Christmas in a Nutshell

Happy Christmas! As always the season was full of madness and mayhem. We went to my mum and dad's for our annual pre-Christmas dinner and it was as noisy, chaotic and marvellous as ever. There are fifteen of us now so it's getting more and more difficult to squeeze us all in .. mum managed it though. This was the view taken from my mobile phone, as you can see everyone is far too busy with their dinner to bother to turn and smile which is just as it should be. We had a treasure hunt for the children after lunch, just for chocolate but then, what else do you want to hunt for at Christmas .. they all enjoyed it.

The weather stayed cold and snowy throughout the Christmas holidays, it was our first white Christmas in a long while (though strictly speaking it can't be called that because snow has to actually have fallen on the day and it didn't .. well, not here anyway!) I did my best to watch all of my favourite Christmas films .. 'The Grinch', 'Scrooge' (Albert Finney), 'Prancer', 'Nightmare before Christmas', 'The Muppet Christmas Carol' and 'The Polar Express'. Somehow, we didn't manage to see 'The Snowman' .. I don't know what went wrong or how we overlooked it but it happened. It's the first time since it came out that we haven't seen it on Christmas Day.

I received lots of books which was great, some of which I asked for and some which are complete surprises. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into them. I'm not good at keeping to resolutions but I really must make more of an effort to read from my bookshelves in 2011 but it leaves me in a bit of a quandary because I want to support my local libraries too .. it would be a disaster if any of them closed down and they will if they don't get enough support. I guess I will just have to try and do both.

It has to be said that the main thing I get for Christmas is always indigestion! There is nothing like a few days of turkey, christmas pudding, crackers, cheese, crisps, cake, mince pies and chocolate to make you feel more than a little dyspeptic. It's just not the right time of year to eat healthily. January will soon be upon us and that's the time to be abstemious as far as calories are concerned. In the meantime we will eat, drink and be merry .. after all, there's always Alka-Seltzer!

My attempt at Rocky Road.

Our quieter but none the less calorific Christmas dinner at home.

The Summer Book

Synopsis: An elderly artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter are away on a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. As the two learn to adjust to each other's fears, whims and yearnings, a fierce yet understated love emerges - one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the very island itself. Written in a clear, unsentimental style, full of brusque humour, and wisdom, "The Summer Book" is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own life and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of her adult novels. This new edition, with a Foreword by Esther Freud, sees the return of a European literary gem - fresh, authentic and deeply humane.

Review: Not a particularly good time to read this book .. I do prefer to read books in season but one glance at the foreword and I was hooked. I've not really got into Tove's writing before .. never having liked the Moomins but this is something completely different and for adults. It's a collection of short interlinked stories about six year old Sophie and her grandmother who spend their summers, along with Sophie's father, on a remote island.

Sophie is a smart little cookie and she definitely gets all her feistiness from her grandmother, they have a lovely relationship. Sophie's father is more of a shadowy figure, he's mentioned a lot but only in passing and is often off somewhere else doing necessary or exciting things. Sophie's grandmother is old, she's unsteady, she forgets things sometimes and has dizzy spells, this doesn't stop her from gadding about on her own or with Sophie exploring all the flora and fauna of the island, the skulls and bones and bogs and old roots. She's wise and unsentimental, very much talking to Sophie on equal terms and answering her interminable questions honestly and wisely. She understands that, despite Sophie's determination not to let it show, Sophie is still afraid of deep water, but she doesn't say anything about it, she just observes. She teaches Sophie about life and love and keeping imagination alive.

There are no flowery descriptions, no frills, everything is written down quite sparsely but there's also something incredibly magical about it. Grandmother carves outlandish creatures out of the dead wood in the magic forest and she and Sophie build a tiny replica Ventian city in the marsh pool. Grandmother says thing's like 'wake me up if you do anything that's fun' and 'did I ever tell you about the dead pig I found?' and 'with the best will in the world I cannot start believing in the Devil at my age' .. Sophie says 'you know, sometimes when everything's fine, I think it's just a bloody bore' and 'I hate you. With warm personal wishes. Sophie' and (to the cat) 'how many murdered today?'

I don't always like forewords in books and don't usually read them because quite often they give away too much of the plot but this one was a pleasure to read. Esther Freud, who is a huge fan of the book, goes out to the real island (that Tove spent her summers at) with Tove Jansson's niece Sophie (said to be the inspiration for the fictional Sophie) to spend a couple of days in the house that Tove built with her brother Lars back in 1947. A lot of what she finds there is instantly recognisable from the book, the woodpile, the steep stone steps, the faded blue paint etc. She decides to walk around the island and is shocked when she finds it only takes her four and a half minutes and feels a bit claustrophobic. However, after a few days of pottering about, swimming, foraging and generally enjoying the pace of island life she finds she feels more relaxed and the island seems larger somehow, she's sorry when her short visit comes to an end.

A very special read and one to treasure. I understand there is also a Winter Book which I would like to read but I don't think it's a continuation of the stories about Sophie and Grandmother.

Something Special

Synopsis: Yvonne believes there's more to life than marriage to Sam, the young man who's courting her. But when she tries to have fun, she gets caught up in a fracas in a bar. Sam's idea of "something special" meanwhile is to take her to St Stephen's Green later that night to show her a ghostly tree!

Review: I borrowed this from the library because I was enjoying reading The Sea, The Sea so much and because it's so short I read it in about half an hour. To say that Yvonne is less than enthusiastic about marrying Sam would be an understatement, she wants to have some fun and excitement. Sam thinks he will take Yvonne for a romantic moonlit walk by the river Liffey and then to see a fallen tree but Yvonne wants none of it, her idea of a good night out is to go to Kimballs and explore the slightly seedy downstairs bar and she's determined to have her way. Yvonne's mum and uncle just want to see her married to a decent man. A funny little story, set in Dublin, beautifully illustrated throughout with Michael McCurdy's lovely woodcut engravings.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

It's not often, in the South of England, that we get a white Christmas so it was particularly nice to wake up this morning to a very white world. We ran about snapping pictures and pulling scarves and hats on but the reality of it was that five minutes outside was all it took for us to long for the warmth of the wood burning stove and a hot cup of chocolate. Sadly we seem to have got to the age where we worry about broken bones and frostbite rather than how quickly we can build a snowman (when did that happen?) We did put our best foot forward and head to the shops because, after all, it is the last Saturday before Christmas but I can't say it was a very enjoyable experience and we abandoned it about an hour in.

