Reviewer

I'm not sure what to think of Emma. It deals movingly with moral themes quite close to my heart without the ghastly Victorian sentimentality one expects of anything written in the nineteenth century (it was published twenty years before Victoria's accession to the throne in 1837); it is written in polished prose that never seems dull or prolix; its characters are memorable and charming.

And yet, as much as you might luxuriate in Austen's topnotch diction, you can't help wishing they'd all just shut up, tell each other how they feel and get it over with. The sexual nature of the passion the characters feel for their opposite numbers is quite undisguised to twenty-first century readers, who have the benefit of Freud, so that all the silly guile comes across as being palpably awkward.

The other issue is the sheer number of characters; as someone with a shockingly poor memory and a not stupendous intelligence, it's torture trying to keep track of who's married to whom, who's enamored with whom and who is whose great step goddaughter umpteen times removed. This difficulty can be remedied, but don't make the mistake I made of dragging the reading process out. The book is best read within a week or not at all - it's just too easy to forget everybody, otherwise.

Anyway, without giving too much away, the central theme in the novel, forgetting the uninteresting nonsense about class, is female virtue. It is about BECOMING a whole woman. This process is presented to us masterfully in the dichotomy of the two principal female characters, Emma Woodhouse and Harriet Smith. Harriet is conventional, demure, shy, submissive and brainless, existing only to be a kind of adjunct to whatever man might eventually take her up. Emma, on the other hand, is wilful, worldly and ambitious; she must exist on her own terms and will not accept domestic servitude. Austen, with a wisdom and life experience seldom seen today, rightly espouses the Aristotelian Golden Mean, and the novel finds its resolution in the harmonisation of the above two opposites. Emma gradually and movingly realises she is not after all omnipotent and ought to be more humble before the ever-humble Harriet; Harriet herself realises that humans are fallen creatures, that she isn't the only born sinner and ought to demand her due from the world. Via negativa and via positiva.

Of course, the modern world hates the golden mean, because it isn't INTERESTING; the modern world wants extremity, it wants shock, it wants subversion. But it shouldn't, because those things are quite adolescent and quite contrary to people's long term interests.

This is what redeems the novel; it is a good-humoured, very British celebration of virtues once familiar to all but now quite absent.

I approached Lord of the Flies, quite uncharacteristically, from a position of complete contextual ignorance; that is to say that despite its position as a much-loved modern classic, I read it with very little prior knowledge. I should also state that I had - and have - no knowledge whatever of Mr. Golding or his background.

I feel these two things are noteworthy for the reason that it seems to me difficult to judge from the work alone just what position it was that he took on the questions confronting civilisation; I think it would be just as plausible to read it as a Rousseau-esque condemnation of the life-sapping artificiality of civilisation, a dirge for Arcadian innocence, as to read it more straightforwardly as a warning of the fragility of liberal democracy and the values of civilisation itself.

The cast of characters, as many will know, is made up entirely of children. These children, marooned on an island in the Pacific following an airplane crash - I don't recall any plausible explanation for why only the children survived - quickly realise the necessity of collective organisation for survival, and it is the way in which this organisation evolves that produces the drama and deeper meaning of the story.

The children quickly establish a mock-democracy, centring around the triumvirate of Ralph, Simon and Jack, the novella's chief antagonist. The three boys together represent the three viable methods of organising a society: common law democracy (Ralph), liberal democracy (Simon) and autocracy in its myriad forms (Jack). Jack, of course, uses the time-honored tools of populism to fracture the sensitive structure of democracy Ralph erected. Here is where Golding's ambivalence about civilisation comes in; like Buddha or the Solomon of Ecclesiastes, he appears to view something vulnerable and impermanent as being the less valuable for it, which seems to me an adolescent fallacy. It is also noteworthy that by casting not just Jack and his band, but Ralph too as a petulant and disagreeable child, he appears, again, to be telling us that Ralph's system is not a whole lot better.

In view of the above, it will be apparent that whichever of the two plausible readings we accept of <i>Lord of the Flies</i>, it turns out to be something of a failure: if it is an attempt to vindicate liberal democracy, it fails for having represented that system as vain, petty and unstable. If it is an attempt to condemn civilisation on the grounds that it makes demands of its members, then it fails on moral grounds. Or perhaps it's the context that's missing. Either way, the book seems to me to deserve no more than a token reading

This is a big book, a long read, but absorbing and a real page turner. The page turner is the usual, good writing and who is having an affair whom, but behind this, the background, is the legacy of the French Resistance and the struggle of France in the immediate post 2nd World War years to establish their place in the world. French intellectual society wanted to count, to influence world events. The Left was strong, the Communists were big and intellectual society leant strongly towards Russia and against America, obviously mad to us, - with the benefit of hindsight. Their predicaments seem a bit silly, again, with the benefit of hindsight. For example, finding out about the Stalinist concentration camps was a crisis, if they denounced the Gulags, as obviously they should, it condemned the whole Leftist movement and laid the way open to Fascism, if they said nothing, they were guilty of Fascism. Now we know that socialism can be democratic and respectful of human rights, but coming out of a brutal occupation, that didn't seem an option.

The Third Policeman,

I read Gone Girl after seeing the 2014 film on TV, probably the last person in the UK or American to do so. I was so impressed by the film, especially by Rosamund Pike's interpretation of the main character and I thought there must be more in the book. Yes there was, but not much. The film was a straight and true interpretation.

The writing is colloquial, nasty American. The overall impression is a battle of the sexes. The men are horrible, not suitable companions for women at all, drinking, coarse language, ball games, looking at women as objects, hardly a sentence without the b, c or f words. The author says she has done her research and this is how men are.

It is totally 'show not tell' book, to the ultimate, like the writing schools say you should. An A+ novel from a writing school.

People are having horrible lives in America. Children are hard work, whiny and demanding, rich or poor it is the same. Life is about status, possessions, not attractive, none of us would want it. Very little culture is there, books are mentioned a bit, but not nature, or hobbies, good friends, theatre or even film.

I'm afraid I abandoned this book about one fifth of the way in. I will say straight away the fault is me not the writer, it is just not my sort of book. I gave up the evening I saw Mission Impossible (No 4) on the telly over Christmas and the two stories became muddled in my mind. Jerichp's War is very Mission Impossibily, I stopped at the point a donkey entered the plot. I am sure something nasty was in store for him and I would rather not know. The bit I read was about extreme characters working on their own carrying out highly secret and dangerous tasks that will alter the course of history, except no-one but us will know about them, as it is highly secret. So if you like that kind of thing you may well like this. The book is long, so one fifth was actually pretty good going, and it is plot and war technology, not character driven. The protagonists are introduced just enough to explain why they are there, though I didn't get it. Why for example would a young attractive graduate risk his life, take life and live undercover in war deprived Yemen rather than being a lawyer, adventure holidaying and drugging or whatever in London. The people in it are called The Ghost, The Girl, Belcher and Jericho and are archetypes rather than people. The Archaeologist, (aka The Girl) for example, I mean, which university did she belong to, and NO, under 30 year old women however blond and beautiful (yes she is) don't get to run digs, and where were the diggers and what was she digging anyway?

The author, Gerald Seymour, is very experienced and very successful (he wrote Harry's Game), but I found the style difficult, it is very factual. You have to read where the wounded man turns left, crawling on his belly, along the ditch, how long the ditch is, about the wire, the recessed doors, cement etc etc he has to negotiate while making an escape. As I don't care about the wounded man I don't mind if he makes it or not, so this is boring to me. But ... hands in the air ... I don't read war books. Its a man's book I guess though I imagine most would find the length daunting and wouldn't pick it up in the first place

