How We Live Now: Scenes from the Pandemic | Bill Hayes

 

I had no idea that Bill Hayes was working on another scenes of New York book that would focus on the March-April Covid-19 lockdown of 2020. If I'd known, I may have experienced fewer angsty days of my own, knowing that Bill was going to somehow make it all right!

It’s a little like losing your life while still being alive, this experience.

How We Live Now is presented in a very similar way to Insomniac City from three years ago. A lovely hardback edition, with black and white photographs scattered throughout. Photographs, or more precisely portraits, that Bill takes of strangers as he is out walking around New York (with their permission). You can see some of them here. The photographs are usually accompanied by a vignette - whether it's what was happening on that particular day or a little personal story about his meeting and conversation with the stranger in question.

Behind me a small line had formed....A family was looking for books for their kids to read. I felt like I was in a metaphorical breadline - a breadline for feeding the brain and the soul.

Insomniac City was a love letter to New York and to his recently deceased partner, Oliver Sacks. How We Live Now continues this theme. Losing Oliver is obviously still a painful memory for Bill, but three years later, his stories are fond reminiscences rather than emotional outpourings. While his love for New York continues unabated, despite the changes that lockdown brought.

When you look out & see the empty streets & sidewalks & shuttered shops, a friend tells me, see it as solidarity - everyone doing their best to keep themselves & everyone else healthy....Even so, I can’t deny how sad & disorientating the absence of life in these once busy streets seems.

It's only a small volume. A slim slice of life as we are living it now, by someone who has a tender eye for detail, for the unusual and the routine. Hayes is a thoughtful man who reflects on how is feeling throughout this time as well as documenting the impact on some of those around him.

In the enforced solitude and silence, you can sometimes hear yourself replaying moments in your life, things said or not said, done or not done, love expressed or not expressed, all the gratitude you’ve ever received, all the gratitude you’ve ever felt.

He captured some of the feelings and moods that I also experienced during our Sydney lockdown. The moments of anxiety as well as the odd moments of peace - being able to listen to an individual bird sing, watching a skateboarder roll down an empty street from his apartment window...

Because I’ve worked at home for years now, the mandate to stay home and work from home is, I imagine, a little easier for someone like me. I’m also a loner and an introvert (except when it comes to strangers), which helps too.

Even so, there are times when I feel spooked - not scared but spooked.

However, what I found most endearing or comforting as I read How We Live Now, was the sense of solidarity that we are all in this together, and the reminder to live our lives now. Our collective here and now may not be the one we planned for or expected, but this is what we have right now. 

Because what IS is what matters most. What was will only make you blue in New York.

This is our life. We are living it. And that's all we have ever been able to do - to live in the world we are in.

Wishing that things were 'normal' or talking about when things go back to 'normal', will only lead us to despair. This is our normal now. We're living it. Whatever happens afterwards, will be different to what went before. This experience will change us all, in big ways and in small. We don't know what or how yet, but change is one of the few things guaranteed in life. Covid-19 has simply been a real in-your-face reminder that this is so. If we fight against it, we can become bitter and disappointed. However, if we accept it, and let go of our desire to control everything (one of the hardest lessons I've certainly had to learn as an adult) we can learn to roll with the punches and find some grace in just being, here, now.

And like Hayes, I am curious to see what's on the other side. 

I am climbing the walls here. But I also know I am among the most fortunate: I have a roof over my head, food in my fridge, and my health to be thankful for. So, if this is how we have to live - with masks and gloves and almost no human contact for several more months - then so be it, this is how we have to live. I just want to see what's on the other side of this f***ing mountain.

My Previous Plague/Pandemic Reads:

• The Plague | Albert Camus
• How We Live Now | Bill Hayes (non-fiction Covid-19)
• The Stand | Stephen King
• Moloka'i | Alan Brennert (Leprosy)
• All Fall Down | Sally Nicholls (The Black Death) YA
• Hamnet | Maggie O'Farrell (The Plague)
• Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood
• Year of Wonders | Geraldine Brooks (Great Plague of London)
• The Pull of the Stars | Emma Donoghue (Spanish Flu)
• A Journal of the Plague Year | Daniel Defoe (Great Plague of London)
• Intimations | Zadie Smith (non-fiction Covid-19)

My Current Plague Reads:

• A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century | Barbara Tuchman (non-fiction The Black Death)
• How We Live Now | Bill Hayes

Up Next:

• Pale Horse, Pale Rider | Katherine Anne Porter (Spanish Flu)
• The Decameron Project: 29 Stories from the Pandemic | The New York Times (Covid-19)

Fracture | Andrés Neuman #InTranslation

What a wonderful reading experience!

From the beautifully designed hardcover dust jacket (the gold seams actually sparkle in real life), to the impressive translation that seems to have captured the beauty and thoughtfulness of Neuman's original story, Fracture is a journey to savour.

I knew I was in for a treat from the very first sentence, “The afternoon appears calm, and yet time is waiting to pounce.” This leads us into the startling realisation that we are about to feel the tremors of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Tokyo, along with our protagonist, Yoshi Watanabe.

The fear and shock of the magnitude 9 earthquake, followed by the images of the horrifying tsunami and the subsequent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, take Yoshie back in time.

Time and it's passing, memory and what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget become the central themes in Neuman's story about Yoshie, a survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by default. Yoshie is a hibakusha, a person affected by exposure to an atomic bomb, in a country unable to talk about it. His life is fractured, broken. He spends the rest of his life trying to piece it back together.

Neuman is a writer not afraid to take a risk with his writing. 

He's an Argentinian man writing about a much older Japanese man, from the perspective of numerous women living all around the world (Paris, New York, Argentina, Madrid). We have Yoshie's narration about life in Tokyo now and his remembrances of the war, and we have these women reflecting on their time with Yoshie. What he was like at that period of his life, their views on how the war affected him and why their relationships with him ultimately failed.

