The Complete Polysyllabic Spree

Synopsis: In his monthly accounts of what he's read - along with what he may one day read - Nick Hornby brilliantly explores everything from the classic to the graphic novel, as well as poems, plays, sports books and other kinds of non-fiction. If he occasionally implores a biographer for brevity, or abandons a literary work in favour of an Arsenal match, then all is not lost. His writing, full of all the joy and surprise and despair that books bring him, reveals why we still read, even when there's football on TV, a pram in the hall or a good band playing at our local pub.

Review: Oh I do love reading these sorts of books, it's wonderful to be able to have a nose around an author's bookshelves. This is the complete collection of monthly columns (which were entitled 'Stuff I've Been Reading') that Nick wrote for 'The Believer' magazine spanning from September 2003 to June 2006. Each month starts with two columns ... a list of books he's bought and a list of books he's read and just like the rest of us it seems he can't resist buying books even when there are hundreds waiting to be read on his shelves. He's also a serial abandoner and unfinisher, not seeing the point of plodding on with a novel he's not enjoying ... his view is that reading will never survive as a leisure activity if we all think we have to continue reading books which are a trial for us. I loved the description of his struggle with Iain M.Banks's 'Excession' ... 'the urge to weep tears of frustration was already upon me even before I read the short prologue, which seemed to describe some kind of androgynous avatar visiting a woman who has been pregnant for forty years and who lives on her own in the tower of a giant spaceship. By the time I got to the first chapter which is entitled 'Outside Context Problem' and begins '(CGU Grey Area signal sequence file #n428857/119)' I was crying so hard that I could no longer see the page in front of my face, at which point I abandoned the entire ill-conceived experiment altogether. I haven't felt so stupid since I stopped attending physics lessons aged fourteen' ... although I did get further than the first chapter this is exactly how I felt when I tried reading Steven Erikson's 'Gardens of the Moon' .. it may as well have been written in Greek for all I understood it.

Because of the books chatty style and magazine column format, it's a book you can dip in and out of easily (though you'll probably prefer to hoover it up all at once like I did.) It's quite informal and you just feel like you're chatting with a friend over coffee, albeit a friend with an incredible knowledge of books and writing. He's not smug or pretentious at all, he's got a great sense of humour and that comes over in abundance ... saying stuff like (about 'Motherless Brooklyn') ... 'it wasn't just up my street, it was actually knocking on my door and peering through the letterbox to see if I was in' ... I was constantly laughing. He makes some great points too about the need not to be sniffy about other people's book choices which I know I can sometimes be guilty of, it's the same with music .. if it's making someone happy and entertaining them then that's all that matters.

The books that he read and discussed for the most part were new to me but his enthusiasm for those he enjoyed is simply infectious, you will find yourself jotting down book titles and authors constantly and I have a feeling that I'll be trying books that I never would have thought of otherwise (and that's one of the themes of this book .. Nicks belief that reading one book often leads you to another.)

I'll try and gloss over the fact that he's an Arsenal supporter and therefore my sworn enemy. It's a great book and I just wish the column had run and run.

The Bluebird Cafe

Synopsis: John Vir owns a newsagent in Southampton - the only shop that still stocks packets of petrified celery soup, drosophila-studded fruit and boxes of henna. Lucy and Paul are his favourite customers - they live across the road above Snooke's Electrical Stores, soon to become the Bluebird Cafe. Stencilling blue doves below the picture rails and buying stripped-pine chairs from the Oxfam furniture store Lucy works in the newly opened cafe whilst Paul spends his time at the Badger Centre as a volunteer. Meanwhile John Vir thinks of little else but Lucy and invites her to the cash 'n' carry, hoping of course, that it will be a prelude to something more exciting, for them both.

Review: This was a bright, breezy and quick read (just like this review hopefully) about Lucy and Paul. Lucy owns and runs the Bluebird Cafe (not very successfully it has to be said .. the place is vegetarian and more often than not empty) and Paul is mad about wildlife and conservation. It's quite funny, especially the secondary characters like Mr Vir who runs the corner shop, he's infatuated with Lucy and schemes to get rid of Paul with poisoned samosa's, slow witted Gilbert who is the cafe's most regular customer (but somehow they never have the heart to charge him for his food) and his girlfriend (who's name quite escapes me) who's the sort of person who always sit's next to me on the bus (i.e. nutter) .. I loved her, she wears loud, unmatching, cast off clothes and doesn't understand the concept of personal space. Lucy and Paul are nice, but that's it .. they're just nice, I'm not sure I cared enough about them. It's not rubbish, it made me smile a lot, I didn't want to abandon it .. I just didn't get swept away by it . Rebecca is a distant relation of Jane Austen which was the thing I was most excited about.

