The Sea, The Sea

Synopsis: When Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre, he buys a remote house on the rocks by the sea. He hopes to escape from his tumultuous love affairs but unexpectedly bumps into his childhood sweetheart and sets his heart on destroying her marriage. His equilibrium is further disturbed when his friends all decide to come and keep him company and Charles finds his seaside idyll severely threatened by his obsessions.

Review: I really enjoyed this book, it's beautifully atmospheric and lyrical. I think it's probably going to set me off on an Iris Murdoch obsession .. in fact it already has ... whilst reading it I also managed to fit in Iris's only short story Something Special and am currently reading her husband John Bayley's beautiful Iris memoirs, I've also recently bought The Black Prince so she's becoming a bit of a project. The central character of The Sea, The Sea is Charles Arrowby, an ageing theatrical celebrity, and it has to be said he's completely unlikeable, although my opinion of him shifted quite a bit during the story I never found myself liking him at any point. At the start of the story you find yourself fairly in tune with him .. you can understand why anyone would want to take themselves off to a remote location by the sea to commune with nature and get away from it all .. Charles's wish is to find himself somewhere where he has nothing else to do but 'learn to be good' and this seems admirable, perhaps he is tired of the adulation and fame and yearns for the simple life. He has plans to write a diary/journal/autobiography .. perhaps novel .. he can never quite pin it down and changes his mind constantly. Perhaps it's just as well that I started the novel by being fairly well disposed towards him because he soon tests that to the limit.

The house that Charles buys is called 'Shruff End', it perches on a small promontory and is exposed, isolated, damp and possibly haunted. The locals are fairly hostile, they seem less than impressed with their new celebrity neighbour and the sea (very much a central character in the book) and it's environs also turn out to be unpredictable and unaccommodating. Charles is spooked by all sorts of imaginary faces at windows and bumps in the night and things come to a bit of a head when whilst sitting with his notebook staring out to see he momentarily see's a monster rising from the waves. Are these things just hallucinations or are they portents of things to come?

'I can describe this in no other way. Out of a perfectly calm empty sea, at a distance of perhaos a quarter of a mile (or less), I saw an immense creature break the surface and arch itself upward. At first it looked like a black snake, then a long thickening body with a ridgy spiny back followed the elongated neck. There was something which might have been a flipper or perhaps a fin. I could not see the whole of the creature, but the remainder of it's body, or perhaps a long tail, disturbed the foaming water round the base of what had now risen from the sea to a height of (as it seemed) twenty or thirty feet. The creature then coiled itself so that the long neck circled twice, bringing the now conspicuous head low down above the surface of the sea. I could see the sky through the coils. I could also see the head with remarkable clarity, a kind of crested snake's head, green eyed, the mouth opening to show teeth and a pink interior. The head and neck glistened with a blue sheen. Then in a moment the whole thing collapsed, the coils fell, the undulating back still broke the water, and then there was nothing but a great foaming swirling pool where the creature had vanished.'

He find himself and his cottage besieged by many of the people he has sought to leave behind, old love rivals, relations, friends and enemies turn up at his door, these people seem to both love and loathe him at the same time and it's through them that we start to see Charles's true character emerge and instead of 'learning to be good' he carries on being bad. This is a man who is far more used to manipulating and exploiting people than we were at first led to believe. His staggering conceit and lack of regard for the feelings of others really comes to a head when he bumps into Hartley, an old flame who he was once engaged to marry. Hartley was the one true love of his life and he has never really came to terms with losing her. They were very young when first together and seemingly devoted to each other when Hartley was suddenly whisked away by her family never to be seen again by Charles ... until now. It turns out that Hartley lives just a short way from 'Shruff End', she's an ordinary, rather unattractive and elderly housewife now but that doesn't matter to Charles. He see's her very much as she once was and is convinced that she needs rescuing from her rather brutish husband, Ben. This sets him on a course of actions which can only be described as bizarre, obsessive and self deluded. He thinks his intentions are honourable and finds constant excuses for his selfish behaviour. It is at times extremely uncomfortable to read about Charles's treatment of poor Hartley even though you do find yourself thinking frequently 'get a grip woman for goodness sake' but it's also fairly farcical too (you're constantly cringing and hoping that something happens to thwart his plans and scheme.) It's only in the aftermath of these disastrous encounters with Hartley that Charles really begins to assess his own true character.

