty that nature has to offer and there are some fine stanzas describing the joys and wonders of the animal and plant life that abounds. He ends by reminding Ganimede that his good looks will be eroded by time, but that Daphnis will still love him. The first part of the poem finishes at this point.

The second part is entitled: 'the second dayes lamentation of the affectionate shepherd'. It would seem that Ganimede has refused Daphnis and he chides him for being cruel and unkind. He then goes on to express his love in more desperate terms. There is a curious sequence where he hones in on Ganimede's long curly hair which he has admired previously, but now he cautions the boy and reminds him that Absolom was killed when his hair caught in a tree. He says that Ganimede's hair is indecent, but he forgives it because love is blind. He the lectures Ganimede on his pride and describes for him the virtues that he should seek to achieve. Their is another curious twist at the end of this section: Daphnis reveals that he is now an old man and that he can say farewell to the love-hating boy

The third part is entitled 'The shepherds content, or the happiness of a harmless life. Written on the occasion of the former subject.' This section portrays the joys of the shepherds life, the simple pleasures and the freedom from worries. Again their is a curious section where three stanzas are inserted in praise of Sir Philip Sidney ending with the hope that his soul sleeps in sweet Elysium. The poem then goes on to further extoll the joys of a shepherds life and all thoughts of the love for Ganimede have been forgotten.

The third section certainly anchors the poem in the pastoral tradition. There follows a sonnet and a complaint, but theses can be quickly passed over. The Affectionate Shepherd is a bit of a find, there is much to delight the modern reader. The verse flows easily and does not lose its musical feel. I suppose one has to bear in mind that it is based on the classical pastoral tradition and so may appear artificial to readers who are not familiar with the genre. I thoroughly enjoyed its freshness and vitality and so 4 stars.

>69 baswood: those poetic quotes are beautiful.

Oh..., Philippe Djian
Oh, but not in a good way. Djian's book reads like something that begs to be made into a film. It has all the crash, bang wallop of a film script, with more side stories than enough. It builds towards a set piece climax which afterwards gives a brief time for reflection, as all the jigsaw pieces that have been thrown in the air come down in some sort of order. It is almost a relief when the action finally stops and the credits roll up and ......... ah I was forgetting for a moment that it is not a film. There is no doubt that Djian tells a good story and if it heads towards more excitement than is really necessary then the skilled prose and dialogue makes it acceptable. I can understand why his book is well thought of, so well thought of that it won the author le Prix Interallié of 2012.

So why do I think it is Oh..., but not in a good way? apart from being populist nonsense - no I didn't really mean to say that. It is Djian's presumption of being able to tell the story in the first person from the point of view of Michéle; his female protagonist, who in the story suffers a number of violations. She is a wealthy, attractive, and successful business woman, who as a talent spotter in a publishing company must tell the many male, hopeful authors (including her ex-husband) that they are just not good enough. A prime target one might think for male rape fantasies, and in my opinion that is just what this books boils down to: Michéle (as told by Djian) although troubled by the violations quite enjoys it: the sexual frisson has her coming back for more. For all I know many women might have rape fantasies that are at various depths in their psyche, but here we have a character who gives the writer the excuse to titillate his readers with the idea that women like Michéle can enjoy being violated.

Michéle leads a complicated life. She is a partner in a publishing firm, she has been estranged from her husband for a couple of years and is having an affair with her female business partner's husband. She wants to end it, but he doesn't. Her son Victor who is in debt has recently moved in with a pregnant woman. Victor is not the father, but seems to be involved in raising money for the real father who is in prison for drug running in Thailand. He is tapping his mother and father for more money, but his father (MIchéles ex) has just hooked up with a pretty younger girl and has no money to spare. Michéle's mother Irene has recently taken in a much younger man, her husband is serving a life sentence in prison for a mass murder of young children. The notoriety had plagued her early life with her daughter, but now she is pressing Michéle to visit her father in prison for the first time. Michéle is attracted to a new neighbour, a younger successful banker (Patrick) living across the road; he is of course married, but his wife is going away on a religious retreat. Patrick tells Michéle to watch out for a predatory man lurking in their smart neighbourhood. The publishing company has financial worries of its own after the 2008 crash and Michéle must work hard to keep clients, mainly TV film makers interested in her cache of authors. Michéle in her efforts to keep all her balls in the air invites all these characters over with their problems, to her place for a pre Christmas lunch: the only characters not able to come are the drug runner and the mass murderer who are in prison. What can possibly go wrong?

The Prix Interallie is announced each year in November following the publishing houses big release of new titles that coincide with students going back to school after the summer holidays. The panel is made up of authors and journalists who only consider french authors. This was not a great choice, even if the story telling is of a very high standard 3 stars.

I think I won't look for that one in translation. But that is quite a convoluted pre-Christmas lunch.

Stanley Mullen - Kinsmen of the Dragon
Whilst searching through the Library of Congress Catalogue of Copyright Entries for 1951, (yes I am really a sad person) I came across Kinsmen of the Dragon by Stanley Mullen. It was a surprise because I thought I had cornered the market in 1951 science fiction and fantasy. A quick search on Abe books found the cheapest edition to be over £50 which takes it way above my casual reading price bracket. However the kindle edition costs under 3 euros and so I got it to read, thinking this could possibly be a lost classic of science fiction and fantasy from that era. At the end of the day I am pleased it cost under three euros. Not that it is that bad, certainly not as bad as James Blish and Damon Knight claimed it to be, reviewing it at the time.

The story is a mixture of science fiction and fantasy rather in the style of L Sprague De Camp although more carefully written and much more ambitious. It is a story about parallel worlds; that is a parallel world to our earth. An underground religious sect in London has formed around its leader (Franchard) who has strange powers, which seemed to be linked to radioactive material. Eric Joyce fresh from war time exploits is hired to look into the activities of the group. Through his investigations he comes across John Redwood who tells an extraordinary story of visiting another world, a very hostile environment, from which he has barely escaped. Redwood soon dies of radiation poisoning. The scientist believes that Redwood has somehow crossed a portal into a parallel world and that Franchard is from the other side and has evil intent on planet earth. It is not long before Joyce with his multi-millionaire friend and submarine owner Roger Grant are steaming out to the North Atlantic with a military team to find the portal.

The adventures in the alien world are bloody and relentless. Mullen does a good job in describing the circumstances and the world building is solid. His hero's do all the things that hero's are expected to do with never a moment of self doubt. There is plenty of excitement generated, although events do get a little repetitive. There is magic, there are many gun battles and mysterious adversaries; there is also a beautiful alien woman who flits between the two worlds luring men to their deaths or saving their souls, but there are no dragons. The plot line encompasses a full scale invasion of the earth and Arch-druids with super powers. Mullen packs many things into this novel, even linking it with Welsh druidic legends and stories told by Taliesin.

There are many good things in this fantasy novel, but it is aimed at an adolescent readership. As an adult I could still enjoy parts of it, but my interest wandered from time to time. Not a lost classic rather a summation of all the things you might expect to find in a fantasy novel of this period. If written more recently it could have stretched to at least four volumes. 3.5 stars.

>73 baswood: As far as I am aware that book was printed only once in a very small print run. Which explains the prices of the hardcover. :). Had not realized that it came out as an ebook.

Oh but that cover is awesome. I would love to be sitting on public transportation reading that and furtively watching people's reactions.

Emmanuel Carrère - La Classe de neige
Emmanuel Carrères short novel was published in 1995 and made into a film Class Trip (English title) in 1998. It is an atmospheric mystery story of a pre-teen schoolboy's disastrous school trip for a week of ski-ing lessons. Nicholas the small and overprotected boy knows he will not fit in and dreads the week ahead. The mystery story tinged with horror works well enough, but it is the authors pertinent depiction of a nervous boy that is the real star of this book.

Nicholas is a compulsive collector of free gifts from petrol stations when we meet him, probably immature for his age and frightened that his occasional bed-wetting will cause him acute embarrassment when he has to undergo his school trip. He compensates for his immaturity with a vivid sense of imagination, he is learning how the adult world works and knows enough to manipulate issues to his own advantage, but comes horribly unstuck when he misjudges events in the ski resort. His sensitive nature elicits care from some adults around him, but opens him up to ridicule from his peer group.

His school trip gets off to a bad start when his father insists on making a 400km round trip to save him travelling on the school bus and then driving off without unloading his suitcase. He immediately becomes the odd boy out and it is only when Hodkann the largest boy in the group and something of a loner himself, offers to lend him nightclothes that Nicholas is saved further embarrassment. Nicholas has his first wet dream that night and wakes up thinking he has wet the bed. In his shame and anxiety he wanders outside in the snow where he would have frozen to death if he had not been able to get inside the parked car of Patrick, one of the teachers. Nicholas immediately develops a fever and is separated from the rest of the group with a camp bed made up in the head teachers office. Nicholas loves the attention from the adults and when he overhears that his diagnosis might be somnambulism he acts up his symptoms. From this point on Nicholas can do what he does best and that is to invent a slightly imaginary world with himself at the centre. A horrible murder of a young boy in the ski resort fires his fantasies and his exaggeration of the events leads him to invent stories that involves Hodkann.

The closeted warmth of Nicholas' world in the cafe, where he can watch the other boys sk-ing and the office contrasts with the first snows that blanket the world outside. Nicholas' vivid imagination fires the mystery and the reader searches for clues as to what has happened. Much of what is happening comes from Nicholas' point of view, where adult conversations, huddled shapes merge with Nicholas' fears and obsessions. One short chapter three quarters of the way through the book has Nicolas meeting up with Hodkann by accident in Paris some twenty years later. Nicolas fears for his life. This sharpens the mystery as to what is happening in the ski-resort.

This is a well written story of a sensitive boy's first real experience in an adult world. Nicolas will learn much of what has happened, but the reader must work a little, to piece it together. I enjoyed the hot-house atmosphere created, the insight into the thoughts and actions of young Nicholas and the mystery story and so 4 stars.