Fforde Perfect

Alan told me before we went to Hay that we had to be quite punctual on leaving because he had booked a special birthday surprise for me. He said that he had booked tickets for us to attend a talk given by an author about their latest book. He wouldn't tell me who it was, only that it was a he and that I had read and enjoyed his books (that turned out to be an understatement!) I knew it was to be held at a church in Abingdon and I promised him I wouldn't google it which I didn't though I hardly know how I managed it now.

I have to admit that my mind was boggling and I slightly dreaded it. I was pretty sure that Alan knew the authors I liked and disliked but what if he had got into a muddle or had mixed my views up with someone else's .. someone on the TV for instance (this happens more than you would think), would I have to smile and look thrilled when I was faced with .... well, I'll leave it blank .. it would be rude otherwise.

We did cut it a bit fine on leaving because we had to have once last look/browse around Hay which resulted in more book buying but we got home in plenty of time to change, head off to Abingdon and even have a drink before it was time to find the church. Alan told me who it was before we got there, I think he wanted to be the one to tell me rather than it dawn on me when I was faced with a trestle table full of Thursday Next's. Imagine my delight! I absolutely adore Jasper's writing and to be able to spend an evening listening to him was just brilliant. Despite the terrible venue (not the church .. that was lovely but almost on cue they began digging up the road outside .. at one point it sounded like we'd be bulldozed to oblivion) he was amazing, so welcoming and friendly and very very funny.

Although he did give us a bit of background history about Thursday and read us a short extract from 'One of Our Thursday's is Missing' as well as talking about 'Shades of Grey' (the sequel is not due until the year after next :-( )and 'The Last Dragonslayer', he prefers to answer questions from the audience feeling that it produces a more random and informative talk and provides everyone (not to mention Jasper himself) with a different experience should they attend more than one event. I wasn't brave enough to ask him anything (well, not until I was before him having my book signed) but there were plenty of people who were, in fact we overun slightly, and it was so interesting listening to him talk, not only about his books, but about writing in general.

Some of the snippets I picked up were ... that he is a Bronte reader rather than an Austen one (believing that families are always one or the other ... if only ... apart from Enid's books I can only remember a liberal amount of Catherine Cookson and Zane Grey in our house!) He thinks Jane's heroines are a little bit prissy.... having said that he hates 'Wuthering Heights' with a passion and was glad to get the opportunity to lampoon the characters in 'The Well of Lost Plots'. When asked if some characters were too sacred for him to use in his books, he said that he really reveres Jane Eyre and although of course she appears in his first book, his respect for her was such that he couldn't write extensive dialogue for her .. it sounded wrong and unnecessary. The book/characters he most admires are Scout and Jem in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

I had such a great time, and it was a wonderful birthday treat. I can't wait to read the book now but I still have 'First Among Sequels' on my TBR's.

Hay-on-Wye

I'm just back from a glorious few days in the town of books .. Hay on Wye on the Welsh/English border. It's an absolute book lovers paradise, there are about thirty seven bookshops and anywhere they can squeeze in a bookshelf they do.

I took my list of books with me and though I didn't stick to it religiously, it helped me to focus because to be honest you could just go mad in a place like Hay. Alan took my list and went off searching for the books I wanted ... I tried to rely on memory to help me out (not always successfully.) The bookshops are often housed in buildings that are ancient (one is in a ruined castle) and there are tottering piles of books everywhere. You find yourself halfway up a rickety staircase .. craning your neck sideways to look at the book lined walls .. there's no room for superstition, you get passed on the stairs a hundred times. Nearly all the books are filed alphabetically (by author) so that makes life a lot easier but sometimes they're just mish mashed together and you have to work a bit harder. Every day we went back to the hotel Alan photographed my book haul so far (see pics) .. day one looks a bit pathetic but we only reached Hay at half past two in the afternoon and had to book in etc so I thought I'd done pretty well to find anything. I bought some more before I left for home so the pics aren't quite up to date but almost. The little card that's in some of the photographs is an early birthday card for me from Alan, he looked especially for one with books on (he's spoiled me so much, I'm beginning to get suspicious.