Perhaps one of the most interesting secondary characters is James, Charles's cousin and rival. Charles has never liked or understood him, there's a fair amount of jealousy and suspicion going right back to childhood. Though his character is perhaps only lightly touched upon I found myself drawn to him and wanting to know more and much of the mystery and magic which weaves it's way through the tale is wrapped up in his story.I also really liked the descriptions of the bizarre meals that Charles enjoyed concocting, it added an amusing and quirky touch .. I've since found out that they mostly came from the suggestions of Iris's husband John.

The book is perhaps overlong, I felt at times I had got to the end when I hadn't quite and occasionally the story wandered too far and I found my interest lagging but on the whole I found it mesmerising, strange and quite unlike anything I'd read before. It's a story that's open to many interpretations and probably nearly every reader will take something different from it.

Little Hands Clapping

Synopsis: In a room above a bizarre German museum, and far from the prying eyes of strangers, lives the Old Man. Caretaker of the museum by day, by night he enjoys the sound of silence, broken by the occasional crunch of a spider between his blackened teeth. Little Hands Clapping brings together the Old Man with the respectable Doctor Ernst Frohlicher, his greedy dog Hans and a cast of grotesque and hilarious townsfolk, all of whose lives are thrown together as the town uncovers a crime so outrageous that it will shock the world. From its sinister opening to its explosive denouement, Little Hands Clapping blends lavishly entertaining storytelling with Rhodes's macabre imagination, entrancing originality and magical touch.

Review: You know you're going to be in for something different with Dan's books, they are never predictable and this was something different again. This one reminded me of Neil Gaiman's writing, especially his more sinister short stories. The humour is very, very dark and the tale is disturbing and bizarre yet compelling.

'At ten past three the old man jolts awake at the sharp smack of wood on wood from one of the rooms below. He sit's up and listens for any further disturbance, but none occurs. He sets his alarm for five, then lies back and closes his eyes. He knows the sound, and that it can be dealt with later on. His mouth falls open, and once again his breathing fills the room, beginning as a light wheeze then escalating into a rattle, the inhalations and exhalations at a pitch so indistinguishable that it seems like a single undulating drone. A fat house spider crawls across the sheet, clear against the bright white. It steps onto the sleeve of his nightshirt, where it lingers for a while before scuttling up to his neck. The moment the first of the eight dark brown legs touches the old man's cold skin he wakes once again. He does not move, but the rattle stops dead and his breathing becomes soft and shallow. The spider sprints to his cheek, where it remains still for a moment before moving towards his open mouth. It stops again, as if considering it's next move, and then, with an agility bordering on grace, it darts into the chasm. The old man's mouth shuts and the spider races around, trying to make it's way out, but there is no escape from the thin, grey tongue that pushes it first into his cheek and then between his back teeth. After some final desperate flailing, the spider is crunched into a gritty paste and the tongue moves around the old man's teeth, collecting stray pieces. His breathing slows, and he swallows the final traces. Soon the rattle returns. In and out, in and out, It all sounds the same.'

I found a lot of it extremely distasteful and yet I couldn't stop reading it or laughing from time to time, he's so good at mixing the sick and twisted with funny observational comedy. It's very gothic in feel with more than a nod to Grimm and he doesn't worry about making his main characters loveable .. for the most part they're all either despicable or absurd but there's usually always someone to care about and in this book it's tragic Madalena who cannot bear the loss of her childhood sweetheart and is making her way towards the macabre German museum in which much of the story is set.

I liked the ending, it seemed to tie up all the ends neatly with everyone getting their just desserts which makes a change for Dan's books. I'm intrigued to see what he comes up with next, I like everything I've read of his but I have avoided reading 'Anthropology' ... as I've read indifferent reviews. This one won't be for everyone, it's a bit grim and gruesome but in an adult fairytale kind of way.

Anansi Boys

Synopsis: Fat Charlie Nancy is not actually fat. He was fat once but he is definitely not fat now. No, right now Fat Charlie Nancy is angry, confused and more than a little scared -- right now his life is spinning out of control, and it is all his dad's fault. If his rotter of an estranged father hadn't dropped dead at a karaoke night, Charlie would still be blissfully unaware that his dad was Anansi the spider god. He would have no idea that he has a brother called Spider, who is also a god. And there would be no chance that said brother would be trying to take over his life, flat and fiancee, or, to make matters worse, be doing a much better job of it than him. Desperate to reclaim his life, Charlie enlists the help of four more-than-slightly eccentric old ladies and their unique brand of voodoo -- and between them they unleash a bitter and twisted force to get rid of Spider. But as darkness descends and badness begins is Fat Charlie Nancy going to get his life back in one piece or is he about to enter a whole netherworld of pain?