Thoughts now turn to travelling and the trip we have to make tomorrow to the Sussex coast for the big family Christmas dinner, oh dear! It will be lovely to be there, it will be lovely to see all the family and absolutely heavenly to tuck into Mum's legendary Christmas dinner but oh heck .. the journey, which normally takes about two and a half hours, is going to be a trial. Still, it does look beautiful and perhaps it might just completely thaw out overnight who knows.

The Blue Flower

Synopsis: Penelope Fitzgerald's final masterpiece. Set in Germany at the very end of the eighteenth century, The Blue Flower is the story of the brilliant Fritz von Hardenberg, a graduate of the Universities of Jena, Leipzig and Wittenberg, learned in Dialectics and Mathematics, who later became the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis. The passionate and idealistic Fritz needs his father's permission to announce his engagement to his 'heart's heart', his 'true Philosophy', twelve-year-old Sophie von Kuhn. It is a betrothal which amuses, astounds and disturbs his family and friends. How can it be so? One of the most admired of all Penelope Fitzgerald's books, The Blue Flower was chosen as Book of the Year more than any other in 1995. Her final book, it confirmed her reputation as one of the finest novelists of the century.

Review: This is a book that came highly recommended by Susan Hill (in her words 'it's a novel of genius') in her book Howards End is on the Landing, I'd never heard of it before. When I next went to the library, there it was winking at me from the shelf and so, of course, I grabbed it gratefully.

It's a fictionalised account of the life of Friedrich von Hardenburg born in 1772, otherwise known as the German author, poet and philosopher Novalis, and known in this narrative as Fritz. In particular the book focuses on the relationship between Fritz and his true love Sophie von Kuhn. It's a pretty tall task for the reader to quite grasp the intensity of his love given that Sophie is only twelve when Fritz meets and proposes marriage to her. And indeed she doesn't seem to be particularly beautiful or intelligent (which is what Fritz's brother tries to tell him .. until he falls in love with her himself after five minutes in her company,) she's a bit silly and fanciful like most twelve year olds but then, love is often irrational and inappropriate.

Fritz himself is a very accomplished student and aspires to be a poet but is ultimately destined, as the eldest son, to follow in his fathers footsteps as the Salt Mine Directorate. His father sends him to study business with Coelestin Just and here he furthers his acquaintance with Karoline Just who is niece and housekeeper to her Uncle Coelestin. Karoline is pretty, kind, intelligent and (rather like Agnes Wickfield in David Copperfield) far more suitable as a match for Fritz but he see's her only as a dear friend, his heart is not moved by her.

It's Coelestin that first introduces Fritz to the Rockenthiel family and ultimately Sophie, and within a quarter or an hour of being in her company, Fritz's heart is irrecoverably lost. Before long he has proposed to her and sets out to find out as much as he can about her. He asks Sophie about her favourite food, how her studies are going, whether she likes music and in an effort to philosophise with her talks about transmigration and asks if she would like to be born again 'yes' says Sophie 'if I could have fair hair.' Fritz can only spend a limited time with Sophie but obtains permission to write, but when he receives a letter back from her she says that, although she loves to receive his letters, she herself can write no more. When Fritz enquires of her stepfather why this is so, he answers 'My dear Hardenburg, she must write no more because she scarcely knows how. Send for her schoolmaster and enquire of him!' however Sophie does continue to write him little epistles and he has to content himself with the flimsy information they contain and his occasional visits to the Rockenthiels.

However he is smitten, she is his 'wisdom' his 'true philosophy,' 'spirit guide' and 'heart's heart', and he sets about convincing his father to agree to the match. Again, it has to be said that his father is less than happy about it but he reluctantly consents. Sophie is now fourteen and ailing, she has tuberculosis. Still she makes the journey to Weissenfels to meet with Fritz and his family at their formal engagement party. She has to be carried in, she is pale but still eager and as high pitched as ever, she cannot dance or walk about and so Fritz brings each of his friends and relations forward to meet and congratulate her. But Sophie's health is deteriorating, she has to undergo several painful operations without anaesthetic and sinks further and further every day. Poor Fritz who, for the most part, is unable to be with his love, and doesn't know how to help her when he is, frets and his father is so affected by his visit to the ailing Sophie that he sobbingly declares that he will give her the ancestral home. It's at this point of the story that the reader is able to see more into Sophie's heart and mind and although she never really becomes any different, you do begin to love her yourself .. perhaps because of her desperate plight.

Written very much as a novel would have been written in the eighteenth century and very witty and warm despite it's tragic outcome. The book is full of interesting characters, both Fritz's and Sophie's family are all so well depicted especially Sophie's incredibly kind and caring older sister Friederike (or 'the Mandelsloh' as she's called,) who is also her close companion and nurse, and Fritz's lovely sister Sidonie and brother Erasmus.


click here to continue review - possible spoilers

It's very affecting, to read the afterword and to see that none of the characters actually lived very long. After Sophie's death, Fritz eventually married Julie von Charpentier and said in a letter to a friend 'an interesting life appears to await me .. still, I would rather be dead'. Fritz died in 1801 aged 29.

Susan Hill is still fretting about the fact that this did not win a major prize when it was published, she says 'I was a judge for a major prize the year The Blue Flower was entered and I have never tried so hard to convince others of anything as I did that this one was a rare, a great, novel whose like we might none of us see again.'

