SassyLassy Racing to Year End

Who starts a thread with three and a half weeks left in the year?

Someone with unrealistic expectations that's who.

My (mostly) chronological posting about my reading is stuck somewhere back in April, but I feel the need to at least mark what else occupied my reading to year end.

This may well be the shortest thread ever though!

The surprise 2020 Booker Prize winner



Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
first published 2020
finished reading April 24, 2021

Somewhere I've started a version of my thoughts on Shuggie Bain. That piece of paper is nowhere to be found. That's just as well, as I was getting completely bogged down in trying to impart just what a wonderful book it was by incorporating parts of the book. Consequently, I was floundering.

Suffice it to say, Shuggie Bain is is a love story: the story of a young boy and his desperate love for his mother Agnes. The fact that his mother becomes a raging alcoholic and the two are forced to move progressively through the outer rings of hell that are Glasgow's housing projects, relieves it of any tendency to be maudlin. Along the way, there is also misogyny, sectarianism, violence, child abuse and homophobia.

How then is this a wonderful book? Well Douglas Stuart knows his city and its people well, probably too well.
Stuart's knowledge of his city allows him to create two entirely believable characters: the one a child trying to save himself and his mother; the other a mother who truly loves her son but is unable to overcome her terrible disease. Stuart never gives up on either, and so neither does the reader. However, at the same time, he doesn't insult the reader with anything close to a happy ending.

________________

Here's an example of Stuart's writing, thoughts from Agnes's former husband:

As he turned off into the colliery town he wondered if she'd ruined her looks with the drink yet. He'd seen it before. There was a type, especially in Glasgow, women who froze and withered at the same time. Their faces shrank, sucked dry by the drink, red lines bloomed on bony cheeks, sagging bags of sadness bloated under watery eyes. They tried to cover it all up, but they were stuck, and their faces became a museum to outdated hairstyles and heavy make-up. He wondered if she still had the light Irish eyes and the high cheeks...

image by Chris Leslie
The remains of Fountainwell Court, Sighthill Glasgow, one of the projects where Shuggie and Agnes lived

From Disappearing Glasgow: A photographic journey by Chris Leslie:

Sighthill was once home to 6,000 people and disappeared in a phased demolition schedule from 2009 to 2016. This is the view from a living room in the Fountainwell Court high-rise block in Sighthill just before its inevitable demise. The flats were stripped of all contents and fittings, so that all that remained was the concrete shell and whatever 'wallpaper' survived.

https://www.britishcouncil.org/arts/city-arts-tour/glasgow/disappearing-glasgow

>4 SassyLassy: I wonder if that was made by someone who remembered the wallpaper from Trainspotting?

I think it's great that you are reinvigorating by starting a new thread. I hadn't been sure Shuggie Bain was a book for me, but after reading your review, I think I need to try it.

My thread is also stuck back in May and I'm only now trying to push out a few reviews as I enjoy looking back on my own threads and reading what I thought about a book. But it's quite the effort!

>5 thorold: Ah yes, Trainspotting. I watched that again sometime this past winter, and it does hold up. I should try the book again.

Wallpaper, newspaper, magazines and other layers seem to be a thing in a lot of Scottish films and TV, and always catches my eye. In the photo above, I suspect I would never get out of there for trying to read the ceiling. Maybe when the wind came howling in.

>6 labfs39: Nothing to lose by trying it. I'll be interested to hear how it goes.

>7 lilisin: An effort indeed! I hope you do get a few more reviews out there, as I always read them and find things I would not have known of otherwise. After I started this thread, I also noticed that Trifolia is engaged in the same pursuit, but she's making much more progress.

Elizabeth Costello by J M Coetzee
first published 2003
finished reading April 28 2021

Elizabeth Costello is an unlikeable woman. When first met at the age of 66, she is just about to receive a major book award. This meant travel from her home in Melbourne Australia to Williamstown Pennsylvania. After the long flight, she is looking her age. She has never taken care of her appearance; she used to be able to get away with it; now it shows. Old and tired. However, her son, a professor in the US, was there to help her through the rituals of dinner, seminars, radio interviews, and award ceremony.

