Hello again...

So I'm giving this another go. I never finished my best picks from last year. And now this year is almost over, terrifyingly. So once again with the long cold nights drawing in and the desperate count down until the Christmas holidays underway, I needed something to keep me busy. To trick myself into thinking I'm hugely productive. 

I'm calling time on the unfinished posts from nearly a year ago and starting fresh. They will still be books. There will still be little musings. Just a little shorter and hopefully a little more frequently. I may even include some writing of my own and a maybe a few more day to day 'what I got up to' posts. 

This year has been a busy one. I had a tantrum about my little life stagnating in a small village so I've upped and moved to Brighton and it's marvelous. I had a tantrum about teaching so dropped my hours and am now doing a writing MA. Again, marvelous. And a wonderful excuse to read even more books. 

Picks from last year: Instalment Two

4. ‘The Light Years’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard

I took this one away with me to Turkey last August (this and literally about 10 others. Cue angry boyfriend cramming several in his hand luggage when my suitcase wouldn’t close. Only at these times does a Kindle seem like the best damn idea on earth). On yet another book shop visit in preparation for the holiday, I stumbled across this gem and the cover called to me- understated and most importantly, scattered with floral, with the subtitle ‘The Cazalet Chronicles: Volume One’. As an avid fan of ‘Downton Abbey’ and someone who seems to read a shocking number of novels set in beautiful manner houses of the past, the opportunity to follow a family and all their eccentricities across not just one but five (five!) novels seemed almost like a dream come true. Ridiculous, I know.

The novel is set in ‘the heart of the Sussex countryside’ in 1937-38. It follows the Cazalets, an upper-middle class family, through their everyday lives. Another war is looming and as the Cazalet households prepare for their summer pilgrimage to the family estate in Sussex, we meet Edward, in love with but by no means faithful to his wife Villy; Hugh, wounded in the Great War; Rupert, who worships his lovely young bride Zoe; and Rachel, the spinster sister. Along with this generation of characters, we also follow the lives of not only their children, but also their parents and all of the servants.  The novel has an unusual narrative technique in that the point of view is distributed more or less evenly over more than a dozen characters so that the story is brought to us in a series of snippets. And keeping track of the characters is desperately hard at first. But it is wonderful. Lying by the pool in the sweltering Turkish heat, I was thoroughly absorbed.

I am ashamed to say that I have bought the second book in the series, ‘Marking Time’, but have yet to read it. I will remedy this as soon as. The absence of ‘Downton Abbey’ on a Sunday evening is beginning to affect my well being and the Cazalets are an excellent alternative.

Page 99 Snapshot:

Once a month he went home and Mum made a fuss if him, but his sisters had gone into service, and his brothers were much older, and Dad kept telling him how lucky he was to learn the trade under Mr McAlpine. After a few hours he didn’t know what to do with himself and he missed his friends who were all working in different places. He had been used to doing things in a crowd: at school there’d been a gang of them who’d gone fishing, or picked hops in the season for cash. Here there wasn’t anyone to do things with. There was Dottie, but she was a girl so he never knew where he was with her and she treated him like a boy when he was doing a man’s job- sort of0- earning his living, anyway, same as her. Sometimes he wondered about going to sea, or he might drive a bus; the bus would be better because ladies took buses; he wouldn’t drive,he’d be a conductor, so’s he could see all their legs...

5. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

God I love this book. I first read it when I was at school after being given it by an English teacher of mine and, although I felt its unsettling tone creep under my skin, I didn’t grasp the full significance of the story. I have now taught this text twice to my sixth formers, a year 12 class and a year 13, and I have barely been able to contain myself when reading it. The ending still sends shivers along my spine- clichéd but 100% true. And if a text can do that to you during a five period teaching day surrounded by twelve or so seventeen year olds gaping at you, you know it must be good.

The short story is a tale of a woman driven to the brink of insanity by the ‘rest cure’ prescribed after the birth of her child. While she is isolated in a crumbling mansion, in a nursery with bars on the windows, the tortuous pattern of the yellow wallpaper winds its way into the recesses of her mind. Based on the author’s own experiences, it is a thought provoking and chilling comment on the roles and expectations placed on women, and the damaging consequences such oppression could have.

Pioneered by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, the ‘rest cure’ was prescribed in the late 1800s as a treatment for ‘hysteria’. The treatment usually lasted six to eight weeks and involved almost complete isolation from friends and family, and enforced bed rest. The patients were sometimes prohibited from talking, reading, writing, sewing or any activity that would involve even the slightest mental or intellectual stimulation. Many of those to be prescribed the ‘rest cure’ were women, usually those who were outspoken, creative or independent. It is thoroughly shocking that such a premise existed and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ concerns itself with the gradual decline and disastrous consequences of the treatment. Narrated from the point of view of the female protagonist, the style creates a controlled tension, and we are with her every step by tiny step as she ‘creeps’ slowly towards madness.