Reviewer	Title	Review
Gary	Emma Jane Austen published 1815 2 May 2020	I'm not sure what to think of Emma. It deals movingly with moral themes quite close to my heart without the ghastly Victorian sentimentality one expects of anything written in the nineteenth century (it was published twenty years before Victoria's accession to the throne in 1837); it is written in polished prose that never seems dull or prolix; its characters are memorable and charming. And yet, as much as you might luxuriate in Austen's topnotch diction, you can't help wishing they'd all just shut up, tell each other how they feel and get it over with. The sexual nature of the passion the characters feel for their opposite numbers is quite undisguised to twenty-first century readers, who have the benefit of Freud, so that all the silly guile comes across as being palpably awkward. The other issue is the sheer number of characters; as someone with a shockingly poor memory and a not stupendous intelligence, it's torture trying to keep track of who's married to whom, who's enamored with whom and who is whose great step goddaughter umpteen times removed. This difficulty can be remedied, but don't make the mistake I made of dragging the reading process out. The book is best read within a week or not at all - it's just too easy to forget everybody, otherwise. Anyway, without giving too much away, the central theme in the novel, forgetting the uninteresting nonsense about class, is female virtue. It is about BECOMING a whole woman. This process is presented to us masterfully in the dichotomy of the two principal female characters, Emma Woodhouse and Harriet Smith. Harriet is conventional, demure, shy, submissive and brainless, existing only to be a kind of adjunct to whatever man might eventually take her up. Emma, on the other hand, is wilful, worldly and ambitious; she must exist on her own terms and will not accept domestic servitude. Austen, with a wisdom and life experience seldom seen today, rightly espouses the Aristotelian Golden Mean, and the novel finds its resolution in the harmonisation of the above two opposites. Emma gradually and movingly realises she is not after all omnipotent and ought to be more humble before the ever-humble Harriet; Harriet herself realises that humans are fallen creatures, that she isn't the only born sinner and ought to demand her due from the world. Via negativa and via positiva. Of course, the modern world hates the golden mean, because it isn't INTERESTING; the modern world wants extremity, it wants shock, it wants subversion. But it shouldn't, because those things are quite adolescent and quite contrary to people's long term interests. This is what redeems the novel; it is a good-humoured, very British celebration of virtues once familiar to all but now quite absent.
Rosanne	The Post Office Girl Stefan Zweig 1930s published posthumously 3 May 2020	Like many things I have read these last few weeks in the lock down this book seemed very relevant to the present situation. Set in early 1930s Austria citizens were hemmed in by rules, regulations, officialdom, Police, prying eyes, disapproval and and most of all - poverty. There was no way for them to express themselves, to use their skills and talents. Bound to hated jobs that paid scarcely enough to survive, our two main characters are daily tormented, made worse by the lack of a fellow soul who understands their frustration at the madness and injustice of it all. Their families, people around them, seem to buy the system or at least to tolerate it. They are surrounded by the thought police, if they express different views the condemnation is palpable. It lead of course to Nazism. “...that idiot puppet the government, which doesn’t breathe and isn’t alive and doesn’t want to know anything, the stupidest thing people have ever invented, something that crushes people” Ferdinand speaking, p232 “ ... I don’t have a trace of moral scruple, when it comes to the state I feel completely free. Its committed such terrible crimes against us all, against our generation, that we have a right to anything ...Commandeering, that's the word they used during the war, or expropriating – Versailles called in reclamation. Who taught us how to cheat if not the state – how else would we know that money saved up by three generations could become worthless in a mere two weeks, that families could be swindled out of pastures, houses, and fields that had been theirs for a hundred years ... We have an excellent case against the state, by God, we'll win in every court. It can never pay off its terrible debt, never give back what it took from us. Once there might have been a reason to have some qualms, back when the state was a good custodian, thrifty, decent, proper. Now that its behaved like a hoodlum, we have the right to be hoodlums too” Zweiss (who was forced to leave German in the 1930s) speaking through Ferdinand p235
Eileen	Black Boy (American Hunger), 1945 by Richard Wright and The Outsider, 1953 by Richard Wright and Bog Bodies by PV Glob, 1965	I read these books one after another compiled in my single hardback Library of America volume. They were fantastic books, the sort that you are living in the whole time you are reading, that take over your life. The first is a biography, but reads like a novel. What a life he had. The second is very much a novel, a fascinating story of an amoral man, Dostoevskyan in its compass. You will learn a lot about America in these books, but like all good books both are studies of 'the human condition' and of relevance to us all. Here is just one quote from the first book: "Whenever I thought of the essential bleakness of black life in America, I knew that Negroes had never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization, that they lived somehow in it but not of it. And when I brooded upon the cultural barrenness of black life, I wondered if clean, positive tenderness, love, honor, loyalty and the capacity to remember were native with man. I asked myself if these human qualities were not fostered, won, struggled and suffered for, preserved in ritual from one generation to another." (p37 Black Boy) I followed the biography with its known characters to Wright's novel. The first four pages were slow but then, we are right into the story, an amazing one, such a good one I can read it with people talking around me, stuck on a train, in a cafe, I am lost in the story. The idea, someone who invents a new personality – think about it, starting anew as a mature person. What would that do to you, to your morals ... I wrote this poem while in the middle of Wright's book and Bog Bodies by P V Glob 1965, they had a common theme, which I didn't expect. Bog bodies by Glob Gentle people, soft yielding young By righteous mob Violently killed, throats cut, hung Naked and trussed Pushed face down into peaty pools By people so just Secured with wood stakes cruel Point and splinter Pinning down the rising vampires In midwinter The shortest darkest days when fires Flicker and leap To bring life back into seeds sewn In damp soil asleep Victims frightened forced and alone To horrid ritual Of pagan times sprite witch and fairy Until the dark Yule Was replaced by Christmas oh so merry! Black Boy Mr Wright Puzzled confused hurt and hungry Huge the fight To live, so degraded denied unfree Impossible to be Printer postman washer waiter Eyes down keep clear You don’t belong not now or later Then the great idea Communism! at last a home for you Equality exhilarates But the cost! your own self true It annihilates No thought expression fun awhile But sacrifice Of person for party just one smile Outcast the price Beaten cursed killed with disgust Body trussed By the group so righteous and just
Gary	Lord of the Flies William Golding	I approached Lord of the Flies, quite uncharacteristically, from a position of complete contextual ignorance; that is to say that despite its position as a much-loved modern classic, I read it with very little prior knowledge. I should also state that I had - and have - no knowledge whatever of Mr. Golding or his background. I feel these two things are noteworthy for the reason that it seems to me difficult to judge from the work alone just what position it was that he took on the questions confronting civilisation; I think it would be just as plausible to read it as a Rousseau-esque condemnation of the life-sapping artificiality of civilisation, a dirge for Arcadian innocence, as to read it more straightforwardly as a warning of the fragility of liberal democracy and the values of civilisation itself. The cast of characters, as many will know, is made up entirely of children. These children, marooned on an island in the Pacific following an airplane crash - I don't recall any plausible explanation for why only the children survived - quickly realise the necessity of collective organisation for survival, and it is the way in which this organisation evolves that produces the drama and deeper meaning of the story. The children quickly establish a mock-democracy, centring around the triumvirate of Ralph, Simon and Jack, the novella's chief antagonist. The three boys together represent the three viable methods of organising a society: common law democracy (Ralph), liberal democracy (Simon) and autocracy in its myriad forms (Jack). Jack, of course, uses the time-honored tools of populism to fracture the sensitive structure of democracy Ralph erected. Here is where Golding's ambivalence about civilisation comes in; like Buddha or the Solomon of Ecclesiastes, he appears to view something vulnerable and impermanent as being the less valuable for it, which seems to me an adolescent fallacy. It is also noteworthy that by casting not just Jack and his band, but Ralph too as a petulant and disagreeable child, he appears, again, to be telling us that Ralph's system is not a whole lot better. In view of the above, it will be apparent that whichever of the two plausible readings we accept of <i>Lord of the Flies</i>, it turns out to be something of a failure: if it is an attempt to vindicate liberal democracy, it fails for having represented that system as vain, petty and unstable. If it is an attempt to condemn civilisation on the grounds that it makes demands of its members, then it fails on moral grounds. Or perhaps it's the context that's missing. Either way, the book seems to me to deserve no more than a token reading
	The Post Office Girl Stefan Zweig 1930s published posthumously 3 May 2020	Like many things I have read these last few weeks in the lock down this book seemed very relevant to the present situation. Set in early 1930s Austria citizens were hemmed in by rules, regulations, officialdom, Police, prying eyes, disapproval and and most of all - poverty. There was no way for them to express themselves, to use their skills and talents. Bound to hated jobs that paid scarcely enough to survive, our two main characters are daily tormented, made worse by the lack of a fellow soul who understands their frustration at the madness and injustice of it all. Their families, people around them, seem to buy the system or at least to tolerate it. They are surrounded by the thought police, if they express different views the condemnation is palpable. It lead of course to Nazism. “...that idiot puppet the government, which doesn’t breathe and isn’t alive and doesn’t want to know anything, the stupidest thing people have ever invented, something that crushes people” Ferdinand speaking, p232 “ ... I don’t have a trace of moral scruple, when it comes to the state I feel completely free. Its committed such terrible crimes against us all, against our generation, that we have a right to anything ...Commandeering, that's the word they used during the war, or expropriating – Versailles called in reclamation. Who taught us how to cheat if not the state – how else would we know that money saved up by three generations could become worthless in a mere two weeks, that families could be swindled out of pastures, houses, and fields that had been theirs for a hundred years ... We have an excellent case against the state, by God, we'll win in every court. It can never pay off its terrible debt, never give back what it took from us. Once there might have been a reason to have some qualms, back when the state was a good custodian, thrifty, decent, proper. Now that its behaved like a hoodlum, we have the right to be hoodlums too” Zweiss (who was forced to leave German in the 1930s) speaking through Ferdinand p235
Rebecca	Goodbye to Berlin Christopher Isherwood 1939	The first story in this collection was shorter and less significant than I thought it would be, it was rather pointless. The other stories are actually far more interesting and taken altogether the book is profound. Set in 1930s Berlin, it is a first hand account written at the time, people live in boarding houses, it is all nasty, the houses are uncomfortable, crowded, dirty, the food is horrid and the people are nasty, nasty to each other, hating the other – Jews of course, that is given, but also just people they are jealous of or don’t like, for whatever reason, they take delight in their downfall and unhappiness. Children and parents hit each other and are rough. I cant see why Berlin had such an attraction. It was awful, hell even. But fascinating, the nastiness was the real cause of the 2nd WW and Isherwood shows this with his stories. Hatred had permeated people's lives, become the norm, so beatings up, shootings even, snearing, crashes in people's fortunes, was just what happened. War was the extension of it, not inevitable of course, but logical if nothing stopped the nastiness. It was a failure of the Church, its moral teaching and inspiration had no impact, at least not on Isherwood's characters.