A Christmas Carol

Synopsis: Ebenezer Scrooge is unimpressed by Christmas. He has no time for festivities or goodwill toward his fellow men and is only interested in money. Then, on the night of Christmas Eve, his life is changed by a series of ghostly visitations that show him some bitter truths about his choices. "A Christmas Carol" is Dickens' most influential book and a funny, clever and hugely enjoyable story.

Review: Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without Scrooge, I annually dose myself up with a good dollop of Dickens starting with the book and meandering through several film versions. I love them all but especially the Albert Finney musical (particularly a pleasure because my Dad worked on it .. albeit as a humble scene painter), Alistair Simms version (again, probably because Dad thinks it is the definitive Scrooge) and the Muppet Christmas Carol (who would have thought that would work as well as it did?) I also saw the new 3D Jim Carey version at the cinema last December and thought it was fantastic. I've always thought that to do justice to the book, the ghost scenes are going to have to be CGI, and though I think there's still room for improvement (and am always hoping that either Tim Burton or Peter Jackson will have a go sooner or later) I thought they managed to get the atmosphere of the books over really well. I was disappointed to see that the film is only showing this year in 2D and then only on specific days .. bah humbug!

I have several different book versions and this year I thought I'd read the beautiful edition illustrated by P.J. Lynch, it's gorgeous and it just adds that extra something to the tale. There's probably nobody out there that doesn't know the story of old skinflint Scrooge .. 'a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner' .. who is visited one night by his former partner Jacob Marley in ghostly form and then by three ghosts, all sent to show him the error of his ways.

The part that I love the most is probably the Cratchit family Christmas which seems, despite all their poverty and worry, idyllic. They are just truly happy at being together for the day and I just love the description of their dinner with it's hissing gravy, gushing sage and onion and steaming pudding. In fact I'd love to re-create the dinner by having a goose instead of a turkey but I'm too worried there won't be enough leftovers and I'm far too fond of a turkey, ripe tomato and black pepper sandwich to give it up. Not to mention the worrying tales, I've heard from friends, with regards to the amount of fat that comes out of it, apparently you end up being thoroughly basted in it yourself. The story is beautifully written, Dickens was said to have single handedly reinvented Christmas with this tale and Thackeray called it 'a national benefit' ... it's him at his absolute best.

Something Rotten

Synopsis: Thursday Next, Head of JurisFiction and ex-SpecOps agent, returns to her native Swindon accompanied by a child of two, a pair of dodos and Hamlet, who is on a fact-finding mission in the real world. Thursday has been despatched to capture escaped Fictioneer Yorrick Kaine but even so, now seems as good a time as any to retrieve her husband Landen from his state of eradication at the hands of the Chronoguard. It's not going to be easy. Thursday's former colleagues at the department of Literary Detectives want her to investigate a spate of cloned Shakespeares, the Goliath Corporation are planning to switch to a new Faith based corporate management system and the Neanderthals feel she might be the Chosen One who will lead them to genetic self-determination. With help from Hamlet, her uncle and time-travelling father, Thursday faces the toughest adventure of her career. Where is the missing President-for-life George Formby? Why is it imperative for the Swindon Mallets to win the World Croquet League final? And why is it so difficult to find reliable childcare?

Review: It's that time again when I have to try and do justice to Jasper Fforde's writing .. always a difficult, nigh impossible task. The last time I was with Thursday she was pregnant, without husband Landen who had been eradicated, and dwelling in the Well of Lost Plots as head of Jurisfiction with a minotaur on the loose. The minotaur is still rampaging through fiction and because Thursday, and the other Jurisfiction agents, are keen to keep him alive, he has been darted with a dose of Slapstick with the hope that he will give away his whereabouts with outbreaks in fiction of custard-pie-in-the-face routines and walking-into-lamppost gags but so far no luck (though they cite the ludicrous four wheeled chaise sequence in The Pickwick Papers as being possible proof that he's passed through.) They have an inkling that he is currently residing in the Western genre (apparently he finds cattle drives relaxing) and decide to stake him out at the top of page seventy three of a book called Death at Double-X Ranch, but unfortunately things don't go to plan when Jurisfiction agent Emperor Zhark disastrously intervenes. Thursday is at the end of her tether and feels she needs a rest from Jurisfiction.

So she heads back to Swindon, this time with her two year old son Friday in tow (another reason for returning to the Outland is that Friday can only speak in Lorem Ipsum - the dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry - something he picked up in the Well) as well as her pet Dodo Pickwick and his totally unruly offspring Alan. She is accompanied there by Hamlet who himself has requested leave to the Outland to see if the rumours about Outlanders perceiving him to be a bit of a ditherer are true (he is one .. he can't even order a simple cup of coffee .. 'To Espresso or Latte that is the question. Whether tis tastier on the palate to choose white mocha over plain, or to take a cup to go. Or a mug to stay, or extra cream, or have nothing, and opposing the endless choice, end one's heartache' ... mind you I do sympathise with him there.) Hamlet is having a particular hard time of it, not known for his sunny nature he is particularly downcast now after losing his 'Most Troubled Romantic Lead' crown to Heathcliff ... again. Thursday heads off to her Mum's house which is already quite crowded with Lady Emma Hamilton in the spare room and Otto Bismarck in the attic but this is nothing new she once had Alexander the Great staying there (shocking table manners apparently.)

Problems come thick and fast for Thursday and within no time at all she learns that the local croquet team .. the Swindon Mallets .. must win the Superhoop or the world will be destroyed, the evil Goliath Corporation have decided to become a religion and Thursdays old adversary the fictional (but totally undeterred by that) Yorrick Kaine has become chancellor and is scheming to become an elected dictator. On top of this Thursday is told by her ChronoGuard Dad (in one of his time freezing appearances) that there will be three unsuccessful attempts on her life. Not so bad when you know that they will fail but pretty dire when you find out that the would be assassin is your best friends wife (known, thanks to a mess up at the printers, as the 'Windowmaker') Add to that some babysitting problems (Thursday can only get Melanie Bradshaw to sit, which is fine because she's a lovely lady but then, she is also a gorilla.), some romantic entanglements (namely Emma Hamiltons increasing fondness for both Hamlet and the living room drinks cabinet) a terrible haircut due to Thursdays stand in job for Joan of Arc and the discovery of her own officially sanctioned stalker and you begin to see what she's up against.

