Empire Of The Sun
Empire Of The Sun is the story of a little British boy named Jamie who is forced to grow up and become Jim, when he is interred in a prison camp in China by the Japanese during World War Two.
In the camp he runs wild, whilst those around him try and help him as best they can.
The prose is excellent and the imagery evocative of pre-War China and a certain social class at a certain time, and it engaged me from the beginning, but there were other ways in which I was left puzzled by it.
I was surprised when at the back an interview with J. G Ballard revealed that he was not in fact separated from his parents but interred alongside them and that he chose to write this semi-autobiographical novel as if he was not with them because he felt completely estranged from them from their internment onwards. They could no longer take care of him, and were in a position were they held no authority, and so his entire relationship with them crumbled.
Heartbreaking as this is; this then made some sense of what is by far the silliest and most implausible section of the book, when separated from his parents, Jim meanders around Shanghai alone, riding his bike around and living in other people's houses before hooking up with two American seamen. To hear that this part was a fictional element came as no surprise.
The books strength lies in his journey to the camp, and his experiences there and at various stops along the way which, stark and bleak, feel like truth.
The other interesting element here is Jim's apparent disconnect from events, as atrocity unfolds around him Jim seems to become anaesthetised having adjusted to this war and this life that he leads now, were stealing from the starving and from the dead is not just necessary but normal.
In some ways this makes him an unsympathetic character and in others this emphasises the true price of war.
As a whole it was a thought provoking novel, I read it as it was the favourite of an old friend, but I somehow didn't become completely absorbed in it or become wowed by it, in the same way for example that I was wowed by fellow war memoir The Things They Carried.
It is however, a book destined to be, as the series it comes from suggests, a perennial classic.
8/10
Showing posts with label Autobiography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Autobiography. Show all posts
Tuesday, 30 December 2014
Saturday, 25 October 2014
Book #29 Wait For Me! by Deborah Devonshire
Wait For Me!
Debo, the Duchess of Devonshire was the youngest of the famous Mitford sisters and the last to pass away, just recently, at the age of 94. I only got to really know the Mitford sisters story this year and Debo was by far my favourite, which made her passing all the sadder for me.
There is a slight problem with the portions of the book that cover her childhood and her sisters in that nothing new that isn't already known about them is imparted and feels slightly like a retread. Other stories are familiar too. How many times does one need to read about the 'hilarious' occasion when Woman failed to recognise Lord Mountbatten?
At this point, having read so much about them I was more keen to hear about Debo post her marriage to Andrew Cavendish, when having unexpectedly inherited the dukedom, the couple became determined to turn around the fortunes of Chatsworth House.
Ownership of Lismore Castle also reverted to the Devonshires after the death of Adele Astaire and talk of both these buildings made me want to visit them.
All the Mitfords 'moved in society' but perhaps Debo more than any of them having been related to two Prime Ministers and a US president. Whilst Diana, exiled, socialised with fellow exiles the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Debo was close to Prince Charles and spent time with the Queen, the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.
Her friend the apparently legendary Sybil Chomondley as mentioned in letters to Paddy Leigh Fermor, gets three pages, personally I'd have liked a biography.
Debo also speaks with perhaps unexpected candour about her difficulties carrying children to term, and her husbands struggle with alcoholism.
Easy to read and with a warmth sometimes lacking in the other sisters, Wait For Me is perhaps nonetheless one for the Mitford fans only. 7/10
Debo, the Duchess of Devonshire was the youngest of the famous Mitford sisters and the last to pass away, just recently, at the age of 94. I only got to really know the Mitford sisters story this year and Debo was by far my favourite, which made her passing all the sadder for me.
There is a slight problem with the portions of the book that cover her childhood and her sisters in that nothing new that isn't already known about them is imparted and feels slightly like a retread. Other stories are familiar too. How many times does one need to read about the 'hilarious' occasion when Woman failed to recognise Lord Mountbatten?
At this point, having read so much about them I was more keen to hear about Debo post her marriage to Andrew Cavendish, when having unexpectedly inherited the dukedom, the couple became determined to turn around the fortunes of Chatsworth House.
Ownership of Lismore Castle also reverted to the Devonshires after the death of Adele Astaire and talk of both these buildings made me want to visit them.
All the Mitfords 'moved in society' but perhaps Debo more than any of them having been related to two Prime Ministers and a US president. Whilst Diana, exiled, socialised with fellow exiles the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Debo was close to Prince Charles and spent time with the Queen, the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.
Her friend the apparently legendary Sybil Chomondley as mentioned in letters to Paddy Leigh Fermor, gets three pages, personally I'd have liked a biography.
Debo also speaks with perhaps unexpected candour about her difficulties carrying children to term, and her husbands struggle with alcoholism.
Easy to read and with a warmth sometimes lacking in the other sisters, Wait For Me is perhaps nonetheless one for the Mitford fans only. 7/10
Sunday, 12 October 2014
Book #25 A Life Of Contrasts by Diana Mosley
A Life Of Contrasts
When Diana Mosley's autobiography was published, a friend of hers wrote a review of it in which he accused her of "lacking a dimension" and they subsequently fell out. I only discovered this as I read the additional chapters tacked on to the end of the book, which she added at a later date and I thought it summed up perfectly what was wrong with it.
The 3rd oldest of the Mitford sisters - I was initially reluctant to read Diana's book being so personally at odds with her choice of politics, but I was encouraged to by someone I tweet with and was quite glad I did in the end.
There is a tone to Diana's writing which as her contemporary critics noted lacks something, a je ne sais quoi. if I was to characterise this lack I would call it a sense of normalcy, a sense of awareness of the real world, and definitely a lack of self awareness.
But these absences in her writing lead to a unique book, which is repeatedly unintentionally hilarious, as she laments the lack of a seaside "of their own" (you know as opposed to the norm where people have their own seaside) so they went with their Nanny to visit her sister and the thrill was that "one might pass a Negro on the stairs" OK....then.
A lot of the childhood reminiscences are familiar to those who've read other Mitford books, Farve's opinion on Romeo and Juliet and the nurse who said she was too beautiful to live etc.