Jacquie	Grace Kelly Christina Haughland 2012	I read this book after watching 'To Catch a Thief' a flawed but watchable film by Alfred Hitchcock. I agree that Grace Kelly was stunning in it, absolutely stunning, though she was no actress, and her clothes were horrid. We are told over and over about her wonderful clothes, her style, but actually our eyes tell us she was rubbish at it. She didn’t know herself or her body. 'Corse it was a bad time for clothes, stodgy suits, thin as thin nylons, ghastly shoes, huge bingey out dresses, women looked frights, totally un sexy and immobile, rigid like dolls. The men were just as bad. Poor Grace was meant to fancy Cary Grant, an elderly man who could hardly bend, let alone shag anyone. The book is a paean to Kelly, so it is uninteresting, we are left to guess what she was really like. Well I am sure she never knew herself, brought up in middle class Philadelphia where women were meant to be healthy, virginal girls next door who calmed and stabilised men. She was taken up by the film studios at eighteen, and they owned their women, their looks, opinions and escorts (they weren't allowed friends or lovers or even husbands). Unlike her contemporary Elizabeth Taylor, whose nature rebelled, Grace was pliable and complied, but got out early via marriage, to an unattractive man she hardly knew (but was a Prince). She continued to live her stately, sedate, life, seemingly out of touch with her true nature. She was therefore suited to be a princess, but what sort of 'job' is that for a person? Her life is a glaring example of how society 'puts upon' i.e. moulds women to be some sort of peculiar, useless creature. At least their clothes and 'beauty' regime drives the economy, that's something I suppose. No doubt the same is true today, being in it, we just cant see it, we think its 'normal'.
Eleanor	Backstage Passes life with David Bowie by Angela Bowie and Patrick Carr 1993 ten years after gagging order ceased.	I was never very interested in David Bowie, but the story of his marriage with Angie was actually fascinating and I read this book in one day. Bowie and Angie were young, she 22 and he 25 when they married but already his career as Fashion and Pop Icon was established. Why did David ask Angela to marry him? That is the question. They had been very attracted to each other and this is understandable, they are very similar, almost twins in fact in body and face and clothes and both bisexual. But when they married the initial mutual love passion was over, that had only lasted a few months (a long time for David though). A clue is given at the end of the story, David became dependent on a fixer called Corinne, when she disappears after a fall out with Angie, he goes after her, he cannot live without her. Corinne by this time had taken over the role of Angie. Angie was a good fixer, ambitious, bold, capable, she cooked, cleaned, organised, sewed, found the houses, the band members, the managers, kept the groupies away - a typical capable woman managing an incapable man. She was in love with David, obsessed with his beautiful looks and his unobtainableness, but accepted from the start, so she says, he was going to shag everyone in sight, men and women. In fact he did that horrible man thing, asking her to marry him but 'Is It Going To Be Hard For You Knowing I Don’t Love You?'. She took lovers herself, men and women, loads of them, and drugs, and partying, and spending money, but you feel she would actually have wanted what all women want, a nice faithful man, even is she wasn’t totally faithful herself. Remember she was very young. The most interesting thing for me was, despite her scary sexual prowess and number of lovers, she never had an orgasm - not until much later, when she was older and never with David. Most of the pop and fashion icons of the time have walk on rolls, they are all drug and sex mad, none come out too well though Angie loves them. Do you remember an obscure pop singer called Dana – I did, I always wondered why she was on 'Top of the Pops' cos she was soppy and the songs no good, well – all is revealed in this book. And much much more … Postscript: Checking Wikipedia I see that Bowie married a beautiful sophisticated Somali model with only one short name post Angie and stayed with her for the rest of his life, so he went the way of these successful. talented people, happy faithful (?) marriage with wonderful woman, children, grounded in religion and good sense. Poor Angie, she couldn't compete with that, women somehow cant reinvent themselves in that way. Bowie died of liver cancer aged 71, pretty good considering the abuse his body had been through.
Rebecca	Desert and Forest L M Nesbitt 1928	This is a fabulous book, a must read, the story of the first white men to walk the length of Abyssinia (Etheopia), three of them with about 15 local men of different tribes from NE Africa, with camels and mules. A terrible ordeal, three men were killed, one went mad, the others hardly survived, Nesbit (who was 36) states categorically the temperature was 167 F which is 75 C and as he was a scientist I believe him, this on several stages of the journey, they would put their hands in their arm pits which at 98.4 gave their finger tips slight relief. Lack of water, sand storms, sharp rocky ground were the worst physical sufferings, mental sufferings don’t get a look in, the heat was so extreme. There were beautiful parts of the country, not so hot, striking colours, dramatic geology, sometimes forests (though these even worse to negotiate than the desert) and relief when finding rivers which amazingly do flow through the extraordinary country. The humanity of the people is striking, both the three white men (two Italians, one English) and the 15 native men, all go to huge lengths to support each other, respect each other and care for the animals which they love dearly and look after with love, as best they can in the horrible conditions. Often there was no food for the animals, and worse, no water, but the bond was strong, men and beasts were in it together. I made many notes as archaeologically it was fascinating, the burial monuments, tribal customs (in some cases the oldest most frail man was the chief, in others the most blood thirsty), why they hung on in those awful living conditions (because of antagonistic neighbours who would kill them if they strayed into neighbouring territory). This is a book I shall keep, you will have to search for it on line to get your copy.
Rebecca	The Survival of the Fittest Mike Stroud 1998	A great title, the book is what it says it is, how fit people survive and unfit people, I fear 99% of us, succumb to cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, bad feet, weakness, aches, pains and old age, in fact, just about every ailment going. Stroud states what is obvious but rarely talked about backed up with medical evidence and years of his own experience as a serious endurance runner and medical doctor. Stroud accompanied Ranulph Fiennes on some of his journeys, most notably and described in the book, the trek across the Antarctic pulling all their stuff, fulling in crevasses, and an awful running trip across the Sahara and others in mountains in America. He came to running through enjoyment and challenge. His thesis is that humans evolved to run, for 70,000 years they have been active, running after prey some of the time, moving gathering food, making houses, going about their business, all of the time except for sleep, women, men, old and young alike. Along with running they developed resilience and persistence. Walking ten or 20 miles a day would be normal, everyday practice. Only in the last 100 years have people become sedentary, the instinct to conserve energy (because you will need all of it soon) and consume food (because you cant carry it with you and you don’t know when the next meal will be) dominates, nearly all people and all ages, starting in the 20s. Look around you, you will see he is right. Lots of epic stories of runs and expeditions, all great reading are recounted. In my version it ends with the seven marathons in seven days in seven (?) continents, he and Fiennes together. All the great and good feted this event and somehow it was for charity? I guess people sponsoring?. It was a fascinating read, you really felt the pain, made me pleased to be reading it and not taking part. He learnt a lot about endurance, and what the body does, (fills up with fluid in the legs apparently, pees blood) but ... why do it? We would be thinking carbon footprint of this mad adventure nowadays – at least I hope we would, with all the air flights involved. Not sure it would get the sponsorship today.
Rebecca	Iris Murdoch the sovereignty of good 1970	This little book consists of three essays, The Idea of Perfection, On God and Good, The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts. I read the book after listening to a R3 prog about Iris and philosophy. I enjoyed reading all three, they were clear, interesting and logical, and good for my brain, cleansing. However, the first two, seemed naïve, philosophers worrying about stuff they don’t need to and which most of us have sorted in more sophisticated and practical ways in any case. The last essay though I thought profound and had something new to say, or at least added to writing of authors as Tolstoy and Eckhart Tolle who I return to frequently. One quote: “Beauty is the convenient and traditional name of something which art and nature share, and which gives a fairly clear sense to the idea of quality of experience and change of consciousness. I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There I nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important. ...” much more of the same ...
Jacqui	Childhood, Leo Tolstoy, 1851	I read this as an antidote to Agatha Christie, and it definitely proved to be so. Many layered from the first sentence, showing the complexity of life and feelings, and the huge emotion, and struggle each of us has with being a good person and interacting with others. Childhood apparently was Tolstoy's first novel. I thought it must be his autobiography as it was so truthful and intense, but no, it was a story, but surely based on personal experience.
Jacqui	Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie, 1923	I have never read an Agatha Christie though I have seen a few on telly. This one was holiday reading for me. It was pretty stupid, just the last page was clever, - I think this is typical of an AC book. I know my mother loved them and was very good at getting 'who dunnit', I imagine if you approach her books in this way, rather than as a novel, they are better. I shan't read another though.
Rebecca	June 24th 2019 Born to Run Christopher McDougall 2009	This book was recommended by a customer, someone who trains women distance runners, we got into conversation. I didn’t have it in the shop but definitely will in future. What a great book, I spent Sunday and Monday reading it, sometimes in the garden and sometimes inside with the doors and windows open, stopping only to go for a run myself, and, running one field up and back with no shoes, think I will do this every time from now. So much in this book, crazy American peopleundertaking ultra runs, 50 miles ++, in scorching heat, up and down mountains, through Death Valley, women too, they often beat the men (as our own Jasmin Paris proves ). The evolution of humans was to run of course, that their niche, and why don’t we now, well loads do but the joy of running is counterbalanced by the need for efficiency (i.e. resting) and that is definitely winning out now, with people leading sedentary lives and over eating themselves into disease, old age and mental illness. The centre of the book is a race with the Tarahumara, a cave living ancient tribe of the mountains of Mexico renowned for their running, which they do for fun, from childhood to old age, men, women and children. Along the way we meet colourful and likeable characters (well except perhaps for Barefoot Ted), learn about running shoes (what a con), drug running and brutal murder in Mexico, coaches, great runners, food and much more. I couldn’t put the book down. Please read it and change your life. Some quotes: His enthusiasm, his friendliness, his love of life, shone through every movement … there is not and never was a greater man than Emil Zatopek (I'd never heard of him?). p98 … The Tarahumara, the founders and makers of the history of mankind. Perhaps all our troubles – all the violence, obesity, illness, depression and greed we cant overcome – began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way. p99 Leadville's (dead mining town frozen up for nine months in the year ) only hope was tourism, which was no hope at all p58 And the cost of those injuries (i.e. foot and leg injuries)? Fatal disease in epidemic proportions. Humans really are obligatorily required to do aerobic exercise in order to stay healthy, and I think that has deep roots in our evolutionary history ... if there's any magic bullet to make human beings healthy, it's to run. p168 as far back as 1976 Dr Brand was pointing out that nearly ever case in his waiting room – corns, bunions, hammertoes, flat feet, fallen arches – was nearly nonexistent in countries where most people go barefoot.p177 before the invention of a cushioned shoe, runners through the ages had identical form: Jesse Owens, Roger Bannister, Frank Shorter, and even Emil Zatopek all ran with backs straight, knees bent, feet scratching back under their hips. They had no choice: the only shock absorption came from the compression of their legs and their thick pad of midfoot fat. “those fucking things are going to be dead tomorrow” Bob said, point at the FiveFingers on Ted's feet (i.e. Barefoot Ted, said to him from someone who well knew the country). p187
James	The Old Curiosity Shop Charles Dickens 1840-41	I adore Dickens and couldn’t remember reading this one, so the anticipated pleasure of beginning it, and so it turned out to be. Perfect for June. Dickens was spiritually inspired with this story, so many deep insights into life, goodness, human character, the twists and turns of fate – typical Dickens in fact. You wonder how he knows all this in his comparatively short and active life, his knowledge of the life of the spirit. A hot line to the divine I believe. It is perfect story for June and for now, this moment in my life. Our two main protagonists, with no money or possessions, pushed from their home, set out on a walking journey, trusting to God and the kindness of people, to walk across the English countryside in all its variety, taking comfort from Nature, simple buildings, and simple good people. Of course there are bad people in the story too and they do awful things, and one wonderful brave strong true good person, and of course, being Dickens and an observer of life, he is not educated or good looking, and has no money, but how precious he is.