Great review. Have you checked out the movie?

T H White - The Goshawk
A misanthropic man meets a misanthropic bird so let battle commence.
This is an autobiographical account of White's struggle to train a goshawk to be a companion and hunting bird. White was a man in touch with the natural world, who valued the friendship of animals rather than fellow human beings. He welcomed the challenge of training a goshawk, without any detailed knowledge of falconry, relying on his own observations and knowledge of the natural world. It is a rugged and curiously unemotional story, told straight from the falconer's glove.

The book was published in 1951, however it feels much older than that. It was completed some fifteen years earlier and so represents the epoch just before the second world war. The style of writing feels even older as there are few references to the modernist styles of Joyce, Lawrence or Woolf. White muses on his fledgling career as a writer at the start of his story after two earlier attempts at science fiction:

"But what an earth was the book to be about? It would be about the efforts of a second rate philosopher who lived alone in a wood, being tired of most humans in any case, to train a person who was not human, but a bird."

The goshawk arrives trying to force its way out of a cloth covered box and the author's task has begun. After managing to settle the bird down he prepares to spend three days awake in order for the bird to tire itself into sleep. This seems to be a task that White has invented for himself and although he is right to say that there are no easy options, this course of action seems to be masochistic. Every time that White approached the bird it would 'bate': that is flap his wings enough to tumble off the perch and hang upside down fastened by his tress, finally he has success as the bird feels comfortable enough to sleep. The next six weeks are spent with the bird as almost a constant fixture on his gloved hand. White got used to doing most things with one hand using his free hand to write daily notes of his progress. The book is therefore a summary of these daily notes as White's ambition is to achieve the five great milestones of falcon training: the moment when the bird first ate, the moment when it gave in to its master after the watch, the moment when it flew to his fist, the moment when it flew to him from a distance of 100 yards and the moment when it made its kill.

The bird proves difficult to master and White finds himself taking one step forward and then almost immediately two steps back. It increases his natural pessimism and the situation in 1936 with the fascists in power in Germany and Italy increases his bitter mood:

"In the end one did not need European civilisation, did not need power, did not need most of ones fellow men, who were saturated by both these: finally would not need oneself."

It becomes a fierce struggle between man and bird as to who would be master and this reader felt that they probably deserved each other. The strengths of the book are; the details of this struggle and White's observations of the countryside around him. It is the height of summer, but there are many days of bad weather and this book is a gloomy struggle: relentless and unrelieving. I had enough of White and his goshawk long before the end of the book 3 stars.

Well, kudos for pushing through. I found your review lovely, and really enjoyed it, but I don’t feel I need to read the book.

This specific book is covered in H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, a book on grief and training a goshawk and on White and his book. She also left me fascinated with, but limited interest in actually reading, White’s own account. : ) But I would read more by Macdonald.

I have not read H is for Hawk which I note has received some good reviews. It is not on my radar at the moment.

>80 baswood: it’s certainly not a must-read.

Françoise Chandernagor - Couleur du temps
Françoise Chandernagor is a member of the Académie Goncourt (it says so on the cover of her novel) a French literary organisation based in Paris. It was originally set up in 1900 as a challenge to the more conservative Académie Française. It is responsible for the annual award of the prix Goncourt. It would seem to be an elite group of French language writers and according to Wiki:

The ten members of the academy are usually called les Dix (the Ten). They meet the first Tuesday of each month, except in summer. Since 1914, they have convened in an oval room, the salon Goncourt, on the second floor of the Restaurant Drouant,2 place Gaillon, in the heart of Paris. The cutlery which they use while dining there constitutes the main physical continuity of the academy. Each new member receives the fork and knife of the member whom he (or she) is replacing, and the member's name is engraved on the knife and the fork.

In her short novel: Couleur du Temps, Chandernagor has chosen to depict the world of a French painter/artist in the 18th century. She has imagined an artist and set him down in the real milieu of the time. Baptiste V..... specialises in portraiture which goes against the subject matter of the top artists of the time. In accordance with the hierarchy of subject matter as laid down by the Royal Academy; history painting was at the top of the list with portraiture some way below. Baptiste V.... however becomes the leading artist in his genre and is appointed artist to King Louis 15th. He is a man who knows his own worth; from humble beginnings he has worked hard in artists studios to achieve the right to start his own company of artists. We meet him first of all at the end of his life when he has again passed out of fashion, but has one painting on show at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy. It is a portrait of his own family group, a painting that he has worked on ever since his marriage adding his children to the picture as they came along. Chandernagor uses the picture to describe the life of the artist; a life full of family tragedies.

The clever use of the family portrait is the signpost that leads the reader through the novel. We are told of Babtiste V...s early struggles, his marriage to a younger woman who brings with her a dowry that allows him to strike out on his own and set up his studio. He is a man dedicated to his work a supreme technician who knows how to please the people who commission his work. He rails against the history painters whose search for the sublime is something beyond Baptiste's comprehension. The strength of the novel is the depiction of an artists studio in 18th century Paris. The huge studio room where the artist's workforce share their space with Baptiste's family. His wife Sophie who pays the clavecin in one part of the room, the three easels set up in another part, the mentally challenged daughter sitting in one corner facing the wall and his other children and pets also sharing the space. Baptiste wants his son to follow in his footsteps, but Jean-Nicholas has not the talent and struggles with his tuition. The tragedy is that Baptiste outlives his family and regrets the fact that his work for the king took him away from the family group, he also becomes bitter when his own paintings lose their popularity with his patrons, he is not reduced to poverty, but is left a fairly lonely figure.

Chandernagor tells a good story with a central motif and creates the atmosphere of the life and times of a successful artists. Some readers might see this as too much of an intellectual exercise; for example there are the tragedies in Baptiste's life, but they happen with little drama. It is in the end a biography of an imaginary character, cleverly done, but rather strait-laced. I enjoyed the reading experience and so 3.5 stars.

I'm happy I finally could catch up with your reviews. As always, I enjoyed the variety of your reads and the quality of the reviews.

>57 baswood: I have this book, Et toujours les forêts on my radar, so your positive review might encourage me to read it. I liked the interviews I read from Sandrine Colette after she won the Prix de la Closerie des Lilas, but I've had quite a few disappointement with recently published French novels, so I'm still not sure...

>75 lisapeet: I second this. I love that cover. I think I could read Kinsmen of the Dragon just for the sake of the cover!

Honoré de Balzac - Le Père Goriot
This is an amazing novel as Balzac uses Paris as a backdrop to paint a picture of a society; stratified, corrupt, amoral and money-obsessed: if this sounds like the Tory Government in England today then nothing has changed since 1819; the epoch of Le Père Goriot. Balzac's novel was published in serial form in 1834 and was criticised at the time for its negative view of Paris and the Parisians. No doubt Balzac could have said that his novel was set in an earlier time when the monarchy had been re-established after the fall of Napoleon, but it has come to be recognised as a valid portrait of the human condition.

The story concerns the inhabitants of a Parisian Boarding House: Maison Vaquer, and three boarders in particular. Eugene Rastignac: a medical student who shrugs off his studies when he realises that he can get ahead in society more easily, through a good marriage or as a lover of a wealthy socialite. Le Père Goriot an elderly retired business man who has fallen on hard times through his adoration of his two daughters; Delphine and Anastasia; he has obtained good marriages for them, but they see him as a continual source of revenue and he has been reduced to poverty. The third man is Vautrin a worldly wise man who tempts Rastignac into criminal activity, Vautrin is a mysterious character and there are suspicions around his activities. Rastignac has family connections that allow him an introduction to Parisian High Society, he meets Delphine who is unhappily married and is looking to escape from her husband. Meanwhile Vautrin is tempting Rastignac to make a play for Victorine, another boarder at Maison Vaquer; Victorine would receive a huge inheritence if her elder brother should die.

A feature of much nineteenth century literature is the careful and realistic descriptions of the setting for the story. Balzac spends twenty three pages at the very start of the novel detailing life in the Maison Vaquer. It is a fascinating experience to follow the authors eye around this mean, but bourgeoise residence. The story unfolds slowly as Rastignac escapes for brief moments following his route through society and learning what he must do to improve his position. Throughout the novel there are alternatively dense and lively passages to enjoy: the arrest of the master criminal "Trompe-le-Mort; the temptation of Rastignac into the schemes of Vautrin and finally the death of Père Goriot. There are few good characters in the novel with many of them having their eyes set on the main chance. The two daughters of Père Goriot seem particularly cruel, but this is hardly surprising considering that they are the property of the men they have married. An excellent read and a five star novel

Enjoyed your review. I haven’t read Balzac.

>84 baswood: An excellent read and a five star novel Agree completely

>84 baswood: Great review. Those opening pages are quite something! But Balzac is a slippery slope, all those characters who keep reappearing in different combinations that you want to trace through all those dozens of books…

Edgar Fawcett - Solarion
Published in 1889 in Lipincott's monthly magazine, this is a proto science fiction story. Edgar Fawcett was a fairly prolific novelist and poet: Wiki describe him as being successful in his time, but his works are mainly forgotten today. He tried his hand with several stories that today would be classified as science fiction and Solarion reads pretty well today. Fawcett's Solarion may well have been the first story about a super intelligent dog, certainly Olaf Stapledon scored a success with Sirius in 1944 and that novel owes something to Solarion apart from the fact that the name of the animals have some similarities and are the titles of the novels.

The novel is set in Switzerland where an American is pleased to have escaped the busy city life and his countrymen. While eating in a local restaurant he notices a man whose face is appallingly disfigured, almost half of it is missing; he discovers that he is a fellow American and Hugh Brookstayne is intrigued. Stafford the disfigured man finally agrees to tell his story. He was a keen scientist looking to find a connection between electricity and its possible effect on the mind. He tracked down a German scientist whose work was never published and used his theories to enhance the mind power of a specially selected breed of dog. Stafford succeeds beyond his expectations with Solarion, but encounters moral and philosophical problems that he had not foreseen. He is also in love with Celia who rejects his marriage proposal and life gets more complicated when Celia becomes besotted with Solarian.