I was more interested in later Diana and what I found was a seemingly endless round of houses and interior design and trips abroad on yachts with Daisy Fellowes and pals and that everyone from her cousins to Evelyn Waugh was in love with her. Occasionally there is an astounding indolent vapidity to it in the later years. Her experience at Holloway prison where she was imprisoned without trial for nearly 4 years is the one event of real note and it does come across like the grim event it likely was. My favourite Diana anecdote remains that she bought a fur coat to wear in her cell from the money she got from suing a newspaper accusing her of living in luxury.
What is probably most staggering is her genuine attempt to blame the Holocaust on the Jews - who really should have seen the way the wind was blowing and left Germany. In almost the same breath she incongruously blames those Jews who did leave Germany for making things worse by drawing international attention to it.
She points to other atrocities and leaders and defends Hitler as no worse than Mao or Stalin, and whilst she may have a point, it shows an utter lack of compassion and the same loss of perspective of which she accuses others of in the "two wrongs don't make a right" sense.
Being tarred with the Hitler brush she admits did ruin her life and her sister Unity's life and her husbands political career and yet she stands by her good opinion of him and the fact that in 1935 "there was nothing exceptionally wrong in wanting to have tea with Hitler". There is something almost disarmingly honest in that.
In letters between her other sisters it is said that she stood by her fascist beliefs not because she truly still held them but that to publicly abandon them would be an admission that she and more to the point Mosley had wasted their time, most of their lives and certainly most of their money, pursuing political suicide. If there is one certain thing about Diana it is that she loved Oswald Mosley beyond reason. To leave ones husband in the 1930s to become the mistress of a married man shows a kind of bravery and/or foolishness rare for a woman of that era
Which brings me to a further mystery, Diana and Mosley's finances. How they were able to move from fabulous house in England, to fabulous house in Ireland to fabulous house in France despite his losing most of their fortune in various follies baffled me. It's very hard to see what either one of them DID for a living after leaving Holloway, particularly Diana. When Nancy dies, Debo describes her life as sad, she only had her books, yet Diana doesn't seem to have anything except Mosley whom she propped up as he went from failure to failure. Whilst Nancy wrote, Pamela farmed and ran a stables, Decca had a series of normal jobs, and Debo was busy running Chatsworth as well as commitments associated to being a Duchess, Diana seems to have done little even her children and grandchildren were on the whole looked after by nannies.
A life of contrasts indeed, and a book of contrasts, on the one hand the carefree lifestyle of the rich against the status of pariah in ones own nation state. The writing, joyous and carefree, often funny, and then by turns completely offensive and deluded; do make this book and Diana Mosley as a character unique. She was almost certainly the only woman in history to be well acquainted privately with both Winston Churchill and Hitler which is remarkable of itself.
An interesting and intriguing addition to the Mitford canon well worth reading. 8/10
When Diana Mosley's autobiography was published, a friend of hers wrote a review of it in which he accused her of "lacking a dimension" and they subsequently fell out. I only discovered this as I read the additional chapters tacked on to the end of the book, which she added at a later date and I thought it summed up perfectly what was wrong with it.
The 3rd oldest of the Mitford sisters - I was initially reluctant to read Diana's book being so personally at odds with her choice of politics, but I was encouraged to by someone I tweet with and was quite glad I did in the end.
There is a tone to Diana's writing which as her contemporary critics noted lacks something, a je ne sais quoi. if I was to characterise this lack I would call it a sense of normalcy, a sense of awareness of the real world, and definitely a lack of self awareness.
But these absences in her writing lead to a unique book, which is repeatedly unintentionally hilarious, as she laments the lack of a seaside "of their own" (you know as opposed to the norm where people have their own seaside) so they went with their Nanny to visit her sister and the thrill was that "one might pass a Negro on the stairs" OK....then.
A lot of the childhood reminiscences are familiar to those who've read other Mitford books, Farve's opinion on Romeo and Juliet and the nurse who said she was too beautiful to live etc.
I was more interested in later Diana and what I found was a seemingly endless round of houses and interior design and trips abroad on yachts with Daisy Fellowes and pals and that everyone from her cousins to Evelyn Waugh was in love with her. Occasionally there is an astounding indolent vapidity to it in the later years. Her experience at Holloway prison where she was imprisoned without trial for nearly 4 years is the one event of real note and it does come across like the grim event it likely was. My favourite Diana anecdote remains that she bought a fur coat to wear in her cell from the money she got from suing a newspaper accusing her of living in luxury.
What is probably most staggering is her genuine attempt to blame the Holocaust on the Jews - who really should have seen the way the wind was blowing and left Germany. In almost the same breath she incongruously blames those Jews who did leave Germany for making things worse by drawing international attention to it.
She points to other atrocities and leaders and defends Hitler as no worse than Mao or Stalin, and whilst she may have a point, it shows an utter lack of compassion and the same loss of perspective of which she accuses others of in the "two wrongs don't make a right" sense.
Being tarred with the Hitler brush she admits did ruin her life and her sister Unity's life and her husbands political career and yet she stands by her good opinion of him and the fact that in 1935 "there was nothing exceptionally wrong in wanting to have tea with Hitler". There is something almost disarmingly honest in that.
In letters between her other sisters it is said that she stood by her fascist beliefs not because she truly still held them but that to publicly abandon them would be an admission that she and more to the point Mosley had wasted their time, most of their lives and certainly most of their money, pursuing political suicide. If there is one certain thing about Diana it is that she loved Oswald Mosley beyond reason. To leave ones husband in the 1930s to become the mistress of a married man shows a kind of bravery and/or foolishness rare for a woman of that era
Which brings me to a further mystery, Diana and Mosley's finances. How they were able to move from fabulous house in England, to fabulous house in Ireland to fabulous house in France despite his losing most of their fortune in various follies baffled me. It's very hard to see what either one of them DID for a living after leaving Holloway, particularly Diana. When Nancy dies, Debo describes her life as sad, she only had her books, yet Diana doesn't seem to have anything except Mosley whom she propped up as he went from failure to failure. Whilst Nancy wrote, Pamela farmed and ran a stables, Decca had a series of normal jobs, and Debo was busy running Chatsworth as well as commitments associated to being a Duchess, Diana seems to have done little even her children and grandchildren were on the whole looked after by nannies.