He thought of her as a seal, an old tired circus seal. Reconsidering, he decided seals are amiable. She is a cat: One of those large cats that can pause as they eviscerate their victim and, across the torn-open belly, give you a cold yellow stare. This is the formidable author everyone has in mind, but Elizabeth is doubting her ability to maintain this persona.

Elizabeth's best known novel, her fourth, was published in 1969. The House on Eccles Street was based on the life of Marion Bloom, Leopold's wife. Although Elizabeth had written other books since, her questioners do not want to let her move forward. Just as they are stuck in the past, it becomes apparent that Elizabeth too has not kept up with current literary theory. Her allusions to Kafka are no longer relevant; she will have to reframe her references.

More threatening perhaps for Elizabeth, was a command performance in Africa, where her sister, an actual missionary sister, was being celebrated with an honorary degree. They hadn't seen each other in twelve years, and now here they were. Two old women in a foreign city, sipping tea, hiding their dismay at each other. How do their accomplishments stack up against each other? How about the good each may have done?

Academics and awards have been skewered in many novels. They are well known to Coetzee. He writes in his own acerbic way, and that is the language Elizabeth employs as well. It is a mark of Coetzee's writing that he convinces the reader to acknowledge the tedium and dance of academic debates, the competition and backbiting, and yet in the end feel some sympathy for Elizabeth as she faces the loss of that critical ability to stay on the edge.

Read for my book club



Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald
first published 2020
finished reading May 4, 2021

Helen Macdonald is known for the bestseller H is for Hawk, which I haven't read. Vesper Flights is her follow-up, a collection of 41 essays, some very brief, others developed into something more cogent. She describes the collection as a wunderkammer, referencing the way Victorians and others displayed curiosities from the natural world in special cabinets.

Macdonald's love for the natural world is real, as is her concern for it as it faces the sixth great extinction. She pleads with the reader to understand that your way of looking at the world is not the only one. True enough. Looking at it from a naturalist's perspective is a good way to learn. Looking at it from what that naturalist believes is how a given species views it is a bit too anthropomorphic, no matter how interesting.

There are, however, some more narrative essays in the book, and these held up better. Swan Upping starts off as a Sunday on the Thames for an annual event dating back centuries. Mute swans are the property of the Crown, with those on certain stretches of the river granted to the vintners and dyers guilds. Nowadays, dressed in full regalia, the swan keepers capture the swans temporarily, weigh and measure them, and band the cygnets by ownership. This event is described against a background of ugly patriotism as onlookers cheer on English traditions and values, prompting Macdonald into an interesting diversion into those who supported Brexit and what it means.

A Cuckoo in the House tells of Maxwell Knight, the inspiration for James Bond's M. Knight was a spy and also a BBC host of nature programmes, who kept a pet cuckoo and endeavoured to train it. Macdonald says of them

"the cuckoo's life beautifully mirrored the concerns of Knight's own. First, its sex life was mysterious and secretive. So was Knight's: for years, he'd maintained a hearty heterosexual facade while picking up rough trade in local cinemas and employing local motorcycle mechanics for reasons other than repairing motorcycles. Second, cuckoos were the avian equivalents of the officer-controller of penetration agents; they 'insinuated' their 'chameleon eggs' into the nests of their 'dupes'

Perhaps the best essay is the title essay on swifts. The language here captures their soaring wheeling flights beautifully; birds who can fly so high we can no longer see them.

There are falcons, glow worms, golden orioles and almost a year's worth of subjects here. I wanted to like this book more than I did. I had borrowed it from the library thinking I would like it enough to find my own copy, but that wasn't the case. I suspect the reason is that I've been reading Kathleen Jamie's ideas on the natural world, and find far more in her essays. That's a personal preference I know, and Macdonald does have much of interest in her book.

_________________

There must be easier ways to do this; at least better garb:

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/07/swan-upping-on-the-thames/533877/

>9 SassyLassy: Your review of Elizabeth Costello brought to mind Pnin, which I read earlier this year. Have you read it?

Random question for you, if you don't mind. Who are your favorite Canadian authors? (just checking if I'm missing someone ;-)

>12 avaland: Ooh, yes, she says with ears pricked...