The book describes itself as a Romance and there is a love story that holds it all together. Developments in electrical engineering in the late 19th century were quickly coming on stream and the story would hold some fascination for the imaginative reader. This together with the unexpected issues thrown up by questions of love and loyalty, by metaphysics and spiritualism takes this story along many avenues. In his conversations with Solarian (yes the dog can talk) Stafford tries to instruct him about love:

"It is a power that impulses incessantly through mankind. To some hearts it is a benign blessing; to others it is a frightful curse. Now while you and I speak together, there are men and women pale and tortured with the throews of its ungratified passion. Men when they feel it, cannot explain it, women can explain it still less.................... It is a perpetual comedy, a perpetual tragedy. It is always crowning mortals with roses, it is always dooming them to bottomless pits of torment........ "

The story has some mystery some imagination and it examines again the tropes of a man made monster; Solarion is doomed to a life of loneliness. Fawcett tells a good story and he examines themes that take it out of the well trodden paths of romance and adventure. Characterisation is also good and so 3.5 stars.

La tête de l'emploi - David Foenkinos
David Foenkinos is a French author who had a best selling novel La délicatesse published in 2009 and has since gone on to be successful with his screenwriting. He wrote the screenplay for le Mystère Henri Pick, which was an adaption from his novel published in 2016. La tête de l'emploi published in 2014 was not one of his biggest sellers and I picked it up languishing on the shelves of my local library.

It is told in the first person in autobiographical style and tells of Bernard's struggles, when his wife of twenty years asks him to leave just at the time of the banking crisis in 2008, Unfortunately Bernard is a banker selling dodgy credit issues and he loses his job a couple of weeks after he starts his sojourn in a hotel. Soon running out of liquid money he is forced to move back to his parents house and cannot shake himself out of a lassitude that descends on him. Just before the tumultuous events that have changed his life his only daughter and probably his only friend has moved to Brazil. He starts the book by reflecting on two big mistakes in his life. The first was keeping his birth name of Bernard a name associated with friendship and softness, but not a name associated with success or celebrity. The second was falling in love and marrying his psychoanalyst, a woman who knew all his secrets. This hangdog attitude of feeling sorry for himself is a feature of much of the book. It is wistful and a little sad, the story of perhaps of a number of people who suffered because of the economic crisis.

The novel is easy to read and there are many amusing moments, but the novel cannot really make up it's mind whether it should be a critique of social mores or a comedy. It plays one against the other and generally the comedy wins. Bernard is presented as a sympathetic character, knocked out of his stride by the vicissitudes of life and it all makes for an entertaining, but light read. Its a romcom. 3 stars.

Less is More - How Degrowth Will Save The World - Jason Hickel.
I am assuming in our heart of hearts that the majority of us know that we must consume less to save planet earth from ecological disaster. Jason Hickel outlines the history of the rise of capitalism whose central tenant is that we must all consume more. It is little wonder then that he is of the belief that capitalism is going to destroy the planet. I don't think he ever uses those words exactly, but this is his message. This all chimes very neatly with my own views and so for the majority of the book I was nodding my head in agreement. However a book with such a dramatic title and subtitle is bent on changing the minds of other people who do not hold the same views: this I think is where it might fail. It can seem a bit simplistic with perhaps not enough gravitas, although there are pages of references and end notes.

The book is divided into two parts; More is Less and Less is More, but in my view there is a third part to this book, which continually threatens and then succeeds in tipping it over into the realms of an anthropological conclusion, which strays too far away from the issues of climate change. So lets start with the first two parts of the book as stated in the contents list. More is Less is Hickel's take on the rise of capitalism; a history that neatly reflects my own views, because at many points I was thinking to myself I could have written this. He starts or should that be; we start, with a long definition of capitalism and how it is based on continued growth: the breakdown of feudalism in the late middle ages which gave rise to the enclosure acts in Britain and the wealth created by the merchant class. The early capitalism fuelled more inequality and the continued race to expand, led to colonisation in the search for raw materials and cheap labour. This section concludes with the authors view that: the over reliance on a country's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as a measurement of well being is hopelessly flawed. He concludes by asking the question: Why do we need to keep expanding the economy year on year. The Second Section; Less is More starts with the premise:

"We know exactly what works: reduce inequality, invest in universal public goods, and distribute income and opportunity more fairly.
What’s exciting about this approach is that it also has a direct positive impact on the living world. As societies become more egalitarian, people feel less pressure to pursue ever-higher incomes and more glamorous status goods. This liberates people from the treadmill of perpetual consumerism."

He then explores alternative approaches to capitalist consumerism, before running through the obstacles to any new initiatives: noting the richest 10% of the population are responsible for over 50% of carbon emissions, the richest 1% have their hands firmly on the levers of power and will do all they can to stifle democracy. He says the reason why we are starring down the barrel of an ecological crisis is because our political systems have become completely corrupted.

Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist by training and what is bubbling beneath the surface of his text and which finally breaks through towards the end is his belief in the interconnectedness of nature. He gives examples of anthropological studies of peoples who have learned to live with their environments, people that see little difference between humans, other animals and plant life. People that believe in reciprocity: what you take away from the planet you should put back in. He believes in the more than human world:

"It gestures towards how we might begin to heal the rift from which this crisis has ultimately sprung. It empowers us to imagine a richer, more fertile future: a future free from the old dogmas of capitalism and rooted instead in reciprocity with the living world. The ecological crisis requires a radical policy response. We need high-income countries to scale down excess energy and material use; we need a rapid transition to renewables; and we need to shift to a post-capitalist economy that’s focused on human well-being and ecological stability rather than on perpetual growth."

Hickel does stray into the realms of Gaia a sort of personification of the earth that might deter some readers. I understand where he is coming from, but have not the understanding of the issues to make any sort of valid judgement. I am more at home with the historic, economic and practical information that is contained in this book. The book is easy to read and I wish some of my friends would read it. A four star read

>90 baswood: Interesting book (and review). What was your own personal conclusion by the end - does it feel an unrealistic utopia that we'll ever stop being so greedy and 'more, more, more' focused?

It certainly feels like an unrealistic Utopia when I talk to people who live near to me, both English and French. They really have little interest. I find this difficult to understand, because I have no children and most of the people here are very family orientated. So when I talk about the things we are trying to do to reduce our carbon footprint, they look at me as if I was an active member of Extinction Rebellion (i'm not) and if I remind them that it is there grandchildren they need to be worrying about I just get a shrug of the shoulders. I am pessimistic I can forsee the richest 10% of people living in walled enclosures using new technology to cling onto their lifestyles while a migrant population outside clamours to get in.

La Liste de Mes Envies - Gregoire Delacourt
What would you do if you won the lottery big style? Perhaps the euro lottery, where it is possible to win more money than you could possibly need This is the situation for Jocelyne. She is a woman approaching fifty who has a settled life in Arras; a fairly non-descript town (according to Delacourt) in Northern France. She is in love with her longstanding partner, she has two children, she is the owner of a haberdashery shop in the centre of town which is doing well. She has recently started a personal blog on all things to do with the materials she sells in her shop, which has attracted a large following and so she is leading a happy life with new interests. Her son who plays the lottery every week cajoles her into buying a ticket for the first time and she wins over 18 million euros. Fortunately she has ticked the non publicity box and so she secretly collects her cheque to give herself time to consider what to do. Who should she tell? what should she buy?. She has received advice and counselling from the managers of the lottery company.

Grégoire Delacourt who went to the same school as Emmanuel Macron was a publicist and manager of an advertising company, he published his first novel when he was fifty and has written five other novels since then. It is not surprising that an ex-publicist with his educational background has managed to become a best selling novelist. In La Liste de Mes Envies he has chosen a popular situation on which to base his second novel. The title refers to Jocelyne's secret list of the things that come to mind, that she can buy after she has collected her winnings. It is no surprise that she does not live 'happy ever after' after collecting her winnings. This short novel is in the realms of a beach read. Well enough written as you would expect considering Delacourt's education and background, but instantly forgettable. The principal character in the novel is Joceleyne and Delacourt brings no startling insights into the wants or needs of a working class women in a town like Arras. This little moral tale is so light that when the wind blows on the beach you would have to hold it down firmly to stop it blowing away. 3 stars.

>93 baswood: I love the tone of your review!
I had contemplated reading the book (the title is appealing, I guess we all have in one form or another a "liste de nos envies"), but thanks to your review, I'll use my time reading some other books, that will be better in line with "mes envies (et mes goûts)"!

>93 baswood: This little moral tale is so light that when the wind blows on the beach you would have to hold it down firmly to stop it blowing away. Love it!

How To Save Our Planet: The facts by Mark Maslin
The book amounts to a series of bullet points, backed up by further references, these further references took up over 40% of the book according to the information on my kindle. Bullet points perhaps for an audience with a short attention span, some of the points are recycled as one page only images, so as to further grab the attention of the reader. In his preface Mark Maslin says he wanted to write a book that makes people feel smarter, more knowledgable and empowered to act: this is a book you can quote in the pub or at a dinner party or even in parliament.

There is nothing radically wrong with a book like this although it does feel more like a pamphlet. It was just not the right book for me. There was nothing here that I did not already know and I found the one sentence bullet point annoying me fairly quickly. If you are the sort of person who like to quote newspaper headlines in an argument then this is the book for you. It provides links in its reference section for those people who wish to explore further: I was intrigued to follow the link to the company website for BP which has an aim of attaining net zero carbon emissions by 2050. All quite laudable but probably too little far too late. I could not help noticing the language and the bullet point feel of their website to be very similar to Mark Maslin's book.

As a quick reference guide I think the book works well enough. Don't expect any radical solutions here, or much of a call to arms, but as a middle of the road compendium of where we are and what needs to be done it serves its purpose and so 3.5 stars.

