The Future Library Project

I learnt something new this weekend.

Whilst listening to a podcast with David Mitchell about his latest book, Utopia Avenue, he was asked about a not-yet-published book, called From Me Flows What You Call Time. It turns out this is a book he was invited to write by artist Katie Paterson for her Future Library Project (Framtidsbiblioteket).

Paterson, is a Scottish born artist well-known for her monumental projects that 'consider our place on earth in the context of geological time and change.' Her work includes broadcasting the sound of a glacier melting (2007-2008), mapping all the dead stars (2009), sending a recast meteorite back into space (2012-2014), and creating a cosmic colour wheel that captures all the colours of the universe throughout its existence (2019).

The Future Library is an artwork 100 years in the making, in Oslo, Norway. It's a 'living, breathing, organic artwork, unfolding over one hundred years.'

In May 2014, Paterson planted 1000 Norwegian spruce trees in Nordmarka, a forested area north of Oslo. It's a protected green space cared for by foresters within the Agency of Urban Environment. Hikers are encouraged to walk through the forest.

The city of Oslo has guaranteed it's support for this project during the entire 100 years via the Future Library Trust as part of their Slow Space Curatorial Vision for Oslo Harbour.

However, the artwork is not simply about growing and nurturing an urban forest. Between 2014 and 2114, 100 popular writers will be invited to submit an original manuscript to the archive. The manuscript will not be printed and published until 2114.

In 2114, the manuscripts will printed in limited edition anthologies using paper made from the 1000 Norwegian spruce planted by Paterson.

The manuscripts will be stored in a specially designed Silent Room in the New Deichman Library. The room will be panelled with wood from the forest and will display the names and the titles of each artist's work.

Year by year, the writers' words forming invisible chapters in the trees whose narratives will be reconstituted a century later.

During spring of every year, a special ceremony will take place where the author hands over their work to the project. It is a ritual designed to be repeated for the next 100 years. It begins with a walk into the forest with the author, who then gives a reading. The handover ceremony ends at the library, where the author participates in an 'in-conversation' event.

Due to Covid-19, this year's handover ceremony with Karl Ove Knausgård, the first Norwegian to be invited to write for the project, has been delayed until the 5th of September.

So far the project has works by the following authors.

2014 – Margaret Atwood, Scribbler Moon, submitted 27 May 2015.
2015 – David Mitchell, From Me Flows What You Call Time, submitted 28 May 2016
2016 – Sjón, As My Brow Brushes On The Tunics Of Angels or The Drop Tower, the Roller Coaster, the Whirling Cups and other Instruments of Worship from the Post-Industrial Age, submitted 2 June 2017
2017 – Elif Shafak, The Last Taboo, submitted 2 June 2018
2018 – Han Kang, Dear Son, My Beloved, submitted 25 May 2019
2019 – Karl Ove Knausgård

I'm disappointed that I will never get to read these stories. 

However, I do embrace the hope that this project embodies. That human beings will still be around in 100 years time, in a world still populated with forests of trees. And that these future human beings will still value reading and art.

The mandate is to compassionately sustain the artwork for its 100-year duration. The foresters have a big part to play, they tend to the trees. It’s my dream project because it’s got every aspect of what I like – the collaboration with authors, foresters and librarians. And it operates on slower time. It’s not this rush to make something for a deadline. It’s really nice to let something organically evolve. I couldn’t ask for anything more.

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy

Hamish Hamilton | Penguin Australia

In 1989 Saul Adler (a narcissistic young historian) is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. He is apparently fine; he gets up and goes to see his art student girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau. They have sex then break up, but not before she has photographed Saul crossing the same Abbey Road. Saul leaves to study in communist East Berlin, two months before the Wall comes down. There he will encounter - significantly - both his assigned translator and his translator's sister, who swears she has seen a jaguar prowling the city. He will fall in love and brood upon his difficult, authoritarian father. And he will befriend a hippy, Rainer, who may or may not be a Stasi agent, but will certainly return to haunt him in middle age. 

In 2016, Saul Adler is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. He is rushed to hospital, where he spends the following days slipping in and out of consciousness, and in and out of memories of the past. A number of people gather at his bedside. One of them is Jennifer Moreau. But someone important is missing. 

Slipping slyly between time zones and leaving a spiralling trail, Deborah Levy's electrifying new novel examines what we see and what we fail to see, until we encounter the spectres of history - both the world's and our own.

This is my second Deborah Levy story, so I now know that this style of writing - the slightly off-kilter structure, narration and characters combined with oodles of symbolism and mythology - is her usual way of telling a story. However, The Man Who Saw Everything isn't haunting me (yet) the way that Hot Milk still does, three years later.

Spectres of the past, though, are a big part of this story with personal and European histories haunting the daily lives of our characters. These ghosts of the past didn't get under my skin, like they did in Hot Milk. I suspect the reason lies in the face value issues on display in each book - Hot Milk was a mother/daughter passive/aggressive thing; The Man Who Saw Everything was more father/brother/son stuff with a narcissistic, self-absorbed narrator. Mother/daughter angst will always resonate here.

Saul is an historian of totalitarianism and the psychology of male tyrants. His research project is about the cultural resistance to Nazism in the 1930's. It is 1988, one year prior to the Wall coming down, when he leaves London (via Abbey Road) to go to East Berlin to work. He seems incredibly naive and light-weight to be tackling such a heavy topic.

His thoughts seem to be caught up in light-weight matters like tins of pineapple, photo shoots and who to kiss next. For Saul it is all about him. How he looks to others and what others think of him. His relationships are messy and confusing. He's aware of the Stasi and that they are probably watching him move around East Berlin, yet he is painfully careless with his actions and words.

Levy deliberately throws in the occasional confusing phrase or comment to make us wonder when or who is telling us this story and what is their purpose. Is this a rewriting of history, a whitewash? Or is this an attempt to uncover a truth?

