The Color Purple

Synopsis: Set in the deep American south between the wars, this is the classic tale of Celie, a young poor black girl. Raped repeatedly by her father, she loses two children and then is married off to a man who treats her no better than a slave. She is separated from her sister Nettie and dreams of becoming like the glamorous Shug Avery, a singer and rebellious black woman who has taken charge of her own destiny. Gradually Celie discovers the support of women that enables her to leave the past behind and begin a new life.

Review: The story begins with Celie's first letter to God .. 'You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy' .. she's fourteen years old, her mama's has just given birth to her baby sister and she's not recovering well. She leaves Celie and the other children to travel to Macon to see the doctor. This is the day that Celie is raped by her father for the first time. She asks God 'Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me'.

Celie twice becomes pregnant and gives birth. Her mama is really sick now, dying. She want's to know who the father is of Celie's children. Celie doesn't say. Her father takes the babies into the wood, Celie presumes he kills them.

The person Celie is closest to in the world is her younger sister Nettie, Celie lives in dread that their father will begin abusing Nettie, she want's to save her if she can. Nettie is pretty and smart, Mr _____ ,a widower with three children, has seen her in church and is now calling at the house. Celie urges her sister to keep studying, she want's more for her than to be a housemaid bringing up somebody else's children. But then she see's the way her father looks at Nettie and she tell's her to marry Mr _____. But their pa says Nettie's too young to marry, he want's her to have more schooling and anyway what about Shug Avery. Mr _____ carries a picture around of Shug which he has accidentally dropped, she's the most beautiful woman Celie has even seen, she stares at her picture and dreams about her.

Mr _____ comes again to ask for Nettie's hand, but their father is adamant the answer is no, he offers Celie as a replacement.

'She the oldest anyway. She ought to marry first. She ain't fresh tho, but I specs you know that. She spoiled. Twice. She ugly. But she ain't no stranger to hard work. And she clean. And God done fixed her. You can do everything just like you want to and she ain't gonna make you feed it or clothe it. Fact is, I got to get rid of her. She a bad influence on my other girl's. She ugly. Don't even look like she kin to Nettie. She ain't smart either. But she can work like a man. She near twenty. And another thing ... She tell lies'

Celie marries Mr _____, his children hate her and throw rocks at her and Mr _____ beats her. Nettie runs away from home to live with them but Mr _____ doesn't want her living there so she stays only a short time. Celie gives her the name of a local Reverend and his wife who she hopes will take her in. She doesn't hear from Nettie for a long time and thinks she must be dead.

Mr _____ is still obsessed with Shug Avery, she's a singer and a former lover of his (they have three children together who are being raised by Shug's parents), and when she comes back into town he takes himself along to see her and stays away all weekend. Celie doesn't mind this at all, she just wishes she could see Shug for herself, some folk in the town call Shug names ... 'strumpet, hussy, heifer, streetcleaner' ... this doesn't matter to Celie, she feels protective towards her. When Shug becomes sick, Mr _____ goes off to fetch her and bring her home. After a tentative beginning Celie and Shug become friends, well a lot more than friends. It seems to Celie that nobody, bar Nettie, has ever really loved her, ever really taken the time to know her. Shug awakens in Celie both emotional and sexual love and she starts to blossom. With Shug's help, Celie finally learns the truth about what has happened to Nettie and her two long lost children and she begins to break free from a lifetime of oppression.

The book is considered to be a feminist novel, the woman characters are strong and for the most part right thinking and the men are mostly despicable, weak, bullies. It's true that some men in the book (one in particular) are horrific but some of the others do get the chance to redeem themselves. The language is pretty ripe and there is a fair bit of adult content, but it's not there to shock, just to add authenticity. The title refers to the following word's spoken by Shug and Celie, when they are discussing God, or Shug's perception of God.

'God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God loves admiration'. 'You saying God vain?' I ask 'Naw' she say. 'Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it p*sses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it'

At times it's a harrowing and uncomfortable read but ultimately it's inspiring and hopeful.

Ark Baby

Synopsis: Liz Jensen's second novel, Ark Baby, is a dark, randy and riotous romp back to the future featuring twin plot lines as tightly twisted as a double helix. The novel (if not the story) kicks into gear on New Year's Eve 1999 when a sudden, heavy rainfall over Britain signals the end of fertility on the sceptred isle; with the turn of the millennium, every last specimen of British womanhood is rendered mysteriously barren. In the aftermath of this event, child-starved couples start turning to lower primates to satisfy their baby lust; enter veterinarian Bobby Sullivan, the hapless hero of Jensen's quirky meditation on evolution and survival of the fittest. After accidentally killing a client's beloved macaque monkey and being charged with murder, Bobby escapes to a remote northern seaside town called Thunder Spit and eventually gets involved with two slightly hirsute twins whom he manages to impregnate--the first fertile women in England since the millennium.
Not content to chronicle Bobby's adventures in Thunder Spit around the dawn of the new millennium, Jensen weaves in the 19th-century adventures of foundling Tobias Phelps as counterpoint. Discovered abandoned in the Thunder Spit church by a childless vicar and his wife, Tobias is raised by the couple as their own, but his unusual appearance (squashed features, odd feet, hairy body) spur him to find his biological parents. As Bobby muddles towards 21st-century parenthood and Tobias gets tangled up in Victorian England's fascination with the theories of Darwin, the two plots begin to converge in a welter of diary entries, exotic recipes, strange artefacts and curious coincidences. By the end of Ark Baby readers might well conclude that far from being "red in tooth and claw", nature has one hell of a sense of humour.

Review: The book blurb has a comment from the New York Times which tells you to think of this book as 'Monty Python's Origin of Species' which is spot on. This is an absolutely bonkers take on Darwin's theory of evolution.
'The book starts with a prologue, following the Ark (no, not that one, this is a 19th century ship) as it makes it's way towards England with a cargo full of animals.

'In the beginning, the ocean. Huge. Ink-dark beneath a black sky. The sunlight chinking through: bright, dangerous. beneath the bunching clouds, rain slashes the waves, walls of glass that crash in brutal shards against the Ark's hull. The vessel is a speck on the face of the deep. A toy of wood and string. The air rumbles. Inside his padded leather cabin in the Ark, the Human awakes lurching in the gathering storm. Flings out an arm, grasps the hip-flask, glugs at blood-red claret. Then sputters and curses. His language: the Queen's English. "B*ggeration"

Something is wrong below deck, the Human can hear grunts, whistles, snarls, growls and the shrill scream of a woman. He mutters a word to himself and that word is 'mutiny' All you then know is that some sort of catastrophe befalls the Ark and a month later, a woman arrives at the workhouse in Greenwich, she is alive but frozen, her cloak has turned to ice like a rigid tent and the tutu that she is wearing sticks out horizontally from her hips. The nuns have to crack the tutu off of her and plonk her into a tub of warm water. But then they notice her condition and quickly call for a midwife. There's something not quite right about the infant though, word quickly spreads that the Frozen Woman's offspring is a child of the Devil, and the workhouse being a Christian establishment, throws the pair of them out. She picks her way through the snow towards the twinkling lights of the Travelling Fair of Danger and Delight which is encamped in Greenwich, and when the fair heads northwards the Frozen Woman leaves with them and is never seen again in Greenwich.