>12 avaland: >13 labfs39: Funny you should ask this now, as I just finished a book by the late Timothy Findley. It had been awhile since I had read him, and I was impressed all over again by just how good a writer he is.

I don't read much CanLit, but Michael Crummey would top my list right now. I know he is also a favourite of yours. Others I read consistently are Jane Urquhart, whose style I really like, but who is probably as cold as Ian McEwan, Lisa Moore, and the late Alistair MacLeod, who wrote very little but who was a master.

In the past year I have read two books by Emily St John Mandel, but I'm not sure I would call her Canadian anymore given her move to the US which looks pretty permanent, although The Glass Hotel really captured rural Canadian life well.

Unfortunately I haven't kept up with Francophone writers, and your question reminds me I should go back to them. I would mention Michel Tremblay and Marie-Claire Blais though, the latter very dark.

Very little outstanding here, which is my problem in general with Canadian writers. The fact that I usually read them from the library instead of purchasing them says something to me. Writers it might be more difficult for you to find would be Frances Itani, Nino Ricci and the late Marion Engel.

I haven't said much about current writers here, and my list is balance toward the east.

>11 labfs39: Interesting about Pnin, which I haven't read. I'm stuck somewhere in the middle of Invitation to a Beheading, and can't seem to move forward.

>14 SassyLassy: Dan loved Invitation to a Beheading. I hope it picks up for you, as I know you rarely give up on a book.

>15 labfs39: It was Dan's review that prompted me to read it. I usually am more in tune with his reading.

This book had been kicking around the place for a long time, moving from one TBR pile to another. I've no idea where it came from. The 2.00 on the inside cover makes me think I picked it up somewhere at a sale. It was time to read it and then find a proper place for it. I didn't really expect to like it.



The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat
first published 1951
finished reading May 10, 2021

The Cruel Sea is a somewhat autobiographical novel of Nicholas Monsarrat's life during WWII. In 1939, Sub-Lieutenant Keith Lockhart RNVR, was assigned to a new class of ship, a corvette, being built on the Clyde. The ship would be under the command of Lieutenant Commander George Ericson.

Monserrat starts slowly with the building and fitting of the ship. He moves on to the testing and training of the men and their ship, HMS Compass Rose. As this is happening, the disparate crew members are also being tested and trained for something few of them can imagine. Corvettes were built to detect and destroy enemy submarines. They escorted vital supply convoys back and forth across the Atlantic and north on the Murmansk run. There was tedium and terror on these runs, but always an iron discipline had to be maintained.

As WWII ground on, the crew on the ship coalesced. Convoy ships were lost, crew members were lost, but food, men, and materials made it through to Britain and the Soviet Union. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the reader is drawn into the life of the ship. The ship is the world for those onboard: a darkened claustrophobic dot on an immense ocean. There were only three ways out of the situation: injury, death, or the end of the war. Then in 1942

There was a muffled explosion, which they could each feel like a giant hand squeezing their stomachs, and Compass Rose began to slide down. Now she went quickly, as if glad to be quit of her misery: the mast snapped in a ruin of rigging as she fell. When the stern dipped below the surface, a tumult of water leapt upwards: then the smell of oil came thick and strong towards them. It was a smell they had got used to on many convoys: they had never thought that Compass Rose would exude the same disgusting stench.

The sea flattened, the oil spread, their ship was plainly gone: a matter of minutes had wiped out a matter of years. Now the biting cold, forgotten before the huge disaster of their loss, began to return. They were bereaved and left alone in the darkness; fifty men, two rafts, misery, fear, and the sea.

Those who survived found themselves back on the Clyde, repeating the early days, but this time with a frigate, the Saltash, fitted out with much better equipment. There were still the endless convoys though, more and more critical as the war wound on in 1943.

