The Joy of Re-reading

Val McDermott, Scottish crime writer, shared her Culture Fix in The Times recently. She said, her favourite book is Treasure Island, first read aged nine and re-read most years since. Another Scottish writer, 

Ian Rankin regularly re-reads The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. He finds “fresh pleasures in its artfulness, its blending of comedy and tragedy, and the complexity of characterization.” 

Historian Simon Schama calls himself a War & Peace-nik because of his obsession with this epic novel. He was nagged into reading it by a Cambridge friend and was about 100 pages in, reading in a café, when he was interrupted by an elderly, military-looking man: “Excuse me young man, but I see you are setting off on the Long March. Would this, by any chance, be your First Time?” “Indeed it would”, Schama replied. “Ah, so fortunate to have all that ahead of you.” his eyes shining with the benevolence of a gratified apostle. “Do you know, I myself will be setting off for the 12th time this summer?” Schama said he could hardly believe anyone would read W&P that many times but now he can, having read all 1100 pages eight times himself.”

There’s great satisfaction in curling up on the sofa to re-read a well-loved book, knowing that hours of enjoyment lie in store. C. S Lewis said, “I can't imagine anyone really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” So, for me this year will certainly involve re-reading some of my favourite books. Perhaps a Brother Cadfael story by Ellis Peters or How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewelyn, or my favourite contemporary novel, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles - already re-read 3 times.

Over Christmas I re-read a classic, Middlemarch by George Eliot, regarded by many as one of the greatest English novels, and which the poet Emily Dickinson referred to in a letter: "What do I think of Middlemarch? What do I think of glory – except that in a few instances 'this mortal [George Eliot] has already put on immortality'.". 

When I first read Middlemarch, four years ago it took some getting into. Victorian prose, with its longer more convoluted sentences can’t be rushed and the various characters and plot lines only gradually make their appearance. But once I’d tuned in to the style and slower pace, I read it with increasing pleasure. When it was chosen as our book group’s January read, I was glad of the chance of a re-read. This second time through I have been struck by how timeless the situations and relationships are that George Eliot describes, how supremely intelligent she is and how skillfully she creates character and dialogue. All human life is there, just as supposedly, it once was found in the pages of the News of The World. 

Here is George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) standing up for her sex - Mary Garth in conversation with her mother:

“And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.” and, “I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the world!” “Nonsense, child; you’ll think your husband better.” “Impossible,” said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; “husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order.”

Something that Rosemond Vincy does with consummate ease to the despair of her husband, Dr Lydgate.

Books like Middlemarch are called classics for a reason. They have stood the test of time and speak to each new generation of readers across the world. The Italian author, Italo Calvino listed 14 definitions of a classic including: “A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers” But he also included this definition: 'Your classic is a book to which you cannot remain indifferent, and which helps you define yourself in relation or even in opposition to it.” 

By this definition, one of my personal classics is Angels and Men by Catherine Fox which I re-read over Christmas for the sixth time. It’s a novel that deals with both the search for faith and its rejection and always scratches where I itch.

C S Lewis again: “It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”. So, this year I shall mix the old with the new, not only re-reading favourite books but also exploring the classics, both old and modern, and prompted by Val McDermott what better place to start than with my 1947 New York edition of Treasure Island. Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

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Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders

It is interesting how one book leads to another. Recently by different routes I found myself immersed in Victorian England and in particular the world of Victorian theatre. Just before Christmas the BBC showed “The Invisible Woman”, a film depicting the relationship between a middle-aged Charles Dickens and a young actress Ellen (Nelly) Ternan. It was based on a biography of the same name by Claire Tomalin and having read her marvelous biography of Dickens I just had to read her life of Nelly Ternan. It did not disappoint.

Tomalin’s portrayal of 19^th Century theatre life reminded me of ShadowPlay by Joseph O’Connor, a novel centred around the Lyceum Theatre in 1880’s London, when audiences flocked in to see Henry Irving and Ellen Terry play Hamlet and Ophelia, and when the theatre manager Bram Stoker was struggling to write a best-selling novel (review HVN Sept 2020). So, leading on from the life of Nelly Ternan I found Ellen Terry’s gossipy autobiography online and was once more immersed in the life and society of late Victorian England which of course included a certain Oscar Wilde, dandy, poet, playwright, and wit. Wilde gets a walk on part in Shadowplay, and Ellen Terry records that Wilde and Whistler where without doubt the most remarkable men she knew.