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

The hotel was lovely, there were bookcases everywhere .. even in the loo and you were free to borrow any of the books to read (which I did .. I bought fifty odd books over three days and took my own reading books with me and was still delving into theirs ... other people's books always look more exciting than your own.)

It is such a lovely place and we had a great time there, we're tempted to go back when the festival is on but the hotelier warned us that it gets really busy. I'm saving up my pennies to return though .. it's a great place to hunt for books.

Along the Enchanted Way

Synopsis: When William Blacker first crossed the snow-bound passes of northern Romania, he stumbled upon an almost medieval world. There, for many years he lived side by side with the country people, a life ruled by the slow cycle of the seasons, far away from the frantic rush of the modern world. In spring as the pear trees blossomed he ploughed with horses, in summer he scythed the hay meadows and in the freezing winters gathered wood by sleigh from the forest. From sheepfolds harried by wolves, to courting expeditions in the snow, he experienced the traditional way of life to the full, and became accepted into a community who treated him as one of their own. But Blacker was also intrigued by the Gypsies, those dark, foot-loose strangers of spell-binding allure who he saw passing through the village. Locals warned him to stay clear but he fell in love and there followed a bitter struggle. Change is now coming to rural Romania, and William Blacker's adventures will soon be part of its history. From his early carefree days tramping the hills of Transylvania, to the book's poignant ending, Along the Enchanted Way transports us back to a magical country world most of us thought had vanished long ago.

Review: I'm not much of a traveller but I do like reading about it. William doesn't just travel through Romania, he falls in love with it and that's what makes this particular book enchanting. He's a man with wanderlust, a bit of a free spirit, a man who hates city life and treading on pavements.

We join William as he heads out of London towards Berlin just after the fall of the wall, from there he heads eastwards through Dresden, Prague, Bohemia, Slovakia and Hungary and several days later reaches the Romanian frontier. It's a tumultuous time in Romania, the country has ceased to be under communist rule, after the execution of Ceauşescu, and it's still in some disarray. William is a sort of happy go lucky traveller and so he's not particularly equipped to deal with the freezing conditions or the scarcity of food but amazingly it's not long before he's invited into the home of some local peasant people and given a bowl of soup and a hunk of bread to help him on his way. This is by no means an isolated incident, William finds the generosity of the local people staggering. He is welcomed into homes, given shelter and sent to the front of bread queues .. payment is refused .. he is their honoured guest (and yet they don't know him from Adam.) I have to admit that if a stranger knocked on my door asking for refreshments (as William sometimes did) I would be extremely suspicious and wouldn't let them in. It made me sad to think of it.This visit is only a short one, but Romania has cast a spell over William and he spends the next few years trying to free himself of ties and obligations which will enable him to return and in 1996 he succeeds.

The Romanian people continue to live as they have done for centuries, they farm the land, produce their own food, bottle and preserve, make their own exquisite tools, clothes, shoes and never travel much further than their local doorstep. But they're not inward thinking, they're inquisitive and ask William many questions about life in England (not really understanding why we all don't keep cows!) In Maramureş he meets an elderly couple Mihai and Maria and starts a friendship which is to last until the end of their days, more than a friendship in fact for Mihai and Maria come to look on William as the son they never had, sharing their home with him, teaching him the local customs, working with him on the land, making him clothes and shoes. William continued to travel and Mihai would always wave him off with tears in his eyes and eagerly await his return. As William says of the Romanian people .. 'they knew the great secret of being happy with little. Is there something of a sham about the modern world - are we, in the western world, for all our wealth and washing machines, any happier than these people - emphatically no.'

But you know boys will be boys and men will be men, and the day that William sets eyes on Natalia, a gypsy girl from Halma, is the day when rational thought jumps out of the window. Natalia is beautiful (and there's a photo to prove it) with her dark hair, flashing eyes and fiery temper and it's not long before William is in a whole heap of trouble. He decides that the trouble is worth the risk and, after some haphazard correspondence between them, he leaves on a visit that will keep him away from Maramureş for some time. Life with the gypsies is every bit as tumultuous as you would imagine, they have a completely different work ethic to the ordinary Romanians. They live in the moment, and put pleasure before toil, it doesn't occur to them to save for a rainy day so during winter they have very little food and have to beg or borrow it. William finds that the local people, who were once so fond of him, turn away from him once they realise that he has disregarded their ominous warnings about consorting with the gypsies. But thankfully not Mihai and Maria, for one thing they're not judgmental and for another they love William .. they would love for him to meet a nice Romanian girl (and there are several excrutiating attempts at this) but whatever he decides is fine with them.