I did not want to know, as well as wanting to. I could not break into her thoughts and feelings. Or my own, I could not break in.

Mostly though, this first half is a relatively straight forward Cold War drama which suddenly shifts in the second part, to 2016 Brexit London. Saul has been involved in a second accident on the Abbey Road crossing, this time more seriously. He is in hospital, coming out of a coma, surrounded by a confusion of visitors, real and ghostly.

I suspect this section is deliberately confusing for all of us. Was the 1988 story a dream? Has Saul been in a coma for 28 years? Or was he revisiting old haunts trying to piece together the story of how he ended up where he found himself in 2016? We all tell ourselves stories to make our lives more habitable. These stories are not only reinterpreted by our present understandings but our present is also influenced by our beliefs about our past. Levy seemed to enjoy poking holes into Saul's preferred story, until he was forced to face the inconsistencies. For a while anyway.

Sadly, for Saul, he failed to recover any degree of self-awareness. All his relationships continue to be messy and fraught with cruel comments and actions. Perhaps the damage of his childhood ran too deep. The early death of his mother combined with a strict disciplinarian, distant father and an elder brother who bullied him. Saul's fluid sexuality from a young age that only alienated his more conservative father and brother even more. They all processed their grief differently, but in ways that hurt each other - forever. 

Saul, our extremely unreliable narrator, was not the man who saw everything, Far from it. Saul could barely see anything beyond the end of his own, very pretty, nose. The man who saw everything was Walter Müller.

He was always looking at me and I think he could see everything that was good and bad and sad in me.

In 1988, Walter was smitten and then deeply hurt by Saul's careless love. He kept a safe distance thereafter, yet couldn't escape completely. Their lives were irrevocably intertwined and Walter was very, very careful to never reveal the full extent of their ongoing connection. Protecting others from the damage that Saul could do, became Walter's modus operandi.

Saul's Stasi report concluded with the phrase 'he is harmless to other people.' Walter, however, declared that this was false - he was, in fact, VERY harmful to others.

It is only as you make your way through the second part of the story that you begin to see all the red herrings and foreshadowing that Levy left behind in the first. It's like a puzzle that shifts and changes shape as you put it together. Saul is enigmatic to the end. A mystery unto himself and to others.

We are haunted by our past - individuals as well as countries and continents. Marx and Stalin continue to haunt the GDR and Russia. Hitler's actions haunt people all around the world to this day. We are also haunted by pop culture. The Beatles music is everywhere and lives inside all of us. Images also haunt us, whether it's four men crossing a road on an album cover, or scenes of the Wall coming down in 1989 or photographs of the Holocaust survivors being liberated from the camps. The images have become part of our collective memory, even if we weren't there to witness it ourselves.

Which brings me to book cover choices. The Australian cover heads this post. I'm fascinated how and why different countries get very different covers. The Bloomsbury and Canadian versions remind me of the US cover for A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I love the Portuguese version that clearly relates to the fateful crossing of Abbey Road. One, less sympatico Goodreads reviewer said, So, this is a novel about how some people need to be more careful crossing roads. This cover would be perfect for them!

Bloomsbury

Hamish Hamilton | Penguin Canada

Relógio D'Água Editores Portugal

It's not only Abbey Road that features in The Man Who Saw Everything. One of the characters loves the Beatles song Penny Lane. It was only towards the end of the book that I began to realise that some of the lyrics was interwoven into the story - the barber and the nurse spring to mind - a reread would be necessary to spot them all, I suspect.

In 2009, McCartney reflected:

"Penny Lane" was kind of nostalgic, but it was really [about] a place that John and I knew ... I'd get a bus to his house and I'd have to change at Penny Lane, or the same with him to me, so we often hung out at that terminus, like a roundabout. It was a place that we both knew, and so we both knew the things that turned up in the story. (source)

If you're planning on reading this book soon, here are the lyrics to take with you:


Penny Lane | The Beatles | 1967

In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
Of every head he's had the pleasure to have known
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say hello

On the corner is a banker with a motorcar
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac
In the pouring rain, very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back

In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the queen
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It's a clean machine

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
A four of fish and finger pies
In summer, meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout
The pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway

In Penny Lane the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
And then the fireman rushes in
From the pouring rain, very strange

Penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back
Penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
Penny Lane

Epitaph Philosophy:

I'm always fascinated by the epitaphs chosen by authors to lead us into their stories. Given Levy's penchant for symbolism, I wanted to unpack what she might have been trying to tell us with the two epitaphs at the start of The Man Who Saw Everything.

• Karel Teige, The Shooting Gallery | 1946

Poetic thought, unlike rootless orchids, did not grow in a greenhouse and did not faint when confronted with today's traumas.

Teige was an avant-garde Czech 'agent provocateur and seismograph, at once provoking action and debate and yet simultaneously reacting with the utmost sensitivity to the shifting political spectrum of his time.' (Kenneth Frampton, Introduction, Karel Teige / 1900–1951: L'Enfant Terrible of the Czech Modernist Avant-Garde | 1999)

He was an editor, writer and artist during the 1920's and 30's. He was a Marxist, but not the card carrying kind. After the 1948 takeover by the Communists, he was not considered to be toeing the party line. Teige was denounced and forbidden to publish or speak out.

Sadly, it would seem, that Teige did in fact, succumb to the traumas of his time, as all reports claimed that he died a 'broken man' in 1951.

It looks like poetic thought can be a as fragile as an orchid. Though, here we are, over fifty years later, still able to read his words, despite the secret police claiming to have destroyed all his papers.

• Susan Sontag, In Plato's Cave | On Photography | 1977

To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.

