Snobs by Julian Fellowes: A Review

Snobs is a meticulously detailed satire of upper class living. The English aristocrats that inhabit its pages are carefully, and sympathetically, drawn. I knew little about Julian Fellowes before picking up this book but after a little research that sympathy is easy to understand for Fellowes, like his narrator, is an upper class actor with a penchant for nice things, and a foot inside the drawing room door.

The plot is very simple and based around Edith, a social climber determined to 'make a good marriage'. The rest of the story charts her predictable boredom once thrown into her new life as a countess and what she chooses to do about it.

The novel is slightly reminiscent of P G Wodehouse in as far as both provide a historical account of a certain type of society. As with the former, Fellowes' plot is secondary to the characters within it. With Wodehouse the fact that the plot is predictable is part of the fun. It breeds a comforting familiarity and requires little concentration on clues and events, leaving the reader to bask instead in the undeniably glory of the prose. Wodehouse crafts language like no-one else, least of all Julian Fellowes. Whilst Fellowes' characters are well observed, he does not possess the razor sharp wit of his predecessor.

Snobs offers an entertaining peek into another world - that mostly appears grotesque - but not much more.




More, more, more:

Reviews in the media from The Independent, The Guardian and The Telegraph

From other blogs here and here.

A Journey: A review

Tony Blair is a man who can certainly stir up some emotion. There are tons of people who openly hate him and, presumably, a few left somewhere (America perhaps) that still love him.

I didn't choose A Journey because I love or hate him. I certainly don't fall into the former camp, I certainly have some major issues with the war in Iraq, but neither do I think he has turned into the spawn of Satan. No, I read his autobiography just because I was interested. Interested in his side of the story, interested in his reasons - or excuses - and interested in a peek behind the scenes of government.

I opted for an audio version of the book because I knew I wouldn't sacrifice enough 'proper' reading time for a book like this. Using up precious hours in my little reading room for Tony Blair... no! Listening to him explain himself while I painted the cellar... more likely.

The fact that I listened to him read the book will no doubt have coloured my judgment. The fact that it was all delivered in his familiar voice made it all sound a little bit more whiney I think, a little bit more like one big excuse.

It was interesting to hear his account of what happened, especially his side of the TB/GB saga in which he seemed to keep Gordon Brown hanging on some perpetual piece of string, just long enough to eventually hang himself with. In reality, however, the fact that the book is arranged thematically not chronologically meant that there was less insight into the day to day machinations of a political power house than I would have liked, or expected.

Instead, there was lots and lots about how well Tony Blair can make decisions. The terms 'analysis' and 'drilling down' have to be the most over-used expressions of the book. We are told early on how Blair's apprentice at the feet of Derry Irvine, while he trained to be a barrister, afforded him an ability to 'drill down' that was second to none. He seems to genuinely believe that he can see the truth where others can't - and not just about current issues. There is a passage dedicated to his views on Chamberlain and WWII where he basically says that Chamberlain got a hammering only because everyone was asking the wrong questions... something that Blair would never do.

There is something about this image of Blair as a meticulous, analytical mind far more focused on asking the 'right' questions than projecting the 'right' image that just doesn't wash. He tries to paint himself as the policy maker, Brown as the less developed political mind but I'm not sure he carries it off. I listened to this just after Peter Mandelson's The Third Man. Life at the Heart of New Labour and both Blair and Mandelson seem willing to rubbish Brown's reputation. So much so that you wonder why, if Brown was really such a belligerent bully, they didn't just 'deal with him' early on.

Blair ends by offering some advice to the Labour party. The fact that this consists of 'keep on doing what I was doing or perish' is rather predictable, rather disappointing. Just as the Tories couldn't see they needed to change when Blair won his landslide victory in 1997, one wonders whether Blair is just a little bit too stuck in his own spin.

All in all an interesting way to pass the time while painting, but not much more.

The future of books?

I certainly hope not, but I admire the work of designer Kyle Bean.

Book sculptures

One of Mike Stilkey's book sculptures. Originally found here

Daughters of Jerusalem: A Review

I sought out Daughters of Jerusalem having enjoyed Charlotte Mendelson's third novel When We Were Bad.

Although the two novels differ substantially; in location, plot and characterisation, the underlying themes are just as focused on the dysfunctional family, of people not turning out to be quite as they seemed, and of the harrowing consequences as the truth begins to unfold.