A life of contrasts indeed, and a book of contrasts, on the one hand the carefree lifestyle of the rich against the status of pariah in ones own nation state. The writing, joyous and carefree, often funny, and then by turns completely offensive and deluded; do make this book and Diana Mosley as a character unique. She was almost certainly the only woman in history to be well acquainted privately with both Winston Churchill and Hitler which is remarkable of itself.
An interesting and intriguing addition to the Mitford canon well worth reading. 8/10
Monday, 23 June 2014
Book #22 Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford
Hons and Rebels
As my growing obsession with The Mitfords continues my next stop was Jessica Mitford's autobiography Hons and Rebels which runs from her childhood through to her husbands departure to fight in World War Two, a conflict he died in.
I read Hons and Rebels in one sitting and it doesn't read at all like a standard autobiography more like a quirky novel about posh people, and as such is eminently easy to read. Autobiographies can prove difficult, particularly celebrity ones and the Mitfords were that in their day, as the author can often be disingenuous particularly if fellow subjects are still living.
In Charlotte Mosley's collection of the Mitford sisters letters, Debo and Diana are both scathing of Decca's portrayal of their parents which they see as hostile. For my part I couldn't really see that, both Muv and Farve come off as eccentric but no more so than anyone else of their era with their suspicion of doctors, anyone who wasn't Upper Class and the lack of merit in educating women. Muv herself was said to have enjoyed it, so I can't really see what the problem was.
Inevitably the first two thirds of the book are the best those parts which cover the girls childhood and then Decca's elopement.
She reveals a closeted, isolated existence as the Mitfords, careful who their aristocratic daughters could associate with, largely only allowed them each others company and the company of cousins. Inevitably this led to all the girls developing the eccentricities which they became famous for, Decca recalls being kept in the schoolroom or the nursery as loud battles raged on over something that Diana or Nancy had done, and being clueless as to what was happening.
Bored and frustrated she was desperate to run away, Unity was desperate to meet Hitler, and Debo was desperate to marry a duke, all of which, bizarrely came to fruition. Particular highlights include how all three girls ran off a succession of governesses, until one came that was a useless teacher but whose one significant contribution to their education was to teach them to shoplift, so they made her life easy so that she would stay; all of their efforts to embarrass their mother when she takes them on a cruise and Unity's habit as a teen of giving the Nazi Salute and shouting Heil Hitler to everyone including those who served her in the post office.
To be honest if anyone comes off badly in this autobiography it would be Decca's first husband, her cousin Esmond. This doesn't seem to have been intentional on Decca's part either. She becomes infatuated with Esmond before ever even meeting him via reports of his Communist exploits and subversive underground newspaper for Public Schoolboys.
When she does finally does meet Esmond from the start he comes across as financially motivated and largely self-interested. My low opinion of him increased once they emigrated to the States whereupon the narrative gets a little dull. Decca's account of their elopement is quite brilliant though, particularly how a British Captain was sent on a destroyer to bring her home and tried and failed to lure her aboard with a Roast Chicken!
Many people enjoy reading autobiography above fiction and if you are one of these people I heartily recommend this one, if you do have a preference for fiction anyway this autobiography is written and reads like a good novel anyway.
Marvellous 10/10
As my growing obsession with The Mitfords continues my next stop was Jessica Mitford's autobiography Hons and Rebels which runs from her childhood through to her husbands departure to fight in World War Two, a conflict he died in.
I read Hons and Rebels in one sitting and it doesn't read at all like a standard autobiography more like a quirky novel about posh people, and as such is eminently easy to read. Autobiographies can prove difficult, particularly celebrity ones and the Mitfords were that in their day, as the author can often be disingenuous particularly if fellow subjects are still living.
In Charlotte Mosley's collection of the Mitford sisters letters, Debo and Diana are both scathing of Decca's portrayal of their parents which they see as hostile. For my part I couldn't really see that, both Muv and Farve come off as eccentric but no more so than anyone else of their era with their suspicion of doctors, anyone who wasn't Upper Class and the lack of merit in educating women. Muv herself was said to have enjoyed it, so I can't really see what the problem was.
Inevitably the first two thirds of the book are the best those parts which cover the girls childhood and then Decca's elopement.
She reveals a closeted, isolated existence as the Mitfords, careful who their aristocratic daughters could associate with, largely only allowed them each others company and the company of cousins. Inevitably this led to all the girls developing the eccentricities which they became famous for, Decca recalls being kept in the schoolroom or the nursery as loud battles raged on over something that Diana or Nancy had done, and being clueless as to what was happening.
Bored and frustrated she was desperate to run away, Unity was desperate to meet Hitler, and Debo was desperate to marry a duke, all of which, bizarrely came to fruition. Particular highlights include how all three girls ran off a succession of governesses, until one came that was a useless teacher but whose one significant contribution to their education was to teach them to shoplift, so they made her life easy so that she would stay; all of their efforts to embarrass their mother when she takes them on a cruise and Unity's habit as a teen of giving the Nazi Salute and shouting Heil Hitler to everyone including those who served her in the post office.
To be honest if anyone comes off badly in this autobiography it would be Decca's first husband, her cousin Esmond. This doesn't seem to have been intentional on Decca's part either. She becomes infatuated with Esmond before ever even meeting him via reports of his Communist exploits and subversive underground newspaper for Public Schoolboys.
When she does finally does meet Esmond from the start he comes across as financially motivated and largely self-interested. My low opinion of him increased once they emigrated to the States whereupon the narrative gets a little dull. Decca's account of their elopement is quite brilliant though, particularly how a British Captain was sent on a destroyer to bring her home and tried and failed to lure her aboard with a Roast Chicken!
Many people enjoy reading autobiography above fiction and if you are one of these people I heartily recommend this one, if you do have a preference for fiction anyway this autobiography is written and reads like a good novel anyway.
Marvellous 10/10
Monday, 16 June 2014
Book #17 Orange Is The New Black by Piper Kerman
Orange Is The New Black
Piper Kerman's prison memoir which inspired the Netflix series of the same name is, unsurprisingly not nearly as eventful as the series it gave inspiration to. Kerman's real life experience is a much tamer affair though there are several moments which translated straight to screen.