Eileen	The Universe and Dr Einstein by Lincoln Barnett; 1948 (8 printings) 1957 2nd edition (7 printings) 1957 (7 printings)	A beautifully written, spiritual book. I cant say I could explain to you now Einstein's theories any more than E=mc2 and the space-time continuum, which you just have to accept as fact and also that there is a General and Special Theory. I do understand from reading it that common sense is only that tiny fraction of the universe we perceive with our limited senses and the vast vast majority of reality is beyond normal comprehension. Reading this book will shift your world view and led me to believe more in a Creator than I did before.
Rebecca	The Story of the Eye Georges Bataille 1953	A gross and pornographic book, very short at least, I skip read it in a day. The most interesting part was the final two pages, written by Bataille, his brief autobiography describing his appalling childhood and explains much of the book. He offloaded his dreadful background on whoever is brave enough to pick this book up and read it - and thus it continues into the future.
Eileen	The Pilot's Wife Anita Shreve 1991	The many, many re-prints of this book prove its worth, it is a tale of a marriage, a familiar story, of one partner finding out hidden secrets of the other, leading to reassessing life, relationships, everything.
Rebecca	Yiwara; Foragers of the Australian Desert by Richard A Gould 1969	Anthropologists Richard and Betsy Gould lived with a group of Aborigines in mid NW Australia in 1965-1966, learning their language and recording their daily lives. Yiwara means track, and is a word in constant use by the Gibson Desert Aborigines since it has several layers of meaning, from the material world to the spiritual. The group the Goulds lived with consisted of thirteen Nyatunyatjara people, these people had had contact with whites at a Mission Centre but had left and returned to their traditional way of life. Richard accompanied them in a landrover, he gave them tobacco and occasionally tools, in return for information, conversation, company and permission to record, photograph and learn. Living with hunter gatherers is an archaeologist's dream, observing their daily life of collecting food (the women) hunting animals (the men), making tools and talking, talking, talking. Much is familiar to us, we would fit in, the politeness, different characters, interactions - the same as us, but much is fundamentally different. No possessions is the main thing leading to connexion to the land enacted in rituals that are learnt throughout life, accruing knowledge from others and from travelling to sacred sites. Some of it is grim, the male initiation ceremonies are gruesome and cruel but undertaken voluntarily, they don’t come to an end either, men open up old wounds in their most sensitive parts at any age. Did you know they had stone circles and avenues, still used in the 1960s? - extraordinary, I didn’t, they are not as big as Stonehenge and Avebury but otherwise similar. These standing stone monuments were used both to herd and hunt animals but also represented the original dream time animals who established the world. Archaeological excavations have shown development in tool technology over thousands of years in Australia, the same as elsewhere, but they lived in the hunter gatherer way in the 20th century, in the hot hot country it was the best option. When the whites came, their life changed for ever, enticed to the Missions by the availability of tools and food and people, they never went back to their desert life. Yet it was hard for them, they didn’t understand about work (though could be hard workers) or the social mores of the whites or about living in one place permanently. They lost the meaning to their lives and had not yet gained a new one.
Eleanor	The Uncoupling Meg Wolitzer 2011	I enjoyed reading this, until it went into the fantastical. Meg W didn’t need to do this, the premise behind the novel – why do people go off sex and what happens to families when they do, is easily good enough to sustain a book (hundreds of books even), so I don’t know why she took it along this route. Probably laziness, the subject is too deep, too much, even for a great novelist to explain.
Rebecca	The Accursed Share Georges Bataille 1967	Georges Bataille expresses such an interesting idea in this book, that the problem people have is not in earning a living, but what to do with their surplus. The Mexican Aztecs used their excess on sacrifice, Islam on militarism, American North West Indians on potlatch (huge parties), Tibet on monasteries, Medieval England monasteries, castles and warfare and today, now – cars (that last one I extemporise). There is much more to his theory than that, but being French and a philosopher, it is difficult to understand and I have not retained it, but I really enjoyed reading it and have recommended to friends and ordered more of his books.
Eileen	Poacher's Pilgrimage; an island journey Alastair McIntosh 2018	For anyone who is a walker and/or adventurer, this is a book you will like. AM has the knack of making you feel you are there, in the wind and rain, hoping from one tufty tump to another in the bog, getting wet crossing streams, tiring walking up hills with a heavy pack, being uplifted by the resonance of the place – The Isles of Harris and Lewis where Alastair grew up. So many insights into spiritual and ecological truths, as an archaeologist I found it wonderful, lots of insights into how people lived in the community, not just practical things, but their minds and spirits. It was like having Alastair there and talking to him without interruption, his undivided attention on you.
Rebecca	Island Farm Frank Fraser Darling 1943	I loved this book, it had all the sense, interest and fun of Herd of Red Deer but directed towards two people wrestling a living from a windy island in NW Scotland in the war years. Frank and Bobbie (his wife) moved tonnes of rock and rebuilt a pier, tonnes of shell sand and slag and fertilised an 'inland', built a house, took sheep to other islands, bred and milked cows, battled with rats and welcomed all other wildlife that increasingly came to the island as it became richer in habitat. It's a brilliant read, totally relevant to today and always, I found it very insightful for archaeological features. Here are some quotes. p74 Prof Toynbee in Study of History discusses the concept of Withdrawal and Return as a potent influence in the spiritual development of individuals. A period of withdrawal from the world may strengthen a man so that when he returns he vies for the energy he did not know he possessed. Christ began his mission after forty days in the wilderness. .... the truth of the concept is dimly realized by many of us as young men. A fault of our civilization is that it denies the wilderness to the great majority of young men. p95 the longer I live the more convinced I am that a man cannot achieve wholeness unless he uses his hands as well as his head. Hands are part of the quality of humanness and their development in skills balances the tumbling, surging activity of our still young and inexperienced brain. p111 both Labour and Conservative promise things to people, ease and pleasure, ... we need a great change of mind throughout our people, less of a desire to get and more of a notion of giving to the community. Most of us can be generous to those we love and know; the test comes in serving and giving to those we do not know. p175 the island years impressed on us most surely the sin of waste, ... in being resourceful and in never taking goods from a needy outside world if we could help it
Jacqui	Snow Country 1956 Thousand Cranes 1959 Yasunari Kawabata	Two poetic stories, about men in yearning relationships with much younger or much older gentle, kind, women. The relationship, impossible to grasp or define, is inter weaved with landscape and beautiful objects, linen, snow, pottery vessels all imbued with soul. Magical but real tales of people struggling to understand themselves.
Rebecca	A Herd of Red Deer Frank Fraser Darling 1935	Wow, wow, wow, what a fantastic book, everyone should read this, more than that, it should be compulsory reading for everybody in England, in the world even. Read it, to learn about animals, about humans, to be walking with someone in the Scottish Highlands barefoot for 35 miles, in awe of this wonderful animal nearer to God and understanding than I have ever been. Their story will bring tears to your eyes and fill you with wonder about the many ways animals choose (yes all have free will to choose) to live. As a practical aside, as an archaeologist it has been a massive help, all those antlers we find on archaeology sites, oh and yes, probably we should re-introduce wolves, for the deer and environment sake.
Rebecca	How to Find Love in a Bookshop Veronica Henry 2016	A dear friend generously gave me this new book and I duely read it, for her sake. I am pleased I did, at one point, about 7/8ths in I thought it might actually be interesting, that people were interweaving through the bookshop which acted as a node, a connexion point, and the obvious girl would not end up with the obvious man, but no I was wrong. This was set in some sort of fantasy never never land, where there are queues waiting to buy and staff and tills ring in bookshops (no, no and no), and where there are fanciable men who like and love women and are loyal to them (no, no and no) and where unscrupulous developers set up new glove factories that will earn millions of pounds in a picturesque Cotswold town (err … No …). So personally I couldn't get round any of that, but I did finish the book and can remember most of it.
Gillian	The Mandarins Simone de Beauvoir 1954	This is a big book, a long read, but absorbing and a real page turner. The page turner is the usual, good writing and who is having an affair whom, but behind this, the background, is the legacy of the French Resistance and the struggle of France in the immediate post 2nd World War years to establish their place in the world. French intellectual society wanted to count, to influence world events. The Left was strong, the Communists were big and intellectual society leant strongly towards Russia and against America, obviously mad to us, - with the benefit of hindsight. Their predicaments seem a bit silly, again, with the benefit of hindsight. For example, finding out about the Stalinist concentration camps was a crisis, if they denounced the Gulags, as obviously they should, it condemned the whole Leftist movement and laid the way open to Fascism, if they said nothing, they were guilty of Fascism. Now we know that socialism can be democratic and respectful of human rights, but coming out of a brutal occupation, that didn't seem an option. I learnt a lot about immediate post war France, it was riddled with the war legacy, there were dreadful retributions, men who had fraternized with the Germans were brutally murdered, women publicly shamed and imprisoned, heroes of the Resistance were lionized. What about women, what did a learn about them from a lead philosopher of the 20th C? Though the main protagonist was a woman and had a serious job (a psychologist), the others were mostly decorative, leading society lives, providing entertainment for the men taking up possibly 15% of their time. Mdm de Beauvoir doesn't mention it and I only learnt later, but French women didn't get the vote until 1944!! This from the land of liberty, equality, fraternity. All that War business, and Occupation and working and politicising and women had no say in it, only manipulation and influence. Extraordinary.
Rebecca	The Territorial Imperative Robert Ardrey 1966	I had a first edition of this book in the shop and as an archaeologist puzzling about when villages and boundaries were first established in the UK, I was attracted by the title, not the cover which looked not for me (but now I get it). I am so pleased I picked it up, first it is an excellent read, Ardrey is witty and super bright and interesting. He draws on a wide range of studies by ecologists, ethologists (the study of inherited behaviour), ornithologists and anthropologists, describing the extraordinary and inexplicable lifestyles and homing instincts of animals, including humans. His thesis is that territory, your space – be it one foot (if you are a puffin), a short stretch of river (if you are a beaver or stickleback) or many miles if you are a lion or grazing herd animal is the main principle of life, the thing you will fight and die for and spend much of your life defending. The need for territory is psychological, not physical. His theories explain why some of us animals live really, really close to our neighbours and squabble at each other over an invisible line. We don’t have to do that, we could move away, but we don’t want to move away, we want to maintain our patch and keep others out of it. Ardrey considers territory is the main guiding principle of evolution. He has convinced me. Humans are group animals, having territory and a common enemy (usually them just over there) keeps us alive, on our toes, full of ingenuity and capable of great selfless acts to keep our space for our tribe, and mercilessly cruel to those trying to take it away. Ardrey goes on to reveal much more about our 'human' condition, which he reveals so logically is an 'animal' condition actually, with the same fundamental driving forces shared with all other animals, even the 'planarium worm' a creature with virtually nothing that existed in pre-Cambrian days. The three fundamentals are identity, stimulation and security – their opposites are anonymity, boredom and anxiety. The last, security is the first to be sacrificed to the other two. Bundled into identity is jostling for power and all those nasty characteristics it engenders. Like vitamins there must be a daily dose of these three fundamentals, and if you go for security you will become 'bankrupt' in yourself (i.e. depressed). Being 'in love' and war satisfy the three main needs, especially war. It brings identity (your rank, role), stimulation (yes there are long periods of boredom but people don’t know this when they launch into it) and you are, you believe, fighting for security. What holds the group together is antagonism to the other, and sometimes to hazard, to natural disasters, when people temporarily come together to fight off a common threat. These needs may just be evolutions driving wheel, forcing genes into competition to be forever selecting the best for the current condition. I could not find a hard copy for sale on the internet (mine is not for sale!) but it has been republished and is available for quite a high price on Amazon. We should all learn what Ardrey precisees and thereby know ourselves. All the social science literature, the psychology, therapy, psychiatry and philosophy seems to ignore it? (though today, 18 Nov 2018, a novel was reviewed on the radio by Barbara Kingsilver called Unsheltered that yes, deals with the precarious balance between security and risk in life). Like Ardrey I am astonished at the gulf between the study of human behaviour and animals. He puts it down to politics, the nature / nuture divide, between biologists – you inherit your needs and character (and are therefore a fascist) and environmentalists – you learn your behaviours from your environment (and are therefore liberal and democratic). Ardrey shows we are animals and our well being comes from how well we deal with these three needs, identity, stimulation, security. Criminality actually answers them quite well, if you can get away with it!