The story takes place in Oxford, focusing on the family of a college Don and his two, quite different, daughters. There is Eve, studious and academically brilliant yet insecure, and Phoebe, a 'normal' child in a world of excessive abilities and intellect. Phoebe hides the crushing pain of perceived inadequacy behind a manipulative zeal to obtain ever more luxurious material goods. Eve merely runs away to her room. To study... and to cut herself. Their father seems largely lost in his studies and an all consuming rivalry with his academic colleague, a rivalry that will take the most dramatic of turns, and amidst it all is his wife, Jean Lux.

Jean Lux is tired. Tired of Oxford and all that it stands for:

She is sick of navy-blue corduroy, Gothic arches, famous fig-trees, shabby dons' wives, cellars, rivers, genius children, stuttering and gold leaf. It is your fault, she thinks, approaching her husband's college, as she glimpses her neighbour, an entirely silent botanist, attempting to untangle his own beard from a hawthorn tree. None of you are normal. Is normal. And I am.

As the novel unfolds Jean realises just what it is she is tired of and who and what it will take to breathe life back into her weary existence.

Daughters of Jerusalem tackles dark, serious taboos - sex with a minor, self harm, lesbianism - but does so with a perfectly wrought comic edge. Art mirrors life in that, in amongst the tragedies and soul-searching, the daily grind dominates and in the minutiae of everyday life there is much that is funny, much that is dull and dreary and much that is plain annoying.

Communication, mis-communication and manipulation are strong themes and they support a plot that is full of genuine surprise, It speaks volumes for Mendelson's skill as a writer that the novel manages to feel thoroughly action packed whilst leaving times for such slow and stilted dialogue as this:

'I' they both say.
'Go on then.'
'No,' says Helena suspiciously. 'You go on.'
'I don't want you to think-'
'I don't,' Helena interrupts.

As in When We Were Bad the novels builds gradually towards realisation, of reversals of role and fortunes and then suddenly everything seems to happen at one, small seeds of awareness blossom and then, all at once, burst forth and then, all too soon, it is over and you are left wishing for more. This is one of the best books I have read in a while, thoroughly recommended.





More, more, more....
Two contrasting opinions from blog reviewers at Bookish Ramblings and Litlove

Press reviews in The Guardian and The Independent

An interview with Charlotte Mendelson on Tanita Tikaram's blog and, finally, an article in which Mendelson considers why writing and reading about dysfunctional families is so satisfying.

Book cover love: Books v. Cigarettes

Apt for someone who has promised herself copious amounts of books for life as a reward for not smoking. The cover's pretty stunning too, I think.

When We Were Bad: A Review

Claudia Rubin can sweep through a room and leave everyone enthralled with devotion. Claudia Rubin is a rabbi, a celebrity, a matriarch all rolled up into one glorious, sumptuous star of a person who seems ‘edible, a fertility symbol made of praline’. As When We Were Bad ends, Claudia Rubin is sitting down to write her family the ‘love letters they deserve’.

The letters may be the start of a new beginning, a new era for the Rubins family, but for now they are the final chapter in the saga of a family falling apart, a family shattering in all directions as each member unleashes their own dirty secret, each one a bomb that zooms to the very core of the family.

There's Leo the porn buying eldest son who runs off with a rabbi's wife and Frances the dependable one who secretly grapples in search of the love she should feel for her son, her husband, her step-daughters, the love that is alarmingly absent. There are the younger siblings who exist in a supported state of perpetual youth and of course their father, Norman, the retiring husband who has done anything but retire, squirrelling himself away instead to write the acclaimed book his wife has been dreaming of for herself.

They inhabit a world of contradiction where family is everything yet nothing, where siblings and parents frantically call each other for hourly updates yet remain entirely oblivious to what is really going on right under their noses, where the reliable become the unreliable and where the preoccupation with food and its plentiful abundance underlines the near absence of soul food, of genuine understanding and spiritual nourishment. That this family exists under the watchful gaze of Rabbi Claudia Rubin, famous for her spiritual nourishment of strangers, is all the more ironic.