Notable differences include that Piper was close to 'Pops' who inspired 'Red' and certainly was never 'starved out' by her and 'Pennsatucky' a vulnerable girl who Piper tried to help.
Nevertheless the story of a middle class woman whose intense lesbian affair with a drug dealer in her 20s caused her to commit a minor felony, before she came to her senses and left the relationship; only to find her past actions catch up to her, was absolutely ripe to be made for television.
And an entertaining, mind boggling tale it is, so unusual that really you couldn't make it up. An easy, quick and enjoyable read, I would recommend it especially if you enjoy autobiography, and I definitely recommend the show.
Verdict : 8/10
Piper Kerman's prison memoir which inspired the Netflix series of the same name is, unsurprisingly not nearly as eventful as the series it gave inspiration to. Kerman's real life experience is a much tamer affair though there are several moments which translated straight to screen.
Notable differences include that Piper was close to 'Pops' who inspired 'Red' and certainly was never 'starved out' by her and 'Pennsatucky' a vulnerable girl who Piper tried to help.
Nevertheless the story of a middle class woman whose intense lesbian affair with a drug dealer in her 20s caused her to commit a minor felony, before she came to her senses and left the relationship; only to find her past actions catch up to her, was absolutely ripe to be made for television.
And an entertaining, mind boggling tale it is, so unusual that really you couldn't make it up. An easy, quick and enjoyable read, I would recommend it especially if you enjoy autobiography, and I definitely recommend the show.
Verdict : 8/10
Sunday, 8 June 2014
Book #15 Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris
Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls
Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls is the third David Sedaris short story collection I have read following Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day. Of the 3 I have read it is probably the most consistently enjoyable.
Included are four short stories, though whilst authored by Sedaris are not his usual style - one is from the point of view a selfish teenager and another the POV of an ignorant American mother. These are a bit weird, Sedaris says he has included them as offerings for teenagers who might be doing "Forensics" at school which sounds nothing like its title and is more like the Speaking and Listening portion of GCSE English. None of these work particularly well as short stories and all illustrate an extreme of some kind.
The main body of the work is the sort of stories I've come to expect from Sedaris. What differed this time round is that whereas in Naked, and Me Talk Pretty there were stories that I thought were brilliant and others which I thought terrible or boring, all of the stories in 'Owls' are good. Whilst this means there are no standout boring ones, it is also true that there's no standout amazing one either. They are all of a similar average.
The best Sedaris stories by far are the ones about his Greek immigrant family living in Raleigh, North Carolina and the best in 'Owls' are, customarily, the ones about his Dad. All however are imbued with his customary strong wit. Sedaris recently read in Liverpool and I couldn't go because I had to honour a prior commitment, reading 'Owls' has made me more sorry that I couldn't.
Whilst the reference to Owls in the title is for reasons that become obvious, I can't fathom what diabetes had to do with anything. There isn't a diabetes story, that I noticed. Anyone?
Verdict : 7/10
Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls is the third David Sedaris short story collection I have read following Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day. Of the 3 I have read it is probably the most consistently enjoyable.
Included are four short stories, though whilst authored by Sedaris are not his usual style - one is from the point of view a selfish teenager and another the POV of an ignorant American mother. These are a bit weird, Sedaris says he has included them as offerings for teenagers who might be doing "Forensics" at school which sounds nothing like its title and is more like the Speaking and Listening portion of GCSE English. None of these work particularly well as short stories and all illustrate an extreme of some kind.
The main body of the work is the sort of stories I've come to expect from Sedaris. What differed this time round is that whereas in Naked, and Me Talk Pretty there were stories that I thought were brilliant and others which I thought terrible or boring, all of the stories in 'Owls' are good. Whilst this means there are no standout boring ones, it is also true that there's no standout amazing one either. They are all of a similar average.
The best Sedaris stories by far are the ones about his Greek immigrant family living in Raleigh, North Carolina and the best in 'Owls' are, customarily, the ones about his Dad. All however are imbued with his customary strong wit. Sedaris recently read in Liverpool and I couldn't go because I had to honour a prior commitment, reading 'Owls' has made me more sorry that I couldn't.
Whilst the reference to Owls in the title is for reasons that become obvious, I can't fathom what diabetes had to do with anything. There isn't a diabetes story, that I noticed. Anyone?
Verdict : 7/10
Tuesday, 26 November 2013
Book #62 Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
Length Of Time In Possession : 1 month
Despite being labelled as a 'fiction' novel this Jeanette Winterson's debut novel bears more than a passing resemblance to the authors own life story. Adopted as a baby and raised in an extremely religious household, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is a coming-of-age story about a girl who was moulded to be what her mother hoped for her : 'a missionary'. Yet when puberty comes, 'Jeanette' discovers that she prefers women to men and find herself at odds with her faith, the church she played such a part in and her domineering mother.
A short but extremely enjoyable read with great turns of phrase; it illuminates a world that is alien and jaw dropping to many and highlights in many ways how easy and unquestioning the indoctrination of young children is.
Having heard a lot of what Jeanette Winterson's childhood was like through recent media coverage; it is no less shocking set down upon the page even Mrs Winterson's own congregation thought she was mad and it is alarming how much Jeanette's life was impacted by her mother's religious mania though she tries to deal with it all with a certain Northern humour.
I would definitely recommend this book to other readers because of the unique oddity of the story it has to tell.
Verdict 7/10
Destination : Keeping this book.
Length Of Time In Possession : 1 month
Despite being labelled as a 'fiction' novel this Jeanette Winterson's debut novel bears more than a passing resemblance to the authors own life story. Adopted as a baby and raised in an extremely religious household, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is a coming-of-age story about a girl who was moulded to be what her mother hoped for her : 'a missionary'. Yet when puberty comes, 'Jeanette' discovers that she prefers women to men and find herself at odds with her faith, the church she played such a part in and her domineering mother.
A short but extremely enjoyable read with great turns of phrase; it illuminates a world that is alien and jaw dropping to many and highlights in many ways how easy and unquestioning the indoctrination of young children is.
