The Salt Path | Raynor Winn #UKNonFiction

 

It has taken me a while to finish The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, not because I wasn't enjoying it, but simply because it became my walking backpack book. It was the perfect choice. It was a slim paperback (i.e. lightweight). It was about going for a very long walk. It was non-fiction and therefore easy to pick up and put down without needing to remember complicated plot points or narrative arcs. And the gorgeous cover design by Angela Harding was a thing of beauty to savour as a drank my coffee, in my favourite coffee shop. at the end of my walk.

The early pages are a tale of woe and misfortune. Winn and her husband, Moth, are in the 50's and suffer a serious of life-changing blows. From financial ruin, losing their home and discovering that Moth as a life-threatening illness, corticobasal degeneration or CBD. I occasionally felt frustration at their level of trust in the goodness of others (and institutions) and their lack of proper planning and forethought, but there was no denying their deep love and commitment to each other. 

After being made homeless, their young adult children were unable to take them in or support them, as they will still at the university/study phase of life. Some friends helped out for a while, but they did not want to be a burden to anyone. Moth's terminal diagnosis hung over them and memories of the life together in Wales on their farm, were too painful to face every day. So they packed up the few things they still owned, stored some, converted others into walking gear and backpacks, and decided to walk the south-west coast path around Cornwall. A mere 630 miles!

They used Paddy Dillon's little brown book, The South West Coast Path: From Minehead to South Haven Point as their guide. Which meant they had to start their walk, at what is considered, the hardest end first so that they could read the book front to back rather then back to front.

Raynor & Moth quickly discovered that they would not be walking as quickly as Paddy and that his idea of a slight incline was very different to theirs!

Sharing their story with other walkers, was also an eye-opening experience. If they mentioned they were homeless and basically penniless, they were treated as hobos to be avoided and looked down upon. But if they tweeked their story a little they could be seen as heroic, adventurous types to be admired or envied. 

The scenery along this walk is obviously amazing, and I do wish they had included some photos so that those of us on the other side of the world could picture it as we read. Of course, google provides the same service these days. 

The walk was also a lot harder than they thought it was going to be. From blisters, to extreme cold (even in the middle of summer), storms in a barely waterproof tent, and the price of food in many of these scenic, touristy seaside villages. Moth's illness slowed them down as well...for a while. Several weeks into the walk, they both realised that he was moving better, experiencing less pain and seemed to be improving. 

In the end, they had to do the walk in two stages, thanks to the onset of winter. 

Many things were left unsaid.

Did they discover a possible cure or at least, a way to slow down the onset of CBD, by doing this hike? Were they able to find work at the end of the walk? And somewhere to live?

I have to assume that many of these queries will be addressed in her latest book, The Wild Silence, or in the Conversation she had with Sarah Kanowski on ABC radio.

• Shortlisted Costa Book Awards 2018

Middle England | Jonathan Coe #UKfiction

I do love the Costa Prize. It regularly throws up a new-to-me author or a book that I come to adore. The Costa folk have a happy knack of selecting engaging stories, quirky ideas and immensely readable books. There was a lot to love about the 2019 Fiction winner, Middle England.

Set in Brexit England, with a cast of characters that made previous appearances in Coe's two earlier books, The Rotters’ Club (2001) and The Closed Circle (2004). Although I hadn't read the first two books, I was able to jump straight into Middle England thanks to the in context flashbacks and remembrances of the main characters. These main characters were obviously much loved by Coe. They were written with such affection, that it was hard not to like them as well.

I would suggest that Coe's political view of the world basically coincides with my own, so even though I learnt a lot about the Brexit process and gained some insight into how it happened, my views were not challenged. The Remain characters were drawn sympathetically, but were also portrayed as being racist, sexist and/or homophobic. The genuine fear (of change, of the 'other', of difference) that many Remain voters feel, was never really brought forward and the many issues with the EU body politic were only briefly touched on. Perhaps the least sympathetic character, was young Coriander (she was always going to be difficult with a name like that!), the extreme left-wing militant who took offence at pretty much everything.

This all might sound a bit heavy and boring, but let me assure you, it was far, far from that. I had some genuine laugh out loud moments and was entertained from start to finish.

I particularly enjoyed the other serendipitous book moments that happened along the way.