William for his part soon learns some harrowing tales from the gypsies, shocking accounts of hostility, corruption and police brutality and it's not long before he experiences it first hand. Ultimately though, although he is incredibly fond of them, life with the gypsies doesn't suit (and really, you could have told him long before that it would never work out ... they were just too different) and William decides to leave. He now spends his time divided between England and Romania (for he still has one very precious reason for returning often.) He's been active too in campaigning for the preservation of the ancient Saxon villages and their buildings and churches (in fact he did a lot of repair work himself whilst there).. so much so that he's managed to persuade Prince Charles to come on board.

Sometimes progress can be a sad thing. TV comes to Romania, tarmac roads are installed, girls give up their national dress for trousers and plastic packaging begins to clog the streams. Naturally the younger people, mesmerised by TV adverts, are inclined to think that the grass is greener and they try to seek their fortune elsewhere .. sometimes with disastrous and harrowing results. Of course they would look at our lives of modern conveniences and 3D cinema's and be envious but they wouldn't necessarily notice how buried in the rat race we are, how strung up we are by our own possessions and debt and how pure and free their lives are in comparison.

I spent the last few pages in tears ... again, just reading about the last time William (or Willy as they called him) saw Mihai and how Mihai, as ill and bent over as he was, walked on and on waving until he couldn't see him any more .. Mihai died soon after and when William attended the funeral there was a letter from Mihai to William read out by the priest which practically had me in floods ... everyone should have a Mihai in their lives.

The Chapel at the Edge of the World

Synopsis: Emilio and Rosa are childhood sweethearts, engaged to be married. But it is 1942 and the war has taken Emilio far from Italy, to a tiny Orkney island where he is a POW. Rosa must wait for him to return and help her mother run the family hotel on the shores of Lake Como, in Italy. Feeling increasingly frustrated with his situation, Emilio is inspired by the idea of building a chapel on the barren island. The prisoners band together to create an extraordinary building out of little more than salvaged odds and ends and homemade paints. Whilst Emilio's chapel will remain long after the POW camp has been left to the sheep, will his love for Rosa survive the hardships of war and separation? For Rosa is no longer the girl that he left behind. She is being drawn further into the Italian resistance movement and closer to danger, as friendships and allegiances are ever complicated by the war. Human perseverance and resilience are at the heart of this strong debut and the small Italian chapel remains, as it does in reality on the island of Lamb's Holm, as a symbol of these qualities.

Review: This was a bit of a slow burner, in fact I'm not sure it ever caught fire. It took me quite a long time to get the characters fixed in my mind and I don't think I ever understood them completely but then I think that was a reflection of the austere times they were living in, they were quite secretive and introspective. Emilio is sent abroad to Africa to fight for Mussolini during WWII and his fiancé - Rosa - is left behind in Lake Como. Emilio and his fellow soldiers are soon captured and are due to be transported as POW's to India but fearing another hot climate, along with it's attendant flies and disease, he is able to wangle a favour from a British corporal (Emilio is a painter and becomes popular among his captors by painting little portraits of their loved one's from photo's) and secures a place on a ship bound for the Orkney Islands, Scotland (to work on the Churchill Barriers.) Struggling to cope with heat is one thing but the alternative proves to be, if anything, more oppressive. When they land at Orkney they are overwhelmed by the sheer desolation of the place, it's the colour of concrete and the wind, which blows fiercely every day, is like a wall that hits you in the face every time you turn a corner. The sky and sea are a mutinous grey, the temperatures are freezing and the landscape is barren and flat as no trees can survive. It's a million miles away from the beauty and climate of Lake Como.

Rosa meanwhile is at home, both living with and helping out her mother at their hotel. She is a little confused regarding her feelings for Emilio, she thinks about his return and their marriage and feels suffocated by it. Italy is now under German occupation and everyone's movements are watched. The hotel is a favourite haunt of the German officers so caution is needed. Rosa finds a job at a little print shop and there meets a childhood friend of hers and Emilio's - Pietro - with whom she becomes incredibly close and it's through this friendship that she learns of, and becomes involved with, resistance work. Her little errands for the resistance become increasingly risky especially as there is a German officer at the hotel who has taken a shine to her and who always seems to be watching.