Which brings me to “Oscar Wilde and The Candlelight Murders”, the first in a series of six novels by Giles Brandreth. Brandreth says, “What makes Wilde particularly attractive as a character to write about is that he was such a fascinating and engaging human being.  What makes him particularly useful – and credible – as a Victorian detective is that he had extraordinary access to all types and conditions of men and women, from the most celebrated to society’s outcasts, from the Prince of Wales to common prostitutes.” So, in The Candlelight Murders Oscar Wilde has turned detective, taking on the mantle of Sherlock Holmes who was just making his appearance in the stories of Wilde’s friend Arthur Conan Doyle. Giles Brandreth has great fun playing with the Sherlock Homes theme and gives Wilde his own Dr Watson in the shape of his friend and first biographer Robert Sherard. Here’s part of the intro to the novel:

“My name is Robert Sherard, and I was a friend of Oscar Wilde …. I kept a journal of our times together. I promised Oscar that for fifty years I would keep his secret. I have kept my word. And now the time has come when I can break my silence. At last, I can reveal all that I know of Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders. I must do it, for I have the record. I was there. I am the witness.”

On the first page Wilde hurries to an appointment. He enters a room expecting to meet someone but instead sees the naked body of young Billy Wood, lying on the floor, illuminated by six candles and with his throat cut. Yet when Wilde returns to the scene of the crime with Conan Doyle, the room is completely empty and completely clean. Who murdered Billy Wood and why, are the central mysteries of the novel? The police are strangely reluctant to pursue the case; a vicious stepfather is an obvious suspect; who are the men who meet at 23 Cowley St? Brandreth sets the puzzles early on and deftly merges the real, yet fictitious Wilde with the wholly fictitious Holmes in this exchange:

‘No, no, believe me,’ he (Wilde) went on. ‘Arthur wants to get away at once. His train departs within the hour. He has his ticket and scant means to buy another. He is strapped for cash, Robert. Like you, money is a perpetual worry to him. Unlike you, he pays his bills on time. Besides, it is his wife’s birthday, and he is eager to hasten back to her, bearing gifts.’ Oscar paused to sip his coffee. Doyle was gazing at him, wide-eyed with admiration. ‘Mr. Wilde, you are amazing,’ he said. ‘You are correct in every particular.’ ‘Come, Arthur, no more “Mr. Wilde”, please. I am your friend. And I have studied your Study in Scarlet. This was scarcely a three-pipe problem.’

The Candlelight Murders is an enjoyable romp through the seedy Victorian underworld of rent boys and secret societies, heavily spiced with Wildean wit and epigrams. Like all detective novels red herrings abound and Wilde of course has worked out the main suspect while the reader is still floundering among the fish. This is a highly readable and very enjoyable story but despite the evocation of Wilde’s wit and the Sherlock Holmes persona not in the top tier of detective fiction.

Giles Brandreth has been obsessed with Wilde since he was young and he says: “One hundred and seven years after his death, I am still having fun in his company and if you read Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders, I hope you will, too.   As Oscar once said, ‘There is nothing quite like an unexpected death for lifting the spirits.’”

Interview with Giles Brandreth

Writer, broadcaster, former MP and government whip, Gyles Brandreth , makes his first foray into
detective fiction with OSCAR WILDE AND THE CANDLELIGHT MURDERS , published by John Murray on 10 May 2007.  The novel is the first in a series of Victorian murder mysteries by Brandreth , each of them featuring Oscar Wilde as the detective.

How did it come about?  Gyles Brandreth explains:

It’s a long story, so I will try to keep it short.

Since I was a boy, I have been an avid admirer of both the works of Oscar Wilde and the adventures of Sherlock Holmes.  (At school, my best friend was the actor, Simon Cadell.  He starred in my school production of A Study in Sherlock.  Jeremy Brett was brilliant as Holmes, I grant you.  But for me, Simon, aged twelve, was definitive!)

Anyway . . . about ten years ago, in the late 1990s, by chance, I picked up a copy of Memories and Adventures, the autobiography of Arthur Conan Doyle, published by John Murray in 1924, and discovered, on page 94, that Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde were friends.  I was amazed.  It would be hard to imagine an odder couple.