The story then jumps to 2005. All British women have become infertile. Here we are introduced to Elvis loving, dissipated, London veterinary surgeon, Bobby Sullivan. You may expect Bobby's patients to be mostly cats, dogs and rabbits but no, ever since the National Egg Bank closed it's waiting list to women over thirty, Bobby has been seeing ten or twelve macaques a week, also chimps, orang-utans, spider monkeys and the occasional gibbon or baboon. His clients now are the 'pseudo mum's' of these primates, dressing them up like babies and shampooing their hair etc. The real fanatics would actually even 'shave them and openly breast feed them in the waiting room'. It's enough to make a man run for the hills. And this is exactly what Bobby does after he inadvisably (and after a bribe of a thousand euro's) colludes with his client Mr Mann, to put to sleep poor little pink dressed, nappy wearing Giselle, a sweet little female macaque. Bobby's assistant, and love interest (in the loosest sense of the word) Holly, is highly offended and resigns and when Mrs Mann herself learns the truth, Bobby finds himself in hot water. So he does what any responsible person would do, he leaves in a hurry, changes his name to Buck de Savile and heads for a peninsula called Thunder Spit.

Staying in Thunder Spit but travelling back to 1845 we are introduced to Parson and Mrs Phelps. They are childless due to a unfortunate incident which befell the Parson as a young man ... he had been obliged to strangle an adder found in his knickerbockers with his bare hands ... so imagine their surprise and delight when they discover a foundling babe left on the floor of the Church of St Nicholas. The baby has a terrible wound to it's lower back, and there are great fears that he cannot possibly survive but 'being blessed by God (though in a later, more cynical version this changed to cursed by the Devil)' he makes it through the night. They name this baby Tobias Phelps. He's a strange child, for the first five years of his life he can only grunt, he's covered in red hair, has a very odd gait and unnaturally shaped feet (you know where this is heading don't you!). Still, they love him, he is the Lord's own chosen child. Years later, when Mrs Phelps is on her deathbed she extracts a promise from Tobias that he will never visit the Travelling Fair of Danger and Delight, but she may as well of asked for snow in July, when the fair returns to Thunder Spit, the temptation is too great.

Also in 1845 in London, we meet Dr Scrapie, his wife Mrs Charlotte Scrapie or the 'Laudanum Empress' as she is known (a nickname which alludes to the chronic addiction which helps fuel her psychic abilities) and their daughter Violet. Dr Scrapie is chief taxidermist to Queen Victoria (or the Royal Hippopotamus as he calls her) and he is currently working on a ridiculous project stuffing animals from around the globe, removing their genitalia, dressing them in clothes and giving them blue glass eyes, for part of her Animal Kingdom collection. Also newly introduced to the household is Monsieur Cabillaud, a chef who, as luck would have it, has no objection to cooking 'unusual meats', in fact he has a flair for it. The Empress has to be my favourite character, she's hilarious. She's full of proclamations and psychic predictions, which nobody else believes or pays heed to ...

'There will be two world wars. As a result, a million skulls will be strewn all over France. But on the more positive side, there will be something known as long-life milk' ... 'There will be heat seeking missiles, and split crotch panties. Not to mention a substance called Play-Doh'' ... 'There will be gambling machines called one-armed bandits. And artists will display their own excrement in galleries'

Somehow all these ingredients are mixed together until their connections become clear. The Empress remains in the story even after she's dead, as a ghost inhabiting her old residence which now belongs to the parent's of Bobby Sullivan's new girlfriends (who are a pair of hirsute twin's with an odd habit of keeping their socks on at all times). After an unexpected encounter involving a strange woman, blackmail and a pickle jar, Parson Phelps abandons Tobias, he abandons religion too and is taken raving to the local sanatorium. Tobias doesn't quite know what to make of it, who was the woman and what is pickled in the jar? Charles Darwin has just published his 'Origin of Species' (indeed both he and Henry Salt get talking parts in this novel) to a general outcry. In 2005 the pregnant twins (but then at least half of the British female population are experiencing phantom pregnancies in what is known as a nine month period of insanity .. there is a 'Euro Fertility Reward' of five million euro's) are busy researching their family tree and Bobby (or Buck as we now call him) is wondering about the stuffed 'Gentleman Monkey' that was in the Scrapie's loft, at first he thinks it might be valuable but after some intensive research he realises it's much more important than that. As the synopsis says this is a bit of a bawdy romp, reminiscent at times of Tristram Shandy etc, but I didn't mind that because Liz Jensen has a deft comic touch and it was totally in keeping with the story. It's dark, humorous, clever and really enjoyable.

Inkdeath (Audiobook)

Synopsis: Life in the Inkworld has been far from easy since the extraordinary events of Inkspell, when the story of Inkheart magically drew Meggie, Mo, and Dustfinger back into its pages.With Dustfinger dead, and the evil Adderhead in control, the story in which they are all caught has taken an unhappy turn.Elinor, left alone in the real world, believes her family to be lost - lost between the covers of a book. But as winter comes there is reason to hope - if only Meggie and Mo can rewrite the wrongs of the past and make a dangerous deal with death....Here is the fantastic finale to the epic Inkheart Trilogy from best-selling author Cornelia Funke.

Review: Although I bought this in paperback I eventually decided to download the audio. The main reason for this was that I found reading 'Inkspell' a trial, I enjoyed it, but because I couldn't commit the time to reading it, I picked it up and put it down far too often and literally got lost in the story, but not in a good way. Anyhow, I'm glad I did because listening to Allan Corduner's reading of Inkdeath was an absolute pleasure. At first it was a bit odd, having read the first two books, I had my own voices for the characters and they weren't for the most part anything like Alan's but after a couple of chapters I forgot about my versions.I was glad to have a copy of the book to use for reference, it has a synopsis of both Inkheart and Inkspell at the start and a comprehensive A-Z list of characters and place names which came in pretty handy especially at the beginning.

click here for the rest of my review - possible spoilers

Back to the story then, since the death of Cosima the Fair, Ombra has been ruled by the decaying but immortal, Adderhead, and governed by his brother in-law, the Milksop. Farid is still mourning the death of Dustfinger, and now slaves away working for Orpheus, desperately hoping that he can persuade him to somehow read Dustfinger back into the story. Orpheus has started to put his own stamp on the story, he creates riches for himself and does his best to ingratiate himself to the Milksop. He conjures up weird and wonderful creatures that had only ever been heard of in fairy tales before. He finds all the right words to use from Fenoglio's original text, he rearranges and mixes them to suit himself. He finds himself growing rich on 'what he can entice from another man's word's'.

Fenoglio is living in Minerva's little attic room, he has turned to drink and lazes about in bed for most of the time, he is despondent and has given up writing, whatever his good intentions Inkworld has started to shape it's own story. Orpheus uses his glass man to spy on Fenoglio, he fears that he may take up his pen again and then he will lose some of the control and influence he has gained.

Mortimer, Meggie and Resa are living with the Black Prince and his band of robbers who are trying to protect the citizens of Ombra from the Milksop and his army. Mo has assumed the identity of the mythical Bluejay, an outlaw immortalised in verse by Fenoglio in Inkheart, strangely though it feels as though the Bluejay has always been a part of him, merely sleeping until Fenoglio's world had brought him to life. At the end of Inkspell, the Adderhead, using Meggie and Resa as bait, had forced Mo to bind a book for him which would make him immortal. He wrote his name in the blank pages but what he didn't know is that Mo had ensured that the book itself was dying. As the book begins to decay, so does the Adderhead, sunlight hurts his skin, his limbs are bloated, every step and every breath is painful to him, he emits a rotting stench so powerful and repellant that it is torture to be anywhere near him. And he knows that this agony will continue forever. He cannot sleep and he spends his time plotting revenge on the Bluejay, he needs to capture him and force him to bind another book that will restore him to full health, and then he will kill him.

Mo also knows that he needs to re-visit the Castle Of Night and write the three words in the book that will permanently rid Inkworld of the Adderhead. But it's dangerous, the Adderhead keeps the blood soaked book with him at all times, how will Mo ever be able to get hold of it? He is surprised when he is offered help in his quest from an unlikely source, the Adderheads daughter ... Her Ugliness ... Violante also want's to see her father destroyed. But can Mo trust her?