Sontag also claimed that the proliferation of photographic images had developed a 'chronic voyeuristic relation' within people. I wonder what she would think of the selfie?
She also believed 'that the individual who seeks to record cannot intervene, and that the person who intervenes cannot then faithfully record, for the two aims contradict each other'. Was Jennifer merely having a conversation about the nature of beauty as she claimed, or was she trying to capture the real Saul? Perhaps she wanted to show Saul how others saw him or maybe she was objectifying him?

In 2003, Sontag published Regarding the Pain of Others, where she revised some of the opinions she had expressed earlier. She was now concerned that 'people remember through photographs but that they remember only the photographs ... that the photographic image eclipses other forms of understanding—and remembering. ... To remember is, more and more, not to recall a story but to be able to call up a picture'.

Saul definitely had trouble remembering what was real, what was imagined or what he wanted to be true.

Favourite Quote:

I have sex all the time but I don't know if it's the sex I had thirty years ago or three months ago. I think I have extended my sexual history across all time zones, but I did have a lot of sex before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. After that it's a blur but I think I had less sex in social democracies than I did in authoritarian regimes.

Facts:

• Shortlisted 2019 Goldsmith Prize
• Longlisted 2019 Booker Prize
• My 2016 Hot Milk post.

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!

The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones

Sometimes a reading experience is not as straight forward as you might first think. There are some books that demand more of the reader. The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones was one of those books for me.

I feel a little guilty about confessing that this was my first Gail Jones. One of my former colleagues (who is very arty and whose book tastes often, but not always, match my own) loves Jones' ouevre. It has taken this year's Stella longlist nominations to finally get me there though.

The Death of Noah Glass could simply be read as a tender, moving story about the sudden death of an elderly, but still physically active and able father in mysterious circumstances. Martin and Evie struggle with their grief and memories, although, ultimately, it is these memories that provide them with solace and connection.

I quickly felt, though, that there was more going on here. There was a lot of Italian art history and art theory being thrown around (as you might expect when one of the characters was an art historian and one an artist) and the discussions on time, space and memory felt layered and purposeful.

So after about 50-60 pages, I googled.

Piero della Francesca was the obvious place to start, as he was the Florentine artist that Noah Glass studied. I quickly discovered that Weng-Ho Chong, the cover designer, had used part of one of the frames from Piero's The Legend of the True Cross for his stunning book cover design. This frame is titled, Dream of Constantine and features a sleeping figure (Constantine) and a relaxed servant in the foreground. The servant, dreamily sits in the left hand corner of the cover, whilst the angel, prophesying victory, has been moved to the other side of the cover.

The Legend of the True Cross 1454-1458, Bacci Chapel, Church of San Francesco, Arezzo

I've also thought many times in the past year, that the blue cover was a nod to Brett Whitely's, The Balcony 2. Given the very Sydney setting of the story, the choice of this particular blue on the cover feels deliberate and significant.

And then I discovered Robert Dixon's article in the Sydney Review of Books, September 2018.

My brain almost exploded with art references and philosophical debates way beyond my ken! However I did take on a few new-to-me terms, and thanks to wikipedia, managed to grasp their meaning:

In Western art history, Mise en abyme is a formal technique of placing a copy of an image within itself, often in a way that suggests an infinitely recurring sequence. In film theory and literary theory, it refers to the technique of inserting a story within a story.

A type of frame story. Sometimes a story within the main narrative can be used to sum up or encapsulate some aspect of the framing story, in which case it is referred to in literary criticism by the French term mise en abyme.

Ekphrasis has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness.

In this way, a painting may represent a sculpture, and vice versa; a poem portray a picture; a sculpture depict a heroine of a novel; in fact, given the right circumstances, any art may describe any other art, especially if a rhetorical element, standing for the sentiments of the artist when they created their work, is present.

Knowing this, gave my reading of The Death of Noah Glass a little extra depth. I could see, and enjoy the various layers that Jones was exploring, even if I didn't completely understand why she wanted to, or needed to do this.

After finishing the book, I found Caroline Baum's review in the Sydney Morning Herald, 6th April 2018, which helped me to understand Jones' intentions a little more,

Acknowledgments are handy for literary snoops: they provide invaluable clues to a book's emotional undertow, especially when the writer is as private and reticent as Gail Jones....

"I'm a novelist of ideas," she continues, as if slightly insulted by the notion that she might entertain even for a moment switching allegiances from the literary side of the fence to populist genre fiction. 

"Novels are machines for thinking as well as feeling. Plot points are really engines for dispersed, unstable ideas about art, family and time. Especially time, and the way it folds and crumples, its patterns and repetitions, how it stops in front of a painting."

 ...Perhaps in spite of herself, Jones' novel reveals her own feelings about what it means to lose those we love. "There is no closure and that is a good thing," she says with certainty. "Other people live on in us, as a kind of secular afterlife. Art consoles us. That is its power."

As someone who has experienced that profound stopping and folding of time in front of certain paintings and in certain historical sites, I honour and admire other people's revelations. I certainly found some consolation in The Death of Noah Glass and hope that Jones did to in the writing of it.

The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

The Child in Time was my latest book club read and one of McEwan's earlier works that I had yet to read. For this particular book club gathering we agreed to extend the meeting to include a viewing of the BBC movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Kelly Macdonald.

I thought it might be interesting to do a before & after type post to compare the two mediums for telling this story.

I finished the book last weekend. During the week I jotted down these thoughts about McEwan's 1987 Whitbread award winning book:

My previous experiences with McEwan helped me to ride through the consistently inconsistent feelings that his books always seem to evoke in me. I find him to be such a frustrating writer - moments of utter brilliance that leave me breathless and wowed followed by rambling, self-indulgent musings about time, memory and love. Normally I love rambling musings about time, memory and love, but McEwan struggles to find the point, any point, for the reader to catch ahold of (at least this reader anyway).