They met in 1889, at the newly-built Langham Hotel in Portland Place.  They were brought together by an American publisher, J M Stoddart, who happened to be in London commissioning material for Lippincott’s Magazine.  Evidently, Oscar, then 35, was on song that night and Conan Doyle, 30, was impressed – and charmed.  The upshot of the evening was that Mr Stoddart got to publish both Arthur Conan Doyle’s second Sherlock Holmes story, The Sign of Four, and Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I was inspired to write the first of ‘The Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries’.

My story begins on the afternoon of the day of Wilde and Conan Doyle’s first encounter.  Oscar calls on a house in Cowley Street, Westminster, expecting to meet up with a friend – a female friend, as it happens, a young actress . . .  Instead, in a darkened upstairs room, fragrant with incense, he discovers the naked body of a boy of sixteen, his throat cut from ear to ear.

Wilde, established poet and wit, ‘the champion of aestheticism’, (and happily married to Constance and living in Tite Street, Chelsea, with their two sons), turns to Conan Doyle, doctor and writer of detective fiction, ‘the coming man’ (still practising as a general practitioner in Southsea), for help - but Conan Doyle quickly discovers that when it comes to the art and craft of amateur sleuthing Oscar Wilde has very little to learn from Sherlock Holmes.   Wilde is overweight and apparently indolent (more Mycroft than Sherlock Holmes), but his mind is amazing: his intellect is as sharp as his wit.  Oscar Wilde, in his own way, is as brilliant as Sherlock Holmes - and just as Holmes had his weakness for cocaine, Wilde has his weaknesses, too.

Famously, Wilde was a brilliant conversationalist.  He was, also, by every account, a careful listener and an acute observer.  And he had a poet’s eye.  He observed: he listened: he reflected: and then – with his extraordinary gifts of imagination and intellect – he saw the truth . . .  What makes Wilde particularly attractive as a character to write about is that he was such a fascinating and engaging human being.  What makes him particularly useful – and credible – as a Victorian detective is that he ad extraordinary access to all types and conditions of men and women, from the most celebrated to society’s outcasts, from the Prince of Wales to common prostitutes.

Dr Arthur Conan Doyle is central to Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders – as he will be to the sequels in the series – but, in my book, he is not Wilde’s Dr Watson.  That role falls to one Robert Sherard, a journalist, poet, ladies’ man, and Wilde’s first, most frequent and most loyal biographer.  Sherard first met Wilde in 1882 in Paris and, throughout their friendship, which lasted until Wilde’s death in 1900, kept a detailed journal of their time together.

Oscar Wilde – dandy, detective, playwright, and, eventually, convicted corrupter of young men - died at about 1.45 pm on 30 November 1900 in a small, dingy first floor room at L’Hotel d’Alsace, 13 rue des Beaux-Arts, Paris.  He was just 46.  Exactly one hundred years later, in the same hotel, in the same bedroom (now expensively refurbished), a band of devotees - twenty or so of us: English, Irish, French, American - gathered to honour the man whose greatest play, according to Frank Harris, was his own life: ‘a five act tragedy with Greek implications, and he was its most ardent spectator.’

It was at 1.45 pm on that Thursday afternoon in Paris that I decided I wanted to write ‘The Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries’.   It was a memorable occasion.  An Anglo-Catholic clergyman - a Canon of Christ Church, Oxford: he was tall and blond, called Beau and came from Cincinatti: Oscar would have approved - lit a candle and led us in prayer.  There was a minute’s silence and some tears and, later, as we toasted the shade of the great man in champagne (absinthe is now outlawed in France), much laughter.  We gazed in wonder at the huge turquoise peacocks decorating the wall above the bed and recalled Oscar’s last recorded quip: ‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.  One or other of us has to go.’

Oscar Wilde has been a figure of fascination to me for as long as I can remember.   I was born in 1948 in Germany, where, in the aftermath of the Second World War, my father was serving as a legal officer with the Allied Control Commission.  He counted among his colleagues, H Montgomery Hyde, who, in 1948, published the first full account of the trials of Oscar Wilde.  It was the first non-fiction book I ever read!  (In 1974, at the Oxford Theatre Festival, I produced the first stage version of The Trials of Oscar Wilde, with Tom Baker as Wilde, and, in 2000, I edited the transcripts of the trials for an audio production starring Martin Jarvis.)  In 1961, when I was thirteen, I was given the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde and read them from cover to cover - yes, all 1,118 pages.   I can’t have understood much, but I relished the language and learnt by heart his Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young – eg: ‘Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.’