Writing and reading is all about the journey into someone else's world. The oft quoted Atticus Finch saying about 'you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it' is very true about Yoshie's story. Neuman gives us multiple ways to climb into Yoshie's skin, because if he had left it entirely to the very reserved Yoshie, our insights would be greatly diminished. 

For some unknown reason, I've found it very difficult to adequately document my journey with this book. This response has taken weeks to complete.

Fracture was a slow, considered read. Thoughtful and thought-provoking. It delved into many of my favourite themes. From very early on, I considered this book 'a keeper', deserving of a reread and a much coveted position on my groaning bookshelf. I savoured every minute, every word, but I simply don't feel like gushing or raving or shouting about it from the roof tops. It's not that kind of book, I guess. It's contemplative and quietly spoken, much like Yoshie himself.

Sometimes, some books, just need to be sat with quietly.

The Guardian | Lucy Popescu | 9 June 2020

A prolific writer, Neuman – born in Argentina, now based in Granada – delights in language and linguistic ambiguity. In Fracture, he explores the fragmented nature of memory, emotional scars, a city’s wounds after a disaster and the cracks in a relationship caused by cultural difference. He draws profound parallels between collective traumas – Japan’s bombing, Vietnam in 1968, Argentina’s “disappeared”, Chernobyl and the 2004 Madrid train attacks. Recalling Japan’s enforced silence in the war’s aftermath, Yoshie’s Argentinian girlfriend, Mariela, ponders: “Maybe the most brutal thing is not that you were bombed. Most brutal of all is that they don’t even allow you to tell people that you’ve been bombed. During the dictatorship here they would kill one of your children and you couldn’t tell anyone.” 

Facts:

• Originally published in 2018
• Translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia in 2020
• Neuman is a poet, short story writer and columnist. 
• The late Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño, said of him “The literature of the 21st century will belong to Neuman.” 

Epigraphs:

• If something exists somewhere, it will exist everywhere | Czeslaw Milosz (Polish winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 1980).
• Love came...after the kill | Anne Sexton (1928 - 1974 a US confessional poet & Pulitzer prize winner for Poetry 1967).
• I wonder if there is/any operation/that removes memories | Shinoe Shōda (born in Hiroshima 1910, she was a hibakusha. She died of breast cancer 1965. Tanka (II) finishes with Where is a cure/for my pain-filled heart?)
• ...and if my body is still the soft part of the mountain/I'll know/I am not yet the mountain | José Watanabe (1946 - 2007 a Peruvian poet with a Japanese father).

Favourite Quote:

...the ancient art of kintsugi. When a piece of pottery breaks, the kintsugi craftspeople place powdered gold into each crack to emphasise the spot where the break occurred. Exposed rather than concealed, these fractures and their repair occupy a central place in the history of the object. By accentuating this memory, it is ennobled. Something that has survived damage can be considered more valuable, more beautiful. (my highlights)

Such A Fun Age | Kiley Reid #USfiction

I had no intention of reading Such A Fun Age. The premise sounded mildly appealing/interesting:

When Emira is apprehended at a supermarket for 'kidnapping' the white child she's actually babysitting, it sets off an explosive chain of events. Her employer Alix, a feminist blogger with the best of intentions, resolves to make things right. 

But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix's desire to help. When a surprising connection emerges between the two women, it sends them on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know – about themselves, each other, and the messy dynamics of privilege.

But really, I'm rather over the whole adulting trope with a world peopled by no-one but twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings. Yet it was hard to completely resist the buzz surrounding the release of this book.

It was everywhere.

Then a colleague read it and came back with a surprisingly good reaction, so I decided to turn Such A Fun Age into a lunch time read.

It's the perfect pick-up, put-down book, ideal as a holiday read or a complete change of pace between your usual fare.

While the dynamics were initially quite tantalising, not being quite sure in which direction this story was going to go, it quickly settled into a book about other people's self-made dramas. The only likeable characters were Emira, the babysitter, and the toddler, Briar. They had some genuinely awkward moments to contend with, but they just got on with life and didn't make a fuss. They didn't spend their time over-thinking every action and reaction, they just got on with having a mutually heart-warming and caring relationship.

Everyone else was pretty annoying. Alix and her friends were ghastly, Emira's friends were tiresome, the husband was a non-event, the children accessories and the boyfriend, Kelley was just creepy.

Class privilege, racial and gender issues bubbled away behind the scenes but were never really resolved. Perhaps there was more actually going on here that an American reader would pick up on, but I simply got weary of all the talk about clothes and hair and social media status. But maybe I'm just showing my age!

There was some interesting stuff about memories, personal bias and how we perceive ourselves compared to how others actually see us, but since no-one really rose above their stereotype it was hard to know what to make of it all. It's this more than anything that leaves me feeling disappointed. A world peopled by no-one but more people of the same age is ultimately dull and an unhealthy place to be. It felt much like watching an episode of a more ethnically diverse Friends.

Don't get me wrong. Reading this book was a tremendous romp and if I'd been lying on the beach as I did so, it would have been perfect! It's only as I've started to think about it more deeply to write this post, that I see how fluffy and flawed it is. But then, not every single book has to be high literature. Some books are just for fun, at any age.

Memories of the Future by Siri Hustvedt

Memories of the Future by Siri Husvedt has lived with me for a few months now. The slowness of my reading is in no way indicative of any lack of enjoyment on my behalf. It is, however a thoughtful, intelligent read, that requires some active participation. Something I could only do when not completely exhausted after work or double-booked, triple-booked on the weekends.

My early feelings and thoughts about the book were contained in this post from last month - Starting a New Book... I won't repeat myself, so if you'd like a brief synopsis of the story, and a poem by Elsa, I'll wait here for you to catch up.

In this particular book, the book you are reading now, the young person and the old person live side by side in the precarious truths of memory

What the 23 yr old SH wrote and what the 61 yr old SH remembers are often two very different things. Hindsight gives a shape to what is shapeless as you live it.
The things that have stayed with her as important are not always the things she recorded in her journal. I am interested in understanding how she and I are relatives.
The story changes, adjusts to new experiences. Memory is not only unreliable; it is porous.
And sometimes there are shocks waiting in the wings to floor you. Sometimes memory is a knife.