Monserrat has divided his novel into sections: Learning, Skirmishing, Grappling, Fighting, The Moment of Balance, Winning, The Prize. Each represents a year of the war, and the arc of th story moves accordingly. The language is pared down, much as it would be onboard. The men are taciturn in the extreme as there is no room for feelings. Lockhart and Ericson are officers, but Monserrat doesn't fail to represent the men. Somehow it all works. My attention never wandered and I will keep it.
_____________

The Cruel Sea was a huge bestseller when it was first published in 1951, before disillusionment with the aftermath of war set in. It was a book the public could relate to as it was only a few years post war. It has sold over 11 million copies.

Monserrat was described as "charming and urbane" but also "cynical and cosmopolitan" in his New York Times obituary. After the war, he held several diplomatic posts, no doubt aided by his connections from Trinity College, Cambridge. He married three times. He continued writing and publishing, but never really seemed at peace.

>17 SassyLassy: What an interesting book. Not one I would have picked up most likely, but one I would probably enjoy. I like the excerpt you quoted.

>17 SassyLassy: An interesting book, thanks for the review!

I enjoyed The Cruel Sea. You can almost smell the sea water and the stink of the oil when reading. I enjoyed your review.

>14 SassyLassy: Thanks. I'll chase down the Mandel you mention; sounds like something I might like. And well, if it has your endorsement....

This is my list :
Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Michael Crummey -- top 3
Thomas Wharton (his early books)
Jane Urquhart - poetry (I have picked up several Canadian poetry anthologies, though)
There are a number of authors of which I've read one book (i.e. Anne Michaels, Joy Kogawa, Joseph Boynton), but no 'favorites' yet among them.

For Crime Novels: Ausma Zehanat Khan, I think I read somewhere she's moved to Colorado...
For SF: Nalo Hopkinson, Robert Charles Wilson, Robert Sawyer, I read these authors quite a long time ago, but have not stayed current. Seems there were others.

Jumping in on Canadian authors, the ones mentioned so far are all pretty old. Moving into middle aged authors, I adore Heather O’Neill and Marian Toews

>22 Nickelini: That was my thought too, with the exceptions of Crummey and Moore, and even they are creeping up there, as is Toews for that matter (all in their 50s). They have stood the test of time though, for what it's worth.

As I said, my list is slanting toward eastern, mostly Atlantic Canada. I was hoping you could add some west coast writers, now that we have prairie representation in Toews.

>21 avaland: I don't think I knew Urquhart writes poetry. I'm afraid I completely blanked on Crime and SF. Have you read Spider Robinson?

>21 avaland: The 1951 publishing date sent me back to your reviews after I posted, and sure enough there it was, only in 2020. I agree about the patriotism aspects of the book, language that seemed to be almost second nature to his class, and I wonder if he even was aware of how it sounded, or if he was, if he just thought it was every day language. Perhaps he was trying to keep it going in the dark days of the '50s.

>18 labfs39: Not one I would normally have picked either, but it worked well.

For crime novels I'd add Louise Penny, Giles Blunt or Linwood Barclay.

For some newer authors, I'd suggest checking out the Giller Prize, Governor Generals Award for Literature or Canada Reads.

>23 SassyLassy: I have not read Spider Robinson, but Michael has. I should have listed Urquhart as fiction and poetry. I read her before 2006 and LT, so sadly there are no notes to my reading of her works (but perhaps I should check out what she's done more recently). I did read Wayne Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, maybe I'll see what else he has written.

Alas, so many authors, so little time....

>24 Yells: They aren't authors I've read, so weren't included. I have looked at all three, but haven't yet been tempted. But, as you say, the long and short lists for most of the awards are great resources, I used to read off several of lists, but have moved to other sources...I like shopping publisher catalogs....

Alas, so many countries, so little time...

>17 SassyLassy: I read The Cruel Sea a couple of years ago and loved it. I picked it up because I remember my father reading it when I was a child in the 50's.
A similar book which I also read a few years ago and unexpectedly loved was Bomber by Len Deighton the story of a WW II RAF bombing raid told from all sides.

>25 avaland: How could I have forgotten to mention Wayne Johnston and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams? I love that book! I have The Custodian of Paradise, the follow up. I have not read it, as bizarrely I am afraid to see the story end, and like the idea of having the book and looking forward to reading it. I really should though.
You might like The Navigator of New York, a fictional account of the race to the North Pole, also on the TBR.

