Shadow Play by Joseph O'Connor

Shadowplay is a wonderful, lyrical novel set around the life of Bram Stoker and his time as manager of London's Lyceum Theatre in late Victorian London. The two stars of the Lyceum were its owner Henry Irving, a vain, demanding martinet and Ellen Terry, witty, seductive and very much in control of her own destiny.



The story is a marvellous imagining of this three-sided relationship and switches between first and third person, letters and dialogue to weave a compelling narrative. Anyone who has  enjoyed O'Connor's Star of The Sea will find more riches to feast on here. You lose yourself in the London where Oscar Wilde is on trial by day and Jack the Ripper walks the East End by night.

Ellen Terry, on Hery Irving:

"Make no mistake he was a peerless actor. The greatest I'll ever see. Majestic, powerful, like an animal not a man. You couldn't look away not even for a second. It was as though your neck was in a vice and your eyes on the stage....

Trouble is he adored the applause and that gets in the way. There's a certain sort of actor, a clap-hound I call them, who do anything for the applause, set himself on fire if he needs to. Harry was King of the clap-hounds. He did it too often. It was like watching the world's greatest concert pianist juggling coconuts in a booth on Southend Pier. Fine, so far as it goes. But there's a Steinway behind you darling. Give us a ruddy tune while you're up there."

But what of Dracula? This one book, famous the world over, is why we know the name Bram Stoker -who knew he was a theatre manager? Throughout Shadowplay, we see Bram, a struggling author, forever twarted by his day job. He sneaks away to an attic, haunted by the ghost of  a dead servant girl, to write stories and a novel but nothing sells; yet slowly a new story is developing in his head. As Shadowplay unfolds, hints of Dracula begin to emerge - a stage painter called Jonathan Harker, a box of earth, the blood and horror of the Ripper, a lunatic assylum where an inmate eats flies, a visit to Whitby. Behind the genesis of Dracula is the shadow world of the theatre, a place of drama, emotion and other worlds, where actors lose their identity and Shylock, Hamlet and Ophelia never die.

Article about Bram Stoker by Joseph O'Connor 

Much better review of Shadowplay in The Times

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Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

This is a truly joyful book and a worthy sequel to Cannary Row. All Steinbeck's wit, compassion and wisdom are on display and a kaleidoscope of characters, familiar and new, populate the story with doubtful schemes, homespun wisdom and unfailing benevolence. It's a gentle, philosophical treatise on loneliness, failure and friendship and it's a love story to warm your heart.

From the opening sentence Steinbeck sets the mood with his laid back, conversational style. This is a book to read on a garden chair, with your feet up, the sun shining, the bees humming and a glass of something close at hand. A book to savour at a leisurely pace, and a journey to enjoy that leads to a most satisfactory ending.

​Doc, a marine biologist has returned from the war to his old life but is plagued by a restlessness he can't pin down. Suzy arrives in town to join the other girls in the Bear Flag, the local bordello, but she doesn't fit in. Fauna, the no-nonsense and kindly Madame sees Suzy as the perfect cure for Doc's ills. How this matchmaking plays out is the main thread of the novel.

"It was Fauna’s conviction, born out of long experience, that most people, one, did not know what they wanted; two, did not know how to go about getting it; and three, didn't know when they had it."

Steinbeck fills the book with a rich cast of supporting characters and meanders away from the main story into their lives. So we have brief encounters with a flipflopping Chinaman, a Seer living on the beach, Frankie, a boy with severe learning difficulties, Jingleballicks, an eccentric scientist and the bowlers and the butterflies of Pacific Grove. Individual threads woven into the story all helping to create an atmosphere of time and place.

But the main counterpoint to Doc and Suzy's journey is Mack, and the boys of the Palace Flophouse. Their ramshackle, vagrant lives have no great purpose and consist mainly of drinking, and dreaming of ways to make money.

The character of Hazel is a delight. He's simple, innocent, gullible and loyal, who believes because the stars are aligned and he has nine toes, he must become President of the United States. His love of Mack and Doc lead him to one drastic act that breaks the deadlock between Doc and Suzy. 

"Thinking is always painful, but in Hazel it was heroic. A picture of the process would make you seasick. A grey whirling furore of images, memories, words, patterns. It was like a traffic jam at a big intersection with Hazel in the middle trying to get something to move somewhere. "

And here's what Doc says to Hazel who has come to help him in his laboratory:

"I like to have you sit with me Hazel. You are the well the - original well. A man can give you his deepest secrets. You don't hear or remember. And if you did, it wouldn't make any difference because you don't pay attention. Why you're better than a well because you listen - but you don't hear. You are a priest without penalties, an analyst without diagnosis."

I love Steinbeck's ability to build a picture and mood in just a few words, his mix of philosophy, and celebration of the human spirit - people will not accept the advice of a friend but will accept the advice of a horoscope chart.

“Men seem to be born with a debt they can never pay no matter how hard they try. It piles up ahead of them. Man owes something to man. If he ignores the debt it poisons him, and if he tries to make payments the debt only increases, and the quality of his gift is the measure of the man.”

​Steinbeck takes a series of stories and characters, set in poverty, hardship, and degradation and sprinkles them with holy water. He strips the sin off the sinners and gives absolution.

 If  you're a romantic, read it; if you're a world-weary cynic there is plenty here to lift the mood, give pause for thought and raise a smile.

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A Woman In Berlin

This is a compelling, heart-rending read. It is a diary kept by a young German woman in Berlin in the Spring of 1945. The diary was published anonymously in the 1950's and caused a great stir and a lot of hostility. It was re-published in the 1970's and a film was made in 2009. After her death the author was revealed as Marta Herta, a journalist.
She is unsparing about the fate of so many women, including herself who were raped by Russian soldiers. As a calculated means of survival she deliberately sought to attract Russian officers who would protect her from other soldiers and also supply her with food.
"Tuesday 24th April Around Noon. No news. We're completly cut off. Some gas but no water. Looking out of the window I see throngs of people outside the stores. They're still fighting over the rancid butter...."
Monday 28th May: "The future weighs on us like lead. All I can do is brace myself for what's to come and try to keep my inner flame alive. But why? What for? What task awaits me? I feel so hopelessly alone."
Wednesday 6th June: All I know is that we Germans are finished. We’re nothing but a colony, subject to their (The Allies) whims. I can't change any of that I just have to swallow it. All I want to do is steer my little ship through the shoals as best I can. That means hard work and short rations, but the old sun is still in the sky and maybe my heart will speak to me once more. One thing's for sure my life has certainly been full - all too full.
Simon Garfield, Observer Review: Reading A Woman in Berlin in one afternoon is an unnerving sensory experience: the walls close in, the air thickens, shrieks from children playing nearby adopt a sinister air. This is an all-enveloping book, a lyrical personal journal …. it leaves a deep scar.
The book brought home to me yet again, how ordinary people are powerless against the powerful. Powerless against those who are able to create mass movements of ideology, fed by propaganda, in order to bring about their own grandiose designs. Yet ordinary people are the ones who suffer most.

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