The car crash in The Child in Time had all the early makings of the infamous ballooning accident in Enduring Love, but somehow the scenes featuring the loss of the child left me cold. The pacing and voice wasn't quite right - I couldn't really engage. I fully expected to feel the panic, the fear and the disbelief but instead I was kept firmly at arms length. Perhaps it was McEwan's way of showing us Stephen's way of grieving. He kept busy, searching and questioning. By trying to fix the problem, bloke-style, he kept his grief at bay, sedating it with alcohol and routines.

Meanwhile Julie allowed herself to succumb to her grief. She embraced the grieving process, chick-style, although it also had the same outcome as Stephen's way, in that they both ended up isolated and alone. The difference being that Julie chose her isolation, it was part of her plan to deal with the pain and loss she was suffering.

Stephen floundered his way towards letting go and acceptance, whereas Julie understood that this was exactly the process she was going to have to work through.

There was some weird shit going on with time that almost made this a ghost story or a time travel story or even a homage to Benjamin Button. A dream-like or perhaps nightmarish quality infused the story. Puzzled by the whole Charles and Thelma storyline though.

The links between the loss of a child with governmental child care policy and the innocence of childhood felt rather clumsy to me. As did the comparison between (bad) city life and (good) country life. In the city we saw the breakdown of transport systems, the rise of poor people wearing beggar's badges to identify them and regulate their movements and invasive technology. Politicians practised disinformation and deception on their constituencies, authoritarian ideals were becoming the norm and the weather seemed to be unpredictable. Meanwhile our characters who returned to the country were searching for an innocence and purity of old. Nature acted to comfort and solace our characters. It worked for Julie, but not, ultimately for Charles.

I have no idea what year the book was set in? It felt slightly futuristic, yet old-fashioned as well. The badges for the poor added to this uncertainty. Beggars badges were phased out of the UK a century or so ago. But they provided another example of an authoritarian government. The kind of government that peddles in disinformation & propaganda & nationalistic policy. Sounds remarkably familiar!

Was the PM gay or was the PM a woman? No name or pronouns used. Was this McEwan's political novel, having a go at Thatcherite England?

I enjoyed the happy-ish ending. I didn't need to know the sex of the baby (but I assumed it was a boy - having another girl would have been too painful. I want Stephen & Julie to be able to enjoy this baby without constantly comparing it to the one they lost).

THE FILM

So first - Cumberbatch - excellent choice for Stephen. He did that British, stiff upper lip, slightly weedy, prone to drinking too much when melancholy character so well. However, in the book, I found it hard to care for him beyond the surface empathy that his loss evoked. In the movie, Cumberbatch was able to convey so much more of Stephen's interior life via his gestures and expressions.

Extra scenes helped to connect the dot that were confusing in the book.

The film had to make some visual leaps of faith - they assumed the PM was male. They also made it clear that the new babe was a boy. The extra bits with the ghost-like boy gave the film a narrative cohesion that the book just missed.

In the film Charles refers his role in the Childcare Book as a joke book which gave me a clearer understanding of what his issues may have been. It didn't even occur to me in the book that his childhood may have been overly authoritarian and harsh, I assumed it was more of a mental illness affecting his behaviour, or perhaps I missed that bit?

The film was softer on the separation and distance between Stephen and Julie. They saw each other a number of times and had regular phone contact. In the book they were far more isolated and alone with their sorrows. The book highlighted how they had to work their own stuff out, on their own, so they could come together again at the end, stronger and more grateful. The film suggested they both just needed some space.

No car accident in the film. Why did they leave it out? Why did McEwan include it?

I felt more emotional throughout the film.

The film helped me to make more sense of the book. But the book explored the layers and themes more than the film. The film was a human drama. The book was more about ideas and politics.

The movie is well worth a watch, but pack a tissue.
The book is not my best McEwan, but it's also not my worst.

4/20 #20booksofsummer (winter)
 11℃ in the Blue Mountains
 18℃ in Northern Ireland

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

I like to think that I have taken my 'what to read whilst travelling' choices to an inspired level of brilliance, but I really outdid myself with our recent trip to Japan. Reading Murakami in Japan now feels like the ONLY place to read Murakami!

Not only does the usual Murakami weirdness make sense when you're actually in Japan, but you also realise just how important the environment is to Murakami and his characters. His descriptions of the trees, forests, waterways and urban spaces are everywhere as you move around the country. As are the crows.

In this case, the boy named crow is a mentor to our young protagonist, Kafka Tamura, perhaps an alter ego, a Japanese Jiminy Cricket. Whatever crow is or isn't, right from word one, Murakami is flagging that symbolism, mythology and psychology will be our prime concerns in Kafka on the Shore.

In Japanese mythology, crows are seen as a sign of 'divine intervention in human affairs' (wikipedia). Western mythology tends to associate the crow with bad news or as a harbinger of death. They're selfish, spread gossip and neglect their young. And they're everywhere in Japan. They sit on telegraph wires, fence posts and roof tops. You often wake up to their cawing, even in the city.

Cats are the other creatures that dominant not only Murakami stories, but many Japanese stories, yet curiously I didn't see one single cat in three weeks, let alone a talking cat! The opposite of the crow, cats are creatures of good luck, although still often associated with death and hauntings.

Silence, I discover is something you can actually hear.

There is no denying that Murakami is on very intimate terms with kooky.

If the talking cats weren't enough, a cameo appearance by Johnny Walker and Colonel Sanders of KFC fame might tip you over the edge. A reference to the (fictional) Picnic at Hanging Rock as an example of another group loss of consciousness event caught my eye. Did Murakami know that it was an urban myth? Is that what he was implying about his own story? The sense of mystery and other-worldliness was certainly a shared atmosphere between the two stories.

