Harvest by Jim Crace

Not a comfortable read, rather one that sets you pondering about humankind and its capacity for violence, cruelty and how we treat ‘the other’ within our midst. The emotionally flat narrator observing a hamlet’s descent into chaos is both heartening and alarming and really touches the reader with his inability to even try to stop what is happening when his intervention could have possibly changed the course of events. Above all, it is the selfishness of each and everyone that hits hardest, selfishness as both a base position and a fallback position. It precludes both the concept and practice of altruism and for me that it is chilling. Are there lessons in this novel for the modern world? Or perhaps it is simply a reflection of it. In my dotage I frequently assess the Thatcher years in Britain as those years in which our non-existent society became selfish, when all of us were encouraged to look out for number one, but perhaps, as this book suggests, this is universal fact of the human condition that periodically comes to the fore. Does history describe a constant battle between the individual and the collective? But there is also the battle between rural and urban going on and the myth of the rural idyll, so beloved of the Romantic poets, is exploded for good. This is a powerful novel not only in its story but also in the manner of its telling, and it is a novel that I am likely to return to, given time.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

A common enough story – boy meets girl – triumph over adversity – good people and scoundrels, but told in a highly original way. But what is really impressive is the change of pace, gradual at first, then building to a crescendo with ridiculously short chapters, some where the preamble is longer than the chapter content. I’m still not sure who was responsible for the villain’s demise and I wonder about the eventual outcomes for some of the characters, but the way the story is told is hugely impressive. Could do without the astrology but I suppose it is important for Lydia’s character. Overall, I cannot recommend this book too highly and although 832 pages might seem a little excessive the reader is kept absolutely enthralled throughout.

Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon

Not the best crime thriller I've ever read, but it is the first Maigret story and the character has yet to be developed. It seems to evoke the unstable France of the late 20s and seems to signal the great upheavals that were soon to come, but somehow it remains unconvincing. The character of Pietr and his brother, Hans, are possible but improbable and their history which is recounted in curious circumstances in the last few pages is simply not credible. An explanation in terms of brothers both loving the same woman, a distinctly minor character and one with neither colour nor form, simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The fact that Maigret is complicit in the death of his adversary didn't cut it with me, for Maigret to be so grossly negligent spolit it for me.

Life Class by Pat Barker

Not quite the impact of the Regeneration trilogy. This is a curious love story set against the background of the Slade and the outbreak of WW1. The scenes at Ypres are beautifully constructed and very well-written, those depicting various parts of London, rather less so. The reference to real people is inconsistent, almost simple name-dropping in the case of Augustus John, and scarcely more convincing with regard to Lady Otteline Morrell. There’s something not quite right about the characters of Paul, Kit and Elinor and I’m not sure what it is. Paul and Kit are naturally suspicious of each other, both rivals for Elinor and at times she appears to be playing them off against each other. At other times she is distant, aloof even, seemingly unaware of the turbulence she is causing among her suitors and so determined to carry on painting in spite of familial pressures to ‘do her bit’ for the war effort. Two peripheral characters are interesting, the unfortunate Lewis a Quaker volunteer orderly, and Catherine Stein whose father is interned because of his German origin. More could have been made of Lewis’ Quaker convictions and Catherine’s treatment.

These two characters represent different kinds of ‘otherness’ which would have been worth exploring in the context of patriotism, duty and suchlike. It is Catherine’s situation that particularly interests me because my paternal grandfather, a Swiss national with a pronounced Swiss-German accent lived in London throughout the war. After some unfortunate incidents in 1914 in which he was presumed to be German and abused for it, he spent most of the war inside the boarding house which he ran with my grand-mother, also Swiss, but seemingly better integrated into the local community.

However, it is the ending of the book that is particularly unsatisfactory, nothing is resolved and the book seems to have been hurried to a premature end, obviously to allow for the possibility of a sequel. In the final pages Elinor twice asks Paul, ‘What are we going to do?’ Yes, what are they going to do? I am going to have to read Toby’s Room to find out.