Our English Lit character had a conference in Marseille, that turned into a mini-Count of Monte Cristo homage, culminating in a visit to the Château d'If where Edmund was wrongly imprisoned in his story. I was very envious.

Half way through, most of our characters sat down to watch the Opening ceremony of 2012 London Olympics, which I had just read up on thanks to my recent read of The Tempest. I loved seeing it through the eyes of so many different people.

There was also a passing reference to McEwan's Saturday that coincided with me selecting it for my most recent Shelf Life post. I love it when my book worlds collide.

Middle England is infused with a very British nostalgia, a huge heart and a sense of increasing bewilderment. The politics of Brexit is made personal as this group of family and friends discuss, fall out and learn to live with each other's different view points and opinions.

I will definitely go back to read The Rotters' Club at some point; I'm curious to know how Benjamin and his family and friends started out. 

Quotes:

• Ian Sansom suggested these books were “the closest thing we have to a contemporary middle-class, middle-England Dance to the Music of Time”.
• John Boyne said: “Millions of words have been and will be written on Brexit but few will get to the heart of why it is happening as incisively as Middle England.”

Facts:

• Costa Book Awards Fiction Winner 2019
• 2019 nominee for The Prix Femina étranger

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

I've had a lovely run of Homeric stories retold from a feminist perspective this year - Madeline Miller's Circe and The Song of Achilles, and now Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls.

After Miller's wonderful, rich storytelling, I was looking forward to seeing what Barker would come up. I was thrilled that her story was going to be told from Briseis' point of view, as I enjoyed the brief glimpse that Miller gave me into a possible story for her in The Song of Achilles.

Briseis, the wife of the King of Lyrnessus, Mynes is one of the women and girls captured as spoils of the Trojan war. She is given to Achilles as a war trophy, but becomes a disputed object between Achilles and Agememnon which leads the reader into the central crisis in Homer's The Iliad.

Barker doesn't shy away from the sexual nature of these transactions. The women and girls knew they were going to be enslaved, raped and abused. Knowing this, I'm not sure why more of them didn't leap from the top of the tower, like Barker described two young women doing early on, as the Greeks crashed through the front gate.

Maybe there wasn't that much difference between their husbands and their new masters? Or perhaps the violence wasn't as horrific as I imagined and Barker suggested? Maybe a form of love or tenderness bloomed between master and subject? Perhaps the Greeks were looking for the comforts of home not more violence?

We will never really know, which is why I'm so fascinated by these modern retellings.

However, in the end, Barker's was a fairly straight version of events as originally told in The Iliad.

I enjoyed the first person narrative of Briseis, but found the occasional third person narrative from Achilles point of view very clunky. There only worth was to highlight just how objectified the women in the camp were to the men. They were sexual objects for barter and to show off. Barker showed these men as being unable to remember the names of the women that they took to their beds on a regular basis, dismissing their words, their presence and their humanity.

I also struggled with the language. Barker's writing style abounded in cliches with her characters often behaving in implausible ways. The dialogue in particular was banal and didn't seem to lead anywhere or show anything. I was disappointed to say the least.

So for now, this ends my run of Homeric retellings with a feminist twist. I still have Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad to look forward to one day and Gareth Hinds graphic novel adaptation of The Iliad on my TBR pile...maybe the next readathon?

Favourite Quote: I didn't underline one single phrase or sentence.

Favourite or Forget: Forgettable.

Facts:

• Costa Novel Award 2018 Shortlist
• Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019 Shortlist
• Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.

9/20 Books of Summer Winter
Sydney 19℃
Dublin 18℃

The Skylarks' War by Hilary McKay

A couple of weeks ago I listed The Skylarks' War by Hilary McKay on my post about books read but not reviewed in an attempt to remove the backlog of reviews bogging me down. But I always knew that I would have to return to this book. And thanks to Lenny's Book of Everything by Karen Foxlee winning the Indie Book Award for Children's Fiction yesterday and rereading my gushing review, that time is now.

So let me tell you about my journey with The Skylarks' War.

My rep gave me a lovely looking ARC at the end of last year. He knows of my love for historical fiction, but in the lead up to Christmas it got put on top of the pile by my bed...and forgotten. I confess the blurb, that reveals that this is yet another WWI story, turned me off a little. We've been inundated with war stories the last five years and I wondered how on earth something new and fresh could be said about this time.