>92 baswood:, >91 AlisonY:

does it feel an unrealistic utopia that we'll ever stop being so greedy and 'more, more, more' focused?

I think this positioning of the problem leads to a dead end, a wholly unsubstantiated fatalism. It's not individual greed that is the problem but capitalists in power. It's what the laws and various governing mechanisms literally, practically, actually allow them to do that is dooming both the environment and human society. And no, it's not even the capitalists' individual greed that is the problem--they are merely expressions of the system that allows them to exist, and if one is removed, another takes his place.

Greed, or as it's often invoked, "human nature", is neither here nor there when it comes to the potential for doing what is right.

It's the system that needs breaking up.

>97 LolaWalser: It's the system that needs breaking up. - Absolutely.

I guess the question is, as I sit in a suburban house surrounded by trump nuts and also mildly more open minded versions of scared parents, how can that system be modified when so many people are wired-in in such a deep fundamental-unalterable way? Capitalism, even really bad capitalism, plays to the instinctual human grasping for more. (I enjoyed your posts, bas.)

>99 dchaikin:

how can that system be modified when so many people are wired-in in such a deep fundamental-unalterable way? Capitalism, even really bad capitalism, plays to the instinctual human grasping for more.

There is zero reason to assume that people are "hard-wired" for capitalism. There is no biological imperative for it to exist. The problem of Trumpists and Trumpism isn't due to genes ("human nature") but to the political and cultural direction of your country, the entire catalogue of specific acts that weakened the left (and not just in the US but through specific US actions elsewhere in the West), broke up your working class, and substituted propaganda and religious fundamentalism for education.

The vast majority of Americans aren't capitalists of any size and have no earthly chance of ever being one. The reason that so many express allegiance to a system and people who exploit them mercilessly is that the propaganda worked. Americans, simply put, are ignorant fanatics, and they have been made ignorant over many decades with great deliberation. If someone lies that there's gold in them there hills and people die massively trying to get to it, it's not clear to me that it's their "greed" that's to blame more than the lie.

As for how one effects real change--through a revolution that ends capitalism everywhere.

One way or another that's exactly where the planet will be one day... with or without us.

>100 LolaWalser: i agree with all that, maybe wired was the wrong metaphor. I meant nurture, not nature, but very deep. I’m still stunned that 75 million people voted for a transparent con man and that everyone I interacted with who liked him ever, never changed and still hasn’t. I’ve convinced myself it has something to do with lower level programming (the rest being rationalization). It’s not just the us, the us just has the strongest privilege aspect to it. But anyway, I don’t know how to manage the lower level programming away from “more”.

>101 dchaikin:

Well, again, I'd push first for a different approach to how to look at the situation, because different approaches suggest different strategies for tackling the problem. There is no point in waiting for people to change their "wiring", "nature" or however we describe some supposed instinct, mainly because this is not a problem with how people "are" in any meaningful, practical, deal-able-with sense. People are everything at once, bad and good, greedy and generous etc., it's all a question which of our potential behaviours will be favoured by the situation.

So, American rebels didn't wait until the British graciously changed their minds on American independence; the North didn't wait for the South to change of itself its stance on slavery; and as far as I know, suffrage was extended (to stay in the US) to black men and eventually all adult women way before there was a general population consensus that this should be done. All these events (and of course there are many more) exemplify instances where real and lasting social change was effectuated way before and in absence of any kind of general "change of heart".

When we enter traffic, no one cares whether we are good or bad, greedy or altruistic, all that matters is whether we follow the rules. We let ourselves be governed by this externally imposed scheme without re-inventing the wheel every time. This is actually the case with a great many essential things in our lives that we all found in an "as is" state on birth--the fact that we'll be sent to school, made to wear clothes, made to obey a myriad cultural and legal precepts that give shape to how we live and comport ourselves day to day. Is it a great burden? I don't think it's likely that most people find this intolerable, because it seems that most people have no trouble recognising that when everyone behaves in this way, the individuals profit.

What I mean by this example is that there are many, many things already that restrain and control us and that we take for granted simply because that's how we found the state of things and found it good enough, or at least not so bad that we'd bother demanding for it to change. In spite of how all these things curtail our ego.

This is probably too many words for trying to say that "human nature" is a red herring of an argument and that all the good of living in a society was achieved not by people one by one seeing the light but simply because of "fiats" imposed externally. Now, the question of who exactly is supposed to declare "no more capitalism" is difficult. I'll just note that the voice of people saying this is again getting stronger.

We are actually in a very similar situation in which Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto, one might say "only more so". Capitalism is defended by the governing political structures, but the whole ship is creaking because of climate change and increasing pressure on the rich by the refugee wave (plus internal unrest by the pauperised classes). The "reformists" achieved nothing to stop this in the 19th century and I see no reason to believe they can achieve anything now, when we are so much closer (or past, I think) time-points for averting various catastrophes.

>102 LolaWalser: Interesting. Where do we go from this?

>103 Nickelini: Well it's got to be revolution against capitalism in the rich northern hemisphere. However unfortunately the far right are more likely to take advantage of the lack of democracy almost everywhere, intent on clinging on to what they have.

Sitting on the left of the political divide makes me extremely pessimistic

Only a couple more years until Trump is re-elected.

My next book on climate change will be White skin, black fuel, on the danger of fossil fascism by Andreas Malm.

Interesting conversation. I do agree that the western political structures are significantly culpable for the global environmental failures, but I don't buy that this somehow lets us off the hook as individuals. I feel that we are now hard-wired for capitalism and the internet has been hugely influential on our expectations as consumers. People are now used to being able to order what they want from wherever they want and getting it incredibly quickly.

Of course major industries have got away much too lightly in terms of being held accountable for their carbon footprints for far too long, but we're culpable too for creating the demand. There's been a huge mindset shift for people in terms of consumer expectations. Does anybody darn socks anymore? Fix TVs on the blink? It's a throwaway culture now. The big supermarkets are selling the (very unstrawberry like) strawberries in winter from Israel because we're buying them in our droves.

That's what I meant by greed. Greedy capitalist system, yes, and a huge systematic failure to put the brakes environmentally on how businesses respond to this huge change in demand expectations, but we've been like kids in a candy store. We want to wag our fingers at the big bad industries who are most contributing to climate change, but we still want to press the button on our Christmas presents arriving next day with Amazon Prime.

So going back to the original book reviewed, it still feels like utopia to me that people will ever vote en masse for a fair distribution of wealth and scale down of material use. That feels like a giant step back to something we're way too greedy to ever vote for now. It's gone too far - the only workable option seems to be trying to change in how we environmentally respond to demand.

>102 LolaWalser: thanks. A really interesting post. The communist aspect has me thinking about power structures and the power checks necessary to avoid mao/stalin type thing.

>103 Nickelini:

If you mean what is most likely to happen, then I must say I share Barry's pessimism--I think I know what would be the best thing to happen but I don't see the path to it, given who is in power.

>105 AlisonY:

I feel that we are now hard-wired for capitalism and the internet has been hugely influential on our expectations as consumers. People are now used to being able to order what they want from wherever they want and getting it incredibly quickly.

Pedantically, being able to order stuff from wherever isn't tied to capitalism, we had global trade back in ancient times. Yeah, the individual transports took far longer, but there were thousands of them in any period.

Insofar global trade contributes to the climate catastrophe, people obviously are beginning to search for more sustainable transport etc. In any case, this situation can't go on forever, however sweet anyone finds getting their gizmo from China the next day. And if certain things become scarce, enormously expensive, or completely absent from our lives, that's just another "novelty" we'll adapt to.

It's a throwaway culture now.

Yes, and it's 100% due to capitalism, but that too has nothing inevitable about it. Without capitalism we would build again for quality and durability and a repair industry would grow again.

but we've been like kids in a candy store.

Allison, yes--but remember it's not kids who build candy stores and it's not kids who make candy and it's not kids who advertise candy. Consumerism isn't something we HAVE to suffer from, it's what capitalism imposes on us. Without capitalism we could do away, or reduce, or change the nature of the "candy store". Recall that the present state of things wasn't a given from the start, that the current abysmal quality of products and "planned obsolescence" are late developments.

it still feels like utopia to me that people will ever vote en masse for a fair distribution of wealth and scale down of material use.

I'm actually more positive about people in this regard but my concern is that there is no time left to wait for such a vote--especially since Western democracies are being shown up for pro-capitalist scams that they are, and falling one after another to right-wing populism.

>106 dchaikin:

The communist aspect has me thinking about power structures and the power checks necessary to avoid mao/stalin type thing.

Lol, sorry, I find this really funny. :) I mean, of all the things that are currently burning issues... and how far away from any sort of communism the US is... Why on earth would you worry about Stalin and Mao more than about Trump?

I'd look to how the young leftists today are shaping their visions, from AOC to Ash Sarkar in the UK.

Samuel Daniel - The tragedie of Cleopatra from the complete works in verse and prose of Samuel Daniel
1594 saw the publication of Samuel Daniel's play The tragedy of Cleopatra. It was probably never performed on stage, even though Daniel in 1607 adapted it in an effort to make it more stage worthy. The 1594 version has come to be known as a closet drama, because it is more appealing as a printed copy to be read in private at home. There is no action to speak of, being more a series of set speeches that tell the story, of the suicide of the Egyptian queen: starting with Cleopatra herself, whose soliloquy takes up the whole of Act 1. The play is written entirely in rhymed verse and so to be successful the poetry needs to be good. In fact it is very good and there is much to be enjoyed.

Samuel Daniel was a professional writer, that is clear from the amount of publications that appeared during his lifetime. He was known mainly for his poetry having published earlier his sonnet sequence Delia which was much admired. Daniel needed the support of a patron and he was under the wing of Lady Mary, Countess of Pembroke to whom he dedicated this work in a long poem praising her virtues, his muse, his success as a sonneteer and invoking the spirit of Sir Philip Sidney and our own Edmund Spencer. Being able to include his own name with Spencer and Sidney probably shows that he saw himself as a poet rather than a dramatist and that he was not risking being scorned for including himself in such illustrious company.