The Progress of Love by Alice Munro

It was strange how my appreciation of this collection changed as I moved through it. Dull and domestic, was my initial reaction to the title story, and the second ‘Lichen’ seemed no better. I found it difficult to relate to the experiences that were being explored here. ‘Miles City, Montana’ was better, I felt that I’d got it, these stories are about women, women and family, women who are ill-used either by accident or by design, new world women who art sometimes beset by old world prejudices. ‘Fits’ remains a puzzle, I read it twice and I still don’t get it, did she or didn’t she, and if she did, why? I’m going to have to read this story again, and probably again.

‘The Moon in the Orange Street Skating Rink’, was the first story I really liked, I liked the characters, Callie and Sam. They were real, believable and had a tangible substance. ‘Jesse and Meribeth’ is a delight, growing up with a best friend and dilemmas of trust and boastfulness. I was lost again with ‘ A Queer Streak’, I found the characters difficult to like yet there was a poignancy about this story that lingered.

My favourite was ‘White Dump’, the multiple voices are so cleverly interwoven that it comes as a surprise to find that this story is really about the divorced wife, Isobel. Whereas the character that really intrigued me was the elderly Sophie, who has a world-weariness combined with an admirable independence. Gradually, I began to understand the power of these stories and the reservoir of interest that lies hidden under a veneer of domesticity.

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

There can be little doubt, this is a female book, framed by its femaleness and pre-occupied with blood - female blood: the blood of childbirth, the blood of the ruptured hymen, the blood of menstruation and the blood of violence. These are extensions of, or re-tellings of once popular fairy tales but with a heavy dose of the macabre. Gothic horror surrounding childhood innocence, and all so beautifully told. Primeval fears are exposed with great lucidity and never before have I read of quite so many female victims of bestial men. The one blessed relief, and Carter’s mischievousness is almost palpable here, is in the story of Puss-in-Boots. The lighthearted eroticism of this story is a wonderful antidote to the unreserved gloom of despoiled virgins and lupine men. A wonderful collection that delights the discerning reader but take care not to let your candle flicker, that fright may be your last.

The Secret History by Donna Tarrt

A wonderfully irritating book. Very well written but it does tend to drag in the middle section. Both a rite-of-passage and a campus novel and far more tragic than most examples of either genre. At times it is very dark and at other times it borders on the weird. However, the characters are finely drawn and with few saving graces. Most of the time one is sympathetic towards the narrator but rarely empathetic, and there were instances when I felt like kicking him up his backside. I think that reducing its length by a third, from 600 down to 400 pages, would be an improvement. The dissolute students who seem to work very hard on their Greek yet lack any personal ambition are a curious bunch who drift, Gatsby-like, through the story until the aberration of the murder changes all their lives. Then they wake up to the immensity of their crime and a wonderful tension begins, heats to boiling point and then explodes in a way the reader could not possibly predict. This is so carefully crafted that you immediately understand how this book got its status as a modern classic. Overall, this is an impressive book which I have no hesitation in recommending to readers who have a degree of stamina and I assure them that their persistence will be repaid, tenfold.

Red Gold by Alan Furst

A pacy espionage thriller sent in wartime France that brings home the many faces of resistance and throws light on the ruthlessness of the communist resistance groups and how firmly they were directed from Moscow. Clearly, there is at least one sequel otherwise the ending is both abrupt and unsatisfactory. Dare I say that the plot and structure is somewhat formulaic and so there are few real surprises. Great episodes such as driving the ancient truck loaded with machine guns from Marseilles to Paris with the inevitable run-in with the Milice. As spy thrillers go, it is very believable but has the feel of being just one unit on a production line. But then so are le Carre’s ‘Smiley’ novels and O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin stories. The dilemma for the reader is whether to seek to read them all or to read some, sure in the knowledge that by not reading others, one hasn’t really missed anything of crucial importance.