I was also amazed by truck drivers who suddenly became classic music afficiandos, quiet librarians who turned out to be sex fiends and sex workers who quoted philosophers. What's not to love? The kookiness gets under my skin and into my head. Just like what happened to me with his previous books.

1Q84 is still roaming around in my head, Colourless Tsukuru less so, but it's still a memorable book experience.

Things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside you. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time your stepping into the labyrinth inside. 

One of the really enjoyable aspects to reading Murakami in Japan is the place names. Suddenly they really mean something. Most of the action in Kafka takes place in Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku. 

We didn't get to Shikiko with this visit, but we did see one of the huge bridges, from a distance, that joins Shikoko to Honshu and we spent some time at the station that is the interchange for the JR line that goes to Takamatsu. Seeing the name of the city featured in my book up in lights suddenly grounded this surreal story into reality.

This is only my fourth Murakami (see my Author Challenge tab for details) so I'm not sure I can safely name all his common themes and ideas, but there are a few that I've clocked. Going into the woods/fear of getting lost, weird sex, talking creatures, dreams, random jazz references, loneliness and silence. And for me, the reader, there is an over-riding sense of bewilderment (WTF was that about?) as well as an overwhelming sense of wanting more (whatever it was a think I like it!) 

I'm caught between one void and another. I have no idea what's right, what's wrong. I don't even know what I want anymore. I'm standing alone in the middle of a horrific sandstorm. I can't move, and can't even see my fingertips.

Murakami doesn't wrap his stories up with a neat, tidy bow or resolve many of the story lines. This should be totally frustrating...and it is, but somehow you love being kept in the dark and confused at the same time. Perhaps it's the likeable characters? Or perhaps it's the not so subtle way he plays with your head? Or perhaps it is the hope that the next book he writes will bring you one step closer to understanding this maddening man and his ability to suck you into his world. 

Every one of us is losing something precious to us....Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's how I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories.

Image source

Murakami likes to do the whole books in books thing. Kafka's backlist was an obvious start -The Castle, The Trial, Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony in this case. But he also referenced The Arabian Nights, the complete works of Natsume Soseki, a book about the trial of Adolf Eichmann (I can only assume it was Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem), Electra by Sophocles, The Tale of the Genji and 'The Chrysanthemum Pledge' in Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari.

So many tangents, so many connections, which one should I tackle next?

The Only Story by Julian Barnes

"Most of us have only one story to tell."

One of the things I love about Barnes is his ability to play with memory, perspective and truth. The Only Story begins with the promise of just such a story. An unfulfilled man looking back on the main love of his life, what happened, how he felt and how it may have appeared to other people,

do all these retellings bring you closer to the truth of what happened, or move you further away?

Barnes has told Paul's story in three acts. The first and last were what I expected from him, but the middle section seemed to waffle off with very little point. Perhaps the second person narrative that was woven into this section didn't work for me? I do often struggle with it. (The first act was in first person (I, we), the second in second (you) and the third in, you guessed it, third person (he, she, it)!)

Because of it's similarities to A Sense of An Ending I was waiting for the ah-ha moment as false memory was revealed. However, The Only Story was more gentle and subtle than that. Paul was also a more honest and reliable narrator than Tony. By the third act we realised that he had a lot of time on his own to think things through and work stuff out.

Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer.

The demands of time, maturity and repetition all change our stories so that our memories evolve right along with the rest of us. Sometimes this enhances elements barely acknowledged at the time or renders once significant moments to footnotes in one's history. This is what Barnes plays with so beautifully.

Although not as satisfying or gratifying as A Sense of an Ending, The Only Story provides a more subdued, mature pleasure that leaves us, like Paul, feeling contentment with less.

P.S.
From the wiser, more mature perspective of a 50 year old, with a houseful of young adults (there are only two of them, but they consume enough for a couple of housefuls!) I found myself nodding sagely in agreement with Paul's comment early on,

now that I am older, I realise that this is one of my human functions: to allow the young to believe that I envy them.

• Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.

I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck

I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck was a bit of an impulse read one grey, rainy work day. It's slim form meant it could slip inside my coat pocket and come along to lunch with me.

I quickly realised that having happiness in the title was a misnomer as this was yet another book about death and loss and grief. 

I have read so many books about dying and sorrow in the past year or so. I'm not sure if it's just me and where my interests are leading me right now, or if it's a wider bookworld theme. 

Considering that I Married You For Happiness was first published in 2011, I have to assume it's me seeking out/being attracted to this theme at the moment. 

A quotation from Blaise Pascal acts as epigraph for the story,

We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us…

Which sets the scene for this bitter sweet story beautifully.

Philip and Nina's history is told over the course of one night.
It's the night that Philip has died in his sleep after having a little lie down after work and just before dinner. Nina sits, shocked, with Philip's body, and throughout the long night, she remembers some of the moments that made their marriage what it was - their first meeting in Paris, the birth of their daughter, Philip's career as a mathematician, the flirtations, arguments and counselling, the jealousy, the secrets and, of course, their love, that endured it all.

Philip was a mathematician, so quite a lot of probability and philosophy was thrown into the mix. His rational nature often clashed with Nina's more artistic soul and their marriage, like most, I guess, became a compromise and dance around each other's emotional abilities and needs.

Tuck throws in the occasional harsh reality check - like Nina suddenly remembering a story about an elderly local woman who was brutally raped when her home was broken into, who subsequently died, not so much from the pain, but the shame.

This is where Tuck excelled. She showed us the complicated and sometimes random nature of grief. Weird trivial thoughts and practical matters often interrupted and intruded on Nina's ability to process what had happened. The reality of her loss would hit her anew, as another memory led her back to this present moment. And then off again.

Tuck used a fragmentary style of writing which suited the in and out, to and fro nature of Nina's thoughts. The writing was sparse yet delicate as Tuck explored the age-old tragedy of how one partner will eventually predecease the other in any marriage. And that even though we all know this harsh fact right from the start, it still catches us by surprise when it actually happens.

Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Caravaggio

The only really weird moment for me, the reader, was the ending. Was it all a dream? Or did Nina create a fantasy to sustain herself in her grief? Given that her favourite painting was Caravaggio's Rest on the Flight into Egypt, the reference to an angel with black wings is perhaps not so surprising, and could be seen as a sign of comfort and solace seeking in her time of need.

Seeking comfort is one of the essential strategies we all need to develop to distract ourselves from our grief. We will never erase or forget our emotional memories, and closure is a myth, but we can plan for and soothe ourselves when those intense emotions and memories are triggered.

Perhaps that's what Tuck was trying to tell us all along - that we all have the ability to comfort ourselves when the time comes.

If you enjoyed Kent Haruf's Our Souls At Night, Tinkers by Paul Harding or Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan you might also enjoy this. 

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

My Name is Lucy Barton might seem like just another simple mother/daughter story, but like all of Elizabeth Strout's stories there is much more going on under the surface than first meets the eye.

Lucy Barton is in hospital for an extended medical procedure. Her husband, busy with his work and their two young girls, arranges for her mother to come and stay awhile to help out while Lucy slowly recovers.

Simple, right?

However, we soon learn that Lucy and her mother haven't spoken in years, that Lucy's mother naps in the bedside chair rather than staying in a hotel or with her son-in-law, that they avoid talking about Lucy's husband or children or her New York life and they tread very carefully around Lucy's childhood memories.

How do we find out what the daily fabric of a life was?

The effects of abject poverty and dysfunction, the understanding that people can only do they best they can in any given situation and that that best is often not enough for those dependant on them, imbue this slight book.

We all love imperfectly.

Perspective, memory and compassion are also significant themes for Strout. Themes that she loves to tease out and explore via her characters.

She was not telling exactly the truth, she was always staying away from something.

I suspect that My Name is Lucy Barton was also a chance for Strout to address some of her ideas about the nature of writing and being a writer.

I like writers who try to tell you something truthful.

She wrote about people who worked hard and suffered and also had good things happen to them.

Her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tell us who we are and what we think and what we do.

I wonder if anyone ever 'accused' Strout of writing with a softness of compassion like they did her character, Sarah Payne? And why anyone would think that that was a bad thing?

The power of language and words to hide, reveal or obfuscate the truth gets a look in,

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

as do some simple home truths on how to treat (or not treat) others.

I think it's the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.

Do not ever think you are better than someone.

I don't normally fill a post with book quotes, but I just adore Strout's use of words. I love how she can pack a great deal of emotional truth into a few simply turned phrases.

They deserve to be highlighted and savoured.

My Name is Lucy Barton was longlisted for the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize and the Man Booker Prize.

Travels With Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski

The plan was to reread Herodotus' The Histories in January/February along with Ruth @A Great Book Study.

The reality however, turned out to be a little different.

I knew I was going to be away for most of January, and as much as I wanted to take The Histories with me, I knew I wouldn't be able to do it justice on the road...or so I thought, until I read Travels with Herodotus (2004) by Ryszard Kapuscinski .

Kapuscinski's reminiscences of travelling with Herodotus throughout his extensive journalistic career was not only a great book for me to travel with, it also made me wish that I had actually packed my copy of The Histories.

I was tempted by people still unmet, roads yet untraveled, skies yet unseen.

I first heard about Kapuscinski last year, when one of our regular customers requested a copy of the book. It sounded like my kind of thing, so I ordered a copy for myself as well...and waited for the right time to dip into it.

Kapuscinski reread The Histories so many times during his lifetime, that he became an unofficial Herodotus expert. He quoted excerpts from the book and found that his experiences as a journalist often complemented those of the ancient world.

One must read Herodotus's book - and every great book - repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.

As I read Kapuscinski and his excerpts of The Histories, I found myself making connections between what I was experiencing in Cuba and Mexico with what I was reading. I also found myself drawing parallels between the rise & decline of the Persian empire with news coming out of the States.

It seems to be easier to fool a crowd than a single person.

Xerxes is unbalanced, unpredictable, an astonishing bundle of contradictions. 

Travels with Herodotus is almost like a Herodotus primer - Kapuscinski discussed who Herodotus was, what his aims were, how he went about gathering his information as well as going over some of the controversies and criticisms surrounding the book and the author's technique.

Memory, perspective and time are themes that both men returned to over and again.

His book is yet another expression of man's struggle against time, against the fragility of memory.

I loved the mix of personal and historical, of current and ancient. Kapuscinski was a thoughtful and thought-provoking writer.

How often do we consider the fact that the treasures and riches of the world were created from time immemorial by slaves?

Like Herodotus, his work was journalistic, anthropological and philosophical in nature.

The present existed always, that history is merely an uninterrupted progression of presents, that what for us are ancient events were for those people who lived them immediate and present reality.

Kapuscinski was a Polish journalist and foreign correspondent post-WWII. He spent time in India, China, Africa & Latin America - and wherever he was posted, he took his copy of The Histories with him. In 1999 he was made 'journalist of the century' in Poland.

Travels with Herodotus was translated by Klara Glowczewska in 2007.

I'll Take You There by Wally Lamb

I seriously hope there are some Wally Lamb fans out there who can tell me what all the fuss is about or at least that I'll Take You There is simply not an example of his best work.

I acknowledge that I am jet-lagged after our big trip away and now a yucky summer head cold has caught up with me too. My ability to concentrate is severely impaired, which is why I had to put down Herodotus' The Histories for a bit.

I'll Take You There seemed light enough and interesting enough for my tired brain to cope with. A bit of a ghost story with a bit of time travel sounded fun. A family drama with secrets, revelations and personal insights sounded just right.