So it languished.

In January, I then noted that it had not only been shortlisted for The Costa Children's Award, but had also won its category award. However, it took a hot, hot summer weekend in mid-Feb when I was feeling blah about everything, including all the books I had half-read on my bedside table, that I flicked through my kids TBR pile.

Over the years I have discovered some real gems on the Costa Book Award list, books I may not have turned to otherwise (Pure by Andrew Miller, the author Marcus Sedgwick and Andrea Wulf's, The Invention of Nature to name a few). So even though this was another war story, I decided it would be light enough to fit my weekend mood.

The first page changed everything though.

More than one hundred years ago, in the time of gas lamps and candlelight, when shops had wooden counters and the streets were full of horses, a baby girl was born. Nobody was pleased about this except the baby's mother. The baby's father did not like children, not even his own, and Peter, the baby's brother, was only three years old and did not understand the need for any extra people in his world....

Clarry was three days old when her mother died. Many things were said about this great calamity, and some of them were regretted later, when people had calmed down and there were fewer tears and more worried frowns in the narrow stone house where the baby had so inconsiderately arrived and her mother had so inconveniently departed. 

I quickly realised why this book had won The Costa and was amazed it hadn't won more - yet.

Clarry, Peter and their older cousin Rupert are characters to take into your heart forever. Told through the innocent childhood eyes of Clarry, McKay is able to tackle some heavy issues. Family dysfunction, bullying, sexism and feminist issues, homosexuality and the hardships of war are all in this book. McKay hints at stuff, leads us up to a point, but she never tells us or explains. She leaves us to work it out and make the connections ourselves, as all the best stories do.

The Skylarks' War will make you laugh and cry. I found myself hugging it to my chest several times and wondering how many people I could make read this book asap.

Part of the success of this story is Clarry's voice. She is believable and feels real.

McKay's writing is the other big plus. She does not condescend or talk down to her child audience. She writes intelligently and like all the very best children's writing (think Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, The Hobbit, The Silver Sword, Lenny's Book of Everything) it is a book that can be read by children and adults alike with an equal amount of pleasure and enjoyment.

The Costa judges described this “as perfect a novel as you could ever want to read." I think they may have understated just how extraordinary and wonderful this story really is.

McKay includes a bibliography in the back of the book and one of the books that informed the authenticity of this story was Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. Enough said really.

The bittersweet heartbreak is there, but so too is the hope.

The Skylarks' War is a keeper. You should read it now.
You can thank me later.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

I'm heart broken.

And I may just have read my most favourite and best book for 2018.

Sally Rooney has written a gut-wrenching, painfully poignant love story about two young damaged souls that will stay with me for a very long time. In Normal People she has captured perfectly all the angst, insecurity and missteps that dog any young relationship. Especially when the two young people involved are still trying to work out their own issues leftover from their childhood.

Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was and become part of it.

Rooney explores the misconceptions around 'normal' and the anxieties we inflict on ourselves in our attempts to belong, to not stand out from the crowd or to be different. On the outside both Connell and Marianne look like they have 'normal' enough family lives. But Connell is being raised by a young single mum and doesn't know who his father is (his mum has said she he has happy to discuss it with him, but he doesn't want to know).

Marianne is also being raised by a single mum (and an older brother), but her father died a number of years ago. Her family is wealthy and except for a dad, seems to have it all. Connell's mum cleans house for Marianne's family. They avoid each other at school, but strike up intense conversations in Marianne's kitchen, as Connell waits for his mum to finish.

Connell is one of the popular, sporty kids at school, who hides just how clever he is to fit in. Marianne doesn't bother hiding how smart she is and doesn't try to fit in. She actively goes about being different, disdainful and fiercely independent.

Normally, I wouldn't be drawn to a tortured romance between two YA's. I had more than enough of that in my own YA years! But this is not your normal YA love story. Rooney gets deep into the heart of this relationship. She teases out each painful nuance and she takes you on this emotional journey that feels very real and very authentic.

We soon learn that Marianne's dad was a violent, unpleasant man. Her mother and brother have dealt with their pain around this by identifying with the perpetrator. They now give back a weird, messed up mix of psychological and physical abuse to Marianne, the only one who has rebelled against this way of living a life.