Meggie is in turmoil also, would they all be better off returning to this world?, can she persuade Fenoglio to take up his pen again and can she read his words to help keep the Bluejay safe? She's annoyed with Farid, who spends most of his time with Orpheus obsessing about Dustfinger. There is another boy that has caught her eye, the Strong Mans younger brother Doria, is it possible to love two boys at the same time?

I loved the twists and turns of the story, Cornelia manages to tie everything up together beautifully and she keeps the suspense building. The question I most wanted answered (or was most fearful of finding out the answer to) was 'will Dustfinger be brought back to life'?, he's got to be everyone's favourite character hasn't he? but I was also eager to find out whether the Folchart's would return to this world or stay in Inkworld. The quality of Cornelia's writing shines out. I still think that Inkheart was the best book of the trilogy, I just thought it was storytelling at it's most perfect, but I really enjoyed this one too. The ending won't be to everyone's taste, there's one outcome in particular that is disappointing, but it felt right for the story as it developed. I liked the way that she hints at adventures yet to come involving new characters, that we've only just met. We probably won't hear about these adventures, but they will be happening just the same.

Full of the Joys

What a beautiful weekend! There has been hardly a cloud in the sky, and the sun has shone endlessly.

I settled myself on a sun lounger yesterday morning hoping to get some reading done, but was so distracted by the wildlife, and befuddled by the heat, that I only managed a few limp pages.

Having said that, I'm not a natural sun worshipper, it's laughable the way that I load myself up with all the outdoor paraphernalia .. sunglasses, lotion, drink, book, towel etc, as if I'm going to be out in the garden all day. Then it's all I can do to sit still for an hour without feeling damp, dishevelled, headachey and guilty .. surely I should be indoors scrubbing pots or sluicing something down.

The lambs are not in my garden worse luck, or even nearby. I saw them as we were on our way to Witney to get some shopping. They seemed to get us confused with Mr and Mrs Farmer, they definitely expected food which made us feel a bit guilty. We only had a few mints with us and I didn't think they'd appreciate the irony so we didn't offer them. They are surprisingly loud though, especially the grown-ups, absolutely deafening.

The gorgeous weather won't last of course, but I'm proud that I've managed to make the most of this unexpected heatwave. The inside of my house looks like a tip, I've got suntan lotion on my clothes and the tip of my nose is scarlet .. perfect!

Girl In A Blue Dress

Synopsis: Alfred Gibson's funeral has taken place at Westminster Abbey, and his wife of twenty years, Dorothea, has not been invited. Dorothea is comforted by her feisty daughter Kitty, until an invitation for a private audience with Queen Victoria arrives, and she begins to examine her own life more closely.She uncovers the deviousness and hypnotic power of her celebrity author husband. But now Dodo will need to face her grown-up children, and worse, her redoubtable younger sister Sissy and the charming actress Miss Ricketts.In Alfred Gibson, the fierce energy and brilliance of the most famous of the Victorian novelists is recreated, in a heart warming story of first love - of a cocky young writer smitten by a pretty girl in a blue dress.

Review: Another historical fiction book, this time about Charles Dickens (re-named Alfred Gibson) and, more importantly, his wife Catherine (here called Dorothea, or more commonly Dodo).

I read Peter Ackroyd's book on Dickens last year and so was fairly familiar with the story of Catherine. She was married to Dicken's for twenty two years and bore him ten children. But towards the latter half of their marriage, the things he had once found so attractive in her - her placid temperament and docile nature - have begun to irk him, he now thinks her dull, stupid and lazy. This coupled by the fact that she has been worn down by the birth of their ten children (he is constantly irritated at her for becoming pregnant .. as if she is all to blame) and has become plump and matronly, leads to him cutting her out of his life, and as far as possible, their children's.The novel follows this line pretty closely, Alfred Gibson (or the 'One and Only' or 'Great Original' as he is called, mostly by himself) has just died, and his widow is reflecting on their life together. The chapters are a mixture of flashback and present day (though of course, present day is sometime in the 1870's), Dorothea thinks back to the time when Alfred first courted her and how, when they were forbidden to continue seeing each other by her parent's, they set up a clandestine correspondence, using a hole in the garden wall as a postbox, and Dodo's younger sister Alice, as their postman.

Back in the present day, Dorothea has not been invited to Alfred's funeral, she sits in the modest room's that she has lived in ever since Alfred persuaded her, ten years or so ago, that they would be better living apart ... 'I fear Dodo, that we were never made for each other from the beginning, and with each year we become more unsuited'. Dorothea, hoping that their separation was going to be of short duration, and that his obsession with the actress, Miss Ricketts would soon be over, agreed to leave ...

'Two days later I left my house for the last time. I went out by the side door while it was still dark. My belongings - such as they were - were already in the carriage. No servants were yet up except Bessie (who stood in her nightgown at the doorway, a handkerchief pressed to her face) and John the coachman, who was silent as usual. No other member of the household was awake. Alfred was not at home.'

The only people who she has had constant contact with since then are her daughter Kitty, who following an unsuitable marriage has fallen out with her father, and Dorothea and Alfred's old friend Michael O'Rourke. Kitty is in a wild temper after the funeral, absolutely incensed that her mother should have been kept away from it and that his 'blessed public' should have so overtaken it.

Alfred was a literary genius and a tireless campaigner for those less fortunate. He was also vain, punctilious, sarcastic, insensitive, exacting, flirtatious and arrogant. He was extremely sharp and witty but could sometimes use this wit to hurt or belittle others. He was a total control freak and couldn't endure anything which didn't go according to his plans and wishes. Dickens I know shared many of these attributes, but I don't think he was quite as bad as Alfred, he would've been completely insufferable if he had been. I have to admit that Alfred was another literary figure that I wanted to 'box the ears of' (that makes three in a row!).Dorothea tries to look for ways in which she can reassure herself that the love Alfred once showed her was real, she is wife now in name only. She cannot bear to think ill of him, she tries to justify his actions and quell the bitter resentment that she feel's. This leads her, after his death, to visit her sister Sissy who has long since usurped her as matriarch of the family and who chose to stay on with Alfred after Dorothea left, and Miss Ricketts, the young actress who Alfred had for many years been so enamoured with, and who Dorothea believes to have been his mistress.

As well as being about Dickens, it has all the flavour of a Dicken's novel, though not much of their complexity it has to be said. Gaynor Arnold has invented some new characters and new situations (including, following Alfred's death, a visit by Dorothea to Queen Victoria) but there is a lot here that will be familiar to anybody who has read a Dicken's biography. I remember feeling a great sadness for Catherine when I read that after the separation she used to buy her own copy of Charles's new books and would write and tell him how much she enjoyed them only to receive back terse little notes of acknowledgment. She also, upon her deathbed, urged her daughter Kate to give her collection of Charles's letters to the British Museum, that the world might know 'he loved me once'. I felt similarly sad here for Dodo, publicly humiliated and estranged from those she loved. It's hugely readable but you can't help but feel that some of the fictionalised situations are so unlikely as to be almost preposterous, like the one involving a spectral visitation à la Jacob Marley. Good job this was near the end because I almost lost the will to continue with it.

Amenable Women (Audiobook)

Synopsis: Flora Chapman is in her fifties when her husband dies in a bizarre ballooning accident. Seizing upon her new found freedom, she decides to finish the history of their village that Edward had begun. A reference to Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife who he rejected for being ugly, captures her imagination as she begins to delve deeper into the life of this neglected figure. Meanwhile, in the Louvre, Holbein's portrait of Anne of Cleves senses the tug of a connection and she begins to tell the story of the injustices she suffered and just how she survived her marriage.