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

A short but direct novel that makes a striking impact. Written in the first person taking the voice of Mary, it is confessional in tone. Mary is determined to set the record straight, failing to comprehend the special place of her son as the ‘Son of God’ but fully aware of how his painful end is the result of political manipulation by both the Jewish and Roman authorities. Moreover, she is very aware of the motives of her guardians who already in the process of writing an account of the life and death of their her son with a clear eye for posterity. In hiding, in Ephesus, Mary knows what she felt and saw and that this is not what the guardians are hoping from her. She also knows that her own death is near and is determined to die without her knowledge of the truth being compromised. This is a very political novel and forces the reader to reflect long and hard on the nature of evidence.

Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali

A story of change in a rural village in Portugal told through many voices, both local and foreign. Ultimately it is a story of rural decline and the vain hope that it can be arrested in the face of young people emigrating and the inconsistency of the new arrivals seeking some sort of future in the sun. Because of the multiple voices each one having only a remote connection to the previous one, it doesn’t quite hang together as a novel. Having said that, it does contain beautiful and perceptive writing with credible characters, the young with their aspirations, some more ambitious than others, and the old with their memories of sterner times and biting poverty. Since it is set in the Alentejo, cork and its gradual decline as a stopper for wine bottles is constantly in the background as is a rather fanatical form of Catholicism. However, the cultural clash between a very traditional society and the newcomers from all over Europe seems to be becoming less marked, and in the character of Vasco, a local having spent many years in the US, acts as a bridge between the old world and the new – both physically and metaphorically. Overall, I enjoyed this book, although I became a little impatient with some of the characters, Chrissie and her wastrel husband China, for example. Although towards the end, even they clean up their messy lifestyle. Not all the loose ends are well-tied however, and this reflects the basic problem with writing a fictional account of a real life community, it is a continuing story and one which I hope Monica Ali returns to in a few years.

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

A gripping tale of loss, suffering and love told in the voice of a teenage American girl trapped in England with her English cousins when a world war breaks out. Not sure who the enemy is, but I think the author was imagining the sort of people who perpetrated 9/11 operating on a global basis. The tension is palpable throughout as is the terror. The casual and brutal murders of Joe and Major McEvoy and the discovery of what had happened at Gateshead Farm are described in compelling detail, the sheer horror of these events propel the second half of the book. The backwoods skills involved in Daisy and Piper’s long trek home are very real and the few moments of happiness amidst the terrible reality of their hunger and fear are very poignant. I found it impossible to predict the ending and when it came its intensity was startling. This is a rite-of-passage tale told with great delicacy and sympathy. And what’s worrying is that the events recounted in this story could happen, and they could happen sometime soon. reminded me of Golding's Lord of the Flies. Well worth reading and cogitating on.

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith

How unusual to read a book that was originally serialised in a newspaper - very Dickensian. But what a wonderful range of characters, no real villains, although Irene comes close. Pat, our heroine, is drifting through life and loves on her second gap year working in an economically-challenged art gallery. We are to understand that her first gap year was a bit of a disaster but we are given no detail. Her temporary infatuation with the rugger-bugger flatmate, Bruce, was bound to end in tears as any reader would have told her. And that is the attraction of the book, we readers know these characters, we seem to have known them for years, they are our friends as well as Pat’s, even Ian Rankin who has a brief cameo part, and we wish them well. Fascinating though Irene and her precocious son, Bertie are, it is Domenica and Angus who are potentially the more interesting human characters. As for the non-human characters Cyril, the beer-drinking dog, is enchanting, but it is Edinburgh itself with its good-heartedness and genteel bourgeois world that captivates. We will undoubtedly miss all this when Scotland votes for independence next year, and this will be a great loss to British cultural life