She finds herself back at SpecOps where her job now entails, thanks to Yorrick Kaine's anti Danish sentiment, the hunting and burning of Danish books (though of course no-one at LiteraTec agrees with this, they have plans to smuggle them into Wales) It's even more important now for Hamlet to keep a low profile and when news comes through, via Mrs Tiggywinkle, that there are problems back in the Bookworld with an unauthorised merger between Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor, it's clear he can't go home yet either. Good news comes in the form of thirteenth century Saint Zvlkx who has proclaimed in his Book of Revealments that the Swindon Mallets will win the Superhoop though quite how is a mystery as most of the team have been bribed, nobbled or pilfered. Unfortunately he has also proclaimed that the president-for-life (the eternally cheery 'turned out nice again' George Formby) will die two days after the Superhoop final which as it stands now would leave the way clear for Kaine. There is a chance that Landen can be un-eradicated after Thursday visits the Goliath Corporation who are now, thanks to their new religious zeal, seeking forgiveness for past wrongs. She's at first inclined to think that it's just another of their schemes but then Landen begins to flicker back to life (literally, he is sometimes there and sometimes not, leading to some very embarrassing not to say heartbreaking encounters for poor Thursday.)

One of the reasons that I liked this one a little more than it's predecessors was the twist towards the end involving Granny Next, firstly I had no idea it was coming (but you wouldn't have needed Saint Zvlkx's Book of Revealments to tell you that .. I think it's becoming clear that unless it's writ in six foot high letters I haven't a hope of foreseeing any plot twists) and secondly it made me feel very emotional which I hadn't before .. unless you count choking over your tea and toast as emotion. It's not all gloom and doom though, the puns come thick and fast and the pace of the books is, as always, hectic and exhilarating. I've only covered a zillionth of it as usual, there's so much more (cloned Shakespeare's, the M4 motorway service station for the semi-dead, a chimera loose in Swindon's Brunel Centre, the hilarious and recently resurrected St Zvlkx, and the croquet match from hell.) Reading these books is such a pleasure, you do have to work that little bit harder than normal but it's well worth it. I can't recommend them highly enough but, a word of warning, don't try and read them out of sequence.

Old Filth

Synopsis: FILTH, in his heyday, was an international lawyer with a practice in the Far East. Now, only the oldest QCs and Silks can remember that his nickname stood for Failed In London Try Hong Kong. Long ago, Old Filth was a Raj orphan - one of the many young children sent 'Home' from the East to be fostered and educated in England. Jane Gardam's new novel tells his story, from his birth in what was then Malaya to the extremities of his old age. Brilliantly constructed - going backwards and forwards in time, yet constantly working towards the secret at its core - OLD FILTH is funny and heart-breaking, witty and peopled with characters who astonish, dismay and delight the reader. Jane Gardam is as sensitive to the 'jungle' within children as she is to the eccentricities of the old. A touch of magic combines with compassion, humour and delicacy to make OLD FILTH a genuine masterpiece.

Review: An enjoyable read. Sir Edward Feathers or Old Filth (failed in London try Hong Kong) is a retired barrister and a Raj orphan. Despite the nickname Filth is scrupulously clean and has all the elegance of the 1920's, he always wears yellow silk socks from Harrods and a Victorian silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. He has a great reputation amongst his colleagues and is remembered fondly and still much discussed, even by the younger members at the Bar. As we join the story Filth is eighty and living back in the UK in Dorset. His wife Betty is now dead and Filth is at a bit of a loss without her, she seemed to be able to run things so efficiently .. she was good with the servants for instance, Filth hasn't a clue what the name of his cleaning lady is, he calls her Mrs-er. Both he and Betty had been born in the Far East but had been shipped back to Britain during childhood. Later, after trying unsuccessfully at the London Bar, Filth had fled to Hong Kong where his success was described as phenomenal. But it wasn't really a place Filth felt he could retire in, not any more, English was spoken less and less there, most of their friends had returned to England and the end of the Empire was drawing near. Betty and Filth decided to settle in Dorset and it had worked, Betty made it work, for she was the sort of woman who was determined not to fail at anything.

Life after Betty was always going to be difficult, but things take a turn for the worse when Filth's old enemy, another ex Hong Kong lawyer and in fact the only person that Filth has ever detested (and the feeling was mutual) Terry Veneering, has moved into the cottage next door (which seems, at first, to be an extraordinary coincidence.) Filth is horrified and determines not to have anything to do with him, which he successfully manages for two years. But then, one disastrous Christmas Day, when waiting for a taxi to take him to lunch, Filth manages to lock himself out of the cottage. The snow is fairly heavy, the taxi never arrives and Filth is forced to seek refuge with his next door neighbour. He finds Veneering however, very much altered.

The story jumps about quite a lot, alternating frequently between present and past. We read how Filth's mother died shortly after giving birth to him and how his father always remained a distant preoccupied figure seemingly disinterested in the young Edward. This seems to be one of the main themes of the book, how Filth is always to be left and forgotten (in a sense this seems worse than being reviled - to feel you've made no impact at all.) In order for him to learn English and to keep him free from illness he is sent back to Britain to lodge in Wales with Ma Dibbs with two of his cousins. We know something unspeakable happened there, something Filth cannot bring himself to reveal to anybody although it is often darkly hinted at. Of course, we don't get to read what it is until much later. Eventually the children are liberated and Edward is taken away to boarding school where he meets the boy who is to become his best friend, Pat Ingoldby. Pat's family welcome Edward .. or Teddy as they call him .. and he experiences what it's like to be part of a large loving family at last, or so it seems, but nothing lasts for long. At one point he is sent to his two maiden Aunt's to lodge, but they are so wrapped up in their own lives that they hardly even notice he's there. His life is a series of lonely journeys.