Page 9 snapshot (there are only 32 pages to the narrative!):

I wish I could get well faster.

But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and its everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breaths didn’t match, and the eyed go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.

6. ‘Birdsong’ by Sebastian Faulks

Another text that I have taught my year 12s this year. They are currently writing their coursework on it so you think I would be sick to death of it by now but I adore it. It’s beautiful. I read it first on holiday (another pool side read!) when I was away with the girls about 5 or so years ago. And I cried. By the pool. I’ve also seen the stage show and it was astounding. Thoroughly recommend it.

The novel is set before and during WWI and follows the life of the protagonist, Stephen Wraysford. Beginning in Amiens, France, in 1910, Part One of the text involves a clandestine, furtive, and fervent love affair, immediately confusing your expectations of a war novel.  This tranquil setting and intimacy serves to create a jarring upheaval for the reader when we are transported in Part Two to the centre of the front line in 1916; a device meant to mirror the experiences of the young men whose lives were so callously uprooted. With the use of narrative prolepsis (flash-forward to the 1970s), Faulks manages to create both an intimate tale of Stephen and those he encounters, but also highlights for the reader the importance of remembrance and respect on a national scale- for all of the thousands who lost their lives. Especially with last year being the centenary, it seemed a fitting choice.

Page 99 snapshot:

‘What’s happening?’ she said. ‘Why is everyone shouting?’

Stephen felt a rush of pity for the girl. He turned speechlessly from her and ran to Isabelle’s room. She had put on a coat and a green hat with a feather. She looked touchingly young.

‘All right?’ said Stephen. ‘Shall we go?’

She took his hand between hers and looked into his grave face. She smiled and nodded and picked up her case.

Each space and unexpected corridor beneath the plunging with its conflicting angles was alive with voices and the sound of feet, heavy, hesitant, running or turning back. The door to the kitchen banged and rolled repeatedly on its hinges as Marguerite and the cook shuttled back and forth to the dining room under the pretext of clearing the dinner, then lingered, listening, in the hallway. At the top of the stairs Stephen appeared with his arm around Isabelle, guiding her past the stricken looks and questions. 

Picks from last year: Instalment one

As promised, I’m going to give a brief nod to some of the books I particularly enjoyed from last year. Some are fresher in my memory than others, but I just know that when trying to select a cross section from my shelf, I felt myself going ‘Oh I loved this one!’ for one reason or another.

Each post will cover about three books until the stack is done and then I will push on to talking about the books I read in December and the start of January (I read often and fast so the list is growing at an alarming rate).

So, children. Let us begin.

1.       ‘The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox’ by Maggie O’Farrell

Now my first two are picks from very early last year and my memories of the ins and outs are hazy but I will try to give you an idea of why they’ve made it here.

‘The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox’  is a narrative full of oppression, madness, injustice and love. It focuses on Iris Lockhart’s reluctant discovery of a great aunt she never knew she had- Esme, a patient of a psychiatric unit who is about to be released. The text moves seamlessly between the present day and, through Esme’s recollections, the 1930s. Esme recalls her early childhood in India with her ayha and mimosa trees. Forced after a traumatic experience to return to England, Esme becomes, through the eyes of her parents, an ‘impossible’ child; she refuses education, loathes dances and has no interest in finding a husband. Eventually, through a series of injustices, hallucinations and violent incidents, Esme’s parents have ‘no choice’ but to place her into an institution, where she is disowned and forgotten for decades.

The novel made me furious and frustrated for Esme- her life was stolen from her because she did not and could not conform to the expectations placed on women. I so desperately wanted to visit Esme in the institution, years before her eventual release, and rescue her, comfort her, help her reclaim her life. A really touching book.

Page 99 Snapshot:

Esme has abandoned the seatbelt and has pressed the hazard light button on the dashboard. The car is filled with a noise like crickets. This seems to delight Esme, who smiles, presses it again, switching it off, waits a moment, then switches it on again.

‘Really?’ Iris says. ‘Well, could you try just “hospital”?... No, not any hospital. I need this one, specifically. Yes.’ Iris feels incredibly hot. She is regretting the jumper under her coat. She reaches out and covers the hazard button with one hand. ‘Could you please not do that?’ she says to Esme, then has to say, ‘No, no, I didn’t mean you,’ to the Directory Enquiries woman who, magically, has managed to locate the whereabouts of Cauldstone on her system and is asking Iris if she wants Admissions, Outpatients, General Enquiries or Daycare.