This is the stuff I love. I even did a similar thing myself in my thirties when I read through my old travel journal from 1991. Even after a decade, the things I remembered were different to what I recorded at the time. I wrote another journal comparing my record with my memories. As I wrote, I was also being written.
I should hunt it out to see what it looks like twenty years later again.

We are all wishful creatures, and we wish backwards too, not only forward, and thereby rebuild the curious, crumbling architecture of memory into structures that are more habitable.

Sadly, though, somewhere after the halfway mark of Memories of the Future I lost my way. All the sideline stories (the crazy neighbour Lucy Brite, the story within the story that she wrote in her twenties...) stopped being interesting to me, even as they began to take up more and more of the story telling space. Every story carries inside itself multitudes of other stories.

It all got too much in the end - too rambling, too meta and curiously, not enough Elsa.

There was one brief passage towards the end about the Marcel Duchamp porcelain urinal debate, where ID, the Introspective Detective says,

The preponderance of scholarly evidence has long been on the side of the Baroness, you know. One, we have the letter Duchamp wrote to his sister, Susanne, two days after the urinal was rejected. It was discovered until 1982. In it he wrote. 'One of my female friends who had adopted the pseudonym Richard Mutt sent me a porcelain urinal as a sculpture.' Two we know that a newspaper reported at the time that the artist Richard Mutt was from Philadelphia. The Baroness was living in Philadelphia at the time. Three, we know that it wasn't until after the Baroness and Stieglitz were both dead that Duchamp assumed full credit for the urinal.... 

Duchamp stole it, all right. It doesn't even resemble the rest of his work.... 

Fountain doesn't fit in. But the museums haven't changed the attribution.

Marcel Duchamp, 'Fountain', 1950 (replica of 1917 original), porcelain urinal, 30.5 x 38.1 x 45.7 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art 125th Anniversary Acquisition, gift (by exchange) of Mrs Herbert Cameron Morris,
1998-74-1 © Association Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP. Copyright Agency, 2019

Marcel Duchamp
Fountain, 1950 (replica of 1917 original)
porcelain urinal
© Association Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP. Copyright Agency, 2019

And as luck would have it, from the 27th April until 11th August my local Art Gallery of NSW is hosting The Essential Duchamp exhibition, with the urinal in question on full display. I wonder if the 'replica of 1917 original' is enough to cover his bases?

Favourite or Forget: Not a favourite in the end, but still keen to read more by Hustvedt.

Favourite Characters: IF IS and ID

Favourite Quote:

My first moments in my apartment have a radiant quality in memory that have nothing to do with sunlight. They are illuminated by an idea....I was twenty-three years old...

This took me straight back to my own 23 yr old self, living alone for the first time in a new town, starting my career, on the brink of my adult life, excited, full of anticipation and hope and plans and the love, the 'radiant quality' I felt for my first, slightly dingy, older style townhouse on the wrong side of the tracks.

Books in Books:

• Don Quixote 
• Balzac
• The Great Gatsby
• Proust
• Sherlock Holmes
• Gogol - Dead Souls
• Baudelaire - The Flowers of Evil
• Laurence Sterne - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
• Plato - Apology
• Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
• Socrates
• Smolett - The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
• The Metamorphosis
• Chaucer
• Milton - Paradise Lost
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• Finnegan's Wake
• Simone Weil "imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life."
• Great Expectations
• John Ashbery
• Michael Lally
• Thomas Wyatt
• Shakespeare
• John Donne
• John Clare
• Emily Dickinson
• Thomas Moore
• Sylvia Plath
• Alan Turing
• Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
• etc - there were many more but you get the jist!

Starting a New Book...

So I've just started reading Siri Hustvedt's latest novel, Memories of the Future.

I'm inclined to anticipate enjoyment of Hustvedt's work thanks solely (so far) on my experience with What I Loved. I feel sure that I will be in for an intelligent, literary treat.

The first chapter has not disappointed.

Metafiction is the name of this game as Hustvedt's story explores a 61 yr old woman looking book on the journal written by her 23 yr old self when she first moved to New York to write.

In a curious, personal, twist of fate, there is a Don Quixote connection right from the start.

Within the journal of 23 yr old S.H. is another story about Ian Feathers (I.F.) - a man whose real 'life was lived in books, not out of them.' A man who took his passion for mystery, unsolved crimes and murder too far. A man who 'lived in a world built entirely of clues.' A man who wanted to live his life through the 'splendid' example of Sherlock Holmes (another S.H.). All good heroes need a sidekick - I.F.'s 'all-important confidante, his Sancho, his Watson,' was/is Isadora Simon (I.S.).

I love it when my book worlds collide, or perhaps, more elegantly, when serendipity steps in to allow one bookish experience to inform the next.

Memories of the Future is also ripe with books within books, or more accurately, poets and their poems.

John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Barbara Guest and Frank O'Hara. And The Great Gatsby, Balzac, Proust, Gogol, Baudelaire, Laurence Sterne and Plato just to name those referenced in the first 32 pages. But the one that has made several appearances and will obviously play a bigger role as the story unfolds is the Dada-poet/performance artist, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

Who? I hear you ask.

According to the Poetry Foundation, she was a 'German-born avant-garde poet. Known for her flamboyance and sexual frankness, the Baroness was a central figure in Greenwich Village’s early-twenties Dadaism'.

Wikipedia describes her as 'breaking every erotic boundary, revelling in anarchic performance'.

Her friend Emily Coleman saw her as, 'not as a saint or a madwoman, but as a woman of genius, alone in the world, frantic'.

I'm very curious to see how Hustvedt will thread the Baroness' life into the rest of her story.
                     