Eileen	Night and Day Virginia Woolf 1919	Reading this book was such a relief after finally finishing Netherland, so nice to enter the real world of women, for example wondering why someone is looking awkward when you hand them a cup of tea, or of why that person said that with a rather strange look and, ultimately, whether you should marry the man who (says) he adores you but you are not excited by. It is the world of gentle England with undertones of change and revolution, of activists spreading the word of total suffrage, of disquiet at rich and poor. The war is not mentioned, rather it is all about internal conflicts, within person, within England. I am sure Virginia Woolf drew on much of her own experience to write Night and Day, and the characters portrayed and probably some of the scenes are people known to her, which makes it all the more valuable to read.
Eileen	Netherland Joseph O Neill 2008	This book was written to tap into the post Twin Towers national trauma in America and also the UK. It doesn't have anything to do with the outrage, but the story is set in New York after it had happened and it is mentioned rather a lot. It is a very blokey sort of book, or rather a 'Guyish' sort of book as it is extremely American. That means, race is everything, and men are inarticulate, tough and not very nice. I actually didn't like the females either, but as it was written by a man, I suspect he got their motives wrong and misinterpreted. The book put me off men - again - and made me think how it is still so much a man's world and how separate the sexes are. I am reading a Virginia Woolf now - phew, back to the real world.
Rebecca August 2018	The Dark Tower Phylis Bottome 1916	I quite enjoyed reading this book, tho it was very Old Fashioned. The language was the hardest thing to get over, ‘jolly’ ‘awfully’ preponderated, the second hardest thing was to feel any sympathy with the Staines family who divided women into good types – who you protected and looked after regardless and ‘bad’ types for which anything goes. After this though the story was good, I read it easily, it was streaks ahead of the average detective novel type of today, miles ahead of them. I was puzzled though over the American spelling when it was set so clearly in an upper class ante diluvian shires family of England, all huntin and shootin and drinking. Later I found, not to my surprise, that Phylis B was a teacher who had taught Ian Fleming briefly, the book reminded me of the Bond novels in their tone, but it was better than them (not hard).
Gillian August 2018	The Possessed Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872	This novel is very 'Dostoevskyan', full of dark forces, dense passions and terrible events. It was written in 1871 and shows just how long the Russian Revolution was on the boil and just how brutal and bloody is was destined to be. Hatred and passion were churning in people, in all classes, the serfs wanted revenge for the lack of dignity and poverty they had suffered for centuries, but also the aristocracy were boiling, so quick to take life offence for something as little as a perceived insult but often big things too, inheritance was everything to the aristocracy. By 1870 estates were no longer reckoned in serfs, so in order to maintain their lifestyles landowners were selling timber, land, the family silver, but buyers were few and far between. Dostoevsky knew about evil people, both educated and not, prepared to commit murder for a few roubles, and be caught with the severe consequences that meant. Streets were muddy, alleys dark and murderous, houses cold, horses and carriages dangerous, people drank, husbands beat their wives. Brutality was like the weather, something that just was. The main thing is though that the reader and main protagonist (a shadowy figure we hardly meet) know what is right and wrong, just what we would think is right or wrong today in fact, that has not changed. The circumstances in which people live though are very different. Therein lies Dostoevsky's message, how to maintain sanity and a broadly satisfying life, whatever the circumstances you find yourself in.
Rebecca	Shelley; The Pursuit by Richard Holmes; 1974	Richard Holmes is a brilliant writer and biographer and Shelley was his first book. It won him prizes and started him on his career path. Shelley is an excellent subject of course with a stack of letters and diaries to consult and with such a colourful life, but only someone able to read it all and understanding it and the human being behind it, someone like Richard Holmes, is worthy of the task. Shelley was first and foremost a political activist, and only secondly a poet and Holmes' biography reflects this, for it is as much a story of people's struggle for political representation as it is about Byron, Shelley's menage a trois (or quatre or cinq) and his travels around England and Europe fleeing creditors and authorities. Shelley rarely stayed more than a few months in any of the magical places he lived. Holmes's book reads like a novel but is better, because there are questions, we cannot know about some key events in Shelley's life (who was the father, who the blackmailer, did that assault really happen) but only guess. I loved the story, and liked Shelley, though I didn’t like that he didn’t pay his debts and never intended to (a criminal in fact) and didn’t work at a paying job, though he did work very hard at his poetry and political writing. If he had been born a couple of hundred years later, he would have been a TV pundit perhaps, saying acid things on chat shows, but also a writer, he could get up early, and work, and he was passionate about equality and freedom. In his view this is what a poet was for. “For the most unfailing herald, or companion, or follower, of an universal employment of the sentiments of a nation to the production of beneficial change is poetry, meaning by poetry and intense and impassioned power of communicating intense and impassioned impressions respecting man and nature.” Much of Shelley's perspicacious pamphletering and political poetry was not published until years after his death, much of it in 1839 after the Great Reform Act plus a few years, though his obscure and difficult Queen Mab apparently became underground literature inspiring Working Men's Groups (though it is hard to think how, I and my poetry group found it unintelligible). Holmes' reminds us that the real achievers and workers for suffrage and dignity were working class and not famous, people such as Samuel Bamford, William Lovett, Henry Hunt, Francis Burdett, Thomas Wooler and Richard Carlile. To my mind Shelley's poetry is ruined by his education, his great poetry comes when he has to write quickly, as in 'The Mask of Anarchy' completed in 12 days after the Massacre of Peterloo (on 16th August 1819), that ends 'Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number - Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you – Ye are many – they are few' It's a great poem that was unpublishable, people were thrown into gaol for far less. Shelley was cross that it lay neglected in his publisher's cupboard but he was safe in Italy, it was his publisher Ollier who would have been thrown into prison. Read the book, for the story of Shelley and to remind yourself of the great struggle of people for their dignity, you will definitely go out and vote next time round.
Jacqui	The Third Policeman, Flann O Brian 1940, published 1967	Considering it is a classic I left this book late in life to read, I think my reason was because so many old hippies said it was their favourite book, it put me off. Don't be put off, the old hippies are right, it is a great book, a strange indefinable book. It begins like a Dostoevsky novel, you think 'Wow, this is amazing - this extraordinary, terrible situation' and it ends like that too, only even worse. In between it is strange and rambling, but for a story o-phile like me, there is enough of a plot to keep you going. I did have one of O Flann's ideas myself actually ... his theory (one of them) is that evolution (of men to bicycles and vice versa) can happen in a lifetime, in the case of the bicycles, due to the constant hammering and bashing of atoms on Irish rubbly roads. Well I have thought for quite a while that late 20th C men have adapted physically to their cars (long arms to jangle keys, bendy backs, short attention spans), this episode was unremarked (except here) and is passing, now the adaption is to mobiles.
Rebecca	Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; 1818 April 2018	I began to read Frankenstein in an 1831 edition, a small bound book with a wonderful Blakeian illustration in the front. I was immediately entranced, beginning as it did with a letter home from a fond brother to his sister while negotiating ice flows in the Arctic, He told of a strange sight, a large man racing a sledge at furious pace across the horizon. I read the book over the weekend, but on an iPad, once I realised how valuable the hard copy was, which took away some of the romance, but certainly not completely. So enjoyable a read it was, Shelley brought the adventure of travel absolutely to life, and the mysteries of personal relationships mixed with horrid events that will bring you up sharp. This was a horror story after all. Definitely a classic, one of those books that forms history rather than follows it. How did a teenage girl know all this? By absorption of everything around her, mixing and re-telling for following generations.
Eleanor	The Time of Angels, Iris Murdoch, 1966 February 2018	A classic Iris M entanglement of people's sexual and intimate dreams confronting philosophy and God's love and will. The names are less strange in this one, though still strange (e.g. Carel - man, Muriel). Characters are briefly described and then their hidden murky depths bringing about some wonderful, funny and sadly for me, recognisable situations. Marcus ''If you ask me, he's a neurotic selfish isolated self obsessed person. It is a very family type among men". I'd forgotten how good I M is.
Gillian	Unsung Hero by Kevin Fulton 2006 8 March 2018	The story of Kevin Fulton (not his real name) was ghost written by two journalists and looking at the credits, it took them a long time and a lot of legal and emotional hassle to achieve it. It is a horrible story, but one that we should all know. For me the main theme was actually about leading young, gun happy men astray, not about the Troubles. KF was entranced by the British Army that he saw all around him, so far so normal, but was trapped by it before he reached the age of reason. His reasoning came much much later. Kevin was Catholic but loyal to the army – at least that is what he gave as his purpose for setting off on such a, mad, irreversible and deadly path, that of and informer in N Ireland during the 1980s and 1990s, a mostly pre-mobile phone time. Kevin lived a terrible lie, and interestingly became addicted and totally dependent on his 'handlers'. Everything he did was for them, and though money and motivation to save army lives were a factor, it was to please the handlers that he continued the horrific task of responding to IRA demands. This meant grinding fertiliser (for weeks), planting bombs, carrying out 'judgements' (shootings) and spending his life with known IRA men who were really just low life thugs. This is clear from what they did. Targeting workmen on building sites for example because the site was in some vague way connected to the British, dragging men from their families and shooting them, going up to young men in bars and shooting them. None of the operatives were employed so in order to fund their hand to mouth existence they carried out elaborate insurance scams, heists and the like. Kevin and the many other double agents should never have been recruited, his life was sacrificed for dubious benefit. I am not sure if he is still alive, but when eventually his cover was blown he lived from then under a permanent death sentence. His handlers never did rescue him as they had promised but actually planned his death (by the IRA) once he had outlived his usefulness.
Rebecca	Gone Girl Gillian Flynn 2012	I read Gone Girl after seeing the 2014 film on TV, probably the last person in the UK or American to do so. I was so impressed by the film, especially by Rosamund Pike's interpretation of the main character and I thought there must be more in the book. Yes there was, but not much. The film was a straight and true interpretation. The writing is colloquial, nasty American. The overall impression is a battle of the sexes. The men are horrible, not suitable companions for women at all, drinking, coarse language, ball games, looking at women as objects, hardly a sentence without the b, c or f words. The author says she has done her research and this is how men are. It is totally 'show not tell' book, to the ultimate, like the writing schools say you should. An A+ novel from a writing school. People are having horrible lives in America. Children are hard work, whiny and demanding, rich or poor it is the same. Life is about status, possessions, not attractive, none of us would want it. Very little culture is there, books are mentioned a bit, but not nature, or hobbies, good friends, theatre or even film. Mainly it is about marriage, the huge mystery of what is in the other person's mind, and who is a good person and who is not, and how marriage reveals or hides personality. There are many truths in it.