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre

When I embarked on the challenge of reading all eight ‘Smiley’ novels by John le Carre, I wasn’t aware that I’d be reading The Spy who Came in from the Cold fifty years after it was written. The Cold War may now be part of modern history, different kinds of conflict now dominate the newspapers and the internet. Nevertheless, the grim, gritty battles that we associate with espionage are probably continuing, and not necessarily with entirely new protagonists. Although it is beautifully written, this is a dark novel, pregnant with gloom and foreboding. Yes, it is a psychological battle between Leamus and Fiedler and Mundt but they are proxies for the dirty war between East and West, between the ideologies of communism and capitalism. I was in Berlin in 1961 shortly after the Wall appeared and was even taken through Checkpoint Charlie to visit the outrageously opulent Soviet War Memorial, it was the only opulent thing in the Eastern Sector at that time or so it seemed to me. Everything else was a uniform grey, and this greyness seems to pervade the novel, everything that happens seems to happen in the shadows, light is at a premium except at the very end when massive arc lights illuminate Leamas’ final coming in from the cold. A masterpiece of the thriller genre and a must read for those who wish to engage with Europe in the 1960s.

Ancient Greek Literature by Tim Whitmarsh

A first class introduction to the literature of Ancient Greece. I was fortunate to have a working knowledge of about half the ancient texts referred to in the book before tackling it, and I believe that it was made more understandable because of that. However, no writer can be totally neutral politically, and Whitmarsh does seem to have a political agenda although we are cautioned against imposing out modern sophistications onto ancient ways of thinking. The sting comes in the final chapter and it is a challenge: ‘Literature, as a category of culturally privileged, specialist discourse, often preserves itself for society’s dominant groups.’ He might almost be saying that knowledge of literature is the great divide in society and led me to speculate whether ignorance [of the literary canon or archive] is bliss or something to be encouraged in the masses so that they are never able to threaten the privileged position of the elite.

Lorne Doone: A Romance of Exmoor by R D Blackmore

A romance written during the mid-late 19th century set on the fringe of Exmoor in the late 16th century. The gentle giant, John Ridd, farmer and loyal son delays revenge on his father’s killers, the notorious Doone clan until, in adulthood and knighted, he is persuaded to lead a party of vigilantes to wipe out the clan. Lorna, it transpires is not Lorna Doone but the Lady Lorna Dughal, a wealthy heiress agrees to marry Sir John, and eventually they live happily ever after. I say eventually because there is much adventure and anguish before peace finally breaks out. A rip-roaring tale with some difficult regional dialect, much of it at the very beginning and thus quite off-putting, but the reader’s perseverance is rewarded, and is soon into an engaging romance with many twists and turns before matters are finally settled. This yarn offers a small insight into the confused and bloody politics of the day. Loyalty to King and country and to one’s family and friends is made much of, as is the brutality of the suppression of the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion and the extermination of its perpetrators by the terrible Judge Jeffryes. All human life is here and I am puzzled why I haven’t read it before my 68th year, it is at least as good as the books of similar ilk by Sir Walter Scott, if not better.

(This charming illustration was done by the American illustrator, Mead Schaeffer, in 1930)

The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning

Well over a thousand pages, three volumes in one, and strangely riveting for the interested reader. Olivia Manning demonstrates great skill in description of place and people, her characterisations are funny and perceptive and depicted with both strengths and weaknesses. Harriet Pringle meets and marries Guy Pringle over a three-week period while he is on leave before being posted to a position with the ‘Organisation’ in Bucharest on the outbreak of WW2. Manning’s description of society and its descent into chaos are both moving and quirky. The Ruritanian politics and the snobbery of the various elites, both foreign and local, are related with subtle mockery, particularly the academic snobbery of the British community. The slow build up of tension as the time of evacuation approaches and the sudden disappearance of some of the characters is telling.