2.        ‘The Light Between Oceans’ by M.L. Stedman.

For the book ‘The Light Between Oceans’, I will just give you the blurb that enticed me. It is cheesy. It is clearly melodramatic. But every time I entered Waterstones over the course of a few weeks (I stroll in there remarkably often- bookshops are soothing!), I felt myself coming back to this book again and again, against my better judgement. The blurb is as follows:

A boat washes up on the shore of a remote lighthouse keeper’s island.

It holds a dead man and a crying baby.

The only two islanders, Tom and his wife Izzy, are about to make a devastating decision.

They break the rules and follow their hearts.

What happens next will break yours.

I am even cringing as I write that, it’s so so so awful. The last two lines make me want to die a bit inside. And the comment ‘Heartbreaking’ from Good Housekeeping was off putting too- it literally says in the blurb that the novel will break the reader’s heart so this review is hardly mind blowing. And also, Good Housekeeping?! But I swallowed my literary snobbery and bought it. The setting sounded quaint and mysterious and I just had to know whether it would, in fact, break my heart. It pains me to say this but I actually cried at the end. *hangs head in shame* It was surprisingly well written, tender and complicated, full of moral questions and I was gripped from start to finish.

Page 99 Snapshot:

Tom checked the pencilled scrawl on the paper. Yes, the right room number. He scanned his memory again for the lullaby-gentle sound of his mother: ‘Ups-a-daisy, my young Thomas. Shall we put a bandage on that scrape?’

His knock went unanswered, and he tried again. Eventually, he turned the handle tentatively, and the door gave no resistance. The unmistakable scent rushed to meet him, but it was a split second before he recognised it as tainted- with cheap alcohol and cigarettes. In the closed-in-gloom he saw an unmade bed and a tatty armchair, in shades of brown. There was a crack in the window, and a single rose in a vase had long ago shrivelled.

(***Ahh even the obvious connotations of the single shrivelled rose pain me a little bit! But it is good- I swear.)

3.       ‘Small Pleasures To Save Your Life’ by Maeve Haran

Okay, so this isn’t a novel but a collection of the small, simple, everyday things that Maeve Haran finds comforting and wholesome. I was drawn to this book during a time when I was feeling particularly bleak and desperately sad about life. I was actually searching for a birthday present for a friend of mine when I discovered it. Enticed by the line ‘Good bread, warm towels, crisp mornings, eating the froth on the cappuccino: these are the ordinary pleasures that make life worth living’, I bought two copies, one for my friend and one for myself. I almost, stupidly, felt like I could read this and it would make me feel much more at peace with myself. It did make me feel all ‘warm and fuzzy’ inside for a time and, despite good ol’ Maeve being a tad irritating at times, it did push me to try and take pleasure in the ordinary to get you through the day when it all just seems a bit hopeless. (Another darling much loved friend of mine and I devised our own simple pleasure to cheer us up- during the summer term, as a Friday treat and a ‘well done for surviving the week’ gift to ourselves, we would get iced lattes from Costa on the way to work. This small, insignificant, tiny indulgence literally made my day.)

Page 99 Snapshot:

An old-fashioned dressing table

Dressing tables were highly unfashionable when I was growing up. We were reacting against suburban 1950s kidney-shaped version, draped in brightly coloured fabrics with frills on. The price we pay for our disapproval was a decade of putting our make-up on in the bathroom with nowhere to balance our foundation or mascara and having to lean uncomfortably over a sink to see into the mirror.

Recently there’s been a romantic revival in the fortunes of dressing tables and I love it. Mine is curvy and capacious, covered in photos of friends and family in petite photo frames. Jewellery is draped everywhere, as well as perfume, some of it in old cut glass bottles. I haven’t gone as far as feathers, but almost.

(*** I swear this one is just me. Throw some sequins and fur on that bad boy and you’re good to go.)

Why I want to love London. But just don’t.

I felt a profound connection with someone a few weekends ago. One of those deep rooted, epiphany type moments when you realise, with a jolt, that some truly ‘gets’ you. It happens oh so rarely and, if or when it does, it never fails to astound me. I was overcome with emotion, a feeling of desperate love and relief and a hope that I am not, after all, alone. And the person that I experienced this moment with? This heart wrenching, tear inducing, knee quivering, all-consuming, gratitude-laden moment? (Hyperbolic? Me?) That wonderful soul has, in fact been dead a good while. That soul was none other than Charles Dickens. And this tender moment of understanding occurred in a room full of other English teachers during a lecture on ‘The Geography of the Gothic’.