To the naked eye the Rubins seem ‘doomed to happiness’ yet ultimately, it seems, they are just doomed. As Claudia clings desperately to her looks, her position, her longed for book publication, all around her are ensconced in their own little bubbles, and all of them are floating further and further away from the mothership. Apparently, Charlotte Mendelson wanted to call this book ’50 ways to leave your mother’ and you can see why. The entire family are trying to escape Claudia's stifling aura in a Freudian orgy of sex and affairs, of gender confusion and whispers of death.

The plot is ferociously fast matched only by Mendelson’s command of language and her ability to draw such engaging characters. On one level the novel works as a light-hearted, comic take on London’s liberal Jewish community. On another it is a dark and emotive psychological comment on the dysfunctional family, of transcending one’s roots... of potentially blowing those roots to bits.

I was captivated by the Jewishness, the ceremonies and tradition. I was impressed by tackling of taboos, most frequently those concerning mother love, or rather lack of it. I was swept along by the quick witted humour. In short I fell for this novel in the way those in the book fall for Claudia Rubin. Hook, line and sinker.




When We Were Bad was short-listed for 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction. Further reviews and a Q&A with the author can be found here.

Pelicans at the Piece Hall

I am somewhat addicted to books. To reading them, of course, but also just looking at them, arranging them on my bookshelves, basically lusting after them I suppose.

A few weeks ago, Husband and I had a rare day alone without the children. We walked around the Piece Hall in Halifax, England.




The Piece Hall is a wonderful collection of 300 rooms built around a courtyard in 1779 originally designed to service the cloth trade that Halifax was once so dependent on. Now it is full of small independent shops selling anything and everything. In amongst them I found a fantastic second hand book shop and thoroughly indulged my addiction to old pelican books - mainly, I admit, for their fantastic covers. Here's some of my trawl.









photo credit

Eat, Pray, Love: Some lasting impressions

As I said in my review, Eat, Pray, love left me really conflicted. There were aspects of the book I hated but, in amongst all that annoyed me or failed to convince, there were some reflections on life - mostly from Gilbert's time in an Indian ashram - that did make me stop and think for a while. Here are my favourites.

I got to thinking about how much time I spend in my life crashing around like a great gasping fish, either squirming away from some uncomfortable distress or flopping hungrily toward ever more pleasure. And I wondered whether it might serve me if I could learn to stay still and endure a bit more without always getting dragged along on the potholed road of circumstance.

There is another passage along similar lines that I failed to note down but which basically told the story of one of Gilbert's friends who was forever getting to a great place, looking around at the beauty or the amazing architecture and saying 'wow, I really must come back here one day' - totally failing to notice that she was there. Failing to live in the moment in other words, missing the here and now. I think I can take a valuable lesson from that!

And then, there was this one...

My Guru once said, 'you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again.

which really got me thinking. Should you stay strong and never fall apart, or do you sometimes need to hit rock bottom, let the demons out of the bottle as it were in order to start the climb back up again... I'm still pondering that one.

Altered books: Robert The

Robert The's altered books, originally found here. More to look at on the artist's own website bookdust.com and an explanation on how it all began here.

Eat, Pray, Love: A review

I avoided this book for ages. It is the true tale of Elizabeth Gilbert's self-styled 'search for everything' - in Italy, India and Indonesia - and I worried that it might be a little too trite, or full of God, for my own tastes.

Why relent? In part because a friend recommended Committed, the sequel, and said it was worth reading Eat, Pray, Love for context alone, but mostly because I was nosey and could no longer bear all the hype about the book, and now the film, without being able to add my own two penneth worth.

Deciding what that two penneth worth will be is proving trickier than usual. The internet is full of diatribes berating Gilbert's self-indulgence but that wasn't really what bothered me. When you pick up a personal story you have to accept it will be... personal, and writing about yourself at length is bound to become at least a little bit self-indulgent.

I was also less bothered than I expected to be by God popping up all over the place. I have a fairly antagonistic relationship with organised religion courtesy of an ultra-religious childhood but actually I was fine with most of it. Yes, Gilbert's actual language of prayer bristled, and the moment when God appeared to instantaneously grant the divorce she had prayed for left me sceptical at best, but in the main I found the book refreshingly non-denominational and inclusive, focusing more on the 'divine' than any set idea of 'God'.

The first section was a beautiful travelogue of Italy and its people and the second, India, was my favourite. That is where Gilbert comes closest to offering some real insight into the universal search for enlightenment and there are some great passages of reflection that really made me stop and think (and which I'll post separately).