And as time goes by, we realise just how insecure and anxious Connell really is once he leaves his home base to go to uni. Spending his childhood trying so hard not to stand out, now means that he doesn't know how to stand on his own two feet in the bigger world.

This is a torturous journey, a train-wreck at times, but I couldn't put it down. I cared for both of them, even as I wanted to shake them into perfect understanding. All those things unsaid, assumed and misspoken that so often plague young love (and many older loves that I know) are explored in agonising detail. My heart is broken, but there is hope.

Normal People deserves the buzz it's getting. We all need to be reminded, at times, how important it is to tell those we love how we really feel.

• Longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker
• Shortlisted for the 2018 Costa Book Award
• Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.

The Green Road by Anne Enright

I finally got around to reading The Green Road thanks to Cathy's #ReadIreland Month. It has been sitting on my TBR pile since 2016.

Over my years of blogging, I've come to realise that writing a rave review about a book I really enjoyed, if not loved and adored, is actually harder to do, than writing about those books that are fine reads but didn't quite reach the heights of ecstasy or move me into speechlessness.

The Green Road was such a wonderful, engaging, poignant read after a bout of books that were fine stories mostly which had failed to move me or delight me. I wonder if it was a coincidence that this bout of books were all written by men? By the end of the Winton, I felt an overwhelming sense of desperation to read a book written by a woman. Either way, I'm left feeling rather bemused about how to write an adequate response that does this glorious book justice.

The story of the Madigan family is a slight story in someway. There is no major crisis or earth shattering family secret. The Madigan's are just a regular family with the usual (in Irish terms) problems, misconceptions and issues.

We start with a series of stories seen from the perspective of each of the four children, Constance, Dan, Emmet and Hanna. We see the fall out of Dan choosing to leave home (for the priesthood, which causes his mother to take to her bed for a week!) via the baby sister's eyes. Ten years later we see him again in New York - a failed priest still coming to terms with his sexuality. The other brother makes his way to Africa as a UNICEF field worker whilst the eldest daughter has stayed in Ireland, married well, had a clutch of children and is battling with her weight. We cycle back to see Hanna, now all grown up, not quite making it as an actor, with a baby of her own and an alcohol problem.

Each of these chapters could almost be a story in their own right. Enright has the ability to weave a sense of place into each chapter so thoroughly, that shifting onto the next one is a little jarring at the start. Ardeevin, County Clare is vividly drawn, as too is AIDS ravaged New York and the hardships of Segou, Mali. Each sibling has attempted to find their own place in the world, their own sense of purpose, all the while their mother's voice and their childhood angst rings in their ears.

Their tale is the usual family tale of coming to terms with the image of your mother as you experienced her as a child, against the mother you wished she had been with the woman she really is. Rosaleen is annoying, at times manipulative and perhaps not quite grown up and at peace with her childhood. In other words, she's a regular woman trying to deal (or not) with her own issues as she brings up a family.

Enright writes with compassion, humour and insight. Like real life, nothing is wrapped up in a tidy bow, for the simple reason that the story goes on. One way or another, we always go on.

The second half of the book centres around Christmas 2005, when all the siblings come home together for the first time in a very long time. The catalyst? Their mother has just declared she is ready to sell the family home. And the Green Road of the title? It's a local road that leads through the fields of County Clare to the beach,

Fanore, Burren, County Clare

This road turned into the green road that went across the Burren, high above the beach at Fanore, and this was the most beautiful road in the world, bar none, her granny said -famed in song and story - the rocks gathering briefly into walls before lapsing back into field, the little stony pastures whose flowers were sweet and rare.

The Green Road was shortlisted for the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the Costa Book Award.
Enright won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award for 2016.

#ReadIreland18

#Begorrathon18

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

As most of you know, the past couple of months or so has been rather 'meh' for me and my family. As a result I've been searching through my rather extensive (okay, out of control) TBR piles for comforting, cosy, entertaining reads to ease me through this time.

The Essex Serpent came highly recommended to me via a colleague as exactly that kind of read.

Right from the beginning I went along for the ride that Sarah Perry set up so lushly. The Victorian time frame, the hint of danger, mystery and myth as well as a full cast of engaging characters kept me engaged and eager to pick up my book at the end of each day.