'He wondered wherever the glass of milk had come from. He had not drunk milk since Ma Didds in Wales. She must be here. He heard the hated voice. "You don't leave this cupboard until you've drunk this glass of good milk and you'd better not stir your feet because there's a hole in there beside you deep as a well and you'd never be heard of more." The long day, and not let out till bedtime, and six years old.
He took the milk back to the kitchen and poured it down the sink, opened a cake-tin and cut himself a slice of Betty's birthday cake and ate it rather guiltily because it wasn't yet stale. Then he poured himself a whiskey and soda, walked into the sun lounge and held the letter up towards the tulip bed. "Betty?" Emptiness. Silence. And silence within the house too. Outside a most unnatural silence. Not a car in the lane, or a plane in the sky, not a human voice calling a dog. Not the church clock on the quarters, not a breath of wind, not a bird on the bough.'

Filth is troubled by the secrets and mysteries of his past and his mind seems to be wandering too .. it's 'too full of litter'. He chats away to Betty still and listens carefully to her advice from beyond the grave. He embarks on a journey to visit his two cousins (not Betty's advice .. she would be horrified), taking with him some keepsakes of Betty's but it only seems to make matters worse. Eventually, believing himself to be dying, he confesses all to a priest and this is where we learn what actually happened in Wales. The one thing that becomes obvious is how difficult it is for children who have been uprooted and deprived of familial love to go on to have loving relationships themselves. Although his life with Betty was ordered and companionable, it's clear that Filth was unable to provide her with the emotional love she needed and, unbeknown to him, Betty sought this love elsewhere (Jane has written a follow up book The Man with the Hat which is Betty's story.) Finally, having gone full circle, Old Filth embarks on one last journey, back to the only place he has ever thought of as home.

Despite the serious themes this is a book that's full of humour and great characters. Gardam says she owes a great debt to Rudyard Kipling's autobiography for the insight and inspiration for the story.

Tis the Season

It's very hard to keep merry at this time of the year, the queues are long, tempers frayed and the shops seem to be full of things you don't want and empty of things you do.

What a pleasure it was then to take some time out to wander around Cirencester one evening and enjoy carols, a lantern procession and a Germanesque Christmas market. By the time we got there most of the shops were closed (although the stalls at the market were open) so a lot of the hustle and bustle had gone and people were meandering about happily.

It has to be said that it didn't quite compete with the Cologne Christmas market that we visited a few years back, this one is on a much smaller scale, but there are still lots of stalls selling lovely handcrafted goods, decorations and great food. There is mulled wine, Gloucester old spot sausages and the densest, most chocolatey brownies that I've ever tasted (these were probably the reason we walked home in record quick time.)


The lanterns were gorgeous too, every conceivable Christmas shape made out of willow and coloured tissue paper. Algie thinks he will make one next year and take part ... I'm guessing it might take the form of a giant toblerone.

A lovely evening despite a catastrophic start at Costa .. we ordered a Caramel Latte which I hated. It was supposed to be a Crème Brûlée Latte but to be honest the menu is so extensive that I was lucky to end up with any kind of coffee at all. Still it helped keep the chill off.

Algie forgot to charge up his camera so that explains the pretty poor photo's, these were the best of a bad bunch which was a shame because the lanterns were glorious.

Half of a Yellow Sun - Audiobook

Synopsis: Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, this is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written literary masterpiece. This highly anticipated novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of a vicious civil war in which a million people died and thousands were massacred in cold blood. The three main characters in the novel are swept up in the violence during these turbulent years. One is a young boy from a poor village who is employed at a university lecturer's house. The other is a young middle-class woman, Olanna, who has to confront the reality of the massacre of her relatives. And the third is a white man, a writer who lives in Nigeria for no clear reason, and who falls in love with Olanna's twin sister, a remote and enigmatic character. As these people's lives intersect, they have to question their own responses to the unfolding political events. This extraordinary novel is about Africa in a wider sense: about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race; and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.

Review: This is the second of Chimamanda's books that I've listened to, the first being 'Purple Hibiscus', and I much preferred this one. Having said that, it's not an easy listen or read. It details the horrors of the Nigerian-Biafran civil war as seen through the eyes of three people ... Ugwu - a lecturers houseboy, Olanna - the lecturer's partner and Richard - the English journalist who is living with Olanna's twin sister Kainene. The writing has such an authenticity to it, frighteningly so as the book progresses .. it's crisp and unflinching in a way that lets you know that the writer knows her subject thoroughly. Like with most books it starts by introducing us to it's main characters, so we join Ugwu as he spends his first day as houseboy to Odenigbo (and sleeps with cooked chicken in his pockets, having been rather overwhelmed by the well stocked fridge) and we read Olanna's account of her first meeting with Odenigbo. Olanna's twin sister is as unlike her as can be, Olanna is beautiful and has a willingness to please whereas Kainene, perhaps as a result of possessing neither of these traits, or at least not possessing them in as much abundance as Olanna, is more wordly and cynical. Kainene is not one of our narrators, but we get to know her well by the narration of her sister and her boyfriend Richard, this is also the case with Olanna's boyfriend, the lecturer, Odenigbo. At this point of time there are just the murmurings and simmerings of war, although the book does jump backwards and forwards, it doesn't stick to a traditional timeline as such .. parts one and three deal with our characters pre-war and parts two and four with the war and aftermath.

But Adichie doesn't just deal with war in itself but the consequences of war, the starvation, corruption and disease, the uncertainty and terror and the feeling of helplessness and anger that comes with the loss of human rights. It's not just facts and figures written down, it's also about how you cope with seeing loved one's suffer or die of malnutrition. It's how you react to seeing people dismembered .. how do you stay sane? How do you keep carrying on when you have seen friends and relations slaughtered, witnessed rape and faced the daily struggle to find food?. It's about the fear of conscription and the battle to keep living for just another day .. how can you get word to your family or find out if they are safe? As the full intensity of the war impacts upon the lives of those that we've come to know, the book really heats up. It's seering, harrowing, uncomfortable stuff and very emotional.