Rosa's letters to Emilio become more and more general and less and less personal, letters about the hotel guests and the local flora and fauna. Emilio is depressed and demoralized but a small ray of light occurs when the new CO of the camp announces that they can convert an old Nissan hut into a chapel. Nobody is particularly excited by this but Emilio is inspired when he reads a newspaper article about a girl who made a wedding dress out of seaweed and custard powder. His enthusiasm soon rubs off on the others and they begin work on the transformation. Not only will it give them somewhere to worship it will give them something to do as they wait to be transported back home. By this time they are no longer prisoners in the official sense but, Germany still has occupation of Italy, and there is no knowing how long it will be before they return home. Hopes are raised and dashed continually.

It was a good read, nothing particularly enthralling but quietly compelling in it's own way. I didn't feel there was enough descriptions of how the POW's built the exquisite little chapel, when you look at the pictures of the real chapel it's just breathtaking. That prisoners could create such a beautiful work of art out of nothing but scraps and salvage is amazing and should have been described in more detail. Also I felt some of the sting went out of the tale by having the aged Rosa and Emilio talking at the beginning of the book ... obviously you knew that nothing particularly catastrophic was going to befall them. The book cover however is beautiful, probably my favourite so far.

Bad Blood

Synopsis: A literary memoir of the highest calibre by the highly-regarded writer Lorna Sage, which vividly and wittily brings to life a vanished time and place, and illuminates the lives of three generations of women. Lorna Sage's memoir of childhood and adolescence is a brilliantly written bravura piece of work, which vividly and wickedly brings to life her eccentric family and somewhat bizarre upbringing in the small town of Hanmer, on the border between Wales and Shropshire. The period as well as the place is evoked with crystal clarity: from the 1940s, dominated for Lorna by her dissolute but charismatic grandfather, through the 1950s, where the invention of fish fingers revolutionised the lives of housewives like Lorna's mother, to the brink of the 1960s, where the community is shocked by Lorna's pregnancy at 16, an event which her grandmother blamed on 'the fiendish invention of sex'. Often extremely funny,and always intelligent, this unique memoir was instantly hailed as a classic upon its first publication.

Review: I bought this book because the blurb on Hilary Mantel's memoirs recommended it highly and I've got a thing at the moment about writers memoirs. One thing that Lorna had in common with Hilary is, as children, they both lived with their grandparents as well as their parents. That seems unusual now but I guess in the 1940's and 50's it was probably quite common. Lorna's grandparents didn't get on, in fact Lorna makes the point early in the book that the first time her grandmother went anywhere near her own husband's grave was feet first in a coffin where they then were 'rotting together in eternity, one flesh at the last after a lifetime of mutual loathing'. Grandma came from South Wales where her family owned a shop and lived over it, when she grew up though there wasn't enough employment there for all the children and so she married and moved away but in a way she never left the shop, she hankered after it and nothing else lived up to it. Grandfather was quite learned and well read (in fact he rather romantically named his grandaughter Lorna after 'Lorna Doone') so it was a mystery as to why he fell for a girl with no interest in books, music or paintings and whose main interests were peppermint creams and frilly blouses. But rather like Mr Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, he was taken in by a pretty face and like Mr B, soon came to regret it. Grandma resented this new life and refused to accept it, she holed herself up in her room at their new home in Hanmer (which was at opposite ends of the house to grandfathers), surrounding herself with scented soap and antimacassars, dreaming of the shop and and her beloved S. Wales, mothballing herself in, refusing to do chores of any kind, and heaping abuse upon God and man. Grandpa's room on the other hand was lined with bookshelves and filled with books .. though strangely they all had their spines blacked out to deter would be borrowers!

When Lorna came to write her memoir, she read through her grandfather's diaries (carefully preserved by her grandmother) and it's through them that she learns the truth about her grandpa's dissolute behaviour and get's a greater grip on the reasons for her grandma's hostility (Lorna always privately sided with him, and still did even in hindsight, because he was the one who gave her her love of books and learning.) It's always a complete mystery why anyone with so much to cover up should write a fairly explicit diary for all the world to see if they chose. Grandpa had gone to Hanmer before his wife and children in order to prepare the house etc and it's not long before he is enjoying country cycle rides, and a whole lot more, with the local district nurse. There's also plenty of other dalliances and a growing love for the bottle, infact he practically uses the local pub as his office. He didn't even write in code, he once wrote down (whilst indulging in a relationship with the best friend of his own daughter when she was aged just 17) that he would have to change his handwriting but he never did (though quite how that would have worked I have no idea.) And this is all the more remarkable because Grandpa is the vicar of Hanmer, and that the villagers should think this behaviour acceptable and turn up each Sunday to hear his stirring sermons is beyond belief, but apparently for quite a while they did. Meanwhile, Grandma grew fat and furious, invoking curses on all men (except her own son) and shaking her fist at people passing by the vicarage.