As a child I felt close to Oscar for another reason.  I was a pupil at Bedales School, where, in 1895, Cyril, the older of the Wildes’ two sons, had been at school.  The founder of Bedales, John Badley, was a friend of Wilde’s, and was still alive and living in the school grounds when I was a boy.  Mr Badley told me (in 1965, at around the time of his hundredth birthday) that he believed much of Oscar’s wit was ‘studied’.  He recalled staying at a house party in Cambridge with Oscar and travelling back with him to London by train.  Assorted fellow guests came to the station to see them on their way.  At the moment the train was due to pull out, Wilde delivered a valedictory quip, then the guard blew the whistle and waved his green flag, the admirers on the platform cheered, Wilde sank back into his seat and the train moved off.  Unfortunately, it only moved a yard or two before juddering to a halt.  The group on the platform gathered again outside the compartment occupied by Wilde and Badley.  Oscar hid behind his newspaper and hissed at his companion, ‘They’ve had my parting shot.  I only prepared one.’

When I told this story to the actor, Sir Donald Sinden, he volunteered that, in the 1940s, when he knew him, Lord Alfred Douglas had told him, too, that much of Oscar Wilde’s spontaneous wit was carefully worked out in advance.  Never mind how he did it - he did it.  Bernard Shaw said, ‘He was incomparably the greatest talker of his time - perhaps of all time.’ 

John Badley told me, ‘Oscar Wilde could listen as well as talk.  He put himself out to be entertaining.   You know, he said, “Murder is always a mistake.  One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.”   He was a delightful person, charming and brilliant, with the most perfect manners of any man I ever met.  Because of his imprisonment and disgrace he is seen nowadays as a tragic figure.  That should not be his lasting memorial.  I knew him quite well.  He was such fun.’

One hundred and seven years after his death, I am still having fun in his company and if you read Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders I hope you will, too.   As Oscar once said, ‘There is nothing quite like an unexpected death for lifting the spirits.’

http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/feature_view.aspx?FEATURE_ID=143

 

 

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Pretty Girl In Crimson Rose (8) by Sandy Balfour

53 years ago, when TV’s were B&W and a teacher’s monthly salary was £59 – I still have a pay slip! – a friend invited me on a Scottish walking/climbing holiday, him, me and five girls. Perfect! Cometh the hour, I arrived at our meetup in York to find not five girls but just one, his girlfriend! The thought of discretely looking the other way for two whole weeks took all the shine off any glories the Highlands might have to offer. The girl friend had an idea, she phoned a friend, who agreed to join us in Fort William. Problem solved, second girl on her way. During the hours of sitting together in a Morris 1100 travelling up the Scottish west coast, the four of us battled our way through the Guardian cryptic crossword. No. 12,111 – I still have that too. Clue 22A was very apposite, “Time soon modifies feelings” (8) Ans: “Emotions” (can you see why?). My feelings were soon modified, emotions kicked in and Reader, I married her.

Which brings me to “Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8)”, by Sandy Balfour. – a memoir of love, identity, and crosswords. He tells the story of how he and his girlfriend hitchhiked from South Africa to England in 1983 and of his subsequent life as a filmmaker and journalist. It is also a love letter to the art of the cryptic crossword which he and his girlfriend discovered together. Don’t let the thought of “difficult” crosswords put you off reading this short, delightful book. Yes, we meet lots of clues (answers all given, either in the text or appendix) and we learn how the cryptic clue works and the inside stories of some of the setters, but there is far more to the book than this. Sandy Balfour takes us on his very personal journey with anecdote, humour and a lightness of touch that carries the reader along. Here is a sample:

“New Year's Day 1990. My girlfriend and I have taken the first steps towards creating a home in London by buying part of a house near Arsenal Football Club. She is attempting to teach me the basics of crosswords. "Take 'Pretty girl in crimson rose'," she says. "Eight letters. What does it mean?" "It means," she continues, "that we have a pretty girl and she is wearing something red, or pink. She is wearing something that suits her prettiness. Prettiness, girls, roses - they all go together." I nod. "Got it," I say. "It means," says my girlfriend, "nothing of the sort." I nod again and smile encouragingly. I am keeping up. "That" she says, "is what they want you to think it means. What it actually means is either the first word or the last word. What it actually means is 'rose'."