>26 arubabookwoman: Bomber sounds like a good follow up. Have you read Day, A L Kennedy's novel of a tailgunner in WWII?

>24 Yells: I've found the prize lists have been disappointing on the whole lately. I haven't had the thought "Here's a great new author", although I suspect Omar El Akkad could change my mind. One award I do follow is the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, although I haven't read any of the recent books.

The last book by one of my all time favourite authors:



Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson
first published 1896
finished reading May 30, 2021

Archie Weir's mother brought to her marriage land, money, and the country house of Hermiston. The woman herself was pious, timid and completely ineffectual. She did work hard though at imparting her religious views to her son. "Judge not lest ye be not judged" was one of her favourites, and her way of demonstrating tolerance to all. In her view of the universe, which was all lighted up with a glow out of the doors of hell, good people must walk there in a kind of ecstasy of tenderness. Her influence on Archie ended with her death when he was only seven, leaving him in the sole care of his father.

Young Archie struggled hard to reconcile her doctrines with the actions of his father, the Lord Justice-Clerk, 'Hanging Hermiston'. Hermiston was brilliant at law; outside it he was taciturn in the extreme. When he did speak, his language was crude and foul. Seven year old Archie had questioned his mother If judging were sinful and forbidden, how came papa to be a judge? to have that sin for a trade? to bear the name of it for a distinction?

Despite his scorn for the Judge, Archie decided he too would choose the Bar. While studying in Edinburgh, he went to witness the trial and subsequent execution of Duncan Jopp. The effect on him was so powerful, so horrendous, that Archie transgressed against his father in an unforgivable manner. Surprisingly, the Judge did not disown Archie and banish him forever. Rather, he sent him to Hermiston to be the laird, and to make it a successful estate. What followed was a real world education for the boy.

Stevenson himself had ongoing confrontations with his father about his path in life. Much of his writing concerns the dynamics of struggle on the part of a young man against the authority of an older man. His youths learned in the real world, not from books.

The motherless Archie now found himself having the same struggles with Kirstie Elliott, the older woman who ran the house. In the wider world surrounding Hermiston, her cousins the four Elliott brothers exerted a malignant power on the district. They had a much younger sister, also named Kirstie Elliott. The family history held the males were gallows-birds, born outlaws, petty thieves, and deadly brawlers, but, according to the same tradition, the females were all chaste and faithful. It was this Kirstie whom Archie loved, knowing his father would never agree.

Sadly the reader will never know the outcome. As Stevenson was at his desk writing this novel, he was felled by the stroke that would kill him at the age of forty-four. As if he sensed what was happening, the last words were It seemed unprovoked, a wilful convulsion of brute nature...

________________

The cover of this edition is a portrait of Lord Braxfield, Lord Justice Clerk 1788 - 1799, the man on whom Archie's father is based.

>27 SassyLassy: There was a follow-up? (did I miss that, or have I just forgotten...). I would have to read the first again. Will look into your suggested book....I do like cold places....

>28 SassyLassy: I book by Stevenson that I did not know (he is not really read in France apart from Treasure Island). I keep this title in mind! Thanks for the review.

ETA: (apart from Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of course!!!)

>29 avaland: It might not have gotten as much press, but after the huge success of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams there was a bit of a time lag if I remember correctly.

>30 raton-liseur: Is Voyage avec un âne dans les Cévennes available? Non fiction, but fun. He wrote so much. It's a shame that the two you mention are the only ones people know.

>31 SassyLassy: It's a shame that the two you mention are the only ones people know.

Truly. I thought all of Stevenson's books were like Treasure Island and Kidnapped, with Dr. Jekyll as an outlier.

>31 SassyLassy: Yes, it's available in physical book as well as public domain free ebooks, which is how I read it a few years ago.
It might be a bit exaggerated to say that Stevenson is known only for those 2 books, but I don't think I'm that far from reality... I don't know Stevenson that well (not read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), but like a lot the short stories I've read so far!