After the dedication to Lady Mary there is an 'argument,' which takes the form of a short prose piece that tells the story of Cleopatra, the same story which Daniel will expound at length with his poetry. This has the effect of diminishing any drama, because the reader already knows the story and can concentrate on the quality of the verse. After the death of Mark Anthony Cleopatra flees to her own monument where she prepares herself for death. The victorious Octavius Caesar wishes to take her back to Rome where he can show her off in his victory parade. The poem tells of the battle of wills between Cleopatra and Ottavius and how she manages to outwit him by arranging for a couple of deadly snakes hidden in a bowl of figs to be brought into her tomb.

The theme of the poem is the character of Cleopatra and describes her feelings and actions at a time of a great emotional crisis. She has lost and betrayed her lover Mark Anthony, she wants to arrange the safe exile of her son by Julius Caesar (Ceasario) and she wants to die in Egypt not in Rome. Cleopatra is now an elderly woman and can no longer trade on the exceptional beauty of her youth, she is a proud woman and a monarch, but she has lost the war with Rome and has betrayed her lover. Samuel Daniel conveys all of this with some splendid poetry, this is an example from her first soliloquy where she is torn between being queen and her responsibility for her son:



"You lucklesse issue of an wofull mother,
The wretched pledges of a wanton bed,
You Kings design’d, must subjects live to other;
Or else, I feare, scarce live, when I am dead.
It is for you I temporize with Cæsar,
And stay this while to mediate your safetie:
For you I faine content, and soothe his pleasure,
Calamitie herein hath made me craftie.
But this is but to trie what may be done,
For come what will, this stands, I must die free,
And die my selfe uncaptiv’d, and unwonne.
Bloud, Children, Nature, all must pardon me.
My soule yeeldes Honor up the victory,
And I must be a Queene, forget a mother,
Though mother would I be, were I not I;
And Queene would not be now, could I be other."

The only action in the whole play is when Cleopatra throws herself at the feet of Ottavius when he meets her for the one and only time in her tomb, in order to persuade her to let him take her as his prisoner to Rome. The dramatic suicide of Cleopatra is told by a third person who witnesses the event. Daniel never lets the drama get in the way of his poetry. At the end of each of the five acts there is a chorus of Egyptian women who give their views of the events, which are expressed in a short series of sonnets. The verse is beautifully tuned throughout the play as we follow the wild and then cunning turns of mind of a desperate woman.

The poem is a superb character study that held my attention throughout. Daniel proves to be a master of the form, but he also has plenty of interesting things to say. Shakespeare his contemporary would have course had access to Daniels work and there are plenty of studies of his use of the tragedy as source material for his own great play: Anthony and Cleopatra. I think Daniel's tragedy stands up in its own right, as an example of Elizabethan literature, but the genre is poetry rather than drama. I rate this 4.5 stars.

>107 LolaWalser: You caught me off guard with the dismissive humor. I guess I find it disturbing. My personal common sense tells me the only thing that has controlled trump so far has been the US checks and balances of power. Any revolution that would undermine capitalism would be pretty extreme. It would constitute a state failure and wipe those checks out, and leave power entirely to the biggest toughest most manipulative bullies, without checks. Stalin and Mao represent examples of exactly that - state failure and revolution and unchecked power. This is what I meant by mentioning them. The US revolution did not wipe out the local power balances, (because the British government was actually too distant to really influence them other than by shipped-in force). The US civil war was a failed revolution. Had it been successful, we still have slavery.

If you overcome trump with a revolution against capitalism, you will get something far worse. As far as I can understand, all the best solutions to the problems of capitalism, and environment and also to trump involve partially successful political maneuvers within the existing system - aka regulation and legal enforcement.

>108 baswood: sorry to distract. This is a great post.

>110 dchaikin: Thanks Dan

>109 dchaikin: I think the issue for me is that regulation and legal enforcement would be fine to curtail a politician like Trump in normal times. We are not living in normal times. We should be by now on a war footing against climate change. Desperate times are going to call for desperate measures and while the world continues to be controlled by market forces we are not going to save the planet. If there is no co-operation to change the system, there will be revolutions of one kind or another, the movement of migrant people alone will see to that I think.

>109 dchaikin: My personal common sense tells me the only thing that has controlled trump so far has been the US checks and balances of power.

Do you really think the US has checks & balances? I used to hear about those amazing checks & balances but the last 5 years have shown me that they're just another American myth.

>109 dchaikin:

I'm sorry I came across as dismissive of you personally, that's not how I felt. As for the argument, it's just that it begs so many other questions that I feel overwhelmed.

Basically, >112 Nickelini: makes the important point.

It's not your constitutional checks and balances that stand between you and tyranny; right now I think it's only your army (theoretically--wouldn't care to bet which way they'd lean in a crisis).

Alice Zeniter - Juste avant L'oubli
So I turn up at my local library with a short list of possible authors that I want to read, however I do not find anything suitable; this is not really surprising as its not a big library being in a town with only 1,500 people on the electoral role. What to do next, how to choose some books, with only a limited amount of time before the library closes for lunch: everything closes for lunch; its France and usually for a good two hours. My natural inclination is to start with the first letter of the alphabet and snaffle up anything worthwhile of authors whose surnames begin with A. Horror of horrors there were no books at all in that section. I could not bring myself to move onto the letter B and so in a light bulb moment, I decided to start at the other end of the alphabet. I had it in mind to choose only French authors and so after passing over a couple of Polish writers I came upon Alice Zeniter's: Juste avant L'oubli. The front cover had no illustrations or photographs just the name of the author and the title of the book and the word roman (novel) in small type just underneath. No time to read any blurb on the back cover and so opening the book was like entering a new room for the first time.

The preface contained a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's: The Lost World, but the story soon settled down to describe the feelings of Franck, whose relationship with his girlfriend Emilie was going through a bad patch. Franck seemed to be blaming his parents for giving him the name Franck. Apart from two contemporary famous Franks; Zappa and Sinatra (spelt differently and both American) he points out that the name in France is steeped in mediocrity, it is barely better than Kevin (perhaps the most unfashionable christian name in the country). The reader soon becomes aware that Franck's only real talent is to feel sorry for himself: he could not cope with the study necessary to become a doctor and so he became a nurse. Frank's girlfriend Emilie; the love of his life has been away from home for three months setting up a symposium on a remote Scottish Island for a best selling author who died on the Island in mysterious circumstances some ten years ago. Franck is about to travel over from Paris to meet up with Emilie who will be leading the final days of the symposium. If this doesn't sound like a good idea, then the difficult travel arrangements that Franck faces getting across to the Island, should have been the final warning bell. Things on the Island do not go well.

The Symposium is for Galwin Donnell the imaginary best selling author of crime novels. His star detective Adrian Dickson Carr apart from not having much talent for detecting is obsessed by sex. Alice Zeniter intersperses her story with quotes and longer passages from the novels of Galwin Donnell as the literary professors and their eager students pick over the bones of Donnell's oeuvre. All of this goes over the head of Franck who spends his time on the island getting drunk with the caretaker, who lives alone when the symposiums are not in operation. There are many threads to Zeniter's writing; there is the mystery of what happened to Donnell, his body was never found, there is the relationship between Frank and Emilie complicated by one of the professors in the symposium, there is the pastiche of the symposium in operation and there are thoughts on the successes and failures of the dead authors literary heritage. Zeniter manages to create plenty of atmosphere of the remote Scottish Island and even does well with the lacklustre character of Franck. The story is a bit predictable, but there are some moments of black humour and insights into a relationship that might have run its course. Zeniter juggles a few balls in the air at the same time, but the bits that I found less interesting were extracts from the literature of Galwin Donnell. I enjoyed the read and so 3.5 stars.

>114 baswood: It's not her most famous one. I plan (at some point, one day...) to read L'Art de perdre, and her last book, Comme un empire dans un empire has had some good reviews (including Dilara, in this group).
I loved your description of finding new books at random!

Interesting to read about Degrowth - I was lucky to attend the degrowth Conference at the Hague this year (online) for an arts organisation. I learned a lot there -- many people far ahead of me. But a persistent thing for me was how we often have grand narratives of climate change and capitalism and the need for degrowth, and we even have some good examples, and also the examples of indigenous peoples, but we often lack the narratives that speak to us (especially in the west), we don't yet know how to do what needs to be done -- and as a result I try to speak about this, to give people ideas and to learn their ideas. It strikes me we need many narratives and examples of what can be done -- there is simply the one person can't achieve anything argument and there is the idea that if we all do things then en masse the difference can be profound, and I think the more we are thinking and talking and doing things and trying things the better. Sorry, may be being a bit preachy there, but heck. I looked at COP26 and wondered how on board States really are with this.

Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective - White Skin, Black Fuel: on the danger of Fossil fascism.
As I am reading my latest book on the imminent dangers of a climate catastrophe, the rain is battering down on the skylight window above my desk. It has been raining in heavy bursts for the last four days and when I was out walking yesterday the fields down in the valley were sodden with water. Today the region is on an orange warning to the dangers of flooding and there is no doubt that the local rivers will burst their banks again. We have reached the stage now where it is not a question of whether there will be flooding, but now, how often it will occur?

Andreas Malm is a Swedish author and an associate professor of human ecology and sits on the editorial board of the academic journal Historical Materialism and has been described as an original thinker on the subject of climate change. His political stance is decidedly left wing with the weight of the history of fascist movements sitting heavily on his shoulders. His premise in White Skin, Black Fuel is that there is an historical link between the petrol chemical industries and racist politics. He refers to this as fossil fascism. The idea that the burners of fossil fuel will continue to burn their way to the destruction of the planet by exploiting prejudices against migrant populations and climate denialism. According to Malm it is a tactic that has an historical precedent in the fascist movements in Germany and Italy after the first world war. We can witness history repeating itself today with the rise of right wing political movements that have succeeded in electing Trump in America, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Andrzej Duda in Poland and the UK's Brexit government. Malm comes up with his own definition of fascism and it is interesting to consider how closely these political movements resemble his ideas:

"fascism is a politics of palingenetic ultranationalism that comes to the fore in a conjuncture of deep crisis, and if leading sections of the dominant class throw their weight behind it and hand it power, there ensues an exceptional regime of systematic violence against those identified as enemies of the nation."