Review: Another one that I liked a lot, though perhaps not as much as 'Neverwhere' or 'Stardust'. This book is a little bit different from Neils other work, it's a lot more funny and less dark but it still has all of the magical, mystical elements that you expect from his work. Fat Charlie Nancy is a great character, a bit hapless and 'ordinary', but someone that you immediately warm to. The story starts with him attending his fathers funeral. He didn't know much about his father except for the fact that he used to embarrass him to death when he was a kid so he's surprised to learn, not to say incredulous, that his father was actually a God .. the trickster spider God Anansi in fact.

Charlie also discovers for the first time that he has a twin brother .. Spider ... who is also a God. Spider comes to stay at Fat Charlie's flat and basically sets about unintentionally ruining his life. Charlie loses his job and finds that his fiancée Rosie has taken more than a shine to Spider who she actually thinks is Charlie, only a new improved and much more interesting Charlie. The trouble is that Spider is everything that Charlie is not, handsome and gregarious with all the inherited smooth tongued charm of his father.

Fed up with this intrusion, and more than a little envious of his brother, Charlie seeks to banish Spider, only he finds that a few subtle hints not to say downright commands to get lost aren't having any effect. Exasperated he turns to his father's old acquaintance Callyanne Higler and her three equally eccentric friends for help. During a seance at Mrs Higlers house Charlie encounters the malevolent Bird Woman who says she can banish Spider but in return she wants Anansi's bloodline. Without knowing what this means Charlie agrees, and although he's at first inclined to think that he's imagined it all, he soon realises that something more sinister is afoot.

There are plenty of delicious secondary characters, Rosie's mum is a gem and I also loved Charlie's boss - the despicably corrupt, murderous, irritating twerp, Grahame Coats. There's a lot to enjoy here, some great plot twists and revelations and really enjoyable Carribean dialogue and humour. I was slightly disappointed that it wasn't quite up to the standard of 'Neverwhere' but that's just nit picking .. it was still a fantastic read.

Snobs (Audiobook)

Synopsis: Edith Lavery is a woman on the make. The attractive only child of a middle-class accountant, she leaves behind her dull job in a Chelsea estate agents and manages to bag one of the most eligible bachelors of the day - Charles Broughton, heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. But is life amongst the upper echelons of 'good' society all that it seems? Edith soon discovers there's much more to the aristocracy than dancing in Anabel's, shooting small birds and understanding which fork to use at dinner. And then there is Charles's mother, the indomitable Lady Uckfield, or 'Googie' to her friends, who is none too pleased with her son's choice of breeding partner. With twists and turns aplenty, this is a comical tale worthy of a contemporary Jane Austen.

Review: An amusing and witty comedy of manners set in the 1980's. This book tells the tale of Edith Lavery, a beautiful Chelsea Sloane who is looking for Mr Right. In particular she has ambitions to social climb her way into marrying a member of the aristocracy and is looking for a man who can remove her from her dreary life and elevate her to the position of mistress of some great country pile in deepest England. All her aspirations come true when she meets the rather shy and polite Charles Broughton who is heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. Charles seems to like her, he takes her to places she has only ever read about and Edith begins to get a taste of the champagne lifestyle in which she would love to become accustomed. Edith's mother who has always dreamt about her daughter making an advantageous marriage is in seventh heaven and Edith pulls out all the stops to secure him.

Although Charles is an absolute darling in many ways, he is also incredibly dull and then there is his mother 'Googie', a terrific snob who is not best pleased by her son's choice of wife (but who never publicises this with an outward show of hostility.) Much is made about the ridiculous pet names that have stuck with the upper classes since nursery. Charles's parents are 'Googie' and 'Tigger' which of course makes all those that aren't intimate with them snigger (but most of these are happy to start bandying the names about once they become even the slightest bit familiar with the family.) Edith finds that once the honeymoon is over she is thrown into a world of stultifying tedium, and also a world where everyone around her, except Charles, is at pains to point out, in the subtlest yet humiliating ways imaginable, that she does not and will not ever fit in.

It's hard to like Edith. She's too selfish and inconsiderate. She must be a top candidate for the title of 'heroine that no-one but the author will like', in fact she deserves it far more than Jane Austen's Emma. I wasn't keen on the narrator either, an un-named actor friend of Edith's, who seemed pompous and stiff.