Many of the British evacuated from Bucharest as the Germans occupied the country find themselves together again in Athens with all their individual prejudices intact and a stark contrast is drawn between the solid, uncomplaining stalwarts like Guy and Dobson, and the nefarious hangers-on such as Lush and Dubedat. When Greece itself becomes embroiled in the war, successfully beating back the Italian forces but then quickly succumbing to a more clinical German assault even with the help of an undermanned and ill-equipped British-led expeditionary force, Harriet and Guy are evacuated once again, this time to Egypt, but it is all touch and go and beset by the stupidity of ‘class division’.

The trilogy describes war from the civilian point-of-view, an interested but powerless civilian with all its terror, pain, sadness and pointlessness, and is particularly poignant in recounting the sudden demise of the Pringle’s most unreliable friend, Prince Yakimov. As ever, money talks, and those with money talk loudest in their own best interests. Manning has created a wonderful evocation of a certain type of Englishness at a particular moment in history, full of eccentrics, scroungers, scoundrels and snobs, a largely bygone age but one that deserves to be remembered. Particularly interesting is the way Manning uses the character of Harriet with all her insecurities to reveal some of the minor characters, for example: ‘Looking at Sophie’s well developed bosom, Harriet felt at a disadvantage. Perhaps Sophie’s shape would not last, but it was enviable while it lasted.’ Manning has a equally perceptive eye for weak men: ‘Glancing up, Harriet found Clarence’s gaze fixed on her. He looked away at once but he had caught her attention. She noted his long, lean face with its long nose, and felt it unsatisfactory. Unsatisfactory and unsatisfied.’ Clarence becomes her companion of sorts, someone to talk to when Guy is busy with work, but like Sasha and later, Charles, their company is preferable to being alone, they are condemned as inadequate and immature. No other man can measure up to Guy with all his obvious faults.

Amateurs in Eden - The story of a Bohemian Marriage: Nancy and Lawrence Durrell

This is a tender, sympathetic and revelatory biography of a marriage, described as ‘Bohemian’ by Nancy’s daughter from her second marriage to Edward Hodgkin.. Perhaps it was ‘Bohemian’ in the aspirations of the strangely naïve Nancy, but for Lawrence we are left with some doubt as to why he married as and when he did. Although I have long thought that women’s motives for marriage tend to be much clearer focused than those of men, this may be a case of two people who both thought that it seemed a good idea, at the time, who knows? Clearly, there is more to Lawrence’s apparently flippant verdict on the break-up than is suggested in a letter to Henry Miller around Christmas 1943: ‘Nancy is in Jerusalem with the child. We have split up; just the war I guess.’ This quotation provides a trigger for the author in her introduction and she returns to it in her final chapter where she speculates whether, had their circumstances been different, the marriage might have survived, and she may well be right for the very next sentence is: ‘After Greece, Crete and the Alamein evacuation we got to understand what the word ‘refugee’ means.’ For a woman with a toddler and a somewhat self-centred husband to look after, those war years cannot have been easy, and perhaps both had got fed up trying to keep up the pretence that they were in anything like a normal marriage. Hodgkin notes that her mother had been described as an ‘innocent’, and it seems likely that we have two innocents at large here.

There are short but touching portraits of Hodgkin’s half sister Penelope, of ‘Mother Durrell, and the scamp Gerald, and the fiction of Gerald’s supposed memoir ‘My family and other animals’, is firmly exposed. Henry Miller is warmly portrayed throughout but his mistress Anais Nin remains the enigma she always has been. Nancy’s failure to complete her studies at the Slade is a source of regret, as is the dearth of surviving painting by Nancy during her years with Lawrence, and it is with some gratification that we find that Nancy took up sculpture later in life.

A well-written, interesting and frequently touching memoir of a marriage and the apparently ‘silent’ woman in it and whose potential never seems to have been fully realised. As a bonus, Hodgkin has provided me with the impetus I needed to take Olivia Manning’s ‘Balkan Trilogy’ off my shelf and to get stuck in. After that I will simply have to have yet another attempt to get through ‘The Black Book’.