Review: This was a fairly enjoyable listen. I wasn't so taken with the story of Flora but was absolutely fascinated by Anne of Cleves's story (albeit a fictionalised account), without her narrative the book would have been a bit 'aga saga-ry', though, as always, Mavis Cheek writes with a great deal of humour.

After her husband Edward's death, Flora decides to finish his history of their village. Amongst his notes, she reads about a local estate which was granted to Anne of Cleves as part of her divorce settlement from King Henry VIII. Flora is incensed to read that Edward has written, as part of his description of Anne, the words 'Flanders Mare', this reminds her too much of Henry's pet name for her, the rather derogatory 'Bun Face'. She decides to find out as much as she can about this much maligned Queen.

Flora knows of old the tale of Henry VIII being much taken with the Holbein portrait of Anne of Cleves, on the strength of it he proposed and was accepted. He was rather less taken with her when they eventually met in Canterbury. 'I Like Her Not' he was reported as saying which was putting it mildly, there was a whole catalogue of complaints, he found her ugly, repulsive and smelly (this was rich coming from a man who was obese, balding and with an ulcerated leg whose smell, had it belonged to any ordinary man, could clear a room in twenty seconds). The marriage went ahead however, Henry couldn't quite extricate himself without disappointing his public and, more importantly, reneging on his treaty with Cleves.

It was not to last though, Henry could not endure it, after a few months he called upon his 'good friend' Thomas Cromwell to arrange for the marriage to be annulled. His good friend's head came off soon after.

Flora decides to visit the portrait which is now housed in the Louvre (apparently we have Oliver Cromwell to thank for this, as well as banning Christmas he sold off the royal art collection .. though Stephen Fry will probably inform me soon that it's all hogwash). She learns from the tour guide that Anne was actually named Anna, but soon the same old story is being repeated and the words 'Flanders Mare' rear their ugly head again. Flora is annoyed, Holbein was known to be no flatterer and when Flora looks at the painting she see's a quiet beauty and intelligence there. She ends up having a rather public disagreement with the tour guide, it's almost as if the portrait has come to life and is talking through her.

She has indeed made a connection, and following Flora's visit, Anna begins to tell us her true story (or as true as a fictionalised account can be), her own revulsion at the sight of England's Golden Prince, her private refutation of all his accusations. He had professed that on their wedding night she 'was no maid', that she was unintelligent, ugly, slow and clumsy. But these were not views shared by any of the other people that had come to know Anna. In fact, considering Henry's track record with wives, how she acted next was of paramount importance to her well being. A less intelligent woman would have probably ended up headless, but Anna, fully aware of the dire situation she was in, gracefully withdrew. She couldn't go back to Cleves, so she stayed here, acquiesced with all of Henry's wishes, knelt before his new Queen, Catherine Howard, barely a few months after her own wedding, and took on the role of the King's 'sister'. She ended up with a handsome divorce settlement consisting of houses - including Richmond Palace - jewels, and a more than adequate annual income. She was one of the few people to remain on good terms with all of Henry's children, especially Mary and Elizabeth, and was welcome at court. She was in fact, like Flora, a very amenable woman.

Here are the two portraits, both by Holbein, of Henry's most beloved wife, Jane Seymour (right) and his least preferred wife (before the heads rolled anyway) Anna of Cleves. Apart from the fact that Jane's portrait has been restored and is so much brighter, I can't see that she was any more beautiful than Anna. And though he didn't necessarily love Jane for her beauty, he obviously wasn't repulsed by her.



I have a bit of a fascination with all things Tudor so in that respect this book was a bit of a treat. I did have to suspend an awful lot of disbelief when, later in the book, at a London exhibition, the portraits of Anna, Elizabeth I and Mary I conversed with one another, also Flora's daughter needed a slap (violent feelings towards literary characters is becoming a bit of a habit with me) and Joanna David's narration was patchy but, on the whole a fascinating insight into Tudor times.

My TBR List

An Echo in the Bone - Diana Gabaldon
The Black Prince - Iris Murdoch
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
The Book of Illusions - Paul Auster
Brick Lane - Monica Ali
Burning Your Boats - Angela Carter
Bury Her Deep - Catriona McPherson
Can-Cans, Cats and Cities of Ash - Mark Twain
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernières
Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold
The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway
The Daughter of Time - Josephine Tey
Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes
Foolish Lessons in Life and Love - Penny Rudge
The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tey
Frangipani - Célestine Vaite
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Garden Spells - Sarah Addison Allen
The Ghost Road - Pat Barker
Gigi - Colette
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
The Great Stink - Clare Clark
Guernica - Dave Boling
A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
Hearts and Minds - Amanda Craig
Heroes and Villains - Angela Carter
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
The Hour I First Believed - Wally Lamb
How Late It Was, How Late - James Kelman
I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced - Nujood Ali
I Know How to Cook - Ginette Mathiot
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess - Merlin Holland
The Journal of Hélène Berr - Hélène Berr
A Journal of the Plague Year - Daniel Defoe
Jane and Prudence - Barbara Pym
Just Kids - Patti Smith
The Kit-Cat Club - Ophelia Field
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Leviathan - Philip Hoare
Light Boxes - Shane Jones
Lives Like Loaded Guns - Lyndall Gordon
Loitering with Intent - Muriel Spark
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint - Brady Udall
Miss Garnet's Angel - Salley Vickers
Molly Fox's Birthday - Deirdre Madden
The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter
Operation Shylock - Philip Roth
Past Imperfect - Julian Fellowes
The Pedant in the Kitchen - Julian Barnes
The Piano Teacher - Janice Y.K. Lee
Possession - A.S. Byatt
The Night Watch - Sarah Waters
The Outcast - Sadie Jones
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth
The Resurrectionist - James Bradley
The Robe of Skulls - Vivian French
The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart - Jesse Bullington
The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
The Secret of Lost Things - Sheridan Hay
Shiver - Maggie Stiefvater
Stories To Get You Through the Night - Various
A Strange Eventful History - Michael Holroyd
Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain
They Were Sisters - Dorothy Whipple
Trawler - Redmond O'Hanlon
Under the Net - Iris Murdoch
Un Lun Dun - China Miéville
The Very Thought of You - Rosie Alison
War Crimes for the Home - Liz Jensen
The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Watching the English - Kate Fox
We Are All Made of Glue - Marina Lewycka
The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag - Alan Bradley
We, The Drowned - Carsten Jensen
White is for Witching - Helen Oyeyemi
Winter Ground - Catriona McPherson
Wise Children - Angela Carter
The World According to Garp - John Irving

Brooklyn

Synopsis: It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time. Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home - and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma - a devastating choice between duty and one great love.

Review: Having read and loved Maeve Binchy and Marian Keyes's books I was looking forward to this one. I love a bit of literary Irish charm and humour.

It's quite an old fashioned story set in the 1950's about Eilis who emigrates to Brooklyn USA. Her family want a better life for her, and when Eilis takes a temporary job in a shop in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, alarm bells ring in the heads of her mother and sister, they want more for her than a life spent behind a shop counter and before Eilis knows it she is embarking on a journey that will take her to America.

At first she finds it hard to settle in, everything is new and strange to her and she doesn't make friends easily. And then she meets Tony. Tony is from Brooklyn but his parents are Italian, soon he and Eilis are meeting several times a week and becoming closer and closer, she's also studying hard for her book-keeping exams. But just as she begins to really settle and enjoy being in America, she receives terrible news from home.