Having heard a lot of what Jeanette Winterson's childhood was like through recent media coverage; it is no less shocking set down upon the page even Mrs Winterson's own congregation thought she was mad and it is alarming how much Jeanette's life was impacted by her mother's religious mania though she tries to deal with it all with a certain Northern humour.
I would definitely recommend this book to other readers because of the unique oddity of the story it has to tell.
Verdict 7/10
Destination : Keeping this book.
Friday, 15 March 2013
Book #23 We Bought A Zoo by Benjamin Mee
We Bought A Zoo
Length Of Time In Possession : 1 year
I bought 'We Bought A Zoo' after seeing the 2011 film adaptation by Cameron Crowe starring Matt Damon. Inevitably whenever I see a film adaptation first my thoughts on the book end up becoming a cross comparison of the two.
When Mee's family realised that Dartmoor Zoo was for sale, their curiosity led them to enquire as a collective into purchasing it. After jumping through many hoops, they acquired the park, and 'We Bought A Zoo' chronicles the period between buying a run down zoo and preparing it for visitors.
In the midst of this, Mee's wife Katherine became terminally ill with cancer, and so the book also covers the emotional issues regarding illness and death occurring at an incredibly busy time in their lives.
The thing is, when they made the film, they transplanted it to America, which feels like a betrayal of a very British story. As well as this, the 'Benjamin Mee' in the film is already widowed when the film begins, and his mother who lived on the site with them does not feature.
To erase these pivotal figures from the narrative, as well as the process of the loss of Katherine feels again like a betrayal of the Mee's story.
Aside from the changes the film has made, the memoir is a very likeable, touching, easy read, with a unique against the odds story to tell, marking it out from other grief or project building memoirs for sale.
Verdict 8/10
Destination : Ebook storage
Monday, 31 December 2012
Book #7 The Mind's Eye by Oliver Sacks
The Mind's Eye
Length Of Time In Possession : 1 week
Oliver Sacks, now nearly 80 is the respected neurologist behind the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, and the well known book and film Awakenings. In this volume he discusses visual perception, what blind people can "see" for example and relates a journal of his own, terrifying, experience of eye cancer.
It was different from the book I thought it was going to be because it did have a lot to do with actual vision as opposed to what we see when we visualise inside our own minds and how that works, inner visualisation is only really discussed in reference to blind people, and not how it works neurologically for most people.
Like in "Hat" Sacks includes several case studies of people he has known or treated who have had to adapt to unusual types of blindness, and then a new case study, his own, as doctor becomes patient.
It was still, despite not being the book I expected, very readable and I will certainly continue to read Sacks.
Verdict : 7/10
Destination : Ebook storage
Length Of Time In Possession : 1 week
Oliver Sacks, now nearly 80 is the respected neurologist behind the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, and the well known book and film Awakenings. In this volume he discusses visual perception, what blind people can "see" for example and relates a journal of his own, terrifying, experience of eye cancer.
It was different from the book I thought it was going to be because it did have a lot to do with actual vision as opposed to what we see when we visualise inside our own minds and how that works, inner visualisation is only really discussed in reference to blind people, and not how it works neurologically for most people.
Like in "Hat" Sacks includes several case studies of people he has known or treated who have had to adapt to unusual types of blindness, and then a new case study, his own, as doctor becomes patient.
It was still, despite not being the book I expected, very readable and I will certainly continue to read Sacks.
Verdict : 7/10
Destination : Ebook storage
Sunday, 10 July 2011
Book #60 Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing
Alfred and Emily
Warning : This review contains some spoilers
Alfred and Emily written by Nobel Prize for Literature winner Doris Lessing, was declared, shortly before publication to be the now 92 year old writer's final book.
Alfred and Emily is a curious blend of fiction and non-fiction the concept of which I was unaware of prior to reading. In the opening section, the first half of the book, we move from August to August beginning in 1902. Alfred Tayler gains notice at a cricket match but opts to stay within the farming community, he has a happy marriage to Betsy and they have twins. At the same cricket match was Emily McVeigh who has scandalised her father and her best friends mother by giving up a university place to become a nurse, her friend Daisy follows her. Later Emily experiences a short, unhappy marriage before becoming involved in charitable works, she maintains contact with her old community including Alfred, from time to time. The early section reminded me much of Virginia Woolf's "Between The Acts". Ordinary British people in the country enjoy summer pursuits, unaware that a World War silently approaches and will tear them apart. At least, that's what I thought was coming.
Alfred and Emily however is a "re-imagining" a guess, at how their lives would have developed without the intervention of the first World War. I read it perplexed, wondering why it didn't impact the characters at all, then suddenly realised that there was something "different" at work here, that Lessing for some reason had edited history and in her story the first World War did not happen.
Suddenly the involving story of Alfred and Emily brings you up short, you turn the page and are confronted by two short obituaries marking their deaths, with half a book left to go. Alfred and Emily are revealed to be Lessing's parents and the story, a story of what her parents lives might have been had not the war intervened, Alfred and Emily having become romantically involved in the war.
Whilst the first half of the book is a fiction, the second half is fact, little vignettes of different aspects of their lives as expats in what is now Zimbabwe and what was then Rhodesia. Their marriage is revealed to not have been entirely happy, and Doris' relationship with them, her mother in particular not always easy.
I suppose we all wonder at times about "might have beens" if we'd chosen a different university, or married a different person and I suppose we all wonder what would have happened if our parents hadn't met, one of my grandfathers for example, almost became a monk. Lessing seems to go one step further though, her story of Alfred and Emily seems almost like wish-fulfillment. Alfred has a happy marriage whilst Emily dies childless. Lessing strongly indicates that in her opinion Emily McVeigh should not have had children but in so doing wishes away her own existence, which makes the book slightly odd.
I found the Rhodesia episodes very true, I find it impossible to remember every incident that has ever happened in my whole life, and I'm only 30. I think all we ever retain are different snapshots of different eras, and the significant moments of our lives. Although sometimes we don't realise their significance. I am sceptical of autobiographies that recall word for word every detail of their lives and Lessing doesn't do that here.