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven by Holland Cotter

Fruit Don’t Fall Far
By Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven
Translated by Jill Alexander Essbaum

From Daddy sprung my inborn ribaldry.
His crudeness destined me to be the same.
A seedlet, flowered from a shitty heap,
I came, the crowning glory of his aim.

From Mother I inherited ennui,
The leg irons of the queendom I once rattled.
But I won’t let such chains imprison me.
And there is just no telling what this brat’ll...!

This marriage thing? We snub our nose at it.
What’s pearl turns piss, what’s classy breeds what’s smutty.
But like it? Lump it? Neither’s exigent.
And I’m the end result of all that fucking.

Do what you will! This world’s your oyster, Pet.
But be forewarned. The sea might drown you yet.

Not my usual poetic fare, but from what I have seen so far, a fair example of the Baroness' writing. And as S.H. says on pg 53, 'I returned to the sputterings of the Baroness because I regarded her as my archival rescue job, almost annihilated back then, and I wanted to protect her from oblivion with my voice.'

Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. I enjoy sourcing poems from my recent reads to join in with her as I can.

Lenny's Book of Everything by Karen Foxlee

I fell in love with Karen Foxlee's writing in 2014 when I read and loved Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy.

A Most Magical Girl confirmed her ability to move me with her words. So much so, that I acquired her YA backlist to read...one day...!

So I was thrilled to discover recently that she had a new book, Lenny's Book of Everything, due out later in the year. When an ARC turned up last week with my reps tear-soaked tissue rave about how good it was ringing in my ears, I popped it on top of the TBR pile for the weekend.

All the PR on the inside covers suggested that this would be Foxlee's 'break-out book', the one that would finally tip her over into the big time (where I've always thought she belonged, by the by).

The opening sentence told me they were correct.

Our mother had a dark heart feeling.

Straight away I had that lovely goosebumpy shiver of anticipation feeling that happens oh-so rarely these days. I knew this book was going to break my heart yet I couldn't stop myself. Even when that breaking my heart feeling almost got too strong, I couldn't look away for long. Because Foxlee breaks your heart so tenderly, so hopefully, so sweetly that you can't not go along for the ride.

Every life has times of sadness and darkness, stories like this remind us that despite the darkness, within the sadness, there can be kindness, loving and beauty. This is what makes our lives worthwhile, this is what gets us through the bad times.

Foxlee also reminds us that words have power. They have meaning and purpose. Some people choose to put that power and purpose to a negative use, but Foxlee shows us the positive, glorious, wondrous nature of words and knowledge. Words that illuminate, uplift and provide hope are her speciality. Her words enrich our lives and fill our souls with joy.

I know, I'm gushing! But I'm not the only one smitten.

The book is full of gushing quotes:
Anna McFarlane (publisher, Allen & Unwin) - it raises spirits while it breaks hearts.
Eva Mills (publishing director) - broke my heart (in a good way!)...a deep understanding of humanity.
Juanita Keig (account manager) - importance of kindness and human solidarity.
Radhiah Chowdhury (editor) - soothes even as it relates the most unutterable pain.

Karen Foxlee's note tells us that this story about 'an encyclopedia set and a boy who kept growing' has been in her head for quite some time, and that when she 'finally sat down to write it, Lenny was there waiting for me. I felt immediately comfortable in her voice.' It shows.

The complexities and nuances within this story have been woven in seamlessly and apparently, effortlessly by Foxlee. Her characters are fully realised with whole back stories just sitting out of sight, influencing all their actions and reactions. The push and pull between her characters as they rubbed up against each other on a daily basis, felt so real and so natural. They loved, they annoyed, they cared and they hurt each other.

Foxlee said she was trying to explore 'love in all its forms' and how wonderful it is to be alive and that 'even in the darkest hours, there's always hope'. She succeeded.

Although Foxlee is Australian through and through, she has set this story in the 1970's in New York City. I've never lived in NYC, but I now feel like I have, at least, in this one little pocket of NYC so vividly described by Foxlee.

The rest of the story details I leave for you to discover yourself.

Not many books make me cry out loud - I can count the contenders on one hand - but Lenny's Book of Everything made me blubber. Yes, my heart was broken, but it wasn't unbearable. My heart was full of love, wonder and hope too and my heart was mended, again.

The comparisons to Wonder, The Boy in the Striped Pyjama's and The Book Thief are spot on. They are all very different stories, told in very different ways, but they all share an authenticity and tell an emotional truth that is universal and enduring.

The final hardback cover will look like this:

If you'd like to read about the creative process that made this stunning cover, read about it @Things Made From Letters.

Lenny's Book of Everything is a Nov 2018 publication Allen & Unwin.
Book 20 of #20booksofsummer (winter) WAHOO!!
Temperature in Northern Ireland 19℃
Temperature in Sydney 18℃

The Guggenheim Mystery by Robin Stevens

The Guggenheim Mystery is the follow up story to Siobhan Dowd's 2007 The London Eye Mystery. Dowd sadly died of cancer at the end of 2007. She had been contracted to write two Ted Spark mysteries, but other than selecting the title of book two, she died before planning any of it.

The Siobhan Dowd Trust (established by Siobhan herself in her dying days) set out to find someone to finish her stories. Patrick Ness took over the half conceived A Monster Calls while Robin Stevens was given a title!

In her Author's Note at the end of the book, Stevens says,

I realised why Siobhan had chosen it (the Guggenheim) as the setting of Ted's second adventure. If Ted is a different detective, the Guggenheim, with its curving ramp, its rotunda shape and its insistence on viewing art from all angles at once, is a different sort of museum. Ted would be perfectly at home there - and if anything were to happen to one of the paintings, he would be the perfect person to solve the mystery.

It turns out that Stevens, like Ted's cousin, Salim, also grew up with a mother who worked in a museum. In fact, her mother was working at the Ashmolean in 2000 when thieves stole a Cezanne using smoke bombs. Steven's The Guggenheim Mystery is the perfect example of art imitating life!