I had a bit of trouble warming to Eilis, firstly her name,I couldn't think how to pronounce it, everytime I read it on the page I stumbled over it which got in the way of the text. I should have just googled it, I did when I was halfway through and found that it is pronounced Aylish (although there are variations) and I was happier once I'd got this into my brain. But also she seemed a bit of a cold fish, a bit wishy-washy. I was perplexed by some of her actions, she made me at times want to shake her to get her to wake up. No disrespect to Colm Tóibín but she seemed to be a female character that was definitely written by a man, in as much as her feelings seemed to run only so deep and no deeper, there was no fathoming her.

The story quietly hums along, it's not rivetting but it's very readable. It's a bit mundane in places, but Colm Toibin has a lovely descriptive style that seems to compensate for the lack of any real drama. At no point was I bored or wanting it to finish. I did feel though that some characters were not always fleshed out well, I wanted to know more about Eilis's sister Rose and her mam. However others, like Georgina who was only on the boat crossing, were fantastic (I'd love to have heard more from her) and there are some great gossipy characters.

It's a bit of a contradiction of a book, nothing much happens and it's quite a simple tale but it's still compelling.

I realise that this review sounds less than glowing and that's unfair to the book really because I did enjoy it, it kept me up late last night because I wanted to finish it. True to the rest of the story, there was no big ending and the temptation to throttle Eilis grew but it was consistent and oddly satisfying.

Happy Birthday Puss Cat's

Where does the time go?. It only seems like five minutes ago that we went to a local farm and bought two kittens home that were for sale.

Despite being as different as chalk and cheese, they are brother and sister. Oscar is the ginger male, he rules the roost in all respects, he's the boss and no questions asked. Molly is his black and white sister, she's gentle and sweet tempered.


They absolutely drove us mad for the first six months of their lives, wreaking havoc and ruining (amongst other things) a leather sofa, several houseplant's and the carpet. Curtains and Christmas tree's were climbed and food was no longer able to be left on the worktop to cool (this lesson was learnt the hard way) but for all that they are, and always have been, incredibly good natured and excellent company.

So it was a big shock to me yesterday when I looked at the calendar and saw that they were thirteen years old!! ... which I guess (though I'm loathe to think it) makes them fairly old in cat terms. Luckily it was a gorgeously sunny day outside and so they were able to indulge in a spot of sunbathing before they were treated to poached chicken for dinner which is their absolute favourite.

It got me thinking about famous literary cat's, I couldn't think of many but these are the one's that came straight to mind ...

1. Dinah - Alice's cat in 'Alice in Wonderland'
2. The Cheshire Cat - 'Alice in Wonderland'
3. Crookshanks - Hermione's cat in 'Harry Potter'
4. Mrs Norris - Argus Filch's cat in 'Harry Potter'
5. Dr Seuss's 'Cat in the Hat'
6. Beatrix Potter's 'Tom Kitten'
7. Figaro - Gepetto's cat in 'Pinnochio' (I'm hoping he was in the book)
8. Jonas - Merricat's cat in 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle'

If we could stretch it to wild cat's (and why not?), then there's also ...

9. Tigger - 'Winnie The Pooh'
10. Bagheera - 'The Jungle Book'
11. Shere Khan - 'The Jungle Book'
12. Aslan - 'The Chronicles of Narnia'
13. Richard Parker - 'Life of Pi'

I remember that there was a cat in 'Coraline' and also one that Cassandra was fond of in 'I Capture the Castle', but their names escape me. And not forgetting of course, the famous 'cat' in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'. Perhaps he wasn't in the book, still he was absolutely gorgeous and stole the scene whenever he appeared, not easy to do when your co-star is the utterly gorgeous Audrey Hepburn!

Anyway, Happy 13th Birthday Oscar and Molly, many happy returns!

The Wild Things

Synopsis: Seven-year-old Max likes to make noise, get dirty, ride his bike without a helmet and howl like a wolf. In any other era, he would be considered a boy. In 2007, he is considered willful and deranged. His home life is problematic. His parents are divorced; his father, immature and romantic, lives in the city. His mother has taken up with a younger man who steals quarters from the change bowl in the foyer. Driven by a series of pressures internal and external, Max leaves home, jumps in a boat and sails across the ocean to a strange island where giant beasts reign. The "Wild Things" is from Maurice Sendak's visionary classic. This is an all-ages adventure, full of wit and soul, that explores the chaos of youth while Max explores the chaos of the world around him.

Review: Although I loved 'The Road' I wanted my next read to be something light hearted and fun and this fitted the bill perfectly.This book is an adaptation of Spike Jonze's film, 'Where the Wild Things Are', which itself was an adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic book of the same name. I haven't seen the film or read the original picture book, so I came to this new adaptation without any pre-conceived ideas.
It's about Max who's seven, he lives with his Mum and sister Claire. His parents are divorced, and his Dad lives in an apartment in the city. His Mum has a boyfriend called Gary, Max does his best to get rid of Gary, he plays tricks on him, hides his coffee and replaces his muffins with stale one's, but Gary is not very quick on the uptake, and is not at all suspicious, in fact he thinks that Max is his friend.Max is feeling pretty frustrated with life, his sister's friends have tried to kill him during a snowball fight, and his subsequent revenge (which involved buckets of water and Claire's pretty pink and powder blue bedroom) has made his Mum angry with him. And then there's frog faced Gary, lounging about, taking coins from the dish in the foyer, and calling Max 'bud'

It's more than a seven year old can stand, and after another huge row late in the evening, Max, dressed in his beloved furry wolf suit, runs out of the door (with Gary in pursuit) and into the night.He soon outstrips Gary and reaches the woods, where he finds a small boat, at the edge of a vast lake. Max climbs in and decides that he can sail the boat northwards, until he reaches the city and his Dad's apartment. But although at first he can see the twinkling lights of the city, they seem to be getting farther and farther away, until he appears to be sailing in the open sea.

Eventually Max's boat finds an island, a very strange island with brown and yellow striped earth (like peanut butter and cinnamon) and rocks that have embroidery like red moss clinging to them. He hears a strange mix of sounds, crashing, destructive noises but laughter too. He follows the noises, and comes across some four inch high cat's which is very odd, but they aren't making the noise so what is?. A hundred yards later he finds out. Huge animals, ten or twelve feet high, four hundred pound each or more, like enormous bears but bears with the quickness of deer or small monkey's, and they are all different too, one has a horn, one has string hair and one looks like a goat etc.

Thus we are introduced to Douglas, Carol, Judith, Ira, Alex, Bull and Katherine, seven incredibly wild things. In order to avoid having his flesh and brains devoured, Max persuades them that he is their king. They have a celebration and he's given a crown. The beast's look at him expectantly and Max says the first thing that comes into his head 'Let the wild rumpus begin!'

I found the first two thirds of the book really easy to read and extremely funny in places, but it did seem to lose it's way a bit and the final outcome seemed rushed. It was throroughly enjoyable though, the 'wild things' themselves were endearingly odd and funny. I must put the film on my rental list now.

Audiobook Reviews

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi - Half of a Yellow Sun
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi - Purple Hibiscus
Amis, Martin - The Information
Brandreth, Gyles - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders
Brandreth, Gyles - Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death
Bryson, Bill - At Home : A Short History of Private Life
Cheek, Mavis - Amenable Women
Colin, Beatrice - The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite
Doyle, Roddy - A Star Called Henry
Eugenides, Jeffrey - The Virgin Suicides
Fellowes, Julian - Snobs
Fforde, Jasper - Shades of Grey
Funke, Cornelia - Inkdeath
Kingsolver, Barbara - The Poisonwood Bible
Maguire, Gregory - Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Mantel, Hilary - Wolf Hall
Mosse, Kate - Labyrinth
Stockett, Kathryn - The Help
Vickers, Salley - Mr Golightly's Holiday

The Help (Audiobook)

Synopsis: Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid, Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her 17th white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another.