So this was the kind of atmosphere Lorna grew up in, by the time she was born the resentment had festered into pure hatred. Lorna's mother Valma (another romantic name but they were never able to figure out which book inspired it) continued to live with her parents whilst Lorna's father was away serving in the army, and, to escape the horrors at home (there were devastating rows and arguments sometimes ending in bloodshed) she lived in a sort of dream world of her own .. a 'magical world of unreality' as Lorna puts it. They eventually move to a council house of their own but Grandpa is now dead and it's not long before Grandma, now old, fat and infirm comes to live with them. Lorna grows up wayward, resentful and rebellious but with a continued love of books and studying to sustain her.

I don't know that I ever warmed to Lorna, I never felt sorry for her because she never painted herself as a victim despite her rather turbulent childhood but I did admire her. She became pregnant at 16 (despite being convinced that she'd never had sex) and married soon after but was determined to keep up with her studies and exams. Her and her husband were the first married couple of ordinary student age to graduate in the same subject at the same time, both with Firsts .. quite an accompishment. It's a cracking read though, there's nothing like reading about someone else's dysfunctional family. My eyes were wide with disbelief over some of their antics. It's very funny too, Lorna has a wicked sense of humour. Lorna went on to become an award winning literary critic and reviewer but the book stops at the point of her graduation with only the smallest of updates added so you don't really learn anything about her as a writer but it's a great insight into what it was like to be an intelligent girl with aspirations growing up in the 50's/60's.

Mr Chartwell

Synopsis: July, 1964. In bed at home in Kent, Winston Churchill is waking up. There's a visitor in the room, someone he hasn't seen for a while, a dark, mute bulk, watching him with tortured concentration. It's Mr Chartwell. In her terraced house in Battersea, Esther Hammerhans, young, vulnerable and alone, goes to answer the door to her new lodger. Through the glass she sees a vast silhouette the size of a mattress. It's Mr Chartwell. He is charismatic and dangerously seductive, and Esther and Winston Churchill are drawn together by his dark influence. But can they withstand Mr Chartwell's strange, powerful charms and strong hold? Can they even explain to anyone who or what he is? Or why he has come to visit? For Mr Chartwell is a huge, black dog. In this utterly original, moving, funny and exuberant novel, Rebecca Hunt explores how two unlikely lives collide as Mr Chartwell's motives are revealed to be far darker and deeper than they seem.

Review: What a great premise, to take the famous remark from Churchill about his 'Black Dog' depression, and use it to conjure up one of your central characters. The dog is referred to as 'Mr Chartwell' or more familiarly 'Black Pat' and as well as plaguing the life out of Winston he has turned up at the door of Esther Hammerhans seeking lodgings. Esther, being a literary character, is a bit perturbed by this huge black dog but not as much as you or I would be if he came knocking on your door. And, he's not there to rent the room as first supposed, he's there because Esther is coming up to the first anniversary of her husband's death .. and Black Pat has seen a way in. Esther doesn't know any of this however and at first she's intrigued and fascinated by him because Black Pat can be quite charming and persuasive when he want's to be.

The chapters alternate between Winston and his struggles with Black Pat and Esther's increasing problems with her new lodger. He's a very oppressive character (the writer has captured the blanketing weight of depression perfectly) he has a dark, dark sense of humour (which actually made me laugh at times .. he loves puns) he's very destructive and his sole aim is to completely overwhelm and oppress his 'clients'. Churchill is in a way resigned to this dark presence in his life, however it's still a constant struggle and a battle. Black Pat will drape himself across your chest so that you can hardly breathe, bark in your face or sit squealing like an injured animal in the corner, breathe on your food and block you from sunlight or sit chewing on rocks. He'll make sarcastic comments which are audible to nobody else but you (Black Pat being invisible to all non sufferers) and his stench will overpower all other smells. If he came to your house he'd probably drag your favourite paperback onto the rug, infact he'd drag your whole library there, drool over it and then chew it to bits, belching continuously and eyeing you for your reaction. And even though you are horrified by his presence, there would be a part of you, as disgusted and oppressed by him as you are, that actually looks for him .. it's such a love hate thing whilst you're in the grip of it.