The mystery was relatively easy for an adult reader to work out, but of course, I'm not the target audience. The three main characters are likeable and believable. The use of logical reasoning and deduction techniques appealed to my practical brain. There was a quest-type element to the detective work as each person who was questioned and eliminated, then gave them clues or advice on who to proceed to next.

Dowd created a love letter to London in The London Eye Mystery, in The Guggenheim Mystery Stevens has created her own love letter to New York.

Highly recommended for 10+ readers who love detective-type stories and diverse characters.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

I hadn't realised that Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's was a novella - only 100 pages in my sweet little pink Popular Penguin. Not that I'm complaining. Brief is good for me right now.

This particular edition also contained three more short stories by Capote - House of Flowers, A Diamond Guitar and A Christmas Memory.

There's probably not much more I can say about the actual story of Breakfast at Tiffany's that hasn't already been said. Yes, the book is different to the movie. Capote clearly tells us that Holly has 'boy's hair, tawny streaks, strands of albino-blonde and yellow', yet it is impossible to read this story now without Audrey Hepburn in mind.

The book is seedier, grittier and less romantic than the movie. But in both, Holly comes across as being extremely young and naive (she loves Wuthering Heights after all - the ultimate symbol of young, naive passion). She's looking for love and belonging in all the wrong places. She allows herself to become a kept woman and keeps everyone at arm's length, even the cat.

She's described as being a phony (although a 'real phony. She believes all this crap she believes') and a liar. I'd like to say she was at least true to herself, but that was the part she hadn't worked out yet. She was still searching; trying on different parts; hoping, wishing, longing for something more or something different.

You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.

You're left hoping, that Holly will one day, like the cat, stop running and find a home where she feels that she belongs.

The other three stories are much slighter and quite different in tone and subject matter. I guess you could say that they represent a good cross-section of Capote's writing style, except the sum total of my knowledge about Capote's work is now contained in these four stories. So what would I know!

House of Flowers is set in Haiti featuring a young girl, Ottilie, who has found her way into prostitution. Like Holly, she longs to know what love is and to feel a sense of belonging. For Ottilie this means returning to the Mountains of her childhood and facing the hostility of an older, dying woman. The story seems to be about the battle for power between the two women, with the younger coming off the ultimate winner. Her old life is quickly forgotten as the age-old juggle/struggle for power begins with her new husband.

By the time I had got to the end of A Diamond Guitar, I realised that love and belonging were major themes for Capote. I also found a sense of nostalgia and yearning prevalent in all of his pieces. This one is a prison story - not one of those harsh, cruel prison stories full of depraved beings, on both sides of the wire - but one that focused on friendship, longing and memory with maybe just a hint of gay love.

The final story, A Christmas Memory, is apparently an American classic, but one I have never heard of before. A quick google revealed that there was an autobiographical element to the story, which made it more interesting and enlightening. Capote's writing was obviously his way of searching for the love and belonging that was missing from his childhood. This reminded me that the only thing I had known about Capote before reading these stories was his childhood friendship with Harper Lee. Apparently Sook, the elderly cousin that featured in his Christmas stories, was befriended by Capote during this same time.

I love how books can find connections with other books purely by chance. I'm currently reading Lincoln in the Bardo. Capote's descriptions of Sook made me smile,

Her face is remarkable – not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind.

It gave me an instant affection for her.

I'm not sure if other countries produced pink popular penguins, but in 2013 Penguin Australia teamed with the McGrath Foundation to help raise money for Breast Care Nurses in communities all around Australia.

Glenn McGrath was a prominent Australian cricketer a number of years ago. His wife Jane sadly died of breast cancer in 2008. She was only 42. They started the McGrath Foundation together in 2005. Currently 117 Breast Care Nurses have been placed in various communities around Australia.

The Pink Popular Penguins

• Alphabet Sisters by Monica McInerney

• Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

• The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

• Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

• A Spy in the House of Love by Anais Nin.

This is my seventh completed book & review for #20BooksofWinter. 

I've half read two others on the list. 

There is a grandness in my ability to fail reading challenges!

What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt

So many various and varied roads led me to read What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt this week.

Firstly, she is one of my dear friend's favourite writers (along with Paul Auster). I have resisted for several years now for no particular reason. However, Hustvedt's books are always there, lurking in the back of my mind, waiting for me to pay them attention.

In the past few weeks I have read three truly amazing, but very different books that have a connection to either New York City, art, post-modernism, love or loss - The Museum of Modern Love, Exit West and Insomniac City.

Last week, as I was unpacking boxes at work, the red tinted edges of Sceptre's 30th anniversary special edition of What I Loved grabbed my attention. I flicked open the pages randomly and landed on the top of page 103 and read,

Not once in all my years of marriage had I asked myself whether I loved Erica. For about a year after we met, I had been thoroughly unhinged by her. My heart had pounded. My nerves had tensed with longing until I could almost here them buzz. My appetite had vanished, and I had withdrawal symptoms when I wasn't with her.

I was hooked.
This brief passage reached out to me and insisted I read the rest of it now. It felt real and it felt urgent. It was also set in NYC and featured an artist as one of the main characters.
I was in!

Hustvedt divided the book into three acts. The first act was the getting to know you section that occasionally dragged a little.
Leo is our narrator and protagonist. We become intimately connected to his wife Erica, their friends, Bill, Violet and Lucille and the children Matthew and Mark. Bill is an artist - his work fascinates Leo, which is what brings them altogether.

I found the descriptions of Bill's art work overly long and, well, tedious, at times, although I gradually realised that they gave us many psychological insights into Bill's character as well as allowing Hudsvedt many opportunities to explore her ideas about perception and seeing and interpretation.

Early on Leo remarks that one of Bill's paintings reminds him of Jan Steen's woman at her morning toilet which he saw at the Rijksmuseum. Bill acknowledges the connection and says,

I'm not interested in nudes. They're too arty, but I'm really interested in skin. 