If you like word play and the idiosyncrasies of the English language and are intrigued by or take delight in cryptic crosswords, you will enjoy keeping company with Sandy and his wife, always endearingly referred to as his girlfriend, as he takes you on their personal journey, and his life as a film maker in the turbulent 80’s and 90’s.

'An extraordinary memoir... a positive page turner... A mesh of journeys and destinations, politics and romance, it touches what is beyond words.' Sophie Ratcliffe, The Times

My girlfriend and I still do crosswords together, not always solving them but always taking delight in clever clues. Here are a few:

a.      Picture of girl kept by her parents (8)

b.     Group fixed stage scenery to mount sequence of songs (3) The answer is clued five times by a word that has 364 different meanings and takes most pages to define in the OED

c.      Potty train (4)

d.      Two girls one on each knee (8) - Title of another book about crosswords. By Alan Connor

 Answers:

Title: rebelled. Red is crimson. Pretty girl is belle and it is IN red. Rebelled means rose as in, the people rose up in protest.

Emotions is an anagram of “time soon”

a. Panorama b. Set – It can mean, group, fixed, scenery, to mount, sequence of songs 

c. Loco, d. Patella

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If Only They Didn't Speak English by Jon Sopel & Educated by Tara Westover

 

Bill Bryson claimed he didn’t understand the UK despite living here for 30 years. Well, Bill, the feeling is mutual. When I look across the pond at the USA, I am totally baffled, which is why I needed If Only They Didn't Speak English by Jon Sopel.

Take these conundrums for starters:

How could a man who openly lied, insulted his opponents, and ignored shocking revelations about his personal life, be elected President of The United States? How could a country in which 65% of the adults identify as Christian not change its gun laws after the killing of 20 children at Sandy Hook? How could a country that is a bastion of democracy see a violent mob try and overturn by force the result of a democratic election.

This book by the BBC’s North American editor goes a long way to explaining the enigma that is the United States. Bill Bryson says of the book: "Jon Sopel may be the sanest man in America. He is certainly one of the most insightful. . .".

In the introduction Jon Sopel says: “Through music, literature, film and TV and even through the food we eat and the clothes we wear, we have all a highly developed sense of what America is; ….but America in the election year of 2016 and its extraordinary aftermath felt about as foreign a country as you could imagine.”

The book is divided into ten chapters, beginning with “Anger” and ending with “Chaos”, neat bookends to all that lies between, God, Patriotism, Race, Truth, etc. As you might expect from an experienced journalist the book is highly readable with anecdotes, humour and telling phrases to whisk you along. “Donald J Trump played by the Queensbury Rules in reverse. There was no belt below which he would not punch, no line he would not cross.” But, he also finds a lot to admire in America: “ ….. the odds are much higher [than being shot] that you are going to be blown away by civility, decency and courtesy.”, and “the work ethic of young people is off the charts”

So, if you want to get under the skin of the foreign country that is the United States then this is the book for you.

If politics is not your thing and you much prefer to immerse yourself in a country by reading about its people then try Educated by Tara Westover.  This is the best-selling, coming of age memoir of a young girl, growing up in a strict Mormon family in Idaho. Tara’s Father was a survivalist who believed we are living in the biblical end-times - as do many of Donald Trump’s supporters. In 1992 there was a tragic siege of a family in Ruby Ridge, also in Idaho, that resulted in the death of the wife and son. This reinforced her Father’s belief that his family should be prepared to withstand a siege, be self-sufficient and have nothing to do with any government agencies such as medical care or education. Tara’s mother treated all their illnesses and injuries, some very serious, and learned midwifery from a friend. Tara had no formal education until she was seventeen but with a desire to free herself from her family’s influence and her obvious talent, she entered Brigham Young University, and eventually completed a PhD in Cambridge. “Educated” has been recommended by no less than Barak Obama and Bill Gates so need I say more. It has sold over 6 million copies, so you’ve probably already read it.

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Reading the Russians - the Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop

Viv Groskop is an author, columnist, playwright, broadcaster and comedian. She become obsessed in her teens by all things Russian after reading Anna Karenina and believing the name Groskop was of Russian origin. This led her to two Russian degrees and to living and working in Russia. Eventually she discovered her family originated from Poland and her name means “Fat-head” but this has not diminished her love of Russia and its literature.

The Anna Karenina Fix is a lively, witty overview of the Russian classics and sets out to show they are not deep, difficult and intimidating but can be enjoyed by everyone. The 11 short chapters feature 10 of the great Russian authors, Turgenev, Pasternak, Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky etc with her hero Tolstoy starting and finishing the book with chapters on Anna Karenina and War & Peace.