I mentioned in a previous blog post that everyone I know is sneaking off to London at an alarming speed. I understand why this is- the job opportunities, avoiding a soul-sucking commute, the chance to move out and experience that distinctly ‘London’ lifestyle. The drinks after work, the unusual exhibitions/events/pop ups, the impromptu nights out that don’t involve an extortionate taxi fare and/or a journey home time that takes well over an hour.  But I could still think of nothing I’d rather do less than live there.

I want to love the place. I have an almost romanticised notion of what it would be like living there (almost akin to my notion of a life spent meandering the streets of Paris in a flowing gown, eating pastries and drinking coffee). I like the idea of being able to have so many opportunities on my doorstep. I think of the brunch rendezvous catching up with friends over eggs Benedict; the cocktails consumed in venues with obscure decor; the classes in pottery or life drawing; the writing workshops I could attend; and the local shops and hidden treasures I would come to know, the ones that only a resident would know about. I even enjoy myself to some extent on day trips there. This Saturday I went to the Christmas market outside the Tate, had a drink in a quaint pub and had a mooch around Borough market. I admired the twinkling lights and pretended to ignore the crowds. But, after a few hours, when my feet begin to ache and my cheeks became pink with cold, I started to look forward to getting home. I find myself getting agitated with the swarms of faceless people; the cacophony of abrasive sounds becomes too jarring; I begin to feel inconsequential, claustrophobic and smothered, surrounded by towering monsters of grey concrete. I enjoy watching the blurred view from the train window become leafier. And when I step off at my stop, I feel like I can breathe deeply again.

At times I feel like there is something a bit off about me for not wanting to cast off the country bumpkin skin and join everyone there. I know I should probably want to take full advantage of the city while I am young and with few ties. It just isn’t me though and I’ve slowly come to realise that.

 Hence my profound affinity with Dickens. During this lecture on the Gothic (part of a course that I have been sent on by my school- a course that is so interesting but does involved giving up several Saturdays- and takes place in London, ironically), the lecturer drew our attention to quotes 5 and 6 on our handout. I won’t go into the Gothic context of these quotations but, when we read them, I knew that Dickens must have seen the aspects of London that I can see. A London so different to ours now, but one that must have shared the same unsettling qualities; the unnaturalness, the sinister undercurrent of nameless crowds, the impersonality of it, the stagnation and the corporate, empty current always pushing the people on, rushing and exhausted. I haven’t found my feelings on the city expressed by anyone else in such a way, so I will finish this post and leave you with his words. And despite being years and years apart, I know that Dickens probably would have ‘got’ me to some extent. 

 

“She often looked without compassion, at such a time, upon the stragglers who came wandering into London, by the great highway hard by, and who, footsore and weary, gazing fearfully at the huge crowd before them, as if foreboding that their misery would be but as a drop of water in the sea, or as a grain of sea-sand on the shore, went shrinking on, cowering before the angry weather, and looking as if the very elements rejected them. Day after day such travellers crept past, but always in one direction- always towards the town. Swallowed up in one phrase or other of its immensity, towards which they seemed impelled by a desperate fascination, they never returned. Food for the hospitals, the churchyards, the prisons, the river, fever, madness, vice and death,- they passed on to the monster, roaring in the distance and were lost.”

Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, (1846-8), Chapter 33 

“It was a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows, in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down almost every turning, some doleful bell was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the Plague were in the city and the dead-carts were going round. Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people. No pictures, no unfamiliar animals, no rare plants or flowers, no natural or artificial wonders of the ancient world- all TABOO with that enlightened strictness, that the ugly South Sea gods in the British Museum might have supposed themselves at home again. Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to change the brooding mind, or raise it up.”

Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857), Chapter 3

Picks from this year

Surrounded by glittering lights and nostalgia-inducing songs; wrapped up in knitwear only fit for an elderly man; and clutching a latte flavoured with gingerbread syrup, one can't help but feel festive. If you ignore the crammed shops, hyper children and rapidly dwindling bank accounts of course.

The run up to Christmas is my favourite time of year. And no matter what I do, I can't help but look back at the past year or two, and look forward to the year ahead (reluctantly at times- this sort of reflection normally leads to several thousand new years resolutions regarding life long goals and ambitions. All ridiculous. All eye wateringly unachievable in my delusional time frames).

Being a book dork, it also makes me think about the many a-hundred books I've devoured this year. The nine in the picture will be given their own mini posts over the next few weeks. And one or two, like Donna Tartt's masterpiece The Secret History, will be gushed over in more depth.