Much of the book is a history lesson, a history lesson according to Malm that walks the reader through the story of imperialism: the discovery of coal and oil that powered the might of industrial nations and enabled them to dominate and subjugate much of the southern hemisphere. This is a fascinating story, but feels at times like a thesis written to prove an academic point. I think the links between fossil burning industry, right wing politicians and their resort to fascist policies are there in plain sight, however the historical linkage even if proven adds minimally to the important questions that face the world today; one of which is how are we to divest the power of the fossil fuel extractors from their influence over governments. Malm's book certainly enables us to recognise the enemy (the fossil fascists) and to understand the methods at its disposal to protect its interests. His own ideas from his historical perpective are that: capitalism, not human beings are changing the climate; industrialisation itself is less of a problem than the fossil system that powers it. The overwhelming focus on climate activism must be on dismantling fossil infrastructure.

Malm asks; why do so many parties and politicians of the far right traffic in climate denialism and he refers to the various stages of climate denial based on the ideas of Stanley Cohen's book 'States of Denial: knowing about atrocities and suffering. His three stages of denial are:

If someone asserts that a bad thing does not happen and is not true, her denial is literal; if she accepts that it happens but gives it a lower degree of meaning – rewriting the event, obfuscating the effect, exculpating the perpetrator – it is interpretive. But the most insidious form is perhaps the third. Here the facts and gravity of the matter are accepted, but not acted upon. Knowledge is not an issue. The harm is fully acknowledged, but the obligation to intervene is suppressed through one cognitive technique or other.

On a personal level he uses an anecdote:

Imagine that your neighbour beats his wife badly every Saturday. Each Sunday morning, you wake up and think: what a wonderful neighbourhood this is, peaceful and prosperous, a blessing to live in! If someone asks whether you heard strange sounds yesterday evening, you shake your head vigorously. Or you might respond that some couples behave that way, fighting it out with fists and tableware – it is just one way of conducting an argument. They seem happy enough when he’s not drunk. Or you might recognise to yourself and others that there is grave violence inflicted on that woman and it ought to stop, but then you go about your daily life, month after month, and you listen to the muffled cries without acting – or perhaps you slip in the business card of a therapist through the letter slot, or talk to another neighbour who is also content just talking about the matter, and even if the assaults continue and you glimpse the woman in a state of physical collapse, you imagine that you have done your part.

Malm's thoughts on this are that right wing political leaders today who started out as literal deniers, have moved on to stage two and even stage three. Certainly the publicity emerging from the large petroleum companies Exxon Mobil or BP for example will highlight how they are combating climate change, a phrase now used for much of this would be greenwashing and therefore the third stage of denial.

The final section of the book entitled "Death at the Steering Wheel" is bristling with ideas and attempts to draw the various strands of the book together. This is not a book to instruct the reader as to what they can do to challenge climate change, although there is a section on activism and what is being done at the moment. It is a book that attempts to sketch in an historical perspective, to provide an understanding of the connections between right wing politics, an imperialist past and fascist policies that will blame and then attempt to eradicate the "citizens of nowhere"

Andreas Malm would seem to be the guiding hand behind this book, but it will I presume have contributions from the Zetkin collective, which probably accounts for my impression that the books lacks a little structure. The final section however focuses the readers attention on the difficulties facing those who say: we must act now. There is still much public support to keep the fossil fuel status quo and I know this from my own experience as I can hardly get the people around me to talk about it. I say to them: forget about the anti-vaxxers what you should really be concerned about is the climate deniers, in what ever form they take.

The rain has stopped at last, but the people in the valley are flooded. I am fortunate to live on a hill. However the house is old and it rained so hard the water poured in underneath the front door and flooded the hall. 4.5 stars.

I read but did not comment on the environment discussion above and the two books you read. Pretty much cut off from international news, I have no idea what the current discourse on climate change and environmental protection is, but what can an 18-year old girl offer?

I think the essential things have already been said and concluded in the 1970s. I think you will enjoy reading the essays by Wendell Berry if only with some nostalgia. Coming across that book was a lucky find in a second-hand book market. I would be interested to read more by this author.

Wonderful to see you have developed full proficiency to read French now.

On a totally different note, I wanted to thank you for introducing me to Fires on the plain by Shôhei Ôoka. I read it a few weeks ago (and just wrote and posted my review). It was a powerful reading, one of the most powerful that I have read recently. If I was making a 2021 top 5 of my reading, it would most definitely be part of it!
I had never heard about this book or this author before your review, so thanks a lot!

>120 raton-liseur: Glad you enjoyed it. It was a discovery for me too

>115 raton-liseur: You called? ;-)
I wasn't bowled over by L'art de perdre, but I really enjoyed Comme un empire dans un empire, about the Nuit debout movement and the French left, among othe things. I thought it mixed very skillfully facts and fiction. This is what good middle-brow "journalistic" fiction should be: well-researched, well-written, informative and engaging.

>122 Dilara86: And you answered, so it's great!
Not sure I'm inclined to read a "middle-brow journalistic fiction" at the moment, and L'Art de perdre seemed to be more interesting, now you got me confused... But I think Zeniter is an author I should read, but it won't probably be in a near future... I'll keep both Baswood and Dilara's reviews in mind when I make my decision, though.

Albert Cohen - Le livre de ma mère
Albert Cohen was a Jewish Swiss novelist who wrote in french. His novels took the form of autobiography and this one deals with his relationship with his mother. The novel was published in its current form in 1954 and collects together texts written under the title of Chants de mort. His mother died in Marseilles in 1943. The book takes the form of an hommage to his mother, he speaks of his love and his admiration for the woman who seems to have shaped his life. She is ever present in his thoughts after her death and becomes a ghost like figure that haunts him while he is writing his book.

Cohen starts by introducing himself as a lonely figure who is punctilious in his preparations for writing his texts. He imagines his pen asking him what he is doing "who sleeps" it asks and the author replies it is his mother who sleeps in the cemetery and who is the subject of his pain. He describes his parents early life in France as Jews fleeing to Marseilles, struggling to fit in with a new culture and having to work hard to earn a living. He says his mother never really fitted in, devoting herself to looking after her husband and her children. He sketches in this early life with a series of flashbacks which are memories of his special relations with his mother. He tells of them going to a fashionable cafe where his mother would be unable or unwilling to speak to the other customers, her attention and conversation solely concerned with her son. She stressed his jewish upbringing and wanted to see him remain faithful to the religion. She became a lonely figure, more so when her husband died and her family moved away. She seemed to worship her son Albert, sacrificing herself for him; selling her jewellery when his expensive lifestyle needed to be supported by more money. In return Cohen paints an idealistic portrait of his mother, but it is tinged with guilt.

He talks of his mothers yearly visits when he was following his career in the diplomatic service in Geneva. How her whole year was centred on the two or three weeks that she stayed with him. How she dressed to please him, how she saved her money to buy him small presents, how she never interfered in his lifestyle. The guilt shines through when he tells how he had arranged to meet her in the local park, but dallied with his latest girlfriend (a blond woman) and arrived three hours late to find his mother shivering with cold, but so pleased to see him and not a word of reproach. The memories start to peter out as the book progresses and becomes an agonised calling to his mother beyond the grave, he never actually asks for her forgiveness, but this is clearly his intent as he has becomes a lonely solitary figure just like her. He imagines her in her grave, he imagines her next to him while he is writing. He keeps reminding himself and his readers that his mother, his saintly mother is dead. The book becomes a paean to mothers everywhere.

Cohen's writing is intense, almost a plea. There is much repetition, maybe because of the origins of the book as previous texts, but the repetition has a cumulative effect. In many ways this is an extraordinary book, it will not be to everyones taste, but I found it powerful enough. This is written by a man who feels that he should have dedicated more of his life to his mother as she had dedicated hers to him, all that is left for him to do is write a panegyric and bemoan her absence and confess his love. One wonders if he ever escaped her presence. A five star read.

The Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouke
1951 saw a trio of books depicting life in the armed forces during the second world war, that all made it onto the best selling lists: I have recently read From here to Eternity, and The Cruel Sea and now it is the turn for The Caine Mutiny which is also a bit of a doorstop. Apart from their length and the fact they were aimed at the popular market they have much else in common: the authors based the novels on their own war time experiences, they depict an armed forces struggling to hold together a complicated war machine, a machine that has no room for individuals and one in which men (and they are all men) must grow quickly in inducting themselves into a disciplined service. Herman Wouke takes his readers through the war years from the point of view of Willie Keith: a new officer recruit in the United States Navy posted on the USS Caine, a minesweeper. The parallels with the other two novels were so distinct that clearly the authors had similar war time experiences.

The USS Caine is an old destroyer converted into a minesweeper; Captain Devries, commands his boat through his most senior officers and Willie Keith must fit in to the command structure. Willie comes from a good family with money and soon runs into difficulties, but he survives his initial training period and is glad to see the back of Devries when he is replaced by Captain Queeg. The new Captain proves to be just as tyrannical as Devries, but without Devrie's talent for seamanship. Queeg proves to be an unstable character and the central theme of the novel is at what point should the officer class beneath him reject his authority. When should he be challenged? The mutiny in question is when the second in command (LT Meryk) feels it necessary to replace the Captain when the safety of the ship and the crew is in serious danger. Their follows a court-martial where the sanity of Captain Queeg is under investigation. A court room drama is played out with a hot-shot lawyer on the side of the mutineers.