It' s a shame that I still haven't read a "proper Lessing novel" like The Grass Is Singing or The Golden Notebook, I have only read this : a fact/fiction blend and Shikasta, an experimental space novel. Therefore I feel like I must continue to reserve judgement upon her as a writer.
From what I've read in the Amazon reviews, most people preferred the non-fiction section, I however preferred the fictionalised version of Alfred and Emily. Mainly because I like the idea of alternate realities and whether something so small as not catching the train (as in 1998 film Sliding Doors) can indeed change the world. 7/10
Warning : This review contains some spoilers
Alfred and Emily written by Nobel Prize for Literature winner Doris Lessing, was declared, shortly before publication to be the now 92 year old writer's final book.
Alfred and Emily is a curious blend of fiction and non-fiction the concept of which I was unaware of prior to reading. In the opening section, the first half of the book, we move from August to August beginning in 1902. Alfred Tayler gains notice at a cricket match but opts to stay within the farming community, he has a happy marriage to Betsy and they have twins. At the same cricket match was Emily McVeigh who has scandalised her father and her best friends mother by giving up a university place to become a nurse, her friend Daisy follows her. Later Emily experiences a short, unhappy marriage before becoming involved in charitable works, she maintains contact with her old community including Alfred, from time to time. The early section reminded me much of Virginia Woolf's "Between The Acts". Ordinary British people in the country enjoy summer pursuits, unaware that a World War silently approaches and will tear them apart. At least, that's what I thought was coming.
Alfred and Emily however is a "re-imagining" a guess, at how their lives would have developed without the intervention of the first World War. I read it perplexed, wondering why it didn't impact the characters at all, then suddenly realised that there was something "different" at work here, that Lessing for some reason had edited history and in her story the first World War did not happen.
Suddenly the involving story of Alfred and Emily brings you up short, you turn the page and are confronted by two short obituaries marking their deaths, with half a book left to go. Alfred and Emily are revealed to be Lessing's parents and the story, a story of what her parents lives might have been had not the war intervened, Alfred and Emily having become romantically involved in the war.
Whilst the first half of the book is a fiction, the second half is fact, little vignettes of different aspects of their lives as expats in what is now Zimbabwe and what was then Rhodesia. Their marriage is revealed to not have been entirely happy, and Doris' relationship with them, her mother in particular not always easy.
I suppose we all wonder at times about "might have beens" if we'd chosen a different university, or married a different person and I suppose we all wonder what would have happened if our parents hadn't met, one of my grandfathers for example, almost became a monk. Lessing seems to go one step further though, her story of Alfred and Emily seems almost like wish-fulfillment. Alfred has a happy marriage whilst Emily dies childless. Lessing strongly indicates that in her opinion Emily McVeigh should not have had children but in so doing wishes away her own existence, which makes the book slightly odd.
I found the Rhodesia episodes very true, I find it impossible to remember every incident that has ever happened in my whole life, and I'm only 30. I think all we ever retain are different snapshots of different eras, and the significant moments of our lives. Although sometimes we don't realise their significance. I am sceptical of autobiographies that recall word for word every detail of their lives and Lessing doesn't do that here.
It' s a shame that I still haven't read a "proper Lessing novel" like The Grass Is Singing or The Golden Notebook, I have only read this : a fact/fiction blend and Shikasta, an experimental space novel. Therefore I feel like I must continue to reserve judgement upon her as a writer.
From what I've read in the Amazon reviews, most people preferred the non-fiction section, I however preferred the fictionalised version of Alfred and Emily. Mainly because I like the idea of alternate realities and whether something so small as not catching the train (as in 1998 film Sliding Doors) can indeed change the world. 7/10
Saturday, 21 May 2011
Book #39 Naked by David Sedaris
Naked
Naked, published in 1997 is the second book by David Sedaris I have read having read Me Talk Pretty One Day, a later work, some years ago. All of Sedaris' work comprises of anecdotal, autobiographical short stories. A comic writer many of his stories are genuinely hilarious, but comedy is a personal taste thing and I found the stories overall in this one less amusing than I did the previous book I'd read, which isn't to say that was the case with every story.
In this book Sedaris tackles such diverse topics as his time on a nudist colony, his Greek grandmother, his volunteerism in a psychiatric hospital, his sister Lisa's friendship with a prostitute, a pornographic novel discovered in their home, Lisa's first period and her marriage, and his childhood issues with his homosexuality and OCD among others.
I felt when reading 'Me Talk Pretty One Day' that Sedaris' childhood made anyone's seem dull and tame, and 'Naked' expands on this, the man's life is full of incident and wild stories to tell at dinner parties, whilst what happens to David the majority of the time is unfortunate and often cringeworthy, you feel slightly envious that he had all these experiences. It beats the heck out of childhood Saturdays spent traipsing around garden centres.
The funniest stories this time round for me were 'The Drama Bug' a story in which Sedaris becomes taken with Shakespeare and begins to address his family in Shakespearean Language, which genuinely made me laugh aloud, The Women's Open : the story of Lisa's first period which distinguishes itself for Lisa's reaction to her father in the car. Cyclops, the story of the way in which parents project the worst case scenario outcome onto everything you do; I also liked True Detective an episode in which David tries to establish who is wiping their bum on the bathroom towels among other crimes and finally my favourite The Incomplete Quad chronicling Sedaris' friendship with a disabled student at university, and their various attempts at using her disability for financial gain, getting away with shoplifting and hitchhiking, really funny.
Some of the stories though are actually quite sad, the fact that nobody really liked his grandmother Ya-Ya, and the story of his mothers diagnosis with terminal cancer. Funny or sad, these are stories of a large, chaotic family and the sort of emotions and relationships that occur within a family dynamic, and as such should be very identifiable with a lot of readers. I think like me, other readers will like certain stories better than others and perhaps will like ones that I wasn't too keen on, and dislike ones that I enjoyed.
I struggled with maybe three stories in the book, C.O.G, Naked, and Something For Everyone which made the last section of the book a bit of a "go slow" as these were longer stories which I didn't really find interesting or funny. Like most short story collections you take to some stories and not to others which then makes the book rather a patchy experience. I don't know if I'll read a third collection of his stories, I think it's important that there was a long gap between my reading this book and Me Talk Pretty One Day because I think if you read all his stuff on top of one another it would become a bit samey and irritating.