Imagined greetings - poetic engagements with R. S. Thomas

The tenor of this volume seems to me to reflect my ambivalence towards the language issue that has long beset Wales and promises to continue to do so for years to come with an increasing imperative. There is something of the orphan in those of us who are born in Wales but within an anglicised household, where there is sometimes no will and little incentive to learn the so-called ‘language of heaven’. These days learning Welsh is compulsory in all Welsh schools and a generation of children have grown up with a working knowledge of the language and, certainly in east Wales, with no desire and little opportunity to speak it once their schooldays are over. My experience as an adult learner was similarly fraught, I seemed to expend a great deal of effort acquiring a little Welsh only to find no opportunity to use it and thereby improve my proficiency. This is why I have long admired R S Thomas, for having learned the language as an adult and deliberately sought out parishes in which he could survive only by using the language everyday. This kind of devotion is rare and I lack his determination.

Many poems in this volume were written in Welsh perhaps as a tribute to Thomas’ long promotion of the language although his own work remained stubbornly in English. It is understandable that a poet should prefer to write in his first language for to do otherwise is to risk the wrath of the language purists, an unforgiving bunch at the best of times. However, English translations have been provided, and to my inexpert eye, they work well. Many of the poems have been written in response to Thomas’ death and take the form of an elegy, others were written when he was very much alive and form part of ongoing conversations, and yet others are parody. All are engaging and offer alternative windows into the character of the man. I hope the following extracts will help to give a flavour of both the man and his relationship with the language, as well as indicating the high quality of this anthology.

This from Roy Ashwell:

'Thomas in his final curacy
and caring now for his soul’s cure only
set his English to the door
and strove in Welsh to make good his end,…
(R.S. Writes His Biography in a new Tongue)

and from John Davies:

‘…We stood accused
of reading him. Wrong
language, place, wrong century…’
(R.S. Thomas)

From Peter Finch there are a number of excellent poems but the one that gets me chuckling is this parody of A Welsh Landscape:

'To live in Wales,

Is to be mumbled at
by re-incarnations of Dylan Thomas
in numerous diverse disguises.’

And reminding me of the cover photograph for Justin Wintle’s ‘Furious Interiors’:

‘Is to be bored
By Welsh visionaries
With wild hair and grey suits.’

And the sheep…

‘And the sheep, the sheep
the bloody flea-bitten Welsh sheep,
chased over the same hills
by a thousand poetic phrases
all saying the same things.

To live in Wales
is to love sheep
and to be afraid
of dragons.’
(A Welsh Wordscape)

And so many superb first lines/verses:
From Menna Elfyn (trans. Gillian Clarke):

‘To wash the world new every morning
that’s the poet’s work.’
(The Poet)

and again:
‘A caress in the dark.
What a tame lot we were,

With our secretive yesterday’s kisses,..’
(Handkerchief Kiss)

and the incomparable Emyr Humphreys:

‘Let it be understood poets
are dangerous: they undermine
the state: they thrust
before congregations hymns
they would prefer not to sing.’
(S.L. i R.S. (An Imagined greeting))

It is impossible to mention every impressive poem in this wonderful anthology so I’ll finish with the hearty recommendation that for and R S Thomas fan, this anthology is much, much more than the sum of its words and a few more lines that spoke volumes to me:

From Owen Sheers:
‘From my father a stammer
like a stick in the spokes of my speech.’
(Inheritance)

From John Powell Ward:
‘Carried over the threshold
As before, a bride in white
But as to the hair this time,
The snowfalls of age
For her final honeymoon.’
(A Bride in White)

and from Daniel Westover:
‘I think about a poet’s barriers.
Half offered by the landscape, half fashioned
with his words, the protective walls
kept actual Wales away
and imagined Wales away from human hands.’
(At Porth Neigwl)