They note how you can see the imprint in the woman's skin made by the string that keeps the top of the sock up. Hustvedt plays with the notion of what is skin deep and how what we do (and think) impacts on our bodies. Impressions, influences and surface details versus intent, consciousness and internal meaning also get explored throughout the book.

Naturally I had to source this painting to see it for myself.

Woman at her Toilet, Jan Havickszoon Steen, 1655 - 1660

Curiously Steen seems to have painted this idea twice. The painting above is the one that hangs in the Rijksmuseum. The one below is part of the Royal Collection Trust.

I now wonder if this example of duality was a deliberate choice by Hustvedt or merely happy coincidence.

A Woman at her Toilet 1663 Jan Steen

Act two reveals why the title is written in the past tense. The pace and tension within the story also picks up from here. If you have been struggling with the first chapter, I urge you to wait until the second to make up your mind about whether to continue or not.

I loved the vague sense of foreboding and dread that simmered under the surface during the final two acts. Love, grief, hope, disappointment, trust, despair, loyalty and forgiveness are just some of the heavy emotions that swirl around our characters. It was an emotional roller coaster ride that I couldn't, and didn't want to get off.

I'm always fascinated when an author writes in the voice of someone of the opposite sex. Colm Toibin has impressed me in the past with his ability to write from the female perspective and here, I feel that Hustvedt has captured the male voice so well.

She said in an interview with Bookslut in 2008,

Writing as a man is not an act of translation but means becoming a man while you are working, not unlike an actor becoming his role. I truly believe that most of us have men and women within us and can hear the voices of both sexes, as well as feel the nuanced and sometimes blatant differences between them. A male voice necessarily carries more authority that a woman’s simply because as a culture we give men that privilege. As a woman, I take pleasure in adopting the dominant male tone and assuming a central role, but I have also found that wrenching my perspective away from the feminine, I’ve been able to discover feelings, images, and thoughts I wouldn’t have had without the transformation.

The ageing Leo makes a cameo appearance in Hustvedt's later novel, The Sorrows of an American (2008) a story about immigration that follows the lives of siblings, Erik and Inga. Hustvedt said in the same interview that she 'missed Leo terribly and felt compelled to bring him back.'

I will now have to read The Sorrows of an American as I also miss Leo terribly now that I have finished What I Loved.

Hustvedt is an intelligent writer who embraces her intelligence. I never felt like she was showing off for the sake of being clever. She was writing about something that meant a lot to her, that stirred her passions - intellectually and emotionally.

Inga’s irritation with American culture borders on outrage and reflects my own criticisms of life in the United States today. I once considered writing a book called Culture Nausea (which I proceeded to give to Inga) in which I planned to rail against media cant, rampant anti-intellectualism, political verbiage, the revolting trampling over the rule of law, the wholesale adoption of received ideas without the slightest examination, the lust for the ugly confession, and innumerable other thorns in my side. (Bookslut 2008 interview)

I suspect most of her books reflect Inga's irritation and outrage, certainly What I Loved does and I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed reading a book that engaged my brain and my heart at the same time.

What I Loved was longlisted for the 2003 Orange Prize (now the Baileys Women's Prize)

Insomniac City by Bill Hayes

Insomniac City by Bill Hayes was my third bloody brilliant book in a row.

I went from the stunning award winning Museum of Modern Love by Australian author Heather Rose to the thought-provoking Exit West by Moshin Hamid to Bill Hayes' beautiful, heart-felt love story about his partner Oliver Sacks and New York City.

The three books felt interconnected by theme (love, loss and belonging), creativity & art and by my response. All three books stimulated and enticed me to read deeply and thoughtfully.

New York City also played a part in both The Museum of Modern Love and this book, as well as helping me choose my next (and current) read, What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt.

These four books will now be forever linked together in my mind.

My copy of Insomniac City is the rather lush hardback edition with deckled edges. The cover has one of Bill's photographs of the cross street near his home across it, while the dark blue jacket has little windows cut out to see through to the colours underneath.

Insomniac City is part memoir, part observation and part journal. Hayes' writing is poetic and mesmerising. His kindness and generosity shines through on every page. I felt inspired by how he could find beauty in everyday life and his power to create a meaningful connection with those around him.

Bill has also littered the pages with many of his New York photographs featured on his Instagram page (found here).

The only problem, however, that I soon discovered with deckled edges, is how hard it is to flick though the pages. I had marked, in pencil, several significant passages and possibilities to include in this post.

The only one I could easily find again was this remark of Oliver's to Bill,

The most we can do is to write - intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively- about what it is like living in this world at this time.

This is something they both excelled at and something that I aim to do (however imperfectly) here at Brona's Books.

My reading doesn't occur in a vacuum.
It's influenced by what is going on around me as well as inside of me. Sometimes I want an emotional reading experience (happy, sad or anywhere in between) and sometimes I want to be engaged on an intellectual level.

The very best of books do both at the same time.

I have now read three books in a row that do just that.

Spring Shadows in New York - Bill Hayes

Bill Hayes is one of the many authors appearing at this year's Sydney Writer's Festival - another reason why I was moved to read this book.

The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose

Usually I prefer to start a book knowing as little about it as possible, especially contemporary fiction. I like to come at it without any prejudices or preconceived ideas so that I can make up my own mind.

However that was not the case with the Stella Prize winning book The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose.

Based on nothing but the cover and it's shortlisting for the Stella, I had decided that I would probably give this book a go one day when I felt like a bit of love mixed with art. The tag 'a novel inspired by Marina Abramović' rang no bells at the time except to tell me that this story would be based on someone's real life.

But then I read Kim @readingmatters review, which lead me to Lisa @ANZlitlovers and Kate @booksaremyfavouriteandbest and I realised very quickly that I did indeed know who Marina Abramović was. 

And knowing that moved The Museum of Modern Love straight to the top of my TBR pile.

A while back I had seen Ulay's video (below) as it made it's rounds on social media. Ulay was Abramović's former partner.