Wouk writing clearly from his own experiences gives a claustrophobic impression of one of the old converted cramped minesweepers. A working group of men who must carry out mundane tasks under the whims and caprices of a commander determined to run things his own way. The theatre of war does intrude, but this in really only background to the competition and struggles of the working group. There is a love story and a tug of war between Keith's mother and his showgirl girlfriend, but the characterisation of the female figures lags somewhat behind the men on the ship. Wouk rather cheekily has one of his officers intent on finding time to write a novel, a wartime novel of course. It is Captain Queeg who dominates most of the novel he has such a presence that even when he is absent from a scenario the other characters feel his presence. Wouk handles the action scenes well enough: the typhoon that leads to the mutiny, the kamikaze attack on the ship, the courtroom scene and the very curious hunt for the missing strawberries. Its all very readable. I would certainly not place this in a category of an anti-war novel. The underlying theme is one of duty and serving ones country. I am sure that many people will have seen the film version, which has the advantage perhaps of cutting away some of the padding. In my opinion it is not quite on a par with From Here to Eternity or The Cruel Sea and it does not approach the brilliance of Fires on the Plain also published in 1951 and so 3.5 stars.

Iain Banks - The Steep Approach to Garbadale
I blasted through this novel in a couple of days. It kept me reading and it kept me entertained. This is an Iain Banks novel without the M between his christian and surnames and so the reader is assured it is not one of his science fiction books. It is a family saga and the family Wopuld have made a fortune on a board game 'Empire'. It has been successfully re launched as a computer game and the family corporation are about to hold an extraordinary annual general meeting as a result of a takeover bid from an American company. Alban McGill a third generation member of the family has tried to extricate himself from the business, but is persuaded to attend the A G M by one of his cousins still working for the firm. Alban as a fifteen year old had disgraced himself by being caught 'in flagrante delicto' with his first cousin Sophie at a previous family get together. He had through his own endeavours been accepted back into the family fold, but for the last five years had been working as a lumberjack in the Scottish lowlands. He is still carrying a torch for Sophie and has never forgiven the family for forcibly separating them as teenagers.

Banks starts his story in a Glasgow tenement where Alban is living in typical squalor in a household of poor misfits. His cousin Fielding digs him out of the chaotic flat in order to get him to support his attempts to repulse the takeover bid from the American company. As the two men prepare for the big meeting Albans story is told in a series of flashbacks during a trip up to the family estate in the north of Scotland. Alban is still puzzled by some of the family history, not the least by his own birthright and through meetings with current family members he tries to piece together his story.

Alban's story takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of California, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Indonesian Tsunami and Scotland with plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll. (It is an Iain Banks novel). Readers familiar with some of Banks earlier novel's: Crow Road or Espedair street will know how good a story teller Banks can be. There are plenty of witty asides and some thought provoking moments. There is also Bank's socialist agenda which comes in handy in this novel where he can let rip against the George W Bush loving republicans who are the senior representatives of the American takeover company. Banks even manages to parade his credentials as a climate change activist and this was back in 2007.

The downside to all this marvellous entertainment is that the character although not quite caricatures can come across as stock characters. The matriarchal head of the Wopuld family, the extended family members of the Glasgow tenement, almost all the American representatives and to some extent Alban McGill himself. The star-crossed lovers theme is a very old one and in this novel it holds the key to the story, and it is not difficult to guess the denouement way before the end. I enjoy Banks when he is writing in this vein and especially when he has a story to tell, even if some of the scenarios are set up purely for entertainment: 3.5 stars.

>126 baswood: Nice review. I agree that Banks is a very good story teller. I have never read any of his science fiction, I only go for the modern fiction. Having read seven of his novels, and looking back, I don't like the social realist novels all that much, usually giving them only three stars or 3.5. I hated The Crow Road.

>124 baswood: the repetition has a cumulative effect I agree that that can have a very powerful effect - a book to search out.

>126 baswood: Another book to search out on a completely different level. This is the time of year when stock characters are comfortable in a way. I enjoyed his earlier novels, but haven't read too much of the later ones. Now that there won't be any more, I should rectify that.

>125 baswood: Interesting trilogy. Have you read The Naked and the Dead?

>128 SassyLassy: The Naked and the Dead is sitting on my bookshelves, but I have never read it - why are books from that era about the second world war such chunksters.

>129 baswood: why are books from that era about the second world war such chunksters.

My immediate thought? - No social media to distract from the reading. Somewhat unkind, but I suspect there's something to it. I believe many households didn't even have TV then.

Dominique Fernandez - L'Aube
https://www.librarything.com/work/27470891/book/209964747
Dominique Fernandez is a french author, essayist and critic with over 30 novels published. He won the Prix Goncourt in 1982 with Dans la main de L'ange. LAube was his second novel originally published in 1962, but was revised revised by the Author in 2003. It is a short novel of 126 pages in fairly large type and so almost of novella length, which is fitting for the subject matter of the book.

Jean a young man of 27 years is taking a break with his girlfriend Agatha. They have decided to spend the night at an old mill surrounded by willow trees. Jean is reluctant from the start, he has forebodings about the situation and his relationship with Agatha has become strained. During the night after they have made love there is a storm and a branch of one of the trees strikes the shutters waking them up. Jean is on edge anyway and gets out of bed. Agatha is also restless and from their stilted conversation it appears they are going over old ground about their relationship, but Jean opens up more and talks about his childhood. He was brought up by an aunt who was herself living alone. Her husband had left her and she has become a misandrist, she is over protective of Jean and tries to stop him growing up. Jean admits to being a sensitive and sickly boy with few friends of his own age. He does not start growing up until he leaves home, but then drifts from one relationship to the next. He is suspicious and afraid of committing to Agatha and this confession of sorts is dragged out of him by the more mature female figure: Agatha.

A stormy night and a psychological examination of the tortured adolescence of Jean, makes for a sensitive and interesting read. 3.5 stars.

>131 baswood: A French author with more than 30 novels, who won the Goncourt... I think I have never heard of him!!!
Great that you enjoyed your reading. It's not really the type of book I am inclined to read at the moment so I'll pass, but I'm happy I discovered a new author thanks to you!

>126 baswood: I was poised to add the Banks book to my wish list as your review really sold it - until the last paragraph! Still, might get to it at some stage. Sounds like a good but not great read.

The Taming of a Shrew, anonymous - Anonymous
The Taming of a Shrew was printed in 1594 and was probably performed in the same year. The is not William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, but a sort of parallel version. Much of the content of the two plays is similar and they are both written in verse format. In the Arden Shakespeare they are referred to as A Shrew (anonymous) and The Shrew (Shakespeare). While The Shrew appeared in print for the first time in the first folio in 1623 the relationship of the two plays is obscure because The Shrew was also performed in the early 1590's and that is why I have referred to A Shrew as a parallel version. There is much conjecture as to whether Shakespeare used A Shrew as source material or if A shrew was a bastardised version of the Shakespeare original, or if the two plays were developed from another play now lost.

In the Arden Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew there is a replicate printing of the anonymous version entitled 'A pleasant conceited historie called The Taming of a Shrew: as it was sundry times acted by the right honorable the Earle of Pembrook his servants. It is over 1000 lines shorter than Shakespeare's version. It starts with the hostess of an inn chucking out the drunk Sly who promptly falls asleep outside. He is discovered by a Lord of a hunting party and they decide to play a trick on the drunk. This is similar to Shakespeare's play where Sly is taken to the Lords house and when he wakes up the servants persuade him that he is the Lord, and sit him down to watch a play performed by some travelling players. The play is The Taming of the Shrew and so we have the spectacle of Sly and the servants sitting down to watch the performance and so a play within a play. In A Shrew the action takes place in Athens instead of Padua in Italy and all the names apart from Kate have been changed. In Shakespeare's play after one brief intervention Sly and the other play watchers are forgotten, but in A Shrew the story of Sly is rounded out at the end. It could be said that A Shrew tells more of the story, but in less lines for example we learn why Kate agrees to marry Ferandes ( Petruccio in Shakespeare).

But yet I will consent and marry him,
For I methinks have lived too long a maid,
And match him too, or else his manhood’s good

We are never told this in Shakespeare's version. In A Shrew Kate's submission to Ferandes is even more unequivocal: she ends her long speech with:

As Sara to her husband, so should we,
Obey them, love them, keep, and nourish them,
If the by any meanes do want our helps,
Laying our hands under their feet to tread,
If that by that we, might procure their ease,
And for a president I first begin
And lay my hand under my husbands feete,
(she lays her hand under her husbands feet).

The Taming of A Shrew makes for an interesting read, especially for those people who are familiar with The Taming of The Shrew. 3 stars

>134 baswood: Fascinating background. The Arden Shakespeare editions are always worth it for things like this.

George Chapman - The Shadow of Night, Chapman
George Chapman 1559-11634 was an English dramatist, translator and poet. He was a classical scholar. Chapman is best remembered for his translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. He is the subject of one the most famous early sonnets of John Keats On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer (you know the one that starts with 'Much have I travelled in the realms of gold'). In that sonnet Keats says he heard "Chapman speak out loud and bold" and that is the impression I got when reading The Shadow of the Night. It would seem that Chapman does not do subtle, and although his poetry bears much witness to his classical background there is no toning down of the language: not so much of the polite poetic convention that can be found in some Elizabethan poets, especially the sonneteers. We are back in the world of Christopher marlow

Chapman spent the early 1590's abroad, and saw military action in the Low Countries fighting under the renowned English general Sir Francis Vere. His earliest published work was The Shadow of Night (1594). It consists of two complementary poems "Hymnus in Noctem" and "Hymnus in Cynthium" Both poems celebrate the intellect and assert the superiority of darkness over light:

All you possess'd with indepressed spirits,
Endued withy nimble, and aspiring wits,
Come consecrate with me, to sacred Night
Your whole endeavours, and detest the light.
Sweet Peace's richest crown is made of stars,
Most certain guides of honour'd mariners,
No pen can anything eternal write,
That is not steeped in humour of the night.

