Love in a Cold Climate

I have seen a movie version of this book already - it wasn't bad, and so when I saw this book in the cheap-as-chips Penguin edition I decided to get it.

It has been sitting on my bedside table for a few months now, waiting, but now I am on holiday - in a bach in a beachy location with plenty of time on my hands.  Due to Easter falling one week before Anzac Day, I've taken three days leave and have ten solid days away from work! ... Anyway, the point is, I have finally picked the book up and read it from cover to cover in less than 24 hours.

The story is narrated by Fanny, a cousin/friend and onlooker on several families. She has grown up with several other English girls of the upper classes, all of whom are falling in and out of love. Along comes the beautiful Polly, home from India with her father the Viceroy and her frightening mother, and she doesn't seem interested in falling in love.

I give it a solid three stars. It was a good read with some great characters and there were some moments of real satirical genius. I particularly liked Uncle Matthew and his memories of the Boer War:

"Four days in a bullock wagon," he used to tell us, "a hole as big as your fist in my stomach, and maggoty! Happiest time of my life. The only thing was one got rather tired of the taste of mutton after a bit, no beef in that campaign, you know."

Then there's the splendid and ridiculous Cecil:

"Won't you take off your spectacles?" said Lady Montdore. "I should like to see your eyes."

"Later, dear Lady Montdore, later. When my dreadful, paralysing shyness (a disease with me) has quite worn off."

I also really liked the way it ended - it was quite funny. But I won't give away any spoilers.

It wasn't the best book ever, all the same. Perhaps it was the writing - it was fine, but not excellent. And I guess the reputation this book has for social satire made me expect a sort of 20th century Austen but it's not quite as biting as I had hoped.

So, all in all, a good-ish book. 

Now - back to the holiday! I've got Katherine Mansfield's short stories sitting waiting for me....

the alchemist

It's Book Club this Friday.  We meet in a café, buy drinks, and talk about books.

On the basis of another member's recommendation, this month we've read The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho.  Hence this review.

I've got at least one good thing to say about it.  It's short.

Other than that, I'm going to have trouble being nice, because I found this one of the more painful books I've ever forced myself through.  The writer's sentimental and slightly vain introduction didn't help, but I tried to keep an open mind as I started reading the story...

I guess I can also be slightly positive in that the book wasn't difficult to read.  It wasn't well-written, but it was at least readable.  For a while, I was interested in what would happen to the main character, an unnamed 'boy' who starts as a shepherd in Spain and who travels across North Africa in pursuit of his "Personal Legend" (BLERGH).  I guess the first two thirds are slightly plot-driven and so more tolerable.

Then you get to the bit where the boy is communing with the desert and discovering the Soul of the World and listening to his heart and becoming friends with his heart and being congratulated by an alchemist for pursuing his Personal Legend and learning that it is we who nourish the Soul of the World, et cetera, et cetera.  I just can't write any more because it's too painful.  GAH.

The Alchemist is deeply depressing, as yet another example of a terrible book which has somehow made its author famous and rich.  One star from me - and that's being generous.

At least I've got out the worst of my spleen.  Now I have to work on being polite about the book on Friday.

the big sleep

I am going to fall far short of reviewing Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep appropriately. I simply can't bring myself to even attempt to describe it in its own terms. It's probably better that I don't try. Here is your review, written by a middle-class New Zealand ex-English literature student who has finished everything Agatha Christie or Ngaio Marsh ever wrote and so needed some new crime fiction addiction - and got something worlds apart from Miss Marple.

I saw the Bogart film a few years ago - liked it but can hardly remember what happened, which was good in terms of reading the novel with an open mind.

As far as the novel goes, I wondered as I started if I would be able to keep going. It's written very simply and in a matter of fact manner which is difficult to get accustomed to:

I went over to the mail slot and picked up six envelopes, two letters and four pieces of advertising matter. I hung my hat on the telephone and sat down.

But then there are all the crazy similes and personification and turns of phrase, the proliferation of guns and gutter-dwellers, the underbelly of society presented on the page, and it gets interesting:

She approached me with enough sex appeal to stampede a businessman's lunch.

The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom. ... They smelled as overpowering as boiling alcohol under a blanket.

The calves were beautiful, the ankles long and slim and with enough melodic line for a tone poem.

She gave me one of those smiles the lips have forgotten before they reach the eyes.

Brody's dark brown stare moved up and down my face. His Colt went on hungering for my vital organs.

... against a scribbled wall a pouch of ringed rubber had fallen and not been disturbed.

"Eddie Mars had Regan bumped off," he said calmly, and leaned back as if he had just been made a vice-president.

The purring voice had an edge, like sand in the bearings.

"You'll tell me, little man. Here, or in the back room where the boys pitch dimes against the wall."

Then there's the private detective/street talk which much of the time was incomprehensible to me but worked all the same:

"Agnes is a nice girl. You can't hold that stuff on her. It's not so easy for a dame to get by these days."
"She's too big for you," I said. "She'll roll on you and smother you."
"That's kind of a dirty crack, brother," he said with something that was near enough to dignity to make me stare at him.
I said: "You're right. I've been meeting the wrong kind of people lately. Let's cut out the gabble and get down to cases. What have you got for the money?"