Review: I loved this book, it is absolutely perfectly read especially by the three women voicing Skeeter, Minny and Aibileen. Set in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960's when the civil rights movement was in it's infancy, it tells the tale of two black maids Aibileen and Minny.They've worked for white families as 'the help' for most of their lives, looking after their children as if they were their own and putting up with the sly remarks, insults and prejudice of the women they cook and clean for.

Miss Skeeter wants to be a writer, she has a job working for the local newspaper writing cleaning tips (as she still lives at home with her Mum and Dad, cleaning and household management is something she knows next to nothing about, but she asks Aibileen, her friend Elizabeth's maid, to help her). Skeeter feels uncomfortable over the way her friends treat 'the help' and she hits upon the idea of writing a book, that will tell the story of what it's like to be a black maid working for a white family. She needs to get as many of the maids as she can to tell her about their experiences, she will give them pseudonym's of course and she will write it anonymously. When she approaches Aibileen with this idea Aibileen is skeptical, infact she's adamant she won't do it and neither will any of the other maids, people have been lynched for less .. black people that is.

Skeeter persists and eventually they make a start on the book. But it's not just a dangerous time for the maids, it's a very dangerous time for Skeeter.

Full of the flavours of the deep south, it's a book to make you smile a lot but also to make you ashamed of those white ladies and their polite faced racism. The irony of them having one of their do-gooding fund raisers for the 'poor people of Africa', whilst treating their own maids like dirt was completely lost on them.

The only downside to it was it made me permanently hungry with it's constant talk of chicken pot and lemon chiffon pie's, angel cake's and hush puppies mmm mm.

I stretched it out for as long as I could, it was such an enjoyable listen.

The Road

Synopsis: A man and his young son traverse a blasted American landscape, covered with "the ashes of the late world." The man can still remember the time before. The boy knows only this time. There is nothing for them but survival — they are "each other's world entire" — and the precious last vestiges of their own humanity. At once brutal and tender, despairing and rashly hopeful, spare of language and profoundly moving, The Road is a fierce and haunting meditation on the tenuous divide between civilization and savagery, and the essential, sometimes terrifying power of filial love. It is a masterpiece.

Review: It doesn't get much bleaker than this, a truly tragic tale of a man and his son trying to find their way to the coast in post apocalyptic America (well, the country's not actually named but I took it to be America because of one or two slight references, though it could be anywhere). The writing has been pared to the bone, there is hardly any dialogue and in that respect it felt rather like reading Hemingway. There are no chapters, just fairly short paragraphs of either description or dialogue, every word is weighed and measured. The man and the boy exchange a few short sentences every now and then, the boy seeking understanding or comfort and the man trying to reassure and instill hope or else relaying simple instructions.

But for all that it's not overly descriptive or wordy, it's so beautifully written that you can clearly see that ash ridden, bleak and desolate landscape and feel the desperation of the man and boy. When you think about a landscape devoid of animals, devoid even of rats to feed on corpses, devoid of plant life and sunlight it's utterly unendurable, and the writer makes you feel the loss of these things yourself as you read.

We're not told why this catastrophe happened, which makes it all a bit more terrifying because when a reason is given you can usually find a way of persuading yourself that the chances of it really happening are so slim as to be negligible. We just know that everything, and practically everyone, is dead, and the world has been thrown into perpetual winter.

It felt right that there weren't any chapters, there was nothing to break the spell, no obvious resting places. I had to tear myself away from the book from time to time, in order to try and lighten my mood, but really, from the moment I read that their aim was to find their way to the coast, I was so anxious that they should get there that I just kept reading on and on.

Although it's not what you'd call an action-packed book, there are some pretty horrific scenes, and also some times when their relentless slow trudge across the scorched earth turns into a desperate flight for survival. There are only a few people left on earth, how many is not known, but among them are some pretty terrifying people, people who will do everything and anything to ensure their survival. People with nothing to lose.

All you are hoping for, is that the man and the boy reach the coast and some sort of safety, you celebrate every small piece of good fortune that comes their way and you feel fear whenever they see or meet anyone on the road.I can see that not everybody would like it, it's pretty harrowing stuff. There isn't any light relief or jokes (I imagine they're dead like everything else) but it's compelling and powerful.

I was truly terrified by it, an incredible piece of writing.

Mary Ann meets the Gravediggers .. and other Short Stories by Regina Spektor

I was already familiar with Regina's music but this album was new to me. It includes tracks from her first three albums 11:11, Songs and Soviet Kitsch .. a kind of 'best of' album from someone who, at that point, probably had only had one commercial hit! (the glorious 'Us').

Regina was born in Moscow in 1980, but her parents emigrated to New York in 1989 (settling in The Bronx). She is a classically trained pianist and sings, mostly in English (often with a pronounced New York accent) but also in Russian, French and other languages. She taps out rhythms on the piano top and uses her voice as you would a musical instrument resulting in some weird, wonderful and totally unconventional sounds.

She has a wonderful ability to blend tragedy with comedy in her songs. One of the absolute highlights of this album is the sublime 'Chemo Limo', a song that is heartbreakingly sad but also manages to make you smile too, the chorus, despite it's tragic words, is so catchily sung.

'No thank you, no thank you, no thank you, no thank you, I don't have to pay for this sh*t.

I can afford chemo like I couldn't afford a limo, and on any given day I'd rather ride a limousine

No thank you, no thank you, no thank you, no thank you, I ain't about to to die like this,

I can afford chemo like I couldn't afford a limo, and besides this sh*t is making me tired, it's making me tired, it's making me tired.

You know I plan to retire some day, but mama gonna go out in style, go out in style

This sh*t it's making me tired, it's making me tired, it's making me tired, but mama's gonna go out in style, go out in style'

Other stand out tracks are 'Pavlov's Daughter' a song with lyrics pertaining to Ivan Pavlov's classical conditioning experiments ...

Pavlov's daughter woke up in the morning

Heard the bell ring

And something deep inside of her, made her want to salivate

So she lay there drooling on her pillow

So she lay there,

the sun skimming her skin,

And, and...drooling on her pillow

Also 'Love Affair', 'Mary Ann', 'Consequence of Sound', 'Lacrimosa' and 'Oedipus', a song about how to overcome, being 32nd in line for the throne.

Her vocals are so varied, she can be quite jazzy and guttural, quite bluesy and folksy, but also soaringly pure. There have been comparisons to Tori Amos and Bjork, and it's probably true to say that if you don't like either of them, then you probably won't like Regina, but she has her own originality and quirks that are quite different to theirs.

This CD comes with a bonus DVD that showcases just how quirky and creative she is, with a couple of music video's and a promo.

Good starting points for anyone unfamiliar with her music would be the newer and more commercial tracks 'Fidelity' and 'Laughing With', but though these are great, I like the older, stranger stuff better.

The Way Things Look to Poppyshake

Synopsis: At 23, Asif is less than he wanted to be. His mother's sudden death forced him back home to look after his youngest sister, Yasmin, and he leads a frustrating life, ruled by her exacting need for routine. Everyone tells Asif that he's a good boy, but he isn't so sure. Lila has escaped from home, abandoning Asif to be the sole carer of their difficult sister. Damaged by a childhood of uneven treatment, as Yasmin's needs always came first, she leads a wayward existence, drifting between jobs and men, obsessed with her looks and certain that her value is only skin deep. And then there is Yasmin, who has no idea of the resentment she has caused. Who sees music in colour and remembers so much that sometimes her head hurts. Who doesn't feel happy, but who knows that she is special. Who has a devastating plan. "The Way Things Look To Me" is an affecting, comically tender portrayal of a family in crisis, caught between duty and love in a tangled relationship both bitter and bittersweet.