I do wonder how his family, his brothers and sisters who are still living feel about having themselves and their childhood exposed in such a way, I read that an adaptation of Me Talk Pretty One Day was blocked after Amy Sedaris, herself a writer, voiced concerns to David about how their family would be portrayed.
Overall, I really enjoyed some of it and some of it bored me so maybe we'll say a 6.5/10
Naked, published in 1997 is the second book by David Sedaris I have read having read Me Talk Pretty One Day, a later work, some years ago. All of Sedaris' work comprises of anecdotal, autobiographical short stories. A comic writer many of his stories are genuinely hilarious, but comedy is a personal taste thing and I found the stories overall in this one less amusing than I did the previous book I'd read, which isn't to say that was the case with every story.
In this book Sedaris tackles such diverse topics as his time on a nudist colony, his Greek grandmother, his volunteerism in a psychiatric hospital, his sister Lisa's friendship with a prostitute, a pornographic novel discovered in their home, Lisa's first period and her marriage, and his childhood issues with his homosexuality and OCD among others.
I felt when reading 'Me Talk Pretty One Day' that Sedaris' childhood made anyone's seem dull and tame, and 'Naked' expands on this, the man's life is full of incident and wild stories to tell at dinner parties, whilst what happens to David the majority of the time is unfortunate and often cringeworthy, you feel slightly envious that he had all these experiences. It beats the heck out of childhood Saturdays spent traipsing around garden centres.
The funniest stories this time round for me were 'The Drama Bug' a story in which Sedaris becomes taken with Shakespeare and begins to address his family in Shakespearean Language, which genuinely made me laugh aloud, The Women's Open : the story of Lisa's first period which distinguishes itself for Lisa's reaction to her father in the car. Cyclops, the story of the way in which parents project the worst case scenario outcome onto everything you do; I also liked True Detective an episode in which David tries to establish who is wiping their bum on the bathroom towels among other crimes and finally my favourite The Incomplete Quad chronicling Sedaris' friendship with a disabled student at university, and their various attempts at using her disability for financial gain, getting away with shoplifting and hitchhiking, really funny.
Some of the stories though are actually quite sad, the fact that nobody really liked his grandmother Ya-Ya, and the story of his mothers diagnosis with terminal cancer. Funny or sad, these are stories of a large, chaotic family and the sort of emotions and relationships that occur within a family dynamic, and as such should be very identifiable with a lot of readers. I think like me, other readers will like certain stories better than others and perhaps will like ones that I wasn't too keen on, and dislike ones that I enjoyed.
I struggled with maybe three stories in the book, C.O.G, Naked, and Something For Everyone which made the last section of the book a bit of a "go slow" as these were longer stories which I didn't really find interesting or funny. Like most short story collections you take to some stories and not to others which then makes the book rather a patchy experience. I don't know if I'll read a third collection of his stories, I think it's important that there was a long gap between my reading this book and Me Talk Pretty One Day because I think if you read all his stuff on top of one another it would become a bit samey and irritating.
I do wonder how his family, his brothers and sisters who are still living feel about having themselves and their childhood exposed in such a way, I read that an adaptation of Me Talk Pretty One Day was blocked after Amy Sedaris, herself a writer, voiced concerns to David about how their family would be portrayed.
Overall, I really enjoyed some of it and some of it bored me so maybe we'll say a 6.5/10
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Book #29 The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Year Of Magical Thinking
This book for me was a first. I read it and when I had finished I had utterly no idea how on earth to review it, because of the juxtaposition between the sensitive subject matter and my reaction to it. I had a sense that in criticising this book in any way, I was somehow a bad person, but as a review, I still have to be honest about what I thought of it.
The book is Didion's account of the first year following her husbands death, after he suffers a heart attack at home the day before New Years Eve. Throughout the following year their daughter Quintana suffers several episodes of ill health, and in fact also died shortly before the books' publication, though Didion chose not to update her manuscript to reflect this.
Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne were both writers and so I guess I expected something special here, I at least expected her thinking to be magical given the title, her words on the experience of grief to be moving and perhaps inspiring. But...........
It's cold. The whole book, it's very remote and detached. It's short, and repetitive, filled with quotes from other people's work on the nature of grief and lines from other people's poems, which if removed would leave only anecdotes that would be of interest to family members and the same stories repeated more than once.
It is like a collection of jumbled extracts from a diary, there is no cohesive narrative, and it is not what I expected: an insightful poetic reflection on the nature of death and loss, more a list of facts, an essay. It is much more essay than memoir.
It feels terrible to say that a book by a woman about the death of her husband is a bad book, but it is, and she even comes across badly as a person, showing off her contacts and lifestyle. At some point she writes that having when she read the memoir of D.H Lawrence's widow she felt she was morbid and self pitying, and you certainly can't accuse Didion of that.She doesn't even seem to experience the known stages of grief.
When thinking about how I would review this book I found a review on Amazon by A.Ross which said
"No doubt I am being churlish to some degree for criticizing Didion's portrayal of her experience. It's her life, her tragedy, and she certainly has every right to represent it however she would like to. However, placing it in the commercial realm makes it subject to comment, and my own feeling is that its simply not a very good book. That said, there are glimpses here and there of sharp writing and analysis which makes me think I might like one of her past collections of essays. Still, I can't imagine anyone going through the loss of a loved one would find this book helpful or illuminating in any way"
and I cannot help but concur.
You are left with the feeling that if this were the writing of an ordinary widow with an ordinary husband it would never have been printed, and the reason that it was is because Didion and Dunne were respected on the literary scene and those around the literary scene would be interested in their story because of who they were. This genuinely does feel like something of limited interest to friends and family and not something which would resonate with widows and those grieving everywhere, a lesson in how to love, lose and live on.
Not a year of magical thinking, a year of banal repetitive thinking. But I still feel guilty for criticising it given that it's about a man dying etc.. 4/10
This book for me was a first. I read it and when I had finished I had utterly no idea how on earth to review it, because of the juxtaposition between the sensitive subject matter and my reaction to it. I had a sense that in criticising this book in any way, I was somehow a bad person, but as a review, I still have to be honest about what I thought of it.