I have been haunted by the old lover's reuniting scenario in this video ever since - the look in Marina's eyes and the whole concept behind the staging of the Artist is Present (2010) exhibition fascinated me. 

Having watched this (and several others about Marina's show since) I do now wonder about Ulay's song that plays over this video. It feels a little like Marina's performance has been usurped by his agenda (there is another youtube video of this meeting available that Abramović's team produced as well). But that's an another story....

After reading Kim. Kate & Lisa's reviews I found an archival documentary by Nicola Flint (below) and read this article in The Guardian about Abramović's 2014 exhibition at The Serpentine Gallery in London.

As you can see I became fascinated (okay obsessed) very quickly...and I hadn't even opened the book at this point!

I had very high expectations for this book and it didn't disappoint, although it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be either. By the end though, I had no idea how I could possibly review it any better or more succinctly than Kim, Lisa & Kate had done before me.

It was the art that stood out for me though.

There were so many discussions by the characters about various exhibitions and modern artists that I had no idea about. With each one, I felt the need to google and find out more. This on-the-side research added a great deal of aesthetic and intellectual pleasure to my reading experience.

Reading and researching The Museum of Modern Love became my very own personal art therapy session.

Early on in the novel, Jane Miller (a visitor to New York) on her way to MoMA to see Abramovic's performance, looked up and caught 

sight of the silhouette of a man standing high on the edge of a nearby building. She had squinted, puzzled, ready to be alarmed. But then with a thrill she recognised it as one of the Antony Gormley sculptures dotting New York's skyline through spring.

Rather spooky isn't it?
Antony Gormley has now (re)created several Event Horizon shows around the world including the original in London in 2007, New York in 2010 and Hongkong in 2015/6.

Jane Miller again:  'I think art saves people all the time.'

Yes, Jane, I think so too.
I know that it saves me on a regular, almost, daily basis.

(She) thought instead of Gustav Metzger. Metzger liked to drape cloths over things. He had draped cloth over images of the Holocaust. He might drop a cloth right over Marina Abramović. 

Historic Photographs: To Crawl Into - Anschluss, Vienna, March 1938 (1996/2011)

Sadly, when I googled Metzer for this post, I discovered that he had died just last month at the age of 90. The idea of what can be seen, what is hidden, who is doing the looking and who is hiding were themes that Rose played with throughout the story.

Jane, again (she was an art teacher which explains her interest and knowledge. Rose used her very effectively to provide the reader with relevant information and as a gentle provocateur):

Brancusi, the sculptor, for thirty years or more, worked exclusively with two forms - the circle and the square. Every sculpture was a marriage of the egg and the cube....I think Abramović probably has the same thing in mind. She's asking us to look at things differently. Maybe to feel something invisible....she's always been exploring either intense movement or utter stillness.

Constatin Brancusi - The Kiss 1916

Keeble (a TV art critic, and a not so gentle provocateur):

'For several centuries now art has sat beside religion,' he said. "When we get overlap we get outrage. Take The Black Madonna. Piss Christ. Wim Delvoye tattooing the Madonna onto a pig's back. I'm uncomfortable with how religious it feels to walk into MoMA right now and see all those people literally kneeling or sitting about and staring at Abramović  as if she was a saint.'

Jesus (2005)

The novelist, Colm Toibin sat with Marina in real life and in the book. He wrote about it in The New York Review of Books. Rose's ability to weave together the real and the fictional was flawless.

Books also got mentioned by our characters - Muriel Barbery's, The Elegance of the Hedgehog and 1Q84 by Murakami. One I've read and one I haven't - but it is on my TBR pile. I love books that lead me to other books.

There were so many rich layers and ideas about art, life and love interwoven throughout this gorgeous story that, when I finished, it moved straight onto my To Be ReRead Pile.

Connection and convergence were major themes that resonated strongly with me...not only within the book, but with other real life stuff as well.

It felt like The Museum of Modern Love has now led me naturally, like stepping stones named art, New York and love straight into the arms of Mohsin Hamid's Exit West, Bill Hayes' Insomniac City and now Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved.

Synchronicity and convergence and connection at work on my bookshelves!

I have also been thinking (a lot) about how these things also play out it in our day to day lives.

Perhaps some of the highest praise I can give Rose's book is that it has not only opened up my mind, heart and world to modern art and the idea of art as therapy, but it has also inspired and informed my subsequent reading.

The other review for The Museum of Modern Love that I wanted to highlight was Heather's @Bits and Books.

Sadly, Heather Croxon died after being involved in an accident in early March.
I only knew Heather via her blog, Bits and Books and her instagram, litzy & twitter feeds, but the news gutted me when I first heard about it.

Her enthusiasm for books, the reading community and her budgie knew no bounds. I loved the time and effort she took to create beautifully styled book pics and I always enjoyed seeing her latest book recommendations and links for #6degrees and #TopTenTuesday.

I cannot imagine what Heather's family must be going through now, but if they somehow wander onto this post, I would like them to know how much fun and creativity Heather added to the book blogging world. She will be missed.
Heather was only 31.

Thank you also to Julianne and Andi @Dewey's 24hr Readathon for honouring Heather's memory in their recent post.

I'm Supposed To Protect You From All This by Nadja Spiegelman

A good memoir is a true delight and I love it when I find one that catches me by surprise.

Memoirs, good memoirs, have the power to heal, to connect, to normalise, to reach out, to understand and to promote empathy.

When I picked up the ARC of Spiegelman's I'm Supposed to Protect You From All This at work, I had no idea what to expect.

I didn't know who she was or why she needed to write a memoir or how it was that she was deemed worthy enough to even be published.

However, I quickly learnt that her father is Art Spiegelman of Maus fame and that her mother is Françoise Mouly, art director of the New Yorker. Nadja, therefore, has a fascinating family story to tell.

And she can write.

From page one I was hooked by her style and what she had to say. Her fascination with memory and the different stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives spoke to me.

Pure memories are like dinosaur bones, one neuroscientist wrote, discrete fragments from which we compose the image of the dinosaur. They are only flashes.