The chapter titles give a flavour of Viv Groskop’s light-hearted style. Chapter four for example is titled: 

“How to Survive Unrequited Love” – A month in the Country by Ivan Turgenev – (Or: Don’t fall in love with your best friend’s wife).

The introduction deals with the vexed issue of Russian names, including the exasperating problem of diminutives. How do you keep up when Alexandra is referred to as “Sasha”? Her own name Viv, became “Vivka” (Little Viv) which was misheard by her Russian landlady as “Veepka” (Little VIP) which in turn mutated to “Vipulenka” (Dearest Teeny, Tiny Little VIP).

The book is a vibrant mixture of humour, insight and anecdote, with incidents from her own life in Russia thrown into the mix. It is a very enjoyable, page-turning read and at the end of it you will have had the door flung open on what for too many of us is the closed world of Russian literature. She makes clear in her introduction that the book is not intended to be an academic thesis, but instead:

“It's an exploration of the answers these writers found to life's questions big and small and it's a love letter to some favourite books which at one point helped me to find my identity and buoyed me up when I lost it again.”

Until a few years ago One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch was the only Russian novel I’d read – see chapter 8 in The Anna Karenina Fix. Written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1962 the novel is set in a labour camp in Stalin’s Russia. Despite the harrowing setting, the story is full of humanity and wisdom, and is often included in lists of the world’s great novels. At just 209 pages it is an easy place to dip your toe in the water of the Russian classics.

Three things propelled me deeper: the first was a visit to St Petersburg where my daughter, Anna was doing a prelim course in Russian prior to studying for a year at the university in Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia – she always wanted to live where there was plenty of snow! Surrounded by all things Russian made me want to get to know the country through its literature. The second was our book group choice of First Love by Turgenev which was a short, easy read and prompted me go on to read his Fathers and Sons. The third was the BBC adaptation of War & Peace in January 2016. I’d had a three-volume edition of the novel sitting on my shelves for years and knew if I watched it on TV I’d probably never read it. So, I decided it was now or never and finished it in 20 days. It was such a marvellous read that I went on and read Anna Karenina too.

If you’ve been put off reading the Russians then Viv Groskop will hopefully inspire you to give them a go and if nothing else you will have read a very stimulating introduction to some great literature. As the Telegraph review states; “Explored with dancing wit, affection and brilliance. Passionate, hilarious, joyful”.

 

 

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Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

 

In the Spring of 1957, an American publisher received the first novel from 31-year-old Harper Lee. “The spark of the true writer flashed in every line," her editor said, but nevertheless declared it not fit for publication – “more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel". Lee and her editor completely reworked the manuscript and three years later, one of the great classics of the 20^th Century, “To Kill A Mockingbird”, was published.

For me, and for many others, it is in the top rank of favourite novels, and Atticus Finch is one of the great literary heroes. So, when the reclusive Harper Lee published “Go Set A Watchman” in 2015, a supposed sequel, it created a stir. Atticus Finch of all people had turned racist; the saint had turned sinner and I determined never to read it. But horror of horrors, last year it was chosen for our book group and I had to bite the bullet. What a revelation – I loved it and read it twice!

GSAW is not a sequel but the original manuscript from 1957. It was written when the US Supreme Court had ruled that education in every state must be de-segregated and the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People was growing in power and influence. The southern states felt under threat and the deep tensions that emerged form the background to the novel.

We are 20 years on from TKAM and “Colour-blind” Jean Louise Finch returns to her hometown to find her New York values are not only at odds with Maycomb but tragically at odds with her much-revered Father and also her would-be husband. The flashbacks to childhood where black and white lived alongside each other in a separated harmony and where six-year-old Scout had no understanding of the currents building in the black community contrast sharply with the present where the currents are running strong, and the demand for equal rights is not only tearing the community apart but also tearing Jean Louise from those she holds dear.

At a church service she hears this text from Isaiah:

“For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” (Is 21:6)

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon; And all the images of her gods are shattered on the ground.”

Isaiah saw the coming destruction of Babylon and liberation of the Jews from captivity, and Jean Louise sees the coming liberation of African-Americans from subservience to full citizenship, but her contemporaries are oblivious. In a social gathering, young women she grew up with talk openly of doing away with the Negro race. She reflects on how the great words of the Gettysburg Address have become a grotesque parody:

“Conceived in mistrust and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created evil.”