As most of you know, I don't write book summaries. But if you want to know what the book is about, without actually, you know, reading it yourself, and you've managed to miss all the talk it, you can read the Goodreads blurb here.

Personally, I loved the focus on all the ways we love - parental love, friendship, the first flush of romantic love, unrequited love and the long term, loyal love of a happy marriage. Having taken the time to consider Perry's epigraph, I was conscious of her intent the whole way through and it added to me reading experience.

I found The Essex Serpent to to a warm, generous and joyous read. Highly recommended as a holiday read or for those feeling jaded and in need of a good old-fashion reading romp.

The gorgeous William Morris-esque cover, designed by Peter Dyer, was simply an added bonus every time I picked it up.

The Essex Serpent has also been read and reviewed by Simon @SavidgeReads and Cosy Books.

It was shortlisted for the 2016 Costa Novel Award and longlisted for this year's Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf

The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt The Lost Hero of Science has been on my radar ever since it first came out in 2015.

But it was our forthcoming trip to Cuba that brought it front and centre. There is a national park near Baracoa, in eastern Cuba that is named after Humboldt that we hope to visit. I wanted to know what on earth Humboldt was doing in Cuba.

It turned out that Humboldt was an extraordinary scientific adventurer who had a profound and lasting effect on the way we view the world, nature and the place of humans to this day.

In her prologue, Wulf mentioned that

the irony is that Humboldt's views have become so self-evident that we have largely forgotten the man behind them.

Her book set out to reveal the forgotten man, follow the web of his influence as well as remind us of all that he achieved during his lifetime.

The chapters that detailed his influence on men like Simon Bolivar, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, Ernst Haeckle, George Perkins Marsh and John Muir felt like an intrusion at first.
I didn't feel that we needed these bio's within a bio, but as each one wore on, I found myself caught up in what these men also achieved and how far-reaching Humboldt's influence actually was.

Below are some of the basic facts about Humboldt's life, with a few of his observations and theories that I gleaned from this very accessible, easy to read and enjoyable homage.

• Born in the same year as Napoleon
• Older brother, Wilhelm
• Father died when he was nine.
• 'formal, cold and emotionally distant' mother (pg 13)
• privileged but unhappy childhood.

• invented isotherms.
• 'He came up with the idea of vegetation and climate zones that snake across the globe'. (pg5)
• more place names are named after him than anyone else.
• in 1869, huge world wide public celebrations occurred in honour of his centenary birthday.
• First job was as a mining inspector. He became interested in the working conditions of the miners and invented a breathing mask and a lamp that would work in the 'deepest oxygen-poor shafts'. (pg 21)
• 'Comparison became Humboldt's primary means of understanding nature.' (pg 32)
• Good friends with Goethe - 'That something of Humboldt was in Goethe's Faust - or something of Faust in Humboldt - was obvious to many.' (pg 37)

• June 1799 sailed to South America on board Pizarro, a Spanish frigate, with Aime Bonpland, a French scientist as his companion.
• Slave market at Cumana made 'Humboldt a life-long abolitionist'. (pg 53)
• Nov 1799 experienced first earthquake.
• (pg 54) 'memories and emotional responses...would always form a part of man's experience and understanding of nature.'
• 7th Feb 1800 set off to explore the Orinoco.
• Travelled via Lake Valencia where locals told him that the lake was rapidly disappearing 'he concluded that the clearing of the surrounding forests, as well as the diversion of water for irrigation, had caused the falling water level.' (pg 57) 
• 'The action of humankind across the globe, he warned, could affect future generations.' (pg 58)
• 'Humboldt did not regard the indigenous people as barbaric....In fact, he talked about the 'barbarism of civilised man' when he saw how the local people were treated by colonists and missionaries.' (pg 71)

• Dec 1800 arrived in Havana, Cuba.
• March 1801 sailed to Cartagena. Planned to 'cross, climb and investigate the Andes' as they trekked towards Lima.
• Climbed Chimborazo, then thought to be the highest mountain in the world.
• 'He saw the earth as one great living organism where everything was connected, conceiving a bold new vision of nature that still influences the way that we understand the natural world.' (pg2)
• Produced his first sketch of the Naturgemalde - a visual representation of the different zones of plants in relation to climate, location, altitude.
• discovered the magnetic equator.