Where it all came unstuck, for me at least, was Indonesia. Suddenly Gilbert's days lacked the previous structure of the ashram and it seemed like she was on holiday. It seemed like that, essentially, because she was. Whether it was jealously that kicked in at that point, or something more noble, I have no idea but I started to think that, yes, most people could recover from depression and find balance and peace when sent on holiday for a year at the behest of their benevolent publisher... except it's not really balance and it's a very solitary peace because actually real life is not like that. It is not a holiday.

Reading how she incorporated the lessons of the ashram into her daily grind and found that sort of balance would have interested me more. Perhaps that is to come in Committed but I'm not sure I'm ready yet to set aside the time to find out.

Maybe I'll just wait for the inevitable film.

Book cover love: Instructions for your discontent

Presumably the main therapeutic value of this book lies in its bright and cheery cover...

Reading the past to write the future

Yesterday I wrote about why I read. I wrote that reading saves my soul and whilst the statement itself borders on hyperbole, by and large, it's true.

For as long as I can remember I have read books to understand more about myself, who I am, how I feel. In the snippets of myself I see on a page I find the solace of shared emotion or experience. I feel understood.

In the Q&A below, Jeanette Winterson (author of, amongst other things, Oranges are not the Only Fruit) explains how for her the process of writing, too, is one of understanding, of processing the past, of forgiveness:

So if you were writing before you were reading, do you still write in order to read the world?

Yes. I write so that I'll have something to read, but I also write so that I can explain the world to myself, because writing becomes a third person - it becomes something which is separate from yourself. It's no longer you, although it's generated by you, and when it returns to you it explains things. It explains you to yourself and it explains the world. Books are always cleverer than their authors. They always contain more than the writer intended to put into them - at least they should - otherwise they become rather formulaic. I suspect creative writing school books contain only what is put into them, which is why they're so dreary.

And when you were writing Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, what were you trying to explain to yourself?

I was trying to explain where I'd come from. I was trying to make sense of a bizarre childhood and an unusual personal history. And I was trying to forgive. I don't think it's possible to forgive unless you can understand, and one of the things that writing can do - that literature can do - that all art can do, is to help you understand. It can put you in a position which is both inside and outside of yourself, so that what you get is a depth of knowledge otherwise not possible, about your own situation, and a context in which to put that situation, so you're no longer alone with feelings that you can't manage. People's powerlessness comes from feelings that they can't manage, and especially those that they can't articulate. Being able to write a story around the chaos of your own narrative, allows you to see yourself as a fiction, which is rather comforting because, of course, fictions can change. It's only the facts that trap us. I've always thought that if people could read themselves as fictions they would be much happier.

Her words so eloquently capture the essence of literature as knowledge, a 'depth of knowledge not otherwise possible'. That's why I read to save my soul, because, as Winterson says, people would be much happier if they could read themselves as fiction.


Questions sourced from Random House reading group guide to Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

The very important importance of reading

I read to relax, to laugh or to smile. I read to feel, to cry or to bristle.

I read to shut it all out, and to let it all in. I read to make sense of the past, and to imagine a future.

I read to learn and I read to teach. I read to myself, and of course, to the children.

I read to stop, escape from the day and I read to carry on, each book completed a triumph over the chaos of my mind.

I read to feed the world inside my head and I read to slow that same world down, stop it churning when it threatens to run away with itself.

I read for all of this, for comfort, for habit. Most of all, however, I read because I must. Reading saves my soul.

The man that books built

"Guilt's....

just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear."

Eat, Pray, Love (p.193)

December

December is the story of Isabelle and her self-imposed silence. As winter comes outside, her silence blows a cold wind over family life, freezing their previous happiness, making everything as fragile as ice.

It is the story of a girl whose quest for power leaves her ultimately powerless - powerless to break her own stifling rules. It is the story of her parents desperation, of their helplessness and of the crippling pain they endure at their daughter's withdrawal.

It is a story full of the seasons, art and images. It is slow and intense. A review on amazon says nothing much happens - and it's true, nothing much does, but that nothingness is captured so perfectly by the richness of the language that it comes alive with emotion.

It is the emotion of someone recoiling in horror as they inflict pain on the people they love, yet carrying on because they can't find a way to stop. It is an emotion so strong that it makes December once of the best novels I've read in a while.