Review: I liked this story but I didn't love it, it didn't seem to hold my interest. The story centres around Yasmin who has Aspergers and her two older siblings, Asif and Lila.

Since their parents death it has become Asif's job to look after Yasmin. This he does with extreme care and thoughtfulness. Lila on the other hand is more resentful, calling Yasmin 's*dding Raingirl' and embracing her with bear-hugs which she knows will make her uncomfortable (she also wears a t-shirt with a slogan that is mis-spelt knowing it upset's Yasmin's organised brain).Lila doesn't live at the family home anymore, she lives in a squalid flat which resembles a rubbish tip (a reaction to the tidy and ordered life that Yasmin has imposed on everybody at home). She has an untidy love-life and debilitating eczema. Both Lila and Asif are resentful that their Mother lavished so much time and attention on making sure Yas was ok, that she seemed to overlook their wants and needs. They both have inferiority complexes, Asif feels unworthy to be loved and Lila self harms.

Yasmin, unaware of any of this, is living a life so scheduled and organised that the slightest change causes her extreme anguish. She eats only yellow food for breakfast, she repeatedly watches episodes of 'The Simpson's' on DVD and plays 'Doom' on her computer. She always wins at 'Scrabble' because she knows all the correct high scoring two letter words and when she hears music she see's it expressed in colour. She's not happy though and she doesn't feel hopeful. A TV production wants to film a documentary about Yasmin, Lila is totally against it, Asif is worried about it, but Yasmin, unpredictably, want's to do it.

Although a lot of the book is humorous, Yasmin's story is sad and I often felt moved to tears by it. Just reading simple things like the fact that she has to repeat to herself 'one Mississippi, two Mississippi' to remind herself of how long to keep eye contact for, when someone is talking to her, and how she had to have circles drawn for her on the lawn, to represent different people's 'personal space' ... differentiating between family, friends, acquaintances and strangers.

I wasn't so keen on Asif and Lila's stories, the bit's that didn't involve Yasmin ... Lila's especially. I don't know what it was, it seemed a bit lightweight and predictable, a bit soap-opera, and my interest flagged a little. I didn't know how Yasmin's story would pan out and I found I was far more interested in her than the other's.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

A fantastically macabre and sinister little book. Full of atmosphere and dread. You are grabbed straight away by the first paragraph.

'My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise, I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.'

This isn't strictly true, the two sisters live with their uncle Julian in their big rambling old house. uncle Julian isn't well, he hasn't been well since that fateful night when a dose of arsenic found it's way into the sugar bowl on the dining table.

'You will be wondering about that sugar bowl, I imagine. Is it still in use? you are wondering; has it been cleaned? you may very well ask; was it thoroughly washed?'

Synopsis: Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods - until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night. Acquitted of the murders, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the curiosity and hostility of the villagers. Their days pass in happy isolation until cousin Charles appears. Only Merricat can see the danger, and she must act swiftly to keep Constance from his grasp.

Review: We join the book as Mary Katherine or Merricat as she is nicknamed, is making her way home from her twice weekly shopping trip to the local village. She needs to go to get food and library books, Constance and uncle Julian never leave the house and Merricat wouldn't go either if it wasn't strictly necessary. The villagers stare at her, they mutter insults, the curtains twitch, shopkeepers serve her immediately to hasten her departure, the children jeer, they sing rhymes ..

'Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?

Oh no, said Merricat, you'll poison me.

Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go asleep?

Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!'

Constance had been suspected of the murders and put on trial but was subsequently aquitted. She looks after Merricat and uncle Julian now, lovingly attending to their every need and want. Cooking all their favourite things and making sure they're comfortable. But she never goes into the village, it would be too much for her.

Uncle Julian, in a wheelchair now (thankfully he didn't put too much sugar on his blackberries) and slowly losing his wits, is writing a book about the murders. He checks from time to time with Constance to verify the facts of that fateful day ... he constantly replays every moment.
Merricat loves her cat Jonas, she likes to bury and hide things as talismans. She can sense change is in the air and she thinks of three magic words ... Melody, Gloucester and Pegasus ... if nobody says these words then everything will be fine.

Change comes in the shape of cousin Charles. His parents had forbidden him to come to the aid of his orphaned cousin's and uncle before but now they are both dead. It's not long before he's settled into their fathers room. Merricat hates him, and not least because Constance seems to like him and is suddenly beginning to view things his way. Perhaps she should get on with her life, perhaps she should stop running around after Merricat and uncle Julian, perhaps she could
venture into the outside world again.

We inhabit Merricat's mind, everything we read is from her viewpoint. And Merricat's mind is a pretty dark and disturbing place to be. When she feels threatened, she often recites the names of poisonous plant's or mushroom's (drummed into her by Constance) which is very disturbing for their occasional do-gooding visitors. They hover over the cup of tea and cake they've been given, unsure now.

Merricat's distrust of Charles heightens, he is a threat to their future safety and security, Uncle Julian doesn't like or trust him either, only Constance is taken in.

The book ends quite tranquilly, though in a tragic and desolate way. I thought it was a good ending befitting the story. Like a calm after an extremely ferocious storm!

A strange little tale, quirky and unusual, macabre and disturbing. A real treat.

Notes from Underground

Synopsis: How far would you go to escape the real world? The underground man had always felt like an outsider. He doesn't want to be like other people, working in the ant-hill' of society. So he decides to withdraw from the world, scrawling a series of darkly sarcastic notes about the torment he is suffering. Angry and alienated, his only comfort is the humiliation of others. Is he going mad? Or is it the world around him that's insane?

Review: I could kick myself because I've only just realised the importance of reading the correct translation of this book, and I'm not altogether sure that this was the best translation, however, it was the only one in the library. It seems that Pevear and Volokhonsky are widely regarded to be the best translators of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky though I guess, like everything, it's subjective.

It's not an easy read that's for sure, even though it's short at around 150 pages, it was definitely a struggle to begin with (and perhaps that was down to the translation, I don't know).

He's most definitely Mr Angry, our man from Underground. He has a liver complaint and a toothache and yet he refuses treatment .. out of spite he says and spite is something he knows a lot about.

The first part of the book is a monologue from the narrator, our Underground Man. He starts off saying 'I am a sick man .. I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man' He's full of hate, he's disillusioned with the world, he's disillusioned and ashamed of his fellow man. He hates himself, he's paranoid and vindictive. His thoughts writhe and twist about in an agony of torment .. he broods and festers!

The second part of the book is a record of some specific events which befell our Underground Man earlier in his life and this was a lot easier to read. He invites himself to dine with a bunch of old school fellows, they clearly don't want him there but for the most part remain civil and courteous. Underground Man, suffering from real or imagined slights, begins abusing them verbally. He thinks they are looking down at him, being condescending and his behaviour towards them would make Victor Meldrew blush. He alternates between being outrageously rude and insolent to feeling humiliated and craving their approbation. At times his behaviour is nothing short of maniacal (but you couldn't help laughing from time to time, his behaviour was like a toddler's. At one point, after his friends had moved away from him to enjoy a few drinks on their own .. he marched up and down in front of them, making as much noise as possible, for three hours!).

That same evening he visits a young prostitute called Liza, he attempts to point out to her how terrible her future life will be if she continues to live in this low way. He illustrates it all with words so profound, that Liza is moved to tears. As he leaves, he gives her his address and tells her to come to him. As soon as he wakes up the following day he regrets this folly, he's oppressed by the thought that she will come to his shabby apartment and see him in his filthy clothes. He thinks she views him as heroic but that will all alter if she comes. He broods on this and it starts to annoy him (practically everything does) but as a few days pass and she doesn't appear, he relaxes and even indulges in a few romantic daydreams about her.