• Spent 1803 in Mexico.
• March 1804 sailed to the US via Cuba.
• 'Monoculture and cash crops did not create a happy society'.  'All problems in the colonies, he was certain, were the result of the 'imprudent activities of the Europeans.' (pg 150)

• August 1804 arrived back in Paris.
• April 1805 Rome.
• November 1805 Berlin.
• Wrote the Essays on the Geography of Plants - first ecology book - discussed global patterns, continental shift.
• Published Views of Nature - 'poetic vignettes' about the web of life (pg 132)
• Nov 1807 returned to Paris.
• Published his four volume Political Essays on the Kingdom of New Spain between 1808-1811.

• 1829 travelled to Russia and the Siberian steppes, 'following the border that separated Russia from China' (pg 210).
• Created the 'Magnetic Crusade' to measure magnetic variations across the globe. In three years his magnetic stations collected nearly two million observations.

• In 1834 he started work on Cosmos: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe (published in 1845).
• 'As science moved away from nature into laboratories and universities, separating itself off into distinct disciplines, Humboldt created a work that brought together all that professional science was trying to keep apart.' (pg 235)
• Second volume published in 1847. 
• Third in 1850.
• 'Humboldt had become the most famous scientist of his age, not just in Europe but across the world.' (pg 273)

• Fourth volume of Cosmos published in 1856.
• Fifth in 1859.
• Two days after he sent the manuscript to the publishers, he collapsed. He died two weeks later at age 89.

• Humboldt's ideas 'seeped into the poems of Walt Whitman and the novels of Jules Verne.' (pg 282) 
• Also Aldous Huxley, Ezra Pound, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the paintings of Frederic Edwin Church.

Humboldt was friends with, sponsored or mentored almost every well-known scientist that was alive during his lifetime. He was courted by presidents, royal families and artists. He wrote thousands of letter every year and read thousands more.

Wulf's biography has been thoughtfully arranged, with a few gorgeous coloured plates, extensive notes (at the back of the book where they don't clutter up the narrative) and an inspiring bibliography.

One of Humboldt's strengths was his ability to make science and the wonder of nature accessible to everyone. Wulf has replicated this strength in her award winning biography.

Along with 'Humboldt's disciples, and their disciples in turn, (Wulf has) carried his legacy forward.' (pg 336)

Winner of the 2015 Costa Biography award and Winner of the 2016 Royal Society Science Book Prize.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Usually, I prefer to read the book before I see the movie, but in this case our hot summer weather beat me to the punch.

Last weekend was hot, humid and very unpleasant. My family of boys were absorbed by all things pre-season soccer, so I escaped the heat and the testosterone and sought out the cool, dark comfort of our local cinema.

I watched Brooklyn and Carol back to back. It was heaven on a stick!

Both movies were heart-achingly fabulous for very different reasons and I came away determined to read both books as soon as possible.

I have decided to use this experience to test the pros and cons of seeing the movie before reading the book.

There is no doubt that books offers up much more detail and that most movies have to cut, condense or merge scenes, dialogue and even characters.

Brooklyn is no different.

As I was reading the book, I quickly discovered that Eilis and Rose were not the only siblings - they had three brothers who had moved to England to get to work.
Later, at work in Brooklyn, Eilis talks about the nylon sales and the subtle prejudices at play when black women are encouraged to shop in the store. No such scenes existed in the movie.
There was also an uncomfortable vague lesbian scene with Eilis and Miss Fortini during the bathing suit scene that didn't make it into the movie.

However, the movie provided an emotional depth that I found missing in my reading of the book. I found Toibin's writing to be so subtle and nuanced, that I didn't really enter into Eilis' emotional state in the same way I did as when I was watching the movie.

Perhaps the movie images stole my ability to emotional connect with the written words? I already had Eilis' face, especially her expressive eyes, in my head. Those images were very powerful and Toibin's words alone were not enough to capture all the emotional states I experienced in the cinema.

The movie also taught me how to enunciate Eilis' name correctly. Her lovely Irish name is pronounced Ay-lish.

I've included the movie-tie-in cover because this particular scene in the movie was wonderfully moving & added to the romantic nature of the movie interpretation. It was not one based on the book.