Once Edith gains her position in society by marrying Charles she finds she is bored to tears by it and him and is missing the thrills of earlier days when her boyfriends were a lot less noble and a good deal more lusty. When a television company descends on the house to film a drama, Edith is drawn in a classic grass-is-always-greener way to the handsome (the next Simon McCorkindale apparently) actor Simon Russell who is everything that Charles is not.

It's obvious that Julian Fellowes is entirely comfortable in this tweedy aristocratic world of hunting, shooting, charity dinners, alice bands and kedgeree and writes with a great deal of authenticity. All sorts of comparisons to Austen, Waugh, Mitford and Wodehouse are made but I don't think it quite merits it. Whilst it's enjoyable, and there's plenty of delicious social commentary, the characters are not vivid or absurd enough and the wit is just not sharp enough to completely warrant the comparisons.

I think it wasn't helped by the rather stilted narration by Richard Morant. Someone like Stephen Fry would have brought the gossipy style of the novel to life (but then you could probably say that about every audiobook.)

Mr Golightly's Holiday (Audiobook)

Synopsis: Fiction readers with a sweet tooth and a high tolerance of Anglican whimsy are offered much beguilement in Sally Vickers' new novel Mr Golightly's Holiday. Set in the Devon village of Great Calne, it records the events observed, and in part precipitated, by Mr Golightly, the author of a work once famous but now tending to be overlooked, who has elected to settle himself in this community for a while. Mr Golightly himself, a rumpled, elderly figure arriving in a half-timbered Traveller van, is a familiar enough version of "the male author"; Great Calne, an apparently idyllic village with a wide range of carefully differentiated characters, but underneath seething with unseen discontents and rivalries, is itself another easily summoned trope--the kind of community now perhaps most commonly encountered in fictional terms in TV shows. This is handy, for Mr Golightly decides that the best way of dragging his great work into the limelight of popularity and relevance is to recast it as a soap opera. In the event, he makes little headway with this project because, of course, the affairs of the village become all-absorbing and gradually draw him in. And so things unfold, as the characters carefully established by Sally Vickers work out their destinies in a mixture of social comedy (some of it very sharp), melodrama, nature mysticism and visionary redemption that delivers far more than the opening paragraphs can suggest. Moreover, the precise identity of Mr Golightly, while not exactly part of the plot, is disclosed gradually and may come as a surprise to some.

Review: Deliciously addictive. To begin with I thought it was just an ordinary tale about village life, the writing is so subtle that at first I entirely missed the subtext. Mr Golightly, a polite, affable and fairly ordinary middle aged man, is renting a cottage in Devon whilst trying to write a sequel to his bestselling book of many years ago. He has decided, as befits modern times, that he will attempt to write a soap opera using the same cast of characters, the only trouble being that he has hardly ever watched a soap opera. At the same time he is trying to get to grips with his new laptop and learn the incredibly complicated and convoluted art of sending and receiving e.mails.

The village of Great Calne is teeming with people who all seem to need Mr Golightly's help and assistance, they have a way of swallowing up his time (although he seems more than happy to oblige them) and he finds it hard to focus on his writing and seems to get no further forward with it. The villagers are a bit of a bunch of scheming, dishonest, immoral, self servers and at one point in his life Mr Golightly would have taken a pretty dim view of them, he is inclined to be more benevolent now though, age and experience has made him more charitable. He has at some point in his life known tragedy, his son died and it's something which is still very painful to him. He finds it hard to accept and understand it.

The writing is just sublime, it's very witty and gentle but also at times whimsical, dark and revelatory. I had listened to about three quarters of the book before I realised that Mr Golightly was really someone else altogether. When I finished listening I started listening all over again and felt embarrassed that I hadn't noticed the clues to his identity which had been there all along, but it is so subtly done and the author kind of drip feeds the info in at a time when you think you've got his character sussed out.

I loved it and thought that Michael Maloney did a fantastic job with the narration.

Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (Audiobook)

Synopsis: 'I see murder in this unhappy hand...' When Mrs Robinson, palmist to the Prince of Wales, reads Oscar Wilde's palm she cannot know what she has predicted. Nor can Oscar know what he has set in motion when, that same evening, he proposes a game of 'Murder' in which each of his Sunday Supper Club guests must write down those whom they would like to kill. For the fourteen 'victims' begin to die mysteriously, one by one, and in the order in which their names were drawn from the bag...With growing horror, Wilde and his confidantes Robert Sherard and Arthur Conan Doyle, realise that one of their guests that evening must be the murderer. In a race against time, Wilde will need all his powers of deduction and knowledge of human behaviour before he himself -- the thirteenth name on the list -- becomes the killer's next victim.