The first part of the book was fairly slow going, and I did find it a struggle to stay engaged, but in a way that made the second part all the more affecting. The narration of the audiobook was fantastic and I think that helped a lot. Without it, I think I might have struggled more with the dialogue and the slow going first half.

Ruby's Spoon

Synopsis: This is the tale of three women - one witch, one mermaid and one missing - and how Ruby was caught up in between. When Isa Fly appears in the doorway of Captin Len's Fried Fish Shop, thirteen-year-old Ruby is entranced. Isa comes from the coast where the air is fresh; unlike Ruby's home in Cradle Cross, its factory furnaces pumping and filthy slits of canal water sending up a stink. Isa is on the hunt for a missing person, and Ruby is eager to help, convinced she will be repaid with an adventure at sea. But some of the townsfolk are instantly suspicious of the outsider with her shock of white hair and glinting mirrored skirts. They have their own lost relatives to mourn, and don't take kindly to Isa's ability to leave their Ruby spellbound. Undaunted, Ruby introduces Isa to Truda Blick, the bluestocking graduate who has just inherited the town's button factory, where carcasses are rendered down and bones turned into buttons. Blickses is on the verge of collapse, and Truda has her work cut out. Ruby is desperate to help Truda and Isa but her alliance with the women is pushing the town to the brink of riot. All the trouble began, it seems, when Isa Fly arrived in Cradle Cross...Only Ruby knows enough to save them all. But first she must save herself.

Review: This is another one that I loved and another promising debut. Thirteen year old Ruby Abel Tailor is a great character, full of spirit and spark. The writing is beautifully imaginative, there's a lot of criticism that the story needs a good edit (I nearly didn't read it because the reviews are fairly bad but the cover sang out to me at the library,) but I soaked it all up and wanted more .. I do love adult fairy tales. Rather like The Girl with Glass Feet this could be a book for older children, there's just one or two phrases/rhymes that push it over into unsuitable. Ruby and some of the townsfolk of Cradle Cross speak in a strong Black Country dialect which can take some getting used to but after a chapter or so I was ok (although I have to say I pitched it more in the West Country which is geographically incorrect but seemed right in my head.)

The book is full of interesting characters, Ruby of course is central to it all, she's a sparky little thing but also a thinker and a worrier. She lives a bit of a stifled life with her Nan Annie who loves her but is afraid of losing her and so attempts to hem her in. For one thing Nan Annie forbids Ruby to go anywhere near water, understandably so as family members have drowned, but it's a tall order in Cradle Cross because the town is surrounded by the cut, a dark, dank, smelly body of water full of rusting iron, bones and cack (Ruby's words.) Ruby is also close to Captin and works in his fried fish shop. Captin is a sort of surrogate father or grandfather rather as Ruby's own dad, Jamie Abel, is still alive. He hasn't lived at home for many moons since he fell out with Nan Annie. He lives, works and sleeps at the Dead Arm, a dock where he mends boats and where Ruby brings his dinner every day. Ruby also helps hand out the tea's at the Ruth and Naomi Thursday club, a club formed just after the war, for women who had lost loved one's .. 'tending and mending their grief where the years had worn it thin.' .. it's not a very exciting life for a thirteen year old.

'Through the folds and entries to the Deadarm Ruby ran, quick as she could without slopping Jamie Abel's dinner out the bowl. She wanted time to call at Isa's, to go over the list of people from the chapel records who they could ask about the Fly's. The sooner they found Moonie's missing daughter, the sooner they could go down to St Shirah.
She skittered down the slope towards the Deadarm. Could hear her father hammering inside the boat, still in it's cradle. He kept a steady rhythm, relentless and unyielding in each strike on iron on nail, and as she set his bowl down on the towpath's edge, something ruptured inside Ruby. Flooded, she was, by a pulsing swell of long-dammed indignation. "What will he do when I have gone?" (She told herself, defiant, that she would not yearn for him. How could she miss her father when she had not so much as touched his hand in seven years?) "What will he do without me? What will he do when I have gone to sea? Who will bring his dinner? Who will come and fetch his empty bowl? Who will bring his tea leaves and his bread? His tooth powder, his soap? A flimsy way of living, this" thought Ruby. Her father, sheltering beneath a workbench on a bed of horn sacks filled with shavings from the oak; his evening lit by paraffin in a black lamp hung high from a nail, and sleeping in a tarry dark, sticky from the years of cooking pitch and bitumen. Seven years, he'd camped here, emptying his cack and p*ss into the Cut, and from the start she'd told herself it was a temporary arrangement: one day he'd come home. How could this be anything but short-lived?
Jamie Abel hammered on. A lurching in her belly, and Ruby saw with piercing clarity, so sharp it snatched her breath that she had shored this up; she had sustained his segregation. With every bowl that she had brought him and every twist of tea, she had lent this arrangement permanence and given her consent. As long as she continued, daily, laying down his dinners, he would never leave the Deadarm. Too easy for him to stay here, and she had made it so.'

Maybe that's why Ruby is so taken with Isa Fly, a mysterious woman with salt white hair, one blind eye and an emerald skirt glinting with mirrors. Isa appears at Captin's fish shop one night searching for a lost relative. She has a way of storytelling which captures Ruby immediately, Ruby is determined to help and in return she hopes that Isa will take her back with her when she returns to Severnsea. For although Ruby has an instilled fear of water she has a longing and a hankering to sail on salty seas and she can smell sea breezes on Isa. In their search the two of them forge an unlikely friendship with Truda Cole Blick, another outsider, who has recently inherited the towns button factory.