The book ending was more about Eilis and her personal freedom. It was a declaration of independence - rooted in her past but heading forward into her future. It was hopeful and empowering  and practical rather than romantic.

Two further points.

During Eilis' first Christmas in Brooklyn, she helps Father Flood feed the homeless. At the end of the meal one of the men sings a traditional Irish song. It's a poignant scene in both movie and book. The movie scene depicts all the characters feeling homesick and nostalgic.

Whereas the book scene is more about Eilis - each time the singer reaches the chorus he looks at her "managing to suggest even more that he had not merely learned the song but that he meant it."

The chorus ma bhionn tu liom, a stoirin mo chroi can be translated as "if you'll be mine, be mine, oh treasure of my heart". It's easy to imagine that these hard-living, lonely men saw in Eilis the embodiment of all they loved and remembered as being good about Ireland.

Secondly, Nora Webster.

Towards the end of Brooklyn, when Mrs Lacey is telling Eilis about all the people who have visited in the wake of the funeral, she mentions Nora.
I love how authors connect their books and their characters.
After reading Nora Webster I had heard that the story was based loosely on Toibin's own childhood, which now makes me wonder if Eilis' story is also loosely based on someone he knew. Especially since Mrs Lacey reappears in the early chapters of Nora Webster chatting about life in Brooklyn and Eilis and Tony.

At the end of Nora, I declared my desire to read more Toibin. I'm glad I listened!

My review of Nora Webster.

Brooklyn won the 2009 Costa Book Award and was longlisted for the Man Booker.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

Ahhhh, this is more like it.

After the slight disappointment of my Chamber of Secrets reread, it has been very pleasing to feel myself back in the warm embrace of a long lost friend with The Prisoner of Azkaban.

From the first page, Rowling hooked me back into Harry's magical world.

She kept the recap of previous stories to a minimum and wove these bits into the story in a far more subtle and natural way (than she did in CoS).

I think one of the major differences with this book compared to the first two in the series, is that it no longer feels like we're adults reading a kids book. There is a darker edge creeping into this story.

Let's face it, those Dementor's and their soul-sucking habits are just plain freaky.

This is also a proper teenage coming-of-age story now in the making.
And typical of that 13-14 yr old experience is the desire to rebel against adult authority just as they discover that those same adults are not the all-knowing, all-wonderful figureheads of their childhood. Shades of grey, complexity and nuance begin to creep into the characterisations and story lines.

The reason these books work so well and win over the hearts and imaginations of children and adults alike is how safe they are. Behind all the scary You-Know-Who Voldemort stuff is a traditional boarding school story, where adults impart knowledge and the children learn to become socially accepted members of their community all wrapped in a heart-warming message about the power of love.

In scary times, the world turns to stories that make them feel better and help them to believe in a better world.

Hogwarts is such a world.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was the winner of the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year in 1999 (this prize is now called the Costa Book Award). As fas as I know, it was the only one of the Harry Potter series to win a major book award. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

If you have read The Prisoner of Azkaban recently and would like to leave the link to your review in the comments below, please do. I'd love to read your thoughts.

Amy's review @Lost in a Good Book which includes some fascinating fun facts.
#PotterBinge #XmasinSummer

Pure by Andrew Miller

I'm trying to work out what I think and feel about this book.

I've been left feeling somewhat perplexed - what was the purpose? What was pure? Why were we left with the elephant in the room?

I subconsciously picked this book up from my TBR pile because I needed the title to weave some magic. I wanted to be purified by this story.

Instead I was submerged into a world of death and decay. Putrid was the word that stayed with the whole time I read this book (and as I think about it again now!) - certainly not pure!

Murky, chaotic, dark, unsettling images ran through my mind.
The pits full of decomposing bones, Jean-Baptiste's head wound, the procession of bones to their new resting place, Dr Guillotin's fascination with the mummified Charlotte.

The smells caused me to wrinkle my nose in disgust - the pit full of decomposing bones, the residents bad breath, the market stall selling cheese the old priests lair.

Reading this book was such a visceral experience that I didn't have time to think "but what is it about" until I got to the elephant at the end.

I still don't know "why the elephant" and I may never understand what made Ziguette attempt to kill the engineer or why Lecoeur suddenly went mad or why Jean-Baptiste had so little control of events.