The stories we use to create our sense of self - are also the ones over which we have most heavily embroidered. They have been altered by the moods and settings in which we have told them. They have been altered by what we needed them to mean each time.

Somewhere along the way, the episode had passed from memory to story to myth. 

I've always been secretly envious and also slightly repulsed by people who have such intense, physical and passionate relationships with their mothers and grandmothers. As I read Nadja's story though, I realised that even those of us with more distant, reserved relationships, we still have a lot of the same angsty issues going on within our family stories, it's just there is nowhere for all that feeling to go.

Perhaps that's what makes me feel envious as I read memoirs like this? People being able to express their emotions as they happen. It's a much better way than bottling everything up.

Nadja's bravery in asking the tough questions and tackling the heavy issues within her family was an inspiring act of love and trust that helped three generations to find a more peaceful and hopeful way forward.

20/20 Books of summer (winter)

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos got a rave review on the ABC's Bookclub program early on this year.

I've been saving it for my week's holiday at the beach, because it sounded like it would be my kind of perfect lie-by-the-pool-and-read-all-day book.

And it was.

Skipping between the 1600's in the Netherlands to the 1950's in New York and the year 2000 in  pre-Olympic Sydney, we follow the fate of little known (fictional) artist Sara de Vos and her painting, At the Edge of a Wood.

Described as an 'art-thriller' in some reviews, Smith weaves a wonderfully engaging story about art forgery that spans decades and continents with ease. He builds up the psychological tension bit by bit. His characters are flawed, interesting human beings. The historical elements are vividly drawn and given a modern touch, maybe not quite in the same league as Hilary Mantel, but of that style.

And I learnt stacks about how to forge a painting and the use of light and shade in Dutch paintings.

Historical fiction, art culture, crime and mystery with a whiff of romance! Something for everyone to enjoy.

Smith is Australian born, but describes himself as 'a lapsed Australian'. He now lives in Texas with his family and has four books under his belt. If you haven't read any of his work before, I'm sure this book will have you searching out his backlist pretty quick.

17/20 books of summer (winter)

TrixieBelden #1 The Secret of the Mansion by Julie Campbell

My eldest niece is about to turn 10. I've been waiting for this moment for quite some time.

In my tenth year, my aunt  gave me two books - Trixie Belden #1 and Trixie Belden #3 (sadly #2 was not available at the time of her initial gift purchase, although I quickly rectified that with the judicious spending of my pocket money) - however these two books began a reading obsession that lasted for the next 6 years.

The Secret of the Mansion was first published in 1948, but in 1977 Western Publishing Golden Press re-released the first 16 books - at a mere 95c a piece. They also commissioned the next series of the books that completed the series at #34...or so I thought...until a few years later I discovered they had published another 5 books.

By then, I was 'too old' to read Trixie, but I had to buy the books for my collection.

I've been waiting all this time to re-gift my box of Trixie Belden's to my niece.

But before I could pass on this box of wonderful reading memories to my niece, I felt that I needed to reread the first few to see if they had stood they test of time.

Ohhh and they do! They do! They do!

At least #1 does.

It's easy to see why I fell so hard in love with this series.

Trixie is a very authentic protagonist. She says the wrong things sometimes, she can be impulsive and clumsy. She gets carried away with her own imaginings. She has chores to do, struggles with her homework and argues with her brothers.

The mysteries that Trixie and her friends get caught up in are full of action, drama and human relationships. They have a logic and plausibility that satisfies. The mystery is always solved, but the main relationships are allowed to develop with the series.

The Secret of the Mansion introduces the main characters and the setting - a new neighbour, a dying neighbour, a runaway and missing millions.

I was equally hooked at 48 yrs of age as I was at ten.

I really hope that Random House (who I believe has the rights for these books) decides to republish the entire series so modern readers can discover the joys of Trixie.

The language is a little dated and, of course, there are no ipads, smart phones or viral youtube videos.
I'll be very curious to see what my very modern niece thinks of them.

I, for one, will love Trixie till the day I die.

  1. The Secret of the Mansion, 1948
  2. The Red Trailer Mystery, 1950
  3. The Gatehouse Mystery, 1951
  4. The Mysterious Visitor, 1954
  5. The Mystery Off Glen Road, 1956
  6. Mystery in Arizona, 1958
  7. The Mysterious Code, 1961
  8. The Black Jacket Mystery, 1961
  9. The Happy Valley Mystery, 1962
10. The Marshland Mystery, 1962
11. The Mystery at Bob-White Cave, 1963
12. The Mystery of the Blinking Eye, 1963
13. The Mystery on Cobbett's Island, 1964
14. The Mystery of the Emeralds, 1965
15. The Mystery on the Mississippi, 1965
16. The Mystery of the Missing Heiress, 1970
17. The Mystery of the Uninvited Guest, 1977
18. The Mystery of the Phantom Grasshopper, 1977
19. The Secret of the Unseen Treasure, 1977
20. The Mystery Off Old Telegraph Road, 1978
21. The Mystery of the Castaway Children, 1978
22. The Mystery on Mead's Mountain, 1978
23. The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace, 1979
24. The Mystery at Saratoga, 1979
25. The Sasquatch Mystery, 1979
26. The Mystery of the Headless Horseman, 1979
27. The Mystery of the Ghostly Galleon, 1979
28. The Hudson River Mystery, 1979
29. The Mystery of the Velvet Gown, 1980
30. The Mystery of the Midnight Marauder, 1980
31. The Mystery at Maypenny's, 1980
32. The Mystery of the Whispering Witch, 1980
33. The Mystery of the Vanishing Victim, 1980
34. The Mystery of the Missing Millionaire, 1980
35. The Mystery of the Memorial Day Fire, 1984
36. The Mystery of the Antique Doll, 1984
37. The Pet Show Mystery, 1985
38. The Indian Burial Ground Mystery, 1985
39. The Mystery of the Galloping Ghost, 1986

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.