But then, during the worst possible time, when he is dressed as shabbily as possible and snarling and hurling insults at his servant, Liza appears. Our Underground Man is so full of shame that she has any reason to look down on him that he begins insulting and baiting her and, the final insult, as she hurries from the room in great distress, he runs after her and puts money in her palm.

This is where the narrator says that he will write no more from the Underground, although Dostoevsky adds a footnote to say that the notes continued on, but not for our eyes.

A challenging read, I enjoyed the second half more. I'd like to read the other translation someday, just to see if it makes a difference.

Middlesex

Synopsis: 'I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver's license records my first name simply as Cal.' So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Point, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, "Middlesex" is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.

Review:I loved this book and found it utterly absorbing and engrossing. It was a real pleasure to read, warm and funny for the most part but incredibly sad in places.

It's told from the viewpoint of Calliope/Callie/Cal Stephanides, who was, to all intents and purposes, born, or at least raised, a girl. However, as she nears puberty, alarm bells start ringing, not only in her own head, but in that of her parents also.

She narrates both the past and the present day story. We travel back to 1922, to Bithynios in Asia Minor, where Cal's grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty, are preparing to flee from the great fire of Smyrna (with a pretty shocking secret of their own) and make their way to Detroit, USA.

'I'm the descendant of a smuggling operation. Without their knowing, my grandparents, on their way to America, were each carrying a single mutated gene on the fifth chromosome'

They plan to stay with their only relation, cousin Sourmelina (Lina). In the five years since they've seen her, Lina has 'managed to erase just about everything identifiably Greek about her'. She know's their secret, but she's family, and in any case she has secrets of her own, they move into the house she shares with her husband, Jimmy Zizmo.

Lefty at first get's a job at the Ford plant in Michigan, but things don't work out for him there and he eventually opens a bar up in his own basement and calls it 'The Zebra Room'.

'Historical fact: people stopped being human in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joysticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds. But in 1922 i t was still a new thing to be a machine'.

He and Desdemona have a son, Milton, and Lina and Jimmy have a daughter, Tessie. Milton and Tessie are attracted to each other, but it's an attraction that Desdemona is vehemently against. Tessie, encouraged by Desdemona, agrees to marry Father Mike, but her love for Milton finally overcomes all opposition and anyway, what's wrong with second cousins marrying?.

In the present day Cal has met Julie, he really likes her, they've been dating for a while, but they haven't slept together. Whenever Cal finds himself in a relationship with a girl he likes, he can go so far but no further, he retreats, scared of what they will say and think. Will he ever be able to trust someone enough to be honest with them?

Tessie and Milton have two children, Chapter Eleven (I liked the fact that we were never told why he was called that) and Calliope. We follow Callie as she grows up, her growing doubts and fears that she's not like the other girls at school, her crush on the 'Obscure Object', right up until the fateful day, when, following an accident, a doctor discovers Callie's hermaphrodite anatomy. The fallout from this discovery is immense, it's heartbreaking to see how Cal and her parent's view this new situation, and what happens as a consequence.

It's a big book, but the pages flew by, at no time was it a trial or tedious. I literally ate up all the words, and, like with all good books, I miss the characters now it's ended.

Brideshead Revisited

Synopsis: The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, "Brideshead Revisited" looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.

Review: Brideshead Revisited or, The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder, is a story told in flashback, of Charles Ryder, and his fascination and infatuation, with the Flyte family at Brideshead. The story starts in England during WWII, Captain Charles Ryder and his men have been ordered to leave their barracks and travel to their next billet. They travel by train, and reach the outskirts of their destination in darkness and bad weather. They set up camp for the night, and in the morning Charles asks his second-in-command, for the name of the place they are heading to.

'He told me and, on the instant, it was as though someone had switched off the wireless, and a voice that had been bawling in my ears, incessantly, fatuously, for days beyond number, had been suddenly cut short; an immense silence followed, empty at first, but gradually, as my outraged sense regained authority, full of a multitude of sweet and natural and long forgotten sounds: for he had spoken a name that was so familiar to me, a conjuror's name of such ancient power, that, at its mere sound, the phantoms of those haunted late years began to take flight'

Charles begins to reminisce about his first visits to Brideshead, more than twenty years before, and about how he first met Sebastian Flyte at Oxford University (after a night of revelry Sebastian appeared at Charles's ground floor open window and promptly vomited into the room).

Sebastian is a complex character, quite childlike in a way, he carries his teddy bear Aloysius every where with him and converses with him as you would a friend or confidante, he's also charming, charismatic and self destructive. He appears to have a difficult relationship with his family (he is the younger son of the Marquess of Marchmain) and takes Charles on his first visit to Brideshead when he knows most of them will be absent.

Charles's relationship with his own father Ned is strained (and though I could see it was painful for Charles, I did find myself laughing at Ned's seemingly innocent but scathing remarks) and he's relieved when, during the holidays, he is summoned to Brideshead by a telegram from Sebastian that says 'Gravely injured come at once'. Fortunately, Sebastian has only cracked a bone in his ankle playing croquet .. a bone 'so small, that it hasn't a name' but he has no-one at home to keep him company. His sister Julia picks Charles up at the station but has pressing engagements of her own to attend to and all the rest of the family have already gone (the Father has long since eloped to Italy with his mistress).

This is when Charles really gets to know Brideshead and the Flyte family. Lady Marchmain, a strict Catholic, abandoned by her husband and trying to keep control of the rest of the family. Lord 'Bridey' Brideshead the eldest son, amiable enough but a bit stuffy and serious, with the same devout Catholic views as his Mother. Cordelia, the youngest sister, precocious, intelligent and loving, with the most devout Catholic belief of all. Julia, physically similar to Sebastian, confident and assured but wavering and doubtful about Catholicism. And of course, Sebastian, engaging and attractive, troubled and secretive and a self confessed half-heathen (though still believing in Catholicism as a 'lovely idea').Charles is an agnostic, and so is in turns bemused, irritated and curious, about the family's strict adherence to the Catholic faith.

Charles falls in love with Sebastian, he says he has been searching for love and then with Sebastian found that 'low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city' ... though whether it was a fully realised sexual love is debatable ... nothing overt is mentioned. Later on in the story he falls in love with Julia, but you can't help thinking that it's partly down to her connections with Brideshead, and her physical resemblance to Sebastian.

click here for the rest of the review - possible spoilers

Sebastian's life disintegrates spectacularly, maybe bought on by the constraints of his strict and religious upbringing. His occasional drinking bouts descend into fully fledged alcoholism, and he becomes a concern, and an embarrassment to Lady Marchmain. He drifts away from the family, and from Charles, and flees to Morocco, where he continues his dissolute lifestyle. I missed him a lot when he disappeared from the narrative (only to be mentioned in passing) and found the second half of the book not quite as enjoyable as the first.

Charles himself drifts away from the Marchmain family, he gets married and fathers two children, but is unhappy and restless. He encounters Julia again by chance and they strike up a relationship, but with new found Catholic fervour, Julia eventually decides that she cannot marry him, and instead joins the women's service, and ends up nursing in Palestine with Cordelia.

The story ends with Charles himself, twenty years after his first visit, saying a prayer of 'ancient and newly-learned word's', in the old Brideshead chapel. And you surmise from this, that he is possibly taking the first tentative steps towards his own conversion to the Catholic faith.

Exquisitely written, I enjoyed the first half enormously. The second half was far more melancholic, reflective and religious in tone but I still enjoyed it.