Review: Despite loving Oscar Wilde and murder mysteries I had put off reading/listening to these books because I'm not particularly a fan of Gyles Brandreth (and that's putting it mildly). However, the library was pretty low on choice and the title was attracting me like a magnet, and also I remembered seeing these books recommended on the book club forum so I made the choice to bring this one home.

I'm glad I did, I loved everything about it. Gyles obviously knows his stuff and I had no problem whatsoever believing that I was reading about true events in the life and times of Oscar Wilde. I loved the way in which he used a cast of both real characters (Oscar, Bosie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Walter Sickert, Bram Stoker & Robert Sherard etc) and fictional and the way in which he fleshed out the lesser known characters. Also loved the way in which Gyles's Oscar was a kind of mixture of Oscar Wilde and Sherlock Holmes, deducing everything long before anyone else, being incredibly witty and insightful and making almost everyone else around him seem quite dim and slow on the uptake.

The plotline is a delicious one, Oscar proposes a game of 'murder' in which all of his fourteen dinner guests are asked to write down, on a slip of paper, the name of the person they would most like to murder. These names are then drawn from a hat and read out one by one. Of course, it's not long (barely a few hours) before the person first out of the hat is murdered, and this murder is followed by several others all in sequence. Oscar has a particular interest in solving the crime quickly for as well as feeling a bit guilty about proposing the game in the first place, he himself has been named as the thirteenth proposed victim and his wife Constance is fourteenth.

I loved the dénouement, I had made some half guesses and was correct in a couple of instances but on the whole I was as in the dark and blinkered as most of Oscar's companions. I believe I felt as much wonder as they did as the truth was revealed. Yes there is a big nod to both Conan Doyle's and Agatha Christie's stories and probably any murder mystery fan worth their salt will be able to work out whodunnit long before the end but I'm always incredibly obtuse when it comes to unravelling clues and I'm thankful for it because I can usually read detective novels in complete ignorant bliss.

Oscar is portrayed as incredibly intelligent and witty and also neglectful, selfish and self absorbed which is probably a fairly accurate portrayal. You get the feeling that he could be both delightful to be with and dispiriting, depending on his mood or the affection in which he held you. I loved spending time with him and his companions at Tite Street, The Socrates Club and London in general, so much so that I must read, or listen to, the others in the series asap.

The Information (Audiobook)

Synopsis: How can one writer hurt another where it really counts? The answer: attack his reputation. This is the problem facing novelist Richard Tull, contemplating the success of his friend and rival Gwyn Barry. Revenger's tragedy, comedy of errors, contemporary satire - The Information skewers high life and low in Martin Amis's brilliant return to the territory of Money and London Fields.

Review: This is a really dark satire about life in the literary world, practically everyone is unlikeable. The main character, writer Richard Tull is definitely unlikeable, he's absolutely riddled with envy over his friend (and I use the word 'friend' in it's loosest sense .. you wouldn't want a friend like Richard) Gwyn Barry's recent literary success.

Richard's own literary career is somewhat depressing, he is now reduced to vanity publishing and reviewing biographies for 'The Little Magazine', biographies about long dead and largely forgotten people. He has written quite a few novels and early in his career he was moderately successful, but he wasn't able to build on that success and for a few years now his career has been on the downward slide. He lastest book is actually called 'Untitled' (amongst other titles Richard thinks it may just as well be called 'Unread'), indeed as far as he knows he has a readership of one (there is a running gag about his latest book giving anyone who attempts to read it a crushing migraine, no-one can get past the first few pages). The worst part of all is that the novel that has made Gwyn so famous, rich and successful is the biggest pile of politically correct horsesh*t that Richard has ever had the misfortune to read, it's absolute tripe. And it's mystifying because, in Richard's view, he is the more intelligent and creative of the two. They have known each other since university and it was always supposed to be he that went on to greater things.

To say that Richard is bitter is an understatement and his greatest desire now, far outweighing his previous desire to write a bestseller, is to screw up Gwyn Barry's life. He hits upon various schemes, he tries to seduce his wife, he tries to discredit him with the judges of a literary prize, he arranges to have him beaten up (and rather helpfully Richard's readership of one turns out to be a screwed up sadistic ex-con), found with a prostitute, found guilty of plagiarism, he will in short stop at nothing, until he has covered Gwyn in dishonour and disgrace and seen him stripped of his prizes.Now you may think that you'd feel sorry for Gwyn but you don't because he is an obnoxious, jumped up, puffed up little twerp who believes all the hype.