Esther has a number of people in her life who care for her and are concerned about her state of mind and they set about trying to cheer and occupy her. But it's a meeting with Churchill (not so co-incidental as it sounds .. Esther works in the House of Commons Library) that may prove to be the turning point, it's too late for Churchill to shake off Black Pat but maybe Esther can be saved.

It actually took me a little while to get into the book, the writing is quirky and very creative and I occasionally had to do that thing of reading a sentence twice to make sense of it but once I got the hang of it I was up and running and greatly entertained. It can sometimes be a problem when writers write dialogue for well known historical figures - there's a risk of it sounding false and unauthentic - and this was even more of a problem than usual because I've been listening to readings of Winston & Clemmie's letters and so his manner and style of speech were fresh in my mind but I thought she captured Winston perfectly. Unusual, enjoyable and a very clever debut indeed.

The Dead of Winter

Synopsis: Michael Vyner recalls a terrible story, one that happened to him. One that would be unbelievable if it weren't true! Michael's parents are dead and he imagines that he will stay with the kindly lawyer, executor of his parents' will ...Until he is invited to spend Christmas with his guardian in a large and desolate country house. His arrival on the first night suggests something is not quite right when he sees a woman out in the frozen mists, standing alone in the marshes. But little can prepare him for the solitude of the house itself as he is kept from his guardian and finds himself spending the Christmas holiday wandering the silent corridors of the house seeking distraction. But lonely doesn't mean alone, as Michael soon realises that the house and its grounds harbour many secrets, dead and alive, and Michael is set the task of unravelling some of the darkest secrets of all. This is a nail-biting story of hauntings and terror by the master of the genre, Chris Priestley.

Review: I love Chris Priestley's 'Tales of Terror' and perhaps that's why I was a little bit disappointed with this full length story. It's got all the right ingredients, there's lots of ghostly goings on, a creepy mansion, weird inhabitants and plenty of atmosphere (it was quite Susan Hillish in that respect) but it seemed a little too predictable to me. There was a twist at the end which I saw coming a mile away, which, as you will know, means it was as plain as the nose on your face. Having said that, this is a children's book and so, as an adult, I'm judging it unfairly. I was hoping that he'd write a longer version of one of his tales of terror, something maybe a little more twisted and macabre but this felt more like a traditional ghost story.

I'm being quite hard on it because I did enjoy it, I was just hoping for something more. Perhaps I got too excited and carried away by the thought of a full length story from Chris. The synopsis above pretty much explains the storyline. Michael is another good ghost story character because again he does a lot of that sort of forbidden snooping around that is bound to lead to trouble (if you heard strange banging noises seemingly coming from inside some wood panelling would you investigate? .. of course you would and you'd go looking for strange ghostly ladies who appear in the mist and then suddenly disappear again too wouldn't you.) Michael clearly hasn't heard of the phrase 'curiosity killed the cat' which is just as it should be. There is a baddie and, like I said earlier, it's fairly easy to spot him/her .. I'm sure even Scooby Doo & Shaggy would have whipped his/her hood off long before the end (figuratively speaking .. he/she didn't wear a hood .. if they had then my detection of them may have come even earlier.) Of course it might be that I'm becoming quite Sherlockian but to be honest, I very much doubt it.

I did get the vague chills, but the central heating had packed up so it could've been that. The story was very readable, I just didn't feel it quite lived up to my expectations (which admittedly were sky high.)

The Iris Trilogy

Synopsis: This volume brings together John Bayley's books dedicated to the memory of his wife, Iris Murdoch. Bayley's account of his long and loving marriage to the great novelist Iris takes us from their love affair's comical beginnings in Oxford in the early 50s (Bayley courted Iris on account of her unchallenging plain looks and their first date consisted of a revolting dinner followed by a disastrous dance when Iris sprained her ankle) through its slow and painful closure when Iris developed Alzheimer's 40 years later, to a searching analysis of the condition of bereavement and how he built a life for himself after Iris's death. As Bayley charts the gradual dissolution of Iris's remarkable intellect side by side with the detail of their gloriously eccentric and profoundly satisfying life together, what emerges is the complex portrait of an enigmatic and brilliant woman and of a marriage of quite extraordinary, unforced happiness, and an insight into the mysterious symbolism of Iris Murdoch's novels.