God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam
first published 1978
finished reading June 3, 2021

Margaret Marsh's father may have been a lay fundamentalist preacher, but the arrival of a baby brother when Margaret was eight threw her into what could be considered questionable company. Lydia was the frowsy household maid, who now had to take on the task of creating a weekly excursion for Margaret, a task she embraced whole heartedly. Gone were her demure uniforms and out came colourful sateen and heels on these Wednesdays. She was watched a lot and Margaret watched her being watched. ...Margaret felt wonderfully proud to be walking beside Lydia so stately and at ease.

Lydia would often disappear mysteriously into the woods, only to be discovered later with one or another of her men friends. This left time for Margaret to explore on her own. Margaret's mother recognized that Lydia was probably not quite the right person to leave unsupervised with her daughter. She started taking Margaret out too.

These excursions and her own exploration opened the wider world to the young girl. As with most children, this world didn't encompass many people, but those she met were well outside her limited experience. Being an introspective child, this led her to examine and question her own home life. Unbeknownst to Margaret, the adults in her world were also questioning their lives.

Gardam brings this all together in one penultimate afternoon. Not everything is made clear; the events are narrated in a disjointed fashion, in the way they would have been perceived at the time. Suddenly the next and final chapter is set in another afternoon some dozen years later. What had happened that fateful day became more clear in retrospect, and Margaret was able to see it from an adult perspective.

As usual, Gardam is able to use the little details of everyday life, and her characters' language and speech to build her story. It isn't as successful here as it would be later in her Old Filth trilogy, but it was successful enough for the novel to become a Booker finalist.

>34 SassyLassy: I have this one on my TBR, along with a couple of others. I like the two Jane Gardham books I've read (Crusoe's Daughter and Old Filth) and have been meaning to get to her others. Thanks for the reminder.

>34 SassyLassy: I can imagine that Jane Gardam has made something beautiful out of this. It is now on my wish list. It's curious to see that the Dutch title is On the Rocks.

>35 labfs39: Old Filth was great. Now you need to read the next two.

>36 Trifolia: I think both titles work. I guess the English title is the original, so wondering why the Dutch dropped God.

Second Nature: A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan
first published 1991
finished reading June 12, 2021

This seemed like a lacklustre book at first, and I was disappointed. After all, it was Michael Pollan writing. I had loved A Place of My Own, and that was what had prompted me to track down this earlier, now out of print book.

In 1991, Pollan had been attempting to work five acres of rocky 'intractable' hillside in semi-rural Connecticut, the same property where he would later build that studio. He had been struggling with his plantings for some seven years, with few results. It was time to reconsider both what he wanted and what he expected from his efforts. As he explained it

...I discovered I was ill-prepared for the work I had taken on. The local New England landscape - a patchwork of abandoned farms swiftly being taken over by second growth forest - proved far less amenable to my plans for it than the tame suburban plots of my childhood had. Here were large and rapacious animals, hegemonies of weeds, a few billion examples of every insect in the field guide, killing frosts in June and September, and boulders of inconceivable weight and number. But there were obstacles of a very different kind that proved just as vexing: the unexamined attitudes toward nature that I'd brought with me to the garden.

This was where it started to get interesting.

Pollan explores the evolution of his thoughts on the natural world. As he describes it, Americans have a view of nature as a separate inviolable thing, an entity which should not be altered. Yet a natural area like a shoreline of forest is never static. However, the general perception is that if something is gained, something must be lost. Nature and culture in this scenario are at odds.

What Pollan learned and argues for is that nature and culture can be wedded in a way that can benefit both. The place to do this is the garden. He is not speaking here of those wide green suburban plots mentioned earlier, those lawns that bear no relation to anything. Rather, he is talking about a place where garden and gardener are integrated into the place in a way that reflects the natural world around them.

He bemoans the dearth of American books on this topic. While there are hundreds that will tell you how to grow carrots or prune trees, few discuss the idea of 'garden' in the way that writers in other countries do. I wondered if the subtitle is a nod to the Englishman Russell Page and his book The Education of a Gardener. Pollan's book is more entertaining and less reflective, but maybe that is what is needed to get his ideas across to his American audiences, who will be familiar with their tradition of nature writing from Thoreau on down.

The book could have done with a list of his own reading, but that is probably a small quibble, especially for a first book.