It's viciously dark, Richard is going through a bit of a mid-life crisis (to put it mildly), apart from his jealousy regarding Gwyn, he has problems at home ... his wife is exasperated by his lack of motivation (for anything involving work), he's impotent, he's middle aged and feeling it, he smokes, drinks and takes drugs and now he's involved with a gang of extremely ruthless people. But for all the spite and vitriol it's also very funny (in the blackest way), you can't help laughing at some of the scrapes Richard gets himself into or at some of his innermost thoughts which are scathingly cruel but hilarious.

For the most part enjoyable, I always enjoy Steven Pacey's narrations, but, though it is undoubtedly clever, I though it was too wordy and verbose at times and at 17 hours and 19 mins ... too long.

The Room of Lost Things

Synopsis: Under his railway arch in Loughborough Junction, South London, Robert Sutton is taking leave of a lifetime of hard work. His dry-cleaning shop lies at the heart of a lively community, a fixed point in a changing world. And, as he explains to his successor, young East Londoner Akeel, it is also the resting place for the contents of his customers' pockets - and for their secrets and lies. As he helps Akeel to make a new life out of his old one, Robert also hands on all he knows of his world: the dirty dip of the Thames; the parks, rare green oases in a desert of high-rises and decaying mansion blocks; and the varied lives that converge at the junction. Humming with life, packed tight with detail, The Room of Lost Things is a hymn of love to a great and overflowing city, and a profoundly human story that holds us in its grip from the first sentence until the last.

Review: A very readable warm story about Robert, who has owned a dry cleaning shop at Loughborough Junction, South London for years, and whose mother owned it before him. He has decided it's time to call it a day and sell the shop. He finally settles on selling to Akeel Khan, a young British Muslim from east London, but it's going to be a wrench. The place is full of memories and full of lost things, things that careless customers have left behind. Robert's mother Alice started a filing system for all these things years ago, a box full of keys, one full of shopping lists and one with best man speeches in etc etc, she never threw anything away .. bus tickets, lottery tickets, hankies, earrings, receipts, letters and so on (are people really that careless?, I'm sure I'll check my pockets from now on). But Alice is long dead and Robert has been steadily adding to this collection for years. Akeel will come and work with Robert for a while, so that Robert can show him the ropes and fill him in on all the secrets and tricks of the trade.

Robert's customers are a mish mash of people, he knows them all well, likes some and disapproves of others. There is Australian au pair Helen, her employers Claire and Andrew, Stefan a gay fitness instructor, social worker Marylin, poor confused Mrs Ryan .. one of Marylin's clients and Dean a family man with a shady past (and present). They pop into the shop with their various items of clothing, or walk past the shop and give a cheery wave to Robert, but then we stay with them and follow them home. Most of them have secrets or problems they are struggling with. These are quite Lilac Busish in feel ... little vignettes within the main story whereby we get to see behind the polite conversations in the dry cleaners.

There are sundry other characters too, Charlie and Dan are encamped on a sofa placed at right angles to the road (exactly 3.15 miles from the statue of Eros as the crow flies) drinking body warmed beer, the new owner of the halal meat and veg shop owner just across the street and a Rastafarian man named The Poet who journeys all day long on the 345 bus talking and singing his own compositions, sometimes singing a little Bob Marley, Sir Bob ... messenger of Jah. Some people smile at him, some move away. I'd like to think I'd be a smiler but I know I'd be one of the one's that would be uncomfortable with it. We learn a lot too about Alice, Robert's mother and Jean and Katie, Robert's ex wife and daughter.

I loved the relationship betwen Akeel and Robert, polite and formal to begin - Akeel a bit in awe of Robert and Robert not quite sure about how to behave around a Muslim - softening with familiarity into a quiet confidence, both men revealing their anxieties and fears for the future and Robert especially revealing secrets from his past. It was very touching in places, I loved how Robert gave Mrs Ryan an old uncollected overcoat, when she had come in to pick up her husband's coat, not remembering that he had died years ago. Everything about Mrs Ryan was affecting, the way she had to have her key and address tied into her handbag, the way she knew the cold wet white stuff that was falling outside her window but couldn't remember the name of it, the way that she got anxious and lost her way when out shopping and couldn't remember where she lived only remembering when she eventually saw her address label, the way she only remembered what she had gone out shopping for when she made herself a calming cup of tea and found there was no milk.

Enjoyable story but sad in places. It has an unusual ending in that one minute you have your heart in your mouth, the next she's given you a different, more happy version.

Brideshead Revisited

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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