To say that the townswomen are suspicious of Isa is an understatement, they believe she is the very Devil incarnate set to bring ruin to Cradle Cross and the local children sing rhymes about her 'Isa Fly has got one eye - Her father pawned the other. And then he cut her heart away, And fed it to her brother.' They believe she has bewitched their dear Ruby, not to mention Captin and Truda. Especially hostile is Belle Severn or to give her her nickname 'The Blackbird'. Belle works the dredger in the cut and seems to be particularly concerned about Isa's presence in Cradle Cross, she makes threats to Ruby, telling her she will drown her if she doesn't tell her what Isa has come there for. The women are not very keen on Truda either who, in order to try and save the factory from closure, has made some pretty unpopular changes. Ruby, acting as errand girl for Truda, finds herself for the first time, criticised and unwelcome amongst the women who have always held her dear. Nobody in Cradle Cross has ever heard of Isa's missing relative and even Isa herself doesn't seem all that intent on continuing the search. Life starts to change for Ruby, everything she has always held dear and true begins to unravel. Things in Cradle Cross become desperate, precious items are stolen and others desecrated, all eyes are turned towards Isa Fly and the Ruth & Naomi's adopt their own methods to try and rid the town of her ... but Ruby is determined to stick by her however dangerous it gets.

An atmospheric other-worldly tale of water and the sea, of witches, mermaids, secrets, grudges, rumours and resentments and of one young girls longing for a different kind of life. It's an unusual book, it's not going to be to everyone's taste (the dialect for one thing.) Slightly similar to The Undrowned Child and I Coriander but more challenging and more original. I love the cover it's really appealing and there's a lovely little hand drawn map of Cradle Cross inside which is so useful when you're just finding your way around. I think I fell under it's spell, I must read it again soon.

Letters from Father Christmas

Synopsis: The first ever B-format edition of Tolkien's complete Father Christmas letters, including a new introduction and rare archive materials. Every December an envelope bearing a stamp from the North Pole would arrive for J.R.R.Tolkien's children. Inside would be a letter in strange spidery handwriting and a beautiful coloured drawing or some sketches. The letters were from Father Christmas. They told wonderful tales of life at the North Pole: how all the reindeer got loose and scattered presents all over the place; how the accident-prone Polar Bear climbed the North Pole and fell through the roof of Father Christmas's house into the dining-room; how he broke the Moon into four pieces and made the Man in it fall into the back garden; how there were wars with the troublesome horde of goblins who lived in the caves beneath the house! Sometimes the Polar Bear would scrawl a note, and sometimes Ilbereth the Elf would write in his elegant flowing script, adding yet more life and humour to the stories. No reader, young or old, can fail to be charmed by the inventiveness and 'authenticity' of Tolkien's Letters from Father Christmas.

Review: Well, I know it's a little bit early, and I did mean to ration myself, but once you pick this book up you just can't stop yourself from reading all of it. It's an absolute delight. Of course, it's meant to be for children but I found myself totally absorbed in the letters that Tolkien's Father Christmas sent to his children each and every December. The beautiful pictures alone were worth the purchase price ... they're stunning. Father Christmas's letters are full of wonderful tales about the North Polar Bear and how, although he meant well, he nearly always caused a disaster of some sort in the run up to Christmas, tales of terrible goblins and their attempts to sabotage things and stories about Snow Elves, Penguins, Red Gnomes and Cave Bears. Often the North Polar Bear writes too, adding comments or writing little letters himself .. his spelling is atrocious but then .. he is a bear, and it's all he can do to hold a pen.

I was very fond of my own Dad's attempts to be Father Christmas but tbh .. compared to this he didn't come close (though I would never tell him) it was too easy to suss him out. But I'm sure the Tolkien children must have been completely taken in ... I was (and I know the truth!!) As we already know from his books, he has a wonderful imagination and an innate understanding of how to connect with children, the letters are funny and completely magical and what was clever too is that he sometimes explained why he couldn't get a certain present or why maybe the presents weren't as plentiful as perhaps they had been in past years, lessening the disappointment and the complaints presumably (who would have guessed that goblins would do anything to get their evil mitts on anything related to Hornby trains?!?)

These letters date from the 1920's until the 40's when I guess his youngest child, Priscilla, had got too old for the letters anymore .. I would have insisted upon them continuing if I'd have been her .. even if I had sussed him out by then. I thought Priscilla got a bit of a raw deal compared to the others, her letters seemed a bit more hasty and she didn't always get a picture but then it was the war years and Tolkien was also a lot older by then so it's understandable. Glorious!! A perfect Christmas present for anyone .. adult or child.

Howards End is on the Landing

Synopsis: This is a year of reading from home, by one of Britain's most distinguished authors. Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know her own collection again. A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life. Wandering through her house that day, Hill's eyes were opened to how much of that life was stored in her home, neglected for years. "Howard's End is on the Landing" charts the journey of one of the nation's most accomplished authors as she revisits the conversations, libraries and bookshelves of the past that have informed a lifetime of reading and writing.

Review: What could be more perfect, a book about books and book reading. It's clear that every single room in Susan's house is stuffed full of books, to say I was emerald green with envy would be an understatement .. her farmhouse just seemed to be a book lovers paradise. But most of us, even with more modest collections of books, have books than we own that we've never ever read and this is Susan's dilemma .. she's determined that she won't buy any new books for a year in an attempt to read or re-read some of her books. It's a book that will have you constantly jotting down book titles and googling authors etc, Susan is so enthusiastic about her subject that it's infectious. She ponders lots of questions that are frequent favourites here ... such as 'does a good book title make a difference' (Susan thinks so .. she says she can't be bothered to read a book that's just entitled something like 'Far and Near' .. though it does depend doesn't it .. The Road is not the most exciting of titles and yet it's premise makes it intriguing. She's particular about type face too .. not tolerating anything in sans serif .. particularly arial!.