Did people ever actually talk like this? I almost hope so.

What bugged me about this novel, however, was Chandler's treatment both of homosexuals and women. I'm sure this is not an original complaint to make, because it's so pronounced a quality of this book. It kind of reminded me of Ian Fleming's treatment of women.

You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.

Well, excuse me, Mr Chandler, none of the men in your novel are glittering testimonies to mankind either. And don't even get me started on your repulsive characterisation of the homosexual kid.

It doesn't really have a strong plot, either, and was a little confusing to follow. Especially as it's difficult to understand what the heck the characters are talking about.

I can't deny this, though: the book is fun. I'm not sorry to have read it. There was something deliciously sordid about it. It deserves at least three stars.

secrets, spiggy holes

I've been lying around feeling miserable most of the day with a bad cold. When I was a kid, one of the few things that could make me forget sickness was an Enid Blyton book. When my eye happened to pass over this one - The Secret of Spiggy Holes - sitting in my shelf, I felt an unaccountable urge to read it. I told myself, Allie, you'll just be disappointed. The favourites of your childhood are bound to fall short in adulthood. But I picked it up anyway. Enid Blyton was the reason I first wanted to become an author and I will always feel an attraction to her books for some strange reason.

This is one from yet another series written by Enid Blyton, the "Secret" books. Generally extremely unrealistic, exciting and packed with adventures. Written in 1940, it is just as you might expect it to be - full of "queer sorts" and "odd chaps" and "jolly fellows" and suspicious foreigners; subtle racism and not-so-subtle sexism; definitely a product of its time. Same old Blyton formula of 4 or 5 children, doing without too much adult supervision, outwitting the bad guys and doing exciting things. Nothing about this book pushes the envelope.

Having said that - it was, surprisingly, still a lot of fun. I will say this for Enid Blyton - she has a sympathy for things that appeal to children. Somehow, she manages to cram in secret passages, references to smuggling, camping on a secret island, kidnappings, sinister but inept enemies, lots of hearty-sounding food, tree-climbing, running away, long summer days, young foreign princes, at least one orphan, absent parents and independence from too much control.

Heck, these things appeal to me almost twenty years after I first read about them.

This passage may give you some idea of the general tendency of these books. It describes what happened in the last book, The Secret Island.

[Jack] was not really the brother of Mike, Nora and Peggy, and had no father or mother of his own.
But the children's parents had taken him for their own child, because he had helped Mike, Peggy, and Nora so much when they had run away from an unkind aunt and uncle. Captain Arnold, the children's father, had left them at a farm with his sister, whilst he and his wife had tried to fly to Australia in an aeroplane.
Captain and Mrs. Arnold had been lost for months on a desert island, and when it seemed as if they would never come back, the children's aunt treated them unkindly. They had made friends with Jack, who had helped them to run away to a secret island in a lake, and there the children had lived together until they had heard that their parents had been found and had come back to England to look for them.
... now here they all were together again for the summer holidays. At first they had been sad to hear that Captain and Mrs. Arnold were to go to Ireland to lecture there all about their flying adventures - but now that they were on their way to Cornwall together, to live in a house on the cliffs, and do just what they liked, the children couldn't help feeling excited and happy.

This isn't exactly a normal review but because it was so fun I'm going to give it two and a half stars.

his family ... and other animals

I have just finished reading Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. It's one of those books that I'm delighted to discover now, but really should have come across earlier. Has anyone else coming across this blog read it?

Gerald Durrell was an English (though Indian-born) naturalist and conservationist who also wrote books about his exploits. I've never even considered reading books about animals before, but that was before I realised how much fruit for story-telling they provided him. This particular book is about the five years he spent with his slightly unconventional family on the Greek island of Corfu in the 1930s, from the age of ten.

It feels like cheating to be able to write a book about your childhood years in Corfu, in a way. Durrell has so much to work with, simply by virtue of living in an absolutely beautiful location, with fascinating wildlife, and interesting people. It also feels like cheating to have such a wonderfully eclectic family, and to have such serendipity in encountering the most unusual variety of people outside the family. But at the same time I get the distinctive idea that Durrell is one of those people who could find interesting things anywhere, and, even if they happen to be swamp-delling reptiles or generous wife-killers, endear them to all his readers.

I laughed out loud for a high percentage of this book. It's full of hilarious moments, brought to the page either by Durrell's family/friends or by animals or by Durrell's family's encounters with his animals. When I wasn't giggling, I was fascinated by the wildlife a teenaged Durrell dug up in various swamps or stumps or seas. Or I was bowled over by his descriptions of Corfu. One particular image stands out: swimming in the sea, at night, with porpoises - the sea so full of phosphoresence that the porpoises shone as they swum underneath or beside him, and the water they splashed sparkling like little diamonds.

I did get bogged down a bit in the descriptive passages at times. But as a whole this book is something lovely to read. A slice of chocolate cake, as books go. I give it three and a half stars.