"Hymnus in Noctem" laments the fallen state of the world; the debased world of the present day that is rife with injustice, where avarice and greed rule most peoples daily actions. He calls on them to come back to the glorious mantle of the night, to think to, contemplate, to use their intellect to think about their actions.

Kneel then with me, fall wormlike on the ground,
And from th' infectious dunghill of this round,
From men's brass wits and golden foolery,
Weep, weep your souls, into felicity:
Come to this house of mourning, serve the Night,
To whom pale Day (with whoredom soaked quite)
Is but a drudge, selling her beauty's use
To rapes, adulteries, and to all abuse.
Her labours feast imperial Night with sports,
Where loves are Christmasse'd with all pleasure's sorts
And whom her fugitive and far shot rays
Disjoin, and drive into ten thousand ways,
Night's glorious mantle wraps in safe abodes
And frees their necks from servile labour's loads:
Her trusty shadows succour men dismay'd
Whom Days deceitful malice hath betray'd:

At the end of the poem he calls for the night to send down the "furies" to enable our Empress (Elizabeth I) to make virtue flourish in the light of day.

This idea of night ruling day is a turn around from the usual concept of darkness needing to be banished so that light can flourish. Chapman sees night as creative and harmonious, but also there is a feeling of melancholia as night is also mournful and of course a shadow. "Hymnus in Cynthium" is in many respects a celebration of the arrival of Queen Elizabeth I who must keep her virginity and restoire virtue to her people. An allegory of the myth of Acteon and his hounds is brought in to demonstrate the daylights propensity to encourage the more base affections, the sinful behaviour and lusty passions. The poem ends with an exhortation to Cynthia (Elizabeth I) to use all her powers for the good of her subjects and so:

And thou for ever live the planets' queen

It would seem to me that Chapman was not a man to suffer fools gladly. At the end of each poem he supplies 'Glosses': explanations of some of the classical references used, but at the end of the first poem he says :

"For the rest of his own invention, figures and similies, touching their aptness and novelty, he hath not laboured to justify them, because he hopes they will be proved enough to justify themselves, and prove sufficiently authentic to such as understand them; for the rest, God help them, I cannot do as others, make day seem a lighter woman than she is by painting her"

I can't let Chapman have the last word, however loud and bold his poetry maybe. It was however a surprise to read his more robust style. The examples above show his skill at fashioning rhyming couplets in iambic pentameters (heroic couplets) and I look forward to reading more of his poetry and perhaps his translations. 4 stars.

Eric Ambler - Judgement on Deltchev
Ambler was a British author of thrillers and specialised in spy thrillers. He was noted for adding a new realism into his novels. His novels appeared in two batches: the first six from 1936 to 1940 and then a gap of eleven years until Judgement of Deltchev which appeared in 1951: he continued publishing novels until 1981. His most acclaimed novel before the second world war was The Mask of Dimitrios, which I read and enjoyed some years ago.

Judgement of Deltchev is a story based around the show trial of Bulgarian politician Nikola Petkov who was executed in 1947. Ambler turns these events into a power struggle between the ruling elite, and in his novel it is Deltchev who is on trial for treason in an unnamed Eastern European state. In several of his spy thrillers Ambler uses the trope of an amateur getting involved in a deadly political game and it is used again here. Foster is an American playwright, who unexpectedly receives a commission to report on a show trial taking place in a Balkan state. It is a first person account by Foster who admits that he finds himself over his head in the intrigue. He is met by Pashik on his arrival in the country, who becomes his guide/handler. He takes an instant dislike to Pashik who tells him that his account of the trial must go through the official censorship channels. Pashik's advice is to write nothing until he leaves the country. Foster strains against the restrictions imposed and seeks to meet members of Deltchev's family and his political allies to round out a portrait of the accused. This digging for information gets him involved in the political power struggle and endangers his and Pashik's life. A feature of the novel is the relationship between Foster and Pashik, with each of them struggling to trust each other.

The story has elements of mystery as the reader stumbles along in the dark with Foster as he tries to understand the events going on around him. Ambler creates a realistic atmosphere of subterfuge in a milieu of an eastern European state emerging from the second world war, with rival factions searching for influence in the East (Russia) or the West America. Fosters investigations serve to arouse the suspicions of almost everyone he meets and it becomes clear there is much more going on behind the scenes of the show trial. It all leads to a tense climax with Foster barely escaping becoming involved in a coup d'etat.

Amber has to rely on at least three significant information dumps within the novel to keep the reader informed of the necessary background to the story, and these happen when Forster seemingly puts himself in danger. It is however, a well written plot based novel with some interesting characters and reminded me a little of Graham Greene's entertainments, although characterisation and psychology in Amber's novel take second place to the unfolding story. Reading the novel some 70 years after publication enabled me to step back from the contemporary issues of the time, and the criticism that Ambler was more unsympathetic to the Eastern block countries than in his pre-war novels. 3.5 stars.

>136 baswood: Thanks for that, I have his translations and know the Keats (a good reason to have the translations). Borges has an essay on Homeric translations and Chapman is one he includes in discussing poetic translation overall.

>125 baswood: Thanks for the wonderful review of The Caine Mutiny; it was nice to revisit it. I first read this around the age of 12 when I was reading through my father's war-themed books (he was a WWII vet). I read it again during a Herman Wouk period in the late 70s, early 80s.

Will mention to Michael your review of the Banks. Not sure that he has read that one.

>137 baswood:

I like Ambler much more than Greene. Five novels were included in the Penguin Modern Classics series in new editions. (Not this novel).

Soif - Amelie Nothomb
Amelie Nothomb is a Belgian author who writes in the french language. Since her first novel was published in 1992 she has published a novel every year since then. It is almost a racing certainty that you will find one of her books in your local library. There were three on offer in mine and I chose Soif. There was nothing on the book covers to give a clue as to the subject matter apart from a quote:

"Pour éprouver la soif il faut être vivant"

It took me a few pages to realise that it was an interior monologue of Jesus Christ, just after his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane. He is hauled before Pontious Pilot and sentence to be crucified the next day. Jesus was rather hoping it would be later that day because now he would have to spend a night alone in his cell with the fear of the crucifixion the next day. Nothomb imagines his thoughts during that fearful night and the next day while the sentence is being carried out. It is the passion of Jesus that takes up much of this short novel, however it ends with his reflections following his resurrection.

Nothomb imagines Jesus with the mind of an ordinary man, but a man who believes he is the son of God. He knows he will die in agony the next day and his first thoughts alone in his cell, are whether he will be allowed the blessed peace of being able to sleep. Of course events in his life flash through his mind. He thinks of his mother and the man whom he refers to as Joseph, what good kind people they are, he thinks of how his life might have been, if he was not an incarnation of the son of God. He thinks about his love affair with Mary Magdalene whom he calls Madeleine and the power of human love, but the next day is on his mind and he refuses the bowl of water offered to him. He believes that water is life giving and to deny himself a drink of the life giving liquid, will prepare him for the agony of the next day.

Northomb imagines his thoughts and observations as he struggles to carry his cross up to Golgotha. She presents his jagged thoughts alongside the pain of getting to the top of the hill. She does a good job of putting the reader into the mind of Jesus at the start of his agony. I felt the harrowing experience. The scene at the crucifixion site, the desolation, the numbing agony of Jesus is well described, as is the crucifixion itself. There are moments of kindness which makes Jesus think about humanity and stops his disdain for how he is being treated. This works very well. There are no deep psychological or religious insights, but the events are not lightly treated. There are themes and phrases running through the book that hold it all together. I think it is a moving experience. I am not so sure about the last few pages where Jesus is a disembodied spirit, however it is in keeping with the idea that the human body defines humanity: God as a bodiless spirit does not understand the human beings he has created.

There is much to think about in this original story of the passion of Jesus. It is told with love and affection and I rate is as a 4 star read. I will certainly try other books by this author.

I think that just about does it for book reviews this year. I have still got my french homework to do, but hope to post a few thoughts on my reading experience during this very strange year. Off to a new years party tomorrow night - I hope the new year starts well.

It has been a year when I had firm reading plans based around 4 categories:

Books published in 1951
Elizabethan literature from 1594
Science fiction and proto science fiction
Unread books lurking on my bookshelves

But another category muscled in and this was French books. I joined the local library. I had not been a library member for over 40 years, but now I rediscovered the joys of browsing along the bookshelves. I read 29 French books this year out of a total of 90 books read.

I read 16 books from 1951 and I am wondering how long the quality of the books will hold out as I have now read most of the books on the best books list from that year.

My Elizabethan reading did not get past 1594; The theatres were closed for most of 1593/4 and so most of the published material I read was poetry. Shakespeare published two long poems during this period: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece which are collected with a few other bits and pieces in The Arden Shakespeares Poems. Knowing that none of his plays had appeared in print at this time it is fascinating to realise that Shakespeares reputation was based on his poetry. It was a time for the Elizabethan sonneteers to publish their works and some of it was pretty dire as they followed the poetry of Petrarch stuck in the same tram lines. A couple of poets managed to refine the style or break out from the tracks just a little bit and I enjoyed The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh and Samuel Daniel. For me 1594 ended with discovering the poetry of George Chapman who published his first book that year. One play that did get published was Sir Thomas More credited to Anthony Munday and the Revells edition of this play was a fascinating reading experience.

I read 14 books which could be labelled science fiction. Looking Backward: 2000-1887 - Edward Bellamy was the standout book and I enjoyed a re-read of Ray Bradbury's Illustrated man

The unread books from my shelves for the most part should have stayed unread. However I rediscovered the pleasure of reading Arnold Bennett: Clayhanger is a great Victorian novel.

I finished the year by reading three books on climate change - thoroughly depressing, but sometimes one has to swallow the nasty medicine. I hope to do even better next year with my own carbon footprint.