Review: Continuing with my obssession of all things Iris, these are the beautiful memoirs written by her husband John Bayley. The first book is called 'Iris' and in it John looks back to when he first met her .. or first saw her pedalling past his window at St Antony's College, Oxford University .. 'she was looking both absent and displeased. Maybe because of the weather, which was damp and drizzly. Maybe because her bicycle was old and creaky and hard to propel. Maybe because she hadn't met me yet?' ... They were soon to meet at a party given by a senior member of the English Faculty and though John wasn't particularly attracted to her physically (although nearly everybody else was.. male and female) he was incredibly drawn to her. It's as they're bicycling home that Iris asks John if he writes novels, he thinks it an odd question, but she soon tells him that she has written one and it's soon to be published .. but she says 'you mustn't tell anyone .. I don't want anyone to know' .. to be in her confidence makes John feel very happy indeed. Iris of course was extremely bright, an intellectual (but genuinely modest), she had many friends as well as lovers, she had already written works on philosophy and was to go on to write twenty six novels, several of them highly acclaimed. She was serious but had a sense of fun that was totally in tune with John's .. in a way you feel that when they met two pieces of a puzzle came together.

But that was then, the Iris in the present is very different and she has no memory of having written anything. Iris has at this stage of John's writing been suffering from Alzheimer's for several years and John is both her loving husband and carer. Communication is a problem, Iris asks a lot of questions but they're not often clear or comprehensible, she's a chatterer too .. chattering away like the 'Weatherbys' (their nickname for the swallows that used to sit on the telephone wires outside their bedroom window twittering away.) There's bafflement but there's also jokes, humour has survived Alzheimer's .. or it has at this stage anyhow ... their little in jokes, silly rhymes and quotes can still make Iris smile. Thankfully, Iris, always the most placid of people, has not changed all that much in temperament. Aggression, which can be a side effect hasn't affected her. John spends most of his early mornings now in bed with Iris snoozing and making her little cooing noises beside him as he types away on his trusty 'Tropical Olivetti', she finds the noise reassuring. In the old days she would have taken herself off to her study to start work. This ability to sleep like a cat is a godsend because daily life can be a mix of anxiety and confusion. Getting Iris in or out of her clothes is a problem, washing too, she's developed a penchant for picking up litter .. anything she see's basically, old coke cans, cigarette butts, silver paper .. and she hoards it all in piles and now she's watering the indoor plants to death. They never had a TV before but now Iris is comforted by morning children's TV especially 'Teletubbies', they trot about not doing anything much and somehow this attracts and engages her.

In the next book of the trilogy 'Iris and the Friends', Iris's condition has worsened, she's much more anxious now and confused and their daily routine, such as it is, has become more of a trial. There are more silent tears, more desperate rattling of the locked doors and more frequent escape attempts (some sucessful.) She doesn't respond to jokes anymore, or not as easily, and is refusing food. This book however is less about Iris and more about John, he finds strangely that as Iris's memory disappears his sharpens and in a way it's a comfort to him, an escape from some of the anxieties of the day. During quiet times, when Iris is asleep or calm, John wanders away down memory lane, re-living his youth and finding solace in recollections and daydreams.

The last book is entitled 'The Widowers House' where John talks about Iris's last days in the nursing home and her eventual death. I blubbed my way through it, I could hardly see the pages. I was thinking that perhaps now John at least would be able to get some sense of calm and order back into his life, he was after all in his seventies and had, practically single handedly, looked after Iris during the last few years of her life which must have been an awful physical and mental strain but no, he's besieged on all sides by well meaning friends and finds himself getting into all sorts of scrapes concerning the ladies (honestly this could have been a plotline in one of Iris's novels .. so bizarre were some of the occurences.) I found myself feeling quite anxious for him ... 'widowers don't lead lives. They wait for something to happen: and when something does happen it becomes a muddle from which they at once have to try and escape.'

This is a long but very readable book. It's peppered with references and little insights into Iris's work and literary anecdotes and quotes in general. There's plenty here about their early life together as well as their later struggles and it's written with such love and honesty. John doesn't shy away from uncomfortable truth's .. sometimes detailing his occasional frustration with Iris, during the worst stages of her illness, and his rants and raves .. not everyone would have been so honest as to recount this but I imagine it's how anybody would react in the same situation. It's like a safety valve, to stop you from completely cracking up. It's truly sobering too to read about the effects of Alzheimer's on one of the most brilliant minds of the 1900's.