She's fairly brave in her views and not afraid to say that she doesn't really enjoy Jane Austen and she's clearly not a fan of the electronic book either .. 'no one will sign an electronic book, no one can annotate in the margin, no one can leave a love letter casually between the leaves'. I was also relieved to read that she doesn't mind a bit of book abuse either, freely admitting to crimes such as scribbling in books and *in hushed tones* 'turning down the corners of pages'. One chapter has her spending a whole day looking through her collection of pop-up books of which she is a fan. I haven't got many, if any, pop up books, but I do love to collect illustrated books and it made me realise that I don't look at them nearly enough.

The book is full of anecdotes. Through the course of her life Susan has been lucky enough to meet several famous authors especially in her younger days (Edith Sitwell, WH Auden, Ian Fleming and most touchingly Iris Murdoch both before and after the onset of dementia) and the book has her reminiscing over these meetings. Like Gyles she isn't particularly a fan of Roald Dahl (in person that is, she's a huge fan of his writing - though she did say he'd mellowed with age - new wife apparently.)

One of the things I most liked about it was the discussions about Susan's top 40 essential books ... the 40 books she couldn't possibly do without and it's interesting to read how she makes her choices out of all the Shakespeare plays and all the novels of Dickens/Trollope etc and to see how your own thoughts correspond (or not.) She gives us her final list on the last two pages but it is marred slightly by the fact that neither Susan or her editor noticed that one book went on the list twice. That's just a tiny gripe though (because I'd love to know what book would have been elevated to the list after the amendment had been made.) On the whole I loved it and didn't want to finish it. It's fairly short and the sort of book that you can read easily in one sitting (if you've got a bit of time to spare) and I had to ration my reading so that I could eke out the enjoyment.

I didn't agree with all of her opinions but I could read them forever.

Susan's 40 'Can't do Without' Books:
click here to continue review - possible spoilers

1. The Bible
2. The Book of Common Prayer (1662)
3. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens
4. The Mayor of Caterbridge - Thomas Hardy
5. Macbeth - Shakespeare
6. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe - Carson McCullers
7. A House for Mr Biswas - V.S. Naipaul
8. The Last September - Elizabeth Bowen
9. Middlemarch - George Eliot
10. The Way we Live Now - Anthony Trollope
11. The Blue Flower - Penelope Fitzgerald
12. The Last Chronicle of Barset - Anthony Trollope
13. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
14. A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
15. Washington Square - Henry James
16. Trolyus and Criseyde - Chaucer
17. The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene
18. The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
19. The Rectors Daughter - F.M. Mayor
20. On the Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin
21. The Diary of Francis Kilvert
22. The Mating Season - P.G. Wodehouse
23. Galahad at Blandings - P.G. Wodehouse
24. The Pursuit of Love - Nancy Mitford
25. The Bell - Iris Murdoch
26. The Complete Poems of W.H. Auden
27. The Rattle Bag. Edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes
28. Learning to Dance - Michael Mayne
29. Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes
30. A Time to Keep Silence - Patrick Leigh Fermor
31. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
32. Family and Friends - Anita Brookner
33. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
34. The Journals of Sir Walter Scott
35. Halfway to Heaven - Robin Bruce Lockhart
36. The Finn Family Moomintroll - Tove Jansson
37. Clayhanger - Arnold Bennett
38. Learning to Dance - Michael Mayne ??
39. Amongst Women - John McGahern
40. The Four Quartets - T.S. Eliot

The Catcher In the Rye

Synopsis: "The Catcher in Rye" is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection. Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it's a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at all). Salinger's style creates an effect of conversation, it is as though Holden is speaking to you personally, as though you too have seen through the pretences of the American Dream and are growing up unable to see the point of living in, or contributing to, the society around you. Written with the clarity of a boy leaving childhood, it deals with society, love, loss, and expectations without ever falling into the clutch of a cliche.

Review: I wasn't expecting to like this one, I don't know why .. it has a bit of a difficult reputation but I liked it a lot. I loved the opening paragraph .. 'If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfied kind of c**p, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all - I'm not saying that - but they're also touchy as hell.' ... that sort of sets the scene really and straight away you get a handle on the character of your narrator.

Holden has a naturally conspiratorial chatty style, his thoughts on all subjects just tumble out. It's clear he's depressed (for one thing that's his favourite expression .. he finds nearly everything depressing or phoney) but it's also clear that this depression has swung over into something more serious and stifling. Holden's younger brother Allie died and this is something which has obviously had a big effect on him, he has a great love for his younger sister too and a need to try and protect her. When asked what he really wants to be, Holden says that he wants to be the man who stands by the cliff at the edge of a field of rye catching the children and stopping them from accidentally going over the edge (Holden quotes Robert Burns' poem 'Coming through the Rye' in which he wrote 'gin a body meet a body coming thro' the rye' .. Holden has always thought the line was 'if a body catch a body coming through the rye'.)

As the synopsis says there isn't much of a plot to speak of, Holden has been kicked out of his fourth school but instead of going home at the end of term he decides to bunk off early by a few days and just wander around the city for a bit before facing the wrath of his parents. It's clear his teachers are bemused by him, he's clever but doesn't seem to want to apply himself, he doesn't really have any friends, he gets on with his roomies ok but he doesn't really like them, he likes women but finds it hard to sustain a relationship with any of them. Really, he just can't deal with the insincerity, lies and phoniness that are part of ordinary adult life. He doesn't want to communicate with anybody, he'd rather be mute .. even when he envisages a wife he has her writing her conversations down on paper.

I think Salinger has captured the confused withdrawn cynical adolescent world perfectly, Holden is a complex character but he's so open with his thoughts and feelings that it's fairly easy to see why his life has come to this. He repeats himself constantly which I took to be further signs of his troubled mind. One thing I was impressed with particularly is how Salinger gives us an insight into Holden's behaviour by the way the other characters react to him .. for instance during what looks like normal conversations (or at least Holden's normal rambling style) Holden is often told to stop shouting/screaming .. and you realise then that his behaviour is more erratic than you thought. The book doesn't tie up all the ends and I quite like that too, you're left to draw your own conclusions about Holden and his future.