However, no matter how hard I tried, this just ended up feeling like a baby boomer's nostalgic trip down memory lane. The ghost story felt contrived. I couldn't see the point in the time travel aspect of the story. All the characters tried too hard to be smart, sassy and hip.

My care factor plummeted by about chapter five and never really revived as a skimmed through the rest. I wanted to find out what Lamb's answers were to 'life's biggest questions' as the New York Times quote on the back jacket promised.

I didn't have a problem with his final response as such, but it was nothing new or startling or thought provoking.

What did I miss?

This was my first Wally Lamb, and at this point, my last, unless someone can convince me otherwise.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

For four days I've been trying to write a review that would do this rich, engrossing, mosaic of a book due justice.

It wasn't so much writer's block as writer's muddle.

There was soooo much to say! I couldn't even decide which lens or which perspective to choose?

Because I was enjoying Do Not Say We Have Nothing so much, I began researching stuff before I had finished reading.

I looked up the classical pieces of music conducted by Glenn Gould* that Thien mentioned throughout the book (Bach's Goldberg Variations and Sonata for Piano & Violin no 4) and listened to them as I read the book.

I researched the politicians and artists who were real people. He Luting (1903 - 1999) was a real composer and he really did say 'shame on you for lying' when hauled before a televised interrogation during the Cultural Revolution.

I researched the L'Internationale** to find out the various interpretations of the phrase that Thien used in her title.

I simply couldn't get enough of this book - I wanted to know more, delve deeper. I wanted to totally immerse myself in the reading experience.

On the surface, this is a story about a Chinese composer called Sparrow and the things that happened to him and around him during his lifetime. A lifetime that encompassed the extraordinary events from the Chinese Revolution to Tiananmen Square.

However, Thien weaves in many threads and motifs, until we have a story within a story, across three generations and two continents. She plays with recurring themes, copies of copies and the cyclical nature of history.

Music is a big part of the story and I found her descriptions of the creative process and the interpretation of music mesmerising.

Equally mesmerising, but in a horrifying way, was the astounding use of double-speak by politicians and revolutionaries during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in China.

Thien showed some of the effects of 'self-criticism', 'struggle sessions' and 'denunciations' on the creative mind as they learnt to silence their talents and learnt to live without their language.

One of the major themes developed throughout the story was the life of homosexuals in China*** during the Mao years. Sparrow and Jiang Kai obviously had an intense loving relationship that could not be realised openly. One had to become a hard-line revolutionary, destroying art and lives, while trying to protect his friend from within, who eventually fled the country. While the other stayed, gave up his career as a composer, married and worked in a radio factory of the governments choosing.

Later on, Sparrow's daughter, Ai Ming, also developed very strong feelings for her female neighbour during the heightened times surrounding Tiananmen Square.

Thien intertwined mathematics, etymology, translation, calligraphy, memory, disappearance, loss, free-will, and the nature of time seamlessly. There were moments of humour and moments of pathos.

I have read some reviews that felt Do Not Say We Have Nothing was too wordy. Not for me. I loved every single moment and thoroughly enjoyed the multi-layered, enchanting nature of Thien's loquaciousness.
However this book will not be for everyone.
Hopefully this review will help you decide whether it's for you or not.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a keeper for me. I plan to reread this one day and I will be devastated if this book doesn't win one of the book awards that it is currently shortlisted for (Booker and Giller Prizes as well as the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award).

Below are some of the results of my research (thank you wikipedia):

• The Chinese Soviet Republic (1931-1937) adopted a 19th century French socialist worker's song called L'Internationale** as their anthem. There was a line in the original (Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout) that according to Wikipedia could be translated as 'we are nothing, let us be all'.

• Qu Qiubai translated a version of this song from Russian into Chinese in 1923 which changed this line to mean 'Do not say that we have nothing.'

• To my mind, the Chinese version has a sense of martyrdom inherent in its phrasing. They are being watched and judged by others who say they have nothing. Whereas the English translation seems to resound with solidarity and a proactive intent.

• The anthem later became a rallying cry for the students during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

• Glenn Gould* (25 September 1932 – 4 October 1982) was a Canadian pianist. He became famous for his interpretations of Bach's music. His methods of recording, splicing, mixing and editing his performances in the studio caused controversy at the time. Critics questioned the authenticity of his work and made claims of imitation. More delicious multiplicity on Thien's behalf.

• Historically China, was tolerant of sexual experimentation and same-sex couples. However in 1949***, homosexuality was declared to be a sign of Western bourgeois decadence and vice by the Communist Party. 

• Treatment of homosexuals during the Cultural Revolution was harsh, many were humiliated in public and some were executed. They were forced into heterosexual marriages and all LGBTQ art and culture was destroyed. However, all sexual activity and discussion was considered lustful and decadent during this time. Personal choice was not important. Affairs, sexual freedom and even sex education in schools were all considered enemies of class. Neutral gender clothing was promoted and monogamy expected.

• Some of the books read by the characters during the story - David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and Notes From the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Friedrich Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Kang Youwei's Book of the Great Community and Border Town by Shen Congwen.

• Thien was born in Vancouver. Her mother was born in Hongkong and her father was born in an ethnic Chinese area of Malaysia. They met whilst studying in Australia. The immigrated to Canada in 1974 just before Thien was born.

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Moriarty, quite simply, writes consistently good stories about relationships and everyday life. She captures characters so perfectly that they all feel like your very own family and friends.

She covers topics and issues that have touched all us at some point in our lives.

In What Alice Forgot we tackle the whole IVF baby should we/shouldn't we/for how long conundrum.
Emotional ambiguity and shades of grey are what Moriarty excels at. She doesn't preach or suggest what's right and wrong. She lets her characters fumble through these emotional land mines the best way they can....just like the rest of us. And that's what we love about them. There's a little bit of us in them. And there's a little bit of them in us.