Eleanor	Rogue Male Geoffrey Household 1939	This classic book of wild camping and adventure clashes the individual against the state, one man's revenge against a, or rather an age of, dictators – and what an effective action it would have been if carried out. How many lives saved and how much torment prevented, imagined with such brilliance by Household in 1939. I have bought this book for three outdoorsy friends who I know will love it. The story uses the English countryside as a backdrop for a battle between two strange personalities and some minor players, it is a page turning, racing tale. A downside is it has that distasteful class element that makes so many early 20^th C English books unreadable, the writer, always a 'middle' or upper class person, treating their own kind as farcical alien beings, but I can forgive it this time because the pace of the book and other elements are so strong that you can ignore this. First editions of Rogue Male are currently advertised for high four figure sums, always a sign of a good author but you can get an attractive paperback for a couple of pounds.
Eleanor	The Triumph of Tim H A Vachell 1916	I read this book because I had never heard of the author and the first few pages drew me in. They suggested it was about a big theme in life, how to live a good life when you are blessed/cursed with too many gifts, good looks, exuberance, courage, personality – our hero Tim had it all. Further in the book was about this but the author lost his way a bit. There was a long digression of Tim in California, the author drawing on his own experiences telling a tale of land grabs and inflation and another digression of being at sea, and of fortunes made and lost. It is okay, but draws us away from the main plot, from the main theme. Tim was not very interesting actually. Too handsome and ridiculous, a muscled figure the author fantasises about in a sensual but not intriguing way. Vachell had an exciting life and wrote many novels, I'm not sure I will read any more of them though.
Jacquie Pill box designed by Hitler on the Normandy coast. Hitler planned defensive installations down to the smallest details … even pillboxes usually in the hours of the night. The design were only sketches but they were executed with precision.	Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich 1969 Germany 1970 UK Weidenfeld and Nicholson and Macmillan	This book is an awesome tale of a man corrupted by love for a psychopath. It is Albert Speer's personal account of the Third Reich (i.e. The Third German Realm as the Nazis called it covering Hitler's rise to power and the Second World War). Speer was in love with Hitler (though he was married with six children) and his obsession lasted over 15 years, in fact he was never totally free, even after Hitler's death and 20 years in Spandau prison, he could still feel the magic and mystery of his personality. “Hitler may have become the object of sober studies for the historian. But for me he possesses to this day a substantiality and physical presence, as if he still existed in the flesh.” To be fair, a whole country came under Hitler's spell, his magnetic charm and that indefinable difference (at the basis of which is lack of emotions) characteristic of a psychopath, but the nearer to him victims were the more blinding and binding it was. Speer was captured by Hitler's person and ambition kept him entrapped. The tragic affliction led to his corruption, loss of reality and his complicity in terrible actions. “… all the intrigues and struggles for power were directed toward eliciting the ... 'Heil Speer' a rare greeting of favour … ” It is an extraordinary story of Speer's own rise to power, what he felt, and why he did what he did. Speer was a key figure in Nazi Germany, indeed, once Hess flew off the scene, he was destined to be Hitler's successor. But Speer was not a politician or soldier, he was an architect who Hitler with his own predilection towards art, films and architecture, liked and courted. When only in his 20s Speer designed vast buildings and squares and, entranced by American movies, the Nuremberg rally sets. He was catapulted into the key job of Head of Armament Production when the previous incumbent, Professor Todt died in an aeroplane accident (not the first or last Nazi official to do so) on Feb 8^th 1942. Speer describes the huge difficulties in the German war effort, (jealousy from other key men being the main) how they were overcome, how he felt and responded. You feel Speer was a fair man, a high achiever, driven to do a good job and make sensible decisions. He says he never knew about the Jews. Here's how it explains it. “In making the decision to join the accursed party, I had for the first time denied my own past, my upper-middle-class origins and my previous environment. … my inclination to be relieved of having to think particularly about unpleasant facts, helped to sway the balance. In this I did not differ from millions of others. Such mental slackness above all facilitated, established and finally assured the success of the National Socialist system. The superficiality of my attitude made the fundamental error all the worse. By entering Hitler's party I had already, in essence assumed responsibility that led directly to the brutalities … in 1931 I had no idea that fourteen years later I wd have to answer for a host of crimes to wh I had subscribed beforehand by entering the party. I did not yet know that I wd atone with twenty-one years of my life for frivolity and thoughtlessness and breaking with tradition. Still I will never be rid of that sin.” This is all the space Speer gives to the Jews in a book of 600 pages. As the war progresses he was aware that difficult and inconvenient people were sent to Concentration Camp, but I don’t think he thought it would happen to him. What he was scared of was losing power. With all the plotting that went on he had to be constantly vigilant, very energetic and skilful to maintain his position. Doing a good job (which he did) was absolutely not enough. In the Nuremberg trials Speer was not given the death sentence. It was commuted to 20 years in Spandau jail, a lot tougher than today's jails I suspect though he doesn’t mention any cruelty, just a lack of resources, this book was written on scraps of paper smuggled out while he was in prison. People liked Speer, he wasn’t brutal or a murderer, just ambitious, riven with ideology, and under the spell of Hitler, and a belief in the Motherland. He says people thought they had to be either the Socialist or rather The National Socialist Party (NSKK) or Communist in the 1930s and he considered Socialism the lesser evil. A lot of people joined the party and believed in The Revolution to come because they would then, somehow, miraculously, have a car, everyone was extremely keen on cars. The amazing thing is how long the war went on. The inherent flaws in a dictatorship, with its plotting and intrigue, and an unwilling people coming up against huge outside forces meant it was doomed from the off. All the main men around Hitler including Hitler himself started to go mad. The main thing was, they would not face the truth, that they were outnumbered and out resourced on all fronts, but they lived in fantasy land, cut off from their citizens and soldiers starving and freezing on the front line. Access to Hitler was filtered through Bormann, Keital and Lammers. The latter two fall by the wayside, Bormann, a sycophantic peasant, built his actress mistress a huge mansion, Goebbels (head of propaganda) had blatant affairs, Hesse flew to Britain to arrange a one man treaty, Goering (head of Air Force) was hugely overweight, drugged and transvestite. The main thing was, no-one could be trusted. You do feel that if the Allies had dropped a few revolutionaries into Germany and/or cut off production supplies (always Speer's fear) the War would hardly have even started To me it is noticeable that Speer scarcely mentions religious belief or teaching, except when the twenty-one of them were facing trial in Nuremberg, then he and the others found the weekly chapel a great solace. In the last days of the War with bombs dropping all around Speer undertook another 'Master of the Universe' mad trip into Berlin to see Hitler in his bunker for one last time, still chasing the chimera of love. Hitler treated him as 'an ordinary guest', parting 'without shaking hands'. This was on April 23 1945. Speer realises then: “There was actually something insubstantial about him (Hitler). But this was perhaps a permanent quality he had. In retrospect I sometimes ask myself whether this intangibility, this insubstantiality, had not characterized him from early youth up to the moment of his suicide. It sometimes seems to be that his seizures of violence could come upon him all the more strongly because there were no human emotions in him to oppose them. He simply could not let anyone approach his inner being because that core was lifeless, empty.” Which is the definition of a psychopath. One week later Hitler was dead, though, mad to the last, not before he had sacked Goering and put Bormann as his successor to the German Empire. Afterthought: I think back to when I used to take cycling and camping holidays in Normandy and came across eerie concrete structures deep in vegetation with pools of black water in their bases, the manifestation of Hitler's mind. When walking and exploring the countryside and towns, how much ideology, good and evil, is manifest in what we see.…
Rebecca	The Three of Us, a family story Julia Blackburn 2008	This is an amazing tale of Julia's psychopath father (I'm sorry Julia, he was), unhappy sexy artist mother and herself young and in the middle. The three of them attractive, well read, unpredictable and prone to addictions. From an early age Julia was treated as a sexual rival by her mother who more or less encouraged her various affairs, so long as she kept free from her own boyfriends. For years all three went to therapy with psychiatrists blind with theories which led them only to drugs and introspection. They definitely made things worse. Somehow Julia survived what would be considered a difficult social worker's case to become a talented writer with a happy personal life and family, which just shows you. I read this book in one day, amazed.
Eileen Peacock	The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1880	Jessie Chambers, D H Lawrence's jilted and maligned first love, said she started to recover from the terrible betrayal she suffered after reading Brothers K. I had read it in my teens and think I got something from it, but nothing remained in my head except it was 'good'. I ordered a Folio edition, but am actually reading it on a 'Nook' because it is big and I took it camping. For the first 80 pages or so I didn’t get it. I am used to writing in a more personal way, the interior person speaking to the world, how they see things and feel about things, the way most books are written these days. Dostoevsky writes from the outside, he is an observer of the characters, so they are described quickly and the reader has to take it as fact that that is how they are – passionate, indulgent, upright, dissolute – whatever. He doesn't explain why they are as they are. But after 100 pages or so (of over 800, on my Nook at least), I can see what he is attempting. The fundamental thing, from the beginning he attacks it, how can a person lead a good and sensible life when their passions pull them in the wrong direction, be it towards unsuitable people, disruption, dishonour, hurting innocents. How can you get your passions under control. It is a racing tale, indeed the main character Alexei, the youngest brother rushes from one crises to another attempting to stop disaster. I am halfway through, the book has become a friend and helpmate and I don’t want to finish it.
Gillian	A Dark Adapted Eye Barbara Vine 1986	This is a murder mystery by a Master of psychological drama set in an old fashioned England of 30 years ago, but in all essentials, it is timeless. The writer examines not a crime but a family, an outwardly normal middle class family but internally dysfunctional and painful, so, so far, so typical. Vine however, unlike most of us, understands what is going on and explains it, by the events and words that lead to the hurts and wrongs. Luckily for the human race most people manage to shake themselves free of family before events get out of control and bang up against the law. But you could easily see how they could and this one does. The book is a mystery, you want to know what has happened, who is the perpetrator who the victim, the characters live with you and you take sides yourself. The tension continues to last page, until the very last paragraph has been read and like the characters, you come to terms with what has happened.
Eleanor	You Dont Have to Live Like This Benjamin Markovits 2015	A modern American novel, people speak in it as they do in American films, short obscure sentences leaving you guessing as to what exactly they mean, well that is the men, silent ball game supporters, running, hanging out with neighbours in their yards, drinking wine or whisky (they are middle class). The poor women are having children, doing creative jobs, talking a lot and trying to make sense of it all. I didn’t find the main character particularly likeable I have to say, not sure if I was meant to. It is set in Detroit and is one man's struggle to create a satisfying life in the American economic system. The main dominant thing imposing itself on everything else was race. Are you black or white or in between. It reminded me of when I lived in Wales when the main talking point for everyone was are you Welsh or are you English. I didn’t want to have this stupid issue in my life so I left. The book has lots of great insights into everyone's lives, not just Americans. Some quotes below might give you a flavour. Its a good book, you will whizz through it. Technology and Pleasure The trouble is people don’t use this technology to make them happier. They use if for pleasure. Whenever you get an advance like this the first thing it appeals to is the lowest common denominator. We have to evolve with the technology and that takes time. Good Looks In some places I travel to there isn’t a woman over the age of twenty that you or I would consider sexually attractive. … it costs money to stay attractive. … it occurred to me that what is going on here is an inside outside thing. A woman needs privacy to look good. She has to say to herself, I am going out to face the world, and that means somewhere to prepare herself. Its a question of real estate … from having a room of our own. In poor countries everybody eats together, everybody sleeps together, everybody lives in the street. But we build houses to go inside, which is fine, but then we have to deal with going out again be careful of what you wish for,… I paraphrase think of what you wished for when you were eleven, a teenager or whenever, it would cement you in time, you would not grow and develop, you would not want it now