“I hope the world will little note nor long remember what you are saying here.”

She thinks, “I should like to take your head apart, put a fact in it, and watch it go its way through the runnels of your brain until it comes out of your mouth. We were both born here, we went to the same schools, we were taught the same things. I wonder what you saw and heard.”

At a key point in the novel she confronts Atticus and her language is visceral:

“Atticus, I’m throwing it at you and I’m gonna grind it in: you better go warn your younger friends that if they want to preserve Our Way of Life, it begins at home. It doesn’t begin with the schools or the churches or any place but home. Tell’ em that, and use your blind, immoral, misguided, nigger - lovin’ daughter as your example. Go in front of me with a bell and say, ‘Unclean!”

She wants no more to do with Maycomb and no more to do with Atticus. But her uncle halts her flight.  He says, she has revered her father too much and turned him into a God - “And all the images of her gods are shattered on the ground.”

A famous passage from TKAM is:

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

Her uncle makes Jean Louise realise that her conscience, her Watchman as he calls it, is not the same as her father’s and she needs a new relationship with him, adult to adult.

GSAW is an uncompromising call for justice seen through the eyes of an adult, but it was transformed into TKAM narrated by a child. Was this because Harper Lee could not reconcile the Old Testament voice of the prophet calling for justice and righteousness with the New Testament message of mercy and forgiveness? TKAM removed the conflict between Atticus and Jean Louise, the cry of the prophet was silenced, and Atticus was able to stand Christ-like, for mercy and forgiveness.

If you have never read either, then do read TKAM. But I found GSAW far more powerful in the themes it explores; more realistic and less idealistic than TKAM.

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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 cast of supporting characters and meanders away from the main story into their lives. 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 story threads woven together into one rich celebration of humanity.

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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Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an award-winning Nigerian author who writes about her homeland and how its people are conflicted between their own unique African identities and the onrushing tide of Westernisation.

 Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus was set in a time when Nigeria was ruled by an army dictatorship; her second, Half of a Yellow Sun, covers the civil war at the end of the 1960s when the state of Biafra attempted to form a separate country for the Igbo people. Americanah moves to more recent times when teachers and lecturers are on strike, causing many students to leave Nigeria to seek higher education in the USA or UK. Adichie is a very talented writer and I would strongly recommend all three.

In Americanah we follow the lives of Ifemelu and Obinze from the friendship of their school days through to a growing affection and a deepening relationship in their teens. They have become soulmates but are now forced apart when Ifemelu leaves Nigeria for the USA to continue her stalled education. She expects Obinze to follow her, but he is unable to do so and ends up in the UK. Unable to pay her rent and unable to get a job Ifemelu cuts herself off from all contact with Obinze, not replying to his many letters and emails.

Here are two intelligent, aspirational, young Nigerians seeking an education worthy of their talents but now seen as strangers and aliens, having to fight to achieve status and recognition against immigration barriers and endemic racism. Their ambitions are frustrated at every turn and Obinze is forced back to Nigeria.

Adiche studied in the USA and cleverly throws a strong light on racist issues by means of Ifemelu starting a blog called "Raceteenth". Some blog posts are interspersed with the text of the novel and take the reader out its fictional world into the harsh reality of the real thing.

One particularly moving episode in Americanah is the election of Obama as the first black president of the USA

Blaine was crying holding Araminta who was crying then holding Ifemelu squeezing her too tight and Pee was hugging Michael and Grace was hugging Nathan and Paula hugging Araminta and Ifemelu was hugging Grace, and the living room became an altar of disbelieving joy.

Her phone bleeped with a text from Dike, “I can't believe it. My president is black like me.” She read the text few times her eyes filling with tears.

On television, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama and their two daughters were walking onto a stage. They were carried by the wind, bathed in incandescent light, victorious and smiling. 

“Young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans have sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of red States and blue, states. We have been and always will be the United States of America”

Remember those heady days when the world seemed to turn a corner of tolerance and hope? Read this and weep.

Although this novel is rich in many things, the central core is a love story. Can young love survive change and maturity, the separation of distance and time, and the emotional turmoil of other relationships?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has given a TED talk on "The Danger of a Single Story" and this beautifully written novel challenges the reader to open his/her mind to the multitude of stories of other people and other nations so we may better understand our common humanity.

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