Alice's amnesia, which the whole story hinges on, works well as a storytelling device. It never feels contrived or overworked.
And it allows all of us (characters and readers alike) to contemplate what our (former) selves, from ten years before, might think about the person we have become today.

Fascinating page-turning stuff.

According to the Hollywood goss at the end of last year, Jennifer Aniston has been signed to play Alice Love in the movie version of the book. Mr Books is thrilled!

Shelleyrae @Book'd Out has a more detailed summary review of What Alice Forgot here.
As does Alyce from @At Home With Books here.

Also my reviews for:

Big Little Lies
The Husband's Secret
The Last Anniversary

If you'd like to include your review of What Alice Forgot to this post, please pop your link into the comments below.

Catherine Certitude by Patrick Modiano

You know that something special is coming your way when you start noting down & highlighting quotable lines on page one of a new book.

The story begins in New York. Catherine is an elderly woman watching her daughter teach a dance class. She notices a young girl wearing glasses. The young girl carefully places her glasses on the chair to dance. Instantly, Catherine is transported back to her own glasses-wearing childhood.

Without my glasses, the world lost its roughness and became as soft and downy as the big pillow I used to lean my cheek against before going to sleep.

When I wore my glasses I saw the world as it was. I couldn't dream any more. 

I loved how this one paragraph told me that this was going to be a book about perception & memory - my favourite bookish themes.

Catherine Certitude is by the Nobel Prize in Literature 2014 winner, Patrick Modiano.

It was first published in 1988 in France.
This lovely hardback edition, translated by William Rodarmor & illustrated by Jean-Jacques Sempe, was recently published in the UK through Andersen Press.

It's a curious tale with more adult appeal I feel, than the early reader picture book that it looks like from the outside. The cover declares that it's a love letter to Paris, but it feels more like a loving homage to a father/daughter relationship. Full of tenderness & nuances, Catherine Certitude highlights all the special little understandings that exist in any strong bond.

Catherine now runs a ballet school in New York, but this is the story of her childhood in Paris:

Only one thing in my life is out of the ordinary: before we came to America, I spent my childhood in Paris, in a neighbourhood off the 10th arrondissement. 

One of the few things I knew about Modiano from all the publicity last year was that he had had a difficult childhood and that his stories were concerned with memory, history, identity and the complexities of choice.

I was therefore, even more curious about Catherine's story - was this a wish fulfillment tale about his own childhood or perhaps a story about his relationship with his two daughters?

Modiano's work is haunted by what he says was a cold upbringing, creating the impression of a long letter to his parents. (The Local)

Catherine Certitude leaves us with many unsolved mysteries. Why did the mother leave them in Paris? What were Mr Certitude's shady dealings? Why did he emigrate to France?

There are all sorts of signposts from Modiano's own life - the cold, unavailable mother and a father engaged in dodgy collaborations. Yet, it is clear that this father and daughter are very close. Tolerant and supportive of each other's dreams and foibles:

We always stay the same and the people we have been in the past go on living until the end of time.

Catherine Certitude is Modiano's only children's book, but I for one, will be reading more of his adult work to explore his "art of memory" (Nobel Prize committee).

A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman

I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to A Year of Marvellous Ways.

I read When God Was A Rabbit four years ago and adored it from start to finish. When an ARC of Winman's much anticipated second novel turned up at work two days before my holidays - I knew it was meant to be. AYOMW was going to be my holiday read par excellence.

Everything started off so hopefully. The quirkiness I remembered; the lovely writing. I was in the zone to savour every word and nuance.
But slowly something happened...or failed to happen.

I failed to engage with the characters. I failed to feel emotional involved, & by page 163 (when the main characters finally came together), I failed to see the point.

I don't often write reviews about the books I did not finish or did not enjoy, but occasionally I find it instructive to work out what went wrong.

Was it me? the book? the author? the timing?

In this particular case I started off with extremely high expectations.

The cover treatment for the ARC was superb - inviting and inticing. The little peephole onto the wooden stilt house put me in mind of Vietnam. Even though I knew it was set in the UK, it was just another detail that made this book feel like we were fated to love each other.

I also normally enjoy a story that deals with memory.
The opening quote from T.S. Eliot's, Little Gidding had me ready to dive headlong into its world of living and dying and the marvellous inbetween...

We die with the dying:

See, they depart, and we go with them.

We are born with the dead:

See, they return, and bring us with them.

I tried very hard to rediscover the magic of WGWAR but instead I kept bumping into disjointed time jumps and convenient crises. And in the end my sad conclusion was that it simply tried too hard...and the effort showed.

Normally, on a Monday, I would post my It's Monday! What Am I Reading schedule with Sheila @Book Journey.

But a couple of weeks ago I promised myself not to start any new books until I had finished all the half started ones by my bed (or in my suitcase)! 

Tragically, during this time, Sheila has suffered some heartbreaking family news which means that she will not be continuing her meme for the moment. 

I have found it heartening to witness the love & concern from the book blogging community pouring onto Sheila's various social media sites and blog. 

I sincerely hope that Sheila finds herself able to blog again one day soon. As we all know, the writing process can be such a creative, healing act & the act of reading can be such a comfort & release from our daily affairs. 

However, in the meantime (when I have finished the unread masses), I will continue my weekly reading updates on Monday's as I find them a truly useful way to keep track of my reading life as well as the many book events in the blogging world.

For now, I will finish with my own Monday Shout-out! feature where I highlight interesting reviews that I have read during the week.

Due to my recent holiday in Vietnam, I haven't read many reviews this past week or so, but I did make a point of catching up with Mangoes and Cherry Blossoms new Classics Salon meme.

The idea is to discuss or blog about the classic you are currently reading using the weekly question as a starting point.

I hope to use the meme to kick start my discussion of Germinal for Zoladdiction month along with Fanda et al.