Jacquie	As I Walked Out 1969 Laurie Lee	I read this book in two days, a sure sign of a good book. I did question how true it was though, the writing is polished, it had been thought about a bit too much for a personal account so I was not surprised to learn it was written 35 years after the events. Lee's exploits reminded me of Hilaire Belloc's walks in Italy, massive climbing and endurance in extreme heat, on wine and very little food and shrugged off as normal. Lee was clearly very attractive, with his youth, spirit of adventure, tall good looks, sense of fun and intelligence. I didn’t like him though, I sensed 'nasty man syndrome'. The Spain he walked through was impoverished, but this, horrible as it was, wasn’t the worst thing about it, it was the lack of care. Men and women were separate, prostitution acceptable, men's drinking excessive, cruelty to people and animals rumbling in the background, but Lee did meet kindness, as ever out of the blue and from unexpected quarters. The British Gov for example sent a destroyer to pick him up with one other from a seaside village when war threatened. What a wonderful thing. The Civil War came, the subject of Lee's third book in a trilogy, but I doubt it brought care and love into the community, I suspect that came later with tourism. Read it yourself, you will probably disagree with me.
Rebecca	The Divided Self, R D Laing, 1959	I read this book after seeing the recent film Mad To Be Normal about R D Laing with David Tennant as the man himself. Mr Laing didn’t come out too well in that but I liked him more here, in it you see the intelligence and application behind the celebrity narcissist (which he undoubtedly was). It was Laing's first book of many, the only one I have read but I suspect his best. It has that originality and urgency that you get in really great books. Laing is well read, he knows all the theories, but he pretty much ignores them and comes to each case new, hence the book is timeless. As he says, theory distorts, “the American authors write their cases in terms of ego, superego, id which I feel puts unnecessary limitations on one's understanding of the material.” (p160) To him schizophrenics are individuals and their problems real. Through hours of interviews with patient, family and friends he attempts to understand the reasons and origins for their behaviour. Like Freud, he discusses particular cases in great detail (I wonder about the ethics of this) which of course makes fascinating reading. It seems any of us could succumb to schizophrenia though some, through genetics, are more likely than others. In a sentence, the condition is a fear of the self being seen by others and being destroyed by others which leads to various strategies by the sufferer. They invent an outer persona that interacts with the world, the inner real person they keep hidden. “ … if the mother's or the family's scheme of things does not match what the child can live and breathe in. The child then has to develop its own piercing vision and to be able to live by that – as William Blake succeeded in doing, as Rimbaud succeeded in stating, but not in living – or else become mad” (p189). The schizophrenic is not going to reveal himself to any philandering passer by. If the self is not known it is safe. It is safe from penetrating remarks; it is safe from being smothered or engulfed by love as much as destruction from hatred. (p164/5) – remind you of anyone? The great spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle who I and many others read today says it is our ego that gets in the way of our true being and all suffering comes from it. Tolle says the way to overcome the ego is to live in the present and observe, whenever you feel any emotional upset whatsoever, that is the clue that you are resisting what is and your ego is getting in the way (I hope I have interpreted it right). So our 'true' selves are not our selves at all. Laing agrees: a partial depersonalization of others is extensively practised in everyday life and is regarded as normal if not highly desirable. Most relationships are based on some partial depersonalizing tendency in so far as one treats the other not in terms of any awareness of who or what he might be in himself but as virtually an android robot playing a role or part in a large machine in which one too may be acting yet another part. (p47) but schizos take it further and introduce yet another level: “Indeed, what is called psychosis is sometimes simply the sudden removal of the veil of the false self, which had been serving to maintain an outer behavioural normality that may, long ago, have failed to be any reflection of the state of affairs in the secret self. Then the self will pour out accusations of persecution at the hands of that person with whom the false self has been complying for years. (p100).” I fear you don’t have to be schizophrenic to be the above. Tolle would say such behaviour is the Pain Body rising and taking over but normally it subsides and things return to a bearable state. With schizos they don’t return to normal, they get worse and worse. In literature Laing sees schizos in Kafka but not Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's world the clowns, lovers and kings all live before they die albeit in 'a tale told by an idiot', in Kafka's world it is much worse, his protagonists are de-constructed before they die. It is William Blake he most admires, his Prophetic Books ' … require prolonged study, not to elucidate Blakes's psychophathology but in order to learn from him what somehow he knew about in a most intimate fashion while remaining sane.' Laing believes schizophrenia can be cured (though sadly doesn’t give examples). The task of therapy then comes to be to make contact with the original self of the individual which or who we must believe is still a possibility if not an actuality and can still be nursed back to a feasible life. (p158) Yes but that individual is going to face a lot of difficulties of loneliness. The individual if found will need to bolster that inner self through awareness and the support of a power greater than themselves. This book is a classic, easy to read, you can hear the writer behind the words, and indeed the patients too. Should be on your list of ‘must reads’.
Gillian Litherland	Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann 1932	Invitation to W is a day in the life type of story, but also covers a whole lifetime. It was about two lovely girls and clothes, the colours, clinging, floatiness of them and, interestingly, how they were made (a lost history actually). Two sisters and their different personalities governed by their looks, the pretty one confident, the less pretty one sensitive and kind and doomed to suffer bores, slights and hurts but also to seeing the good people. The main character feels joy, rejection, dejection, – the whole gamut of human emotions, from one moment to the next, occasionally due to nature or music but mostly as a response to the words, looks, nuances and overtures from other mysterious human beings, not knowing what is prompting them or what they mean. Do they like me or not and if they do, do I like them or are they going to latch on and be boring. At the end she realises: “They were so kind. This was what real people were like after all, just as she had always imagined; not sinister, inexplicable, but friendly and simple, accepting one pleasantly, with humour but without malice, without condescension, criticism or caresses” A fantastic book and great writer.
Jacquie Fox	The Reader by Professor Bernard Schlink 1995 Germany	Most people (but not me) know this books from the film, with Kate Winslet, I am sure she would have been very good in it and explained what it is about. Certainly we could have understood the love part with such a heroine. The Reader though is primarily about ideas, wedded to character yes but ideas is the point of it and because of this, at the end, a small part of me wondered about the veracity of it. Don't get me wrong, the characters drive the plot but faced difficult circumstances, they all did. What ideas does Schlink explore?, obsessive love, maybe, victims and perpetrators, yes definitely about this but who is what. Harder, I am still wondering about that. Also about obligations between people based on sexual love, family, work, friendships, many - where should our loyalties lie, this is not easy. The author with a man's succinct way sums up a complex situation in a couple of sentences, but his protagonist cannot move on nevertheless. Most readers will have their view of decisions made, mine differed from the main actor and I suspect I am in the majority. I read this book very quickly, on the train as it happens, unaware of passengers, announcements and delays, always my personal gauge of a good book.
Eileen Peacock	Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence, 1913	Why is it that novels are about relationships, and more than that, nearly always about romantic relationships. I do know the answer. It is because the rest of life, work, hobbies, friends, children, housework, money – while it takes most of our time, provides only a hazy background to the real stuff. That is, relationships and our interior feelings known (or not) only to ourselves, in the search for fulfilment. Lawrence in Sons and Lovers thought wholeness and content was to be found in a woman, but doesn’t find it. S and Ls is a spiritual novel of great truths that resonates today and will in a hundred years time, written by Lawrence when he was still in his 20s. It comes from real life and a thorough intelligence. The book flows like a river, day to day, with day to day events, what happened, what was said and the emotions behind what happens, which the characters do not understand. Real life then. People are generally sad, uneasy with their family, colleagues, lovers and friends, at odds with them, because behind the outward things are deeper things. The need to possess, to be loved and thereby possess, bending the will of the other to behave in more refined ways, sex of course, and bonds between people that are strong but people grow apart even so. The main character is quite a cruel man, not deliberately so, but nevertheless very cruel to his lovers. Drawing them in totally and then leaving them, bereft and broken. Why does he do this? He is searching for that special bond of body, mind and soul, and when the women doesn’t match up, she is rejected. He is unhappy and unsettled. His greatest love is his mother and it is heart breaking their bond, the terrible inconsolable pain of a dear presence gone. The couple of sentences below, taken almost at random illustrates the tone, it is just one of many thoughts DH shares: If so great a magnificent power could overwhelm them, identify them altogether with itself, so that they knew they were only grains in the tremendous heave that lifted every grass-blade its little height and every tree, and living thing, when why fret about themselves. They could let themselves be carried by life and they felt a sort of peace each in the other … (p430 ff). You probably read this book ages ago, do read it again as I did, and will again in a few years time (God willing). Watch out in the bookshop btw for the biography of DH by Jessie Chambers, the real life rejected lover.
Eleanor Rand	Whatever you Love by Louise Doughty 2008	I was drawn to this book by Apple Tree Yard, the intense drama BBC put on early in 2017, based on the novel by Louise Doughty. It seemed to me to be one of the few studies (since Madame Bovary) on women's passion, the out of the blue, all consuming, destructive and dangerous type. Whatever You Love is as good as A T Yard. It is set in a seaside town, the sort young people leave as soon as they can, but due to circumstances our protagonist remains. She is a nice, working woman, slightly bored, like most of us I suspect. Then things happen. A mystery, you never quite know if it the body or mind or who is driving what. It is a novel of intense, unbearable longing, loss and eventually empathy. Beautifully written and grounded in reality, I couldn't put it down and read it in one day. It is still whirling around in my head now.
Rebecca	The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, 2008	This was just about the most depressing book I have ever read, and that includes the biography of Lina Prokofiev. It has all the Irish horror memes of repressed women, cruelty to children and totalitarian rule by Catholic madmen (aka Priests. Because Barry is a great writer and I began it, I did finish, but it would have been better for me if I hadn’t. Just like for the main protagonist it would have been better if she had died in her youth like so many of her contemporaries did who suffered the civil war (the one around the 1930s) and thus avoided the rejection by her nearest and 'dearest' and countless other indignities and heart breaks.
Rebecca	Lina Prokofiev by Simon Morrison 2014	Lina P is a fascinating study of a talented, intelligent woman who had the misfortune to meet and then fall for Serge Prokofiev. He was an emotionally unavailable man, who wanted Lina but only in a supporting role. She followed him erratically around Europe, unable to resist, her reputation devalued at a time when they were important in the relationship market. Because of him she pursued a singing career, when she would have been much more suited to academia (she spoke five languages) or business or fashion. Her career was never successful, she suffered from nerves, bad reviews and bitchiness. Prokofiev only asked her to marry him when she eventually fell pregnant, but things didn’t improve. The story of Lina tells of her relationship, the people she met in artistic Europe, the extraordinary return to Russia at the time of Stalin and her life there. Not an easy life, or a happy one, though the last ten years, when she finally physically (though never mentally) escaped the clutches of Russia were the best of her life. So, it had a happy ending. You will never be able to enjoy Prokofiev's music again, so read at your peril.