When staring at the bookshelves in my Reading Room (more on that at some point too!) in order to try and pluck out these nine, I have already decided on one of my New Years Resolutions. To revisit my love of the classics. I have read very few this year I'm ashamed to say, and this needs to be addressed.

So, for now, please read The Secret History. And I'll get back to you about the rest.

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‘Not That Kind Of Girl’ by Lena Dunham

My life has been a bit all over the place of late. Several chats with friends over coffee/ mulled wine/ Moroccan food have confirmed what I have been feeling for an age: I am essentially having a mid twenties crisis. How terribly melodramatic I hear you cry. Well, evidently it is this feeling of deep dissatisfaction with life and an almost overwhelming desire to either a) hide under a blanket for eternity or b) quit everything and start over that me, and several of my friends, are unable to shake. We grew up being promised the world and have worked damn hard to achieve it, and we are either beginning to realise that these things (a satisfying job, a property of your own, enough financial freedom to actually be a person) are exceptionally elusive. Or, in my case specifically, that the career I have been working towards for years (through a degree, a post grad and a further training year) is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Poor little me. How tragic. Those of another generation often bemoan that we need to just deal with it. Learn to live with this feeling of dissatisfaction and disillusionment. That we are better off than thousands of others and that we should be damn grateful for what we do have. Well, yes that’s all very well and good. But there are always going to people worse off than you. And that doesn’t make my situation any less valid to me. Waking up every day with a deep pitted dread at having to go through it all again and knowing that, unless you change something, you will be in the same place 5, 10, 15 years from now does not make feel full of vitality and zest for life. And I think it was this feeling that I can’t shake that drew me to ‘Not That Kind Of Girl’ by Lena Dunham.

I loved Girls when it first appeared- partly because I viewed it as a cross between Friends and Sex and The City. I found Girls cringe worthy, bewildering and, at times, reassuring- a light relief from life. It was like the main character, Hannah, had reached out of the TV, patted me on the shoulder and said, “Yes. I’m anxious and my life is a bit crap too. I don’t know what I’m doing either”.

Since my first encounter with the series, Lena Dunham has popped up all over the place. Whether it be for her ‘audacity’ at showing her naked self to millions in unflattering sexual encounters; her dress sense  or her views on feminism. I had heard that, like her character Hannah, Lena Dunham’s voice was ‘the voice of a generation’. In short, I had high hopes for her collection of personal essays ; ‘a young women tells you what she’s learned’.

I enjoyed the book. I really did. It was sort of like reading someone’s carefully crafted diary or blog post. Split into different sections (Love & Sex, Body, Friendship, Work, and Big Picture) Lena’s words essentially had the same effect on me as Girls- I laughed, I felt reassured (I revelled in finding out her fears, issues and anxieties were very similar to my own) and I was bemused. But, truthfully, that was about it. There seemed to be a distinct ‘voice of a generation’ aspect that was missing. It seemed juvenile at times; just a collection of comments about boys and being a teenager, littered with anecdotes about sexual discovery that were probably meant to seem 'shocking'. Overall, it didn’t provide me with the epiphany on life that I was hoping for. I guess my hopes were too high and the book had been built up too much- like a New Year’s Eve that ends in exactly the same pit of loose sequins and stained red wine mouth. It had so much promise.

Saying that, I did enjoy reading it. And I was a bit distraught when it was over (I get that with a lot of books- I think it’s the whole running away from life thing). I would recommend it. And I still love Lena Dunham. But I think you will need to keep searching for that reassurance that your own life isn’t a complete disaster elsewhere.

Ironically, what will stay with me is one of the quotes Lena Dunham chose to preface her book. A quote from a novel that I will have to revisit:

“Deep in her soul, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon. She did not know what this chance event would be, what wind would drive it to her, what shore it would carry her to, whether it was a longboat or a three-decked vessel, loaded with anguish or filled with happiness up to the portholes. But each morning, when she awoke, she hoped it would arrive that day...”
- GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, Madame Bovary

 
Page 99 Snapshot:

“My mother invented the selfie.

Sure, there were self-portraits before her, but she perfected the art of the vulnerable candid with an unclear purpose. She used a Nikon, a film camera with a timer, and she would set it up, stand against the cherry-print wallpaper in the bedroom and pose.

It was the early seventies. She had moved to the city armed with nothing but this camera and a desire to make work. She had left her boyfriend behind, a kindly balding carpenter from Roscoe, New York, who wore a flannel nightgown and knew how to tap trees for syrup. I happen to know he’s kindly because we visited him once and sat around his table drinking lemonade, and he didn’t seem mad that she’d left him, just happy for her successes and generally pleased about my existence.”