But the historical stuff was fascinating. The streets of old Paris, the markets, the build up to the Revolution, the walk through Versailles, the mines of Valenciennes, the destruction of the cemetery, the politics and socio-economic observations.

Maybe, like me, Andrew Miller and Jean-Baptiste were looking for 'pure' too. And all we need to do is crawl through some more muck to get there!

Wondrous Words Wednesday - Pure by Andrew Miller

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a lovely meme hosted by Bermuda Onion each week to highlight new (to us) words that we come across in our daily reading.

This week I'm reading the winner of the 2011 Costa Novel Award, Pure by Andrew Miller.

It's set in Paris just prior to the Revolution and I have a number of new words to check out.


Definitions come from the free dictionary.





Escritoire - "He glides to the gleaming walnut of the escritoire, removes from one of its drawers a little picture in a frame..."
 
 

Obviously it's a piece of furniture, but I like to have a picture in my mind.

1. A writing table; a desk.

2. A desk with a top section for books.


A WILLIAM AND MARY WALNUT ESCRITOIRE ON STAND  CIRCA 1700



Charnel - "They start with the south charnel, a gallery of blackened stone adjacent to the rue de la Ferronnerie." 

n.

A repository for the bones or bodies of the dead; a charnel house.

adj.

Resembling, suggesting, or suitable for receiving the dead.

 

Baroques - "What baroques even a mind like his is capable of."

 

I know this word from it's art, music and architecture usage, but I've never seen it used like this before.

 

n.

1. Anything extravagantly ornamented, especially something so ornate as to be in bad taste.

2. Characterized by grotesqueness, extravagance, complexity, or flamboyance.

 

Lucency - "The cloak, the height, that steady gaze lit by the mist's own odd lucency, a faint blue-like light radiating from everywhere and nowhere."

 

The sentence basically gives us the definition in context and I'm assuming a relationship with translucent...

 

1. Giving off light; luminous.

2. Translucent; clear.

Children's Book Council Shortlist 2012

Well, here we again folks...nomination time.

The Pulitzer came and went with no winner for fiction. The Costa Book Award was won by Andrew Miller for his book 'Pure'. The Indie Book Award went to Anna Funder for 'All That I Am'.
The shortlist is out there for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Miles Franklin long list is waiting to be whittled down. And in Australia, we have the Prime Minister's Literary Awards plus various State Premier's Literary awards waiting for their big moment too.

Naturally there is also a site that will keep you informed on all these awards and many more called Literary Awards.

But today we focus on the Australian Children's Book Council Awards.

Nominees for the Older Readers Shortlist are:

Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel by Michael Gerard Bauer
A Straight Line to my Heart by Bill Condon
The Golden Day by Ursula Dubosarsky
The Dead I Know by Scot Gardner
Ship Kings: The Coming of the Whirlpool by Andrew McGahan
When We Were Two by Robert Newton

Younger Readers Shortlist:

Crow Country by Kate Constable
Brotherband: The Outcasts by John Flanagan
Nanberry: Black Brother White by Jackie French
The Truth About Verity Sparks by Susan Green
Bungawitta by Emily Rodda
The Golden Door by Emily Rodda

Early Childhood Shortlist:

The Runaway Hug by Nick Bland
Come Down, Cat! by Sonya Hartnett
That's Not A Daffodil by Elizabeth Honey
The Last Viking by Norman Jorgensen
No Bears by Meg McKinlay  (R)
Rudie Nudie by Emma Quay

Picture Book Shortlist:

Look, A Book ill. by Freya Blackwood
The Dream of the Thylacine ill. by Ron Brooks
For All Creatures ill. by Rebecca Cool
A Bus Called Heaven by Bob Graham  (R)
No Bears ill. by Leila Rudge  (R)
Flood ill. by Bruce Whatley  (R)

Eve Pownall Award for Information Books Shortlist:

The Little Refugee by Anh & Suzanne Do  (R)
One Small Island by Alison Lester & Coral Tulloch
Surrealism for Kids by Queensland Art Gallery
Bilby Secrets by Edel Wignell  (R)
Frommelles by Carole Wilkinson
Playground by Nadia Wheatley

Each year I try to read as many of these nominees as possible. Happily I've already read and reviewed 6 of the nominees - only 24 to go!!

Watch this space.

(R) read but not reviewed