Rosanne Shaw	Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton 1941	Written in 1941 and set in 1939 this classic story of obsession is tough. Easy to read and brilliantly written, but tough. It is a sad story but what disturbed me most was the excessive drinking and smoking and the horrid environment of dingy gas ring flats and car polluted streets, so it is aptly named, reminding us of a nasty world no longer here thank heavens but we can almost remember it. Like all good books the story keeps you turning the pages but lurking behind it are profound truths. Describing the main character George Harvey Bone as a type - “just as certain people look unmistakably horsey, bear the stamp of Newmarket, he bore the stamp of Great Portland Street. He made you think of road houses and there are thousands of his sort frequenting the saloon bars of public houses all over England”. We know it is true, types are clearly visible today too, so how free are any of us and how much are we just victims of fashion and the economy. What is acceptable for people to do governs how they look and the diseases they will die from. The reader knows what George should do fairly early on in the novel but understands why he cant. He needs a help. So it is a lesson, and all of us would gain from reading it.
Jacquie Fox	Stonor by John Williams 1965 Penguin Vintage	Was it worth re-issuing this book, by the writer whose name is so easy to forget, emphatically yes. JW has a unique voice, his style is short, no words are wasted, but all is said. This story is about William Stonor a curious character who we get to know as he proceeds through his life, along you get the feeling with himself, his own discovery of who he is, and it is a bit of a shock to us both. He learns about himself by what happens to him and how he reacts. Of course his character drives the actions but he, as are we, are surprised by what it does, by the hidden depths coming to the surface. First his sudden and then life long love of literature and its justification for study, surely John Williams speaking here against the tide of change in universities. Then about passion, which none would expect from this reticent, withdrawn man. It is a good story, you will turn the pages wanting to know what happens and then at the end you will put the book down and think, what was that, what is a person, how can we ever know, ourselves, those nearest to us, or anyone. Its super prose, and great feeling for the life and politics in a Missouri university way outback.
Eileen Peacock	The Self Enchanted by David Stacton, 1956	I read recently that Stacton was the greatest American author of the 20^th century and I thought, crickey, I've never even heard of him, so I read The Self Enchanted which was one of the only books I could find by him on the shelves and happens to be his third novel at the beginning of a career of writing fiction history and poetry. Was it that good? Well I'm not sure of that but it was definitely good. This book oozed menace, it was about a disordered charismatic person, wealthy, living in sunny California but drawn to the north snowy remote states. Stacton surely had observed such a type and knew the disturbing detrimental effect they had on people who were drawn to them. He has constructed a drama based on personalities tussling with each other, driven by their passions which ultimately they cannot control. Would I read another book by Stacton, yes, - if I could find one.
Rebecca	Memoir by John McGahern 2005	Memoir! definitely the best book I have read this year, and I have read many. It is also (to my shame) the first book I have read by John (Sean) McGahern, written I realise now, one year before his death. While I was engrossed in it and even now, I felt I really knew Ireland, strange and foreign country (to us Brits) that it was (is?), and its spirituality the people felt so keenly. Theirs was a hard life but the important thing was not this life but the next. Sean himself was destined for the priesthood and this was an honour, the highest thing one could aspire to. He was the eldest of seven, all of whom became wonderful people, and from such an appalling background. Sean loved his mother and that was the main thing about him, she was a lovely woman, educated, spiritual, who walked the country lanes of Ireland with her children, collecting flowers for the classroom in which she was head teacher. She earned the money, held the house together, gave the children morals, cooked the dinners. The book though is dominated by the father, as awful as the mother is good. I wish I could have had a conversation with Sean and said to him, 'do you not realise, your father was a psychopath, all this thought and coming to terms by you is pointless, he was a psychopath, you were unlucky the only thing you can do is get away' (all the children did as soon as they could). There is so much in this book, what I have said above merely scratches the surface. I have other books of his lined up to read.
Rosanne Shaw	Beware Pity by Stefan Sweig 1938	I read this book attracted by the author of one of the best Radio Dramas I have ever heard, adapted from a story of his which was about a chess game on board a boat. Beware Pity was brilliant, equally good as the Chess Game and longer and more profound as well. It is a good story, you want to know what happened next but what I liked about it was, unlike many people, Sweig took the important things of life seriously, for example the feelings of a 17 year old girl. How many would give this any thought today at all, not even a sentence would be spent on it. But Sweig doesn’t distinguish between people and he gives the young ordinary person a whole book. To him all people are important and good relations and decency and good feelings between people are the most vital things in the world. Writing in the 1920s and 30s he could be said to understand Freud though probably he never read him, he just knew the way a novelist knows, that emotional feelings are the basis of eveything and it is why this book will not date.
Rebecca	Red Stefan by Patricia Wentworth 1935	What an awful book, I determined to finish it but my goodness it was hard, stupid sexist nonsense. It was written in 1935 but had a definite 50s feel to it. It was all about a whimpish, beautiful (yawn) woman, rescued by a dare devil brilliant charismatic (yawn) man who adored her, and carried her through door ways and told her not to worry it would all be all right … say no more, you get it. In the unlikely event that you want to read it, you will have to go elsewhere, it's not in the shop any more, thank heavens
Eleanor Rand	The Little Red Chairs by Edna O Brien 2016	I was interested in this book as it is a topic that has dominated me for the last two years, that is, the nature of the psychopathic personality. Edna O Brien of course is a brilliant writer with great insights into the human soul but I have to say, in spite of the quote on the cover, by Philip Roth no less ('this is her best book'), I don’t think it is her best book and I think the reason for that is that the book is dominated by an idea and not by the characters. So the characters are pushed about in an illogical sort of way. The idea is about refugees, refugees of all types from all countries who meet and mix together in refuges (what a good name that is) in order to survive. They need first of all shelter and then jobs, so they can at least live and will take virtually anything going. They are all scared, of whatever appalling thing has happened to them, and this is where the psychopaths come in, and of the authorities catching up with them and of losing their job. Injustice continues in their lives albeit in a smaller meaner way, of the type that is not prosecutable unless you are a secure confident sort of person with a bit of clout. They are all sort of amazed at being where they are, but … it can happen to anyone as this story so clearly tells us.
Moira	The High Flyer by Susan Howatch 2001	A friend recommended this book to me, she got it from her local library (where incidentally they have a policy of only stocking books less than 20 years old – you what ??!!). It is all unbelievable, the protagonist is the High Flyer, she speaks in a horrible language (Nutterguff, cut the crap, ) and earns megabucks and has a Life Plan. Everyone has loads of money. There are super attractive men all over the place and other nice religious people prepared to risk all to help this unattractive (and unbelievable) main character. I know why my friend liked it, it is a psychological drama that builds to a crucendo and to be fair to the book, I read it, and it is quite long, I didn’t discard it, which I could have done. But I am pleased it is finished and I can get onto something good, I shan't attempt another.
Louise Symonds	The Ice Beneath Her: Camilla Grebe: Zaffre: translated by Elizabeth Clerk 2015 UK 2016:	The Ice is a Nordic Noir novel of the creepy scary type we Brits love. The author is young, blonde, Swedish and female and she gives the tone for the book. You can just imagine her working in the dress stores, walking the sludgy streets and sleeping in the sparse apartment blocks in which the drama is set. It is a psychological thriller set against the backdrop of a cold snowy Christmas in Stockholm. The stylish dust jacket is stamped Guaranteed To Keep You Up All Night and I can confirm this is true, well almost in any case as I have to be out early for work, but I happily turned off the telly and read it by the fire through the evening. It took me a couple of days, and when I put it down I wanted to get back to it, to find out what happened. I was intrigued by the main characters and their interactions All of them, police, suspects, victims have their character flaws and these weaknesses, predilections, and traumas drive their actions and the plot. The prose is easy to read, no wasted words on description or extraneous characters. Grebe has written four crime novels with her sister Asa Traff which won various awards and also the Moscow Noir trilogy with Paul Leander-Engstrom. I imagine co-authoring hones the writing style and this shines through in the easy to ready first novel as solo author
Gillian Litherland	The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Anne Bronte 1848	This fascinating novel begins where most end, with a marriage. I adored this book. It came at just the right time for me, I am a woman at the end of her life suffering from the effects of bad men, who took home, money, jobs, friends and most of all, emotions. If only I'd read and inwardly digested Wildfell at the age of its heroine, and authoress, that is in my early 20s. Well actually I had read it, when I was about 12, and I dimly remember bits of it, but it had no effect on me then. In fact I may have put it down in the early pages after a passage on badger baiting (reader, get past this, it doesn’t feature again and bears no relevance to the plot). This time round every page was soooo relevant. Conversations are given verbatim, the heroine's feelings recorded in a journal (as one does), horrific domestic events occur daily, with their effects on the emotional life of our heroine detailed. The story is set in a backdrop of English country life. We are given genuine glimpses of the minor gentry in midlands England (so that's how one got through the days living in country piles surrounded by fields), of travel, meals, clothes and customs. This is Bronte world though and violence rumbles just below the surface, sometimes erupting onto the pages. How did Anne know so much at such a young age. She has a real understanding of the absolute importance of a good moral character fortified by religion, if one is to lead a happy, stable and useful life. Love and friendship are secondary. Without moral character one is lost, in this world and the next
Louise Symonds	Gerald Seymour 2017 Jericho's War	I'm afraid I abandoned this book about one fifth of the way in. I will say straight away the fault is me not the writer, it is just not my sort of book. I gave up the evening I saw Mission Impossible (No 4) on the telly over Christmas and the two stories became muddled in my mind. Jerichp's War is very Mission Impossibily, I stopped at the point a donkey entered the plot. I am sure something nasty was in store for him and I would rather not know. The bit I read was about extreme characters working on their own carrying out highly secret and dangerous tasks that will alter the course of history, except no-one but us will know about them, as it is highly secret. So if you like that kind of thing you may well like this. The book is long, so one fifth was actually pretty good going, and it is plot and war technology, not character driven. The protagonists are introduced just enough to explain why they are there, though I didn't get it. Why for example would a young attractive graduate risk his life, take life and live undercover in war deprived Yemen rather than being a lawyer, adventure holidaying and drugging or whatever in London. The people in it are called The Ghost, The Girl, Belcher and Jericho and are archetypes rather than people. The Archaeologist, (aka The Girl) for example, I mean, which university did she belong to, and NO, under 30 year old women however blond and beautiful (yes she is) don't get to run digs, and where were the diggers and what was she digging anyway? The author, Gerald Seymour, is very experienced and very successful (he wrote Harry's Game), but I found the style difficult, it is very factual. You have to read where the wounded man turns left, crawling on his belly, along the ditch, how long the ditch is, about the wire, the recessed doors, cement etc etc he has to negotiate while making an escape. As I don't care about the wounded man I don't mind if he makes it or not, so this is boring to me. But ... hands in the air ... I don't read war books. Its a man's book I guess though I imagine most would find the length daunting and wouldn't pick it up in the first place
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