The book is Didion's account of the first year following her husbands death, after he suffers a heart attack at home the day before New Years Eve. Throughout the following year their daughter Quintana suffers several episodes of ill health, and in fact also died shortly before the books' publication, though Didion chose not to update her manuscript to reflect this.
Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne were both writers and so I guess I expected something special here, I at least expected her thinking to be magical given the title, her words on the experience of grief to be moving and perhaps inspiring. But...........
It's cold. The whole book, it's very remote and detached. It's short, and repetitive, filled with quotes from other people's work on the nature of grief and lines from other people's poems, which if removed would leave only anecdotes that would be of interest to family members and the same stories repeated more than once.
It is like a collection of jumbled extracts from a diary, there is no cohesive narrative, and it is not what I expected: an insightful poetic reflection on the nature of death and loss, more a list of facts, an essay. It is much more essay than memoir.
It feels terrible to say that a book by a woman about the death of her husband is a bad book, but it is, and she even comes across badly as a person, showing off her contacts and lifestyle. At some point she writes that having when she read the memoir of D.H Lawrence's widow she felt she was morbid and self pitying, and you certainly can't accuse Didion of that.She doesn't even seem to experience the known stages of grief.
When thinking about how I would review this book I found a review on Amazon by A.Ross which said
"No doubt I am being churlish to some degree for criticizing Didion's portrayal of her experience. It's her life, her tragedy, and she certainly has every right to represent it however she would like to. However, placing it in the commercial realm makes it subject to comment, and my own feeling is that its simply not a very good book. That said, there are glimpses here and there of sharp writing and analysis which makes me think I might like one of her past collections of essays. Still, I can't imagine anyone going through the loss of a loved one would find this book helpful or illuminating in any way"
and I cannot help but concur.
You are left with the feeling that if this were the writing of an ordinary widow with an ordinary husband it would never have been printed, and the reason that it was is because Didion and Dunne were respected on the literary scene and those around the literary scene would be interested in their story because of who they were. This genuinely does feel like something of limited interest to friends and family and not something which would resonate with widows and those grieving everywhere, a lesson in how to love, lose and live on.
Not a year of magical thinking, a year of banal repetitive thinking. But I still feel guilty for criticising it given that it's about a man dying etc.. 4/10
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Book #9 The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
The Hare With Amber Eyes
I'm not someone who generally reads non fiction but this was my second non fiction book of the year so far. It had simply caught my eye, I had seen it shooting up the Amazon chart, seen it promoted at Waterstones, liked the sound of the title, and bought it with no real idea of what it was about.
On the surface it traces the history of an heirloom passed on to De Waal from his Uncle, but it is really more of a wider tale of inheritance and loss. The heirloom in question is a collection of Japanese netsuke, I was unsure about what these actually were until I looked it up, thinking they were somehow like the crystal owl figure my Nana had on her mantelpiece when I was young. The netsuke are in fact like artistic buttons, used for belts and kimonos, but each has a different scene or animal engraved on to it.
As De Waal traces the path of the netsuke through his family, so too does he trace his own roots and his own ancestry and it is De Waal's personal journey as he does so that involves the reader far more than the netsuke themselves. It is a sort of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' with an heirloom as the celebrity, and the man investigating his family doing it the hard way rather than having it done for him.
You feel his personal connection to his past as he stands looking at the home of his ancestors The Ephrussi Family in Paris, the buildings now used for other purpose. The story begins with Charles Ephrussi, a spare son not needed to follow into the banking business of his family, and allowed to pursue an interest in art, becoming friends with many of the great artists of his era; who buys the netsuke after a craze for Japanese art becomes popular.
As he uncovers their story he uncovers a history of flagrant Anti-Semitism in Europe that is truly shocking, long before the rise of Nazism, but as we follow the path of that history, we inevitably reach the events of the Thirties and Forties of the last century, but how did his family survive? And just how did they manage to hold on to their netsuke?
The Hare with Amber Eyes, is not just a family saga, but a story of hope, and how an object or a collection of them comes to symbolise that hope. It is an unusual story that I'm glad I read, and that I think that many would enjoy, and i think its current presence on the Amazon bestseller list is justified. 8/10
I'm not someone who generally reads non fiction but this was my second non fiction book of the year so far. It had simply caught my eye, I had seen it shooting up the Amazon chart, seen it promoted at Waterstones, liked the sound of the title, and bought it with no real idea of what it was about.
On the surface it traces the history of an heirloom passed on to De Waal from his Uncle, but it is really more of a wider tale of inheritance and loss. The heirloom in question is a collection of Japanese netsuke, I was unsure about what these actually were until I looked it up, thinking they were somehow like the crystal owl figure my Nana had on her mantelpiece when I was young. The netsuke are in fact like artistic buttons, used for belts and kimonos, but each has a different scene or animal engraved on to it.
As De Waal traces the path of the netsuke through his family, so too does he trace his own roots and his own ancestry and it is De Waal's personal journey as he does so that involves the reader far more than the netsuke themselves. It is a sort of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' with an heirloom as the celebrity, and the man investigating his family doing it the hard way rather than having it done for him.
You feel his personal connection to his past as he stands looking at the home of his ancestors The Ephrussi Family in Paris, the buildings now used for other purpose. The story begins with Charles Ephrussi, a spare son not needed to follow into the banking business of his family, and allowed to pursue an interest in art, becoming friends with many of the great artists of his era; who buys the netsuke after a craze for Japanese art becomes popular.
As he uncovers their story he uncovers a history of flagrant Anti-Semitism in Europe that is truly shocking, long before the rise of Nazism, but as we follow the path of that history, we inevitably reach the events of the Thirties and Forties of the last century, but how did his family survive? And just how did they manage to hold on to their netsuke?
The Hare with Amber Eyes, is not just a family saga, but a story of hope, and how an object or a collection of them comes to symbolise that hope. It is an unusual story that I'm glad I read, and that I think that many would enjoy, and i think its current presence on the Amazon bestseller list is justified. 8/10
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