Hi. Catching up. A bunch of wonderful reviews. Interesting about Pollan. I wonder how that might play out productively in a typical suburban neighborhood. Sorry Nabokov’s invitation to a Beheading didn’t work for you. It’s a little bit strange of a work, although I liked it partially because of that.

>39 dchaikin: I haven't given up on the Invitation. I think it's a book you have to be in the right frame of mind for when you pick it up.

Pollan does speak a bit about efforts to change the suburban landscape. I know that in various places that there can be neighbourhoods with restrictive covenants around landscaping which limit the types and height of plants allowed, others where they call in the noxious weed people to speak to the householders even though there are no weeds present, some where you cannot grow food plants in your front yard but can in your back yard. The list goes on and on. There is a lot of work to be done in many towns and cities to make people realize just how detrimental those manicured velvet green streetscapes are to the environment.
One of the things I love about where I live now is just how individual the houses and gardens are, which is something to get you out walking or cycling just to admire them through the seasons. Gardeners are always willing to chat with admirers.

This was a quirky little book, seeming even more odd as it came as part of my And Other Stories subscription, a publisher that usually deals in new fiction from around the world.



Under the Rainbow: Voices from the Lockdown by James Attlee
first published 2021
finished reading June 1, 2021

Remember all those crayoned rainbows, the signs and the posters that appeared in windows during the first Covid wave? James Attlee set out to document them after the lifting of the first Covid lockdown in the spring of 2020.

Attlee bicycled around Oxford stopping at homes where a display caught his eye. Surprisingly, at many doors people were willing to speak with him. He spoke with children, nurses, pensioners, veterans, Brexiteers, and conspiracy theorists. Where did the impetus for all this street art come from ?

Most of the rainbows were made by children, prompted in large part by their teachers. Some had morphed into the colours of particular national flags. A gay activist spoke of how he felt his movement's flag had been recoded. One rainbow in a home for the elderly had a Wordsworth poem with it. In another house there was an Afghan lament.

In their isolation, households had also created signs and messages of solidarity for various cause and agencies. Naturally there was the NHS, but also Black Lives Matter in support of immigrant workers in poorly paid frontline jobs. The environment was a big cause, not unexpectedly as 2020 was the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day. The 75th anniversary of VE Day was also evident, largely as a sentimental reference to perceived better times. Attlee links these displays in windows and doorways to older practices of placing protective talismans at entry points to homes.

The book ends with the beginnings of resistance to hope and to the lockdown with the emergence of the second wave. Reading it now, that period less than two years ago seems like history from long ago. This is its value. It stands as a remarkable slice of primary documentation for an era that will be studied for years to come.

Just catching up here—great reviews, and a few books I want to bookmark for my future TBR. Thanks!

photo Janet Fries/Getty Images 1981 from the New York Times

b 1934-12-05
d 2021-12-23

>42 lisapeet: Always happy to add to people's lists!

Beside the Ocean of Time by George Mackay Brown
first published 1994
finished reading June 30, 2021

How could you not love Thorfinn Ragnarson? Of all the lazy useless boys who ever went to Norday school, the laziest and most useless was Thorfinn Ragnarson. His teacher said he was useless, a dreamer. His father said he wasn't any use on the farm either.

What Thorfinn could do though, that neither of these men could ever begin to contemplate, was take flight into the past, living in one era after another. If the teacher was discussing the conquest of Constantinople by the Norsemen, Thorfinn would be right there, sailing down the Volga with the Swedes and Russians toward Byzantium.

If only Mr Simon knew how to teach! Nobody could made Bannockburn as dull as he could. Thorfinn had ridden from Sutherland to Stirling to witness that great battle back in 1314. He had even been on Orkney in the mists of time, back before the Vikings, back when he had a long forgotten Celtic name.

Time went on. So quickly it passes, the little day of a man's life on earth. Thorfinn left school at fourteen to everyone's relief, but continued dreaming his way through the history of his island. Thorfinn Ragnarson is easily George Mackay Brown, and George Mackay Brown is Orkney. In this slim novel, he writes of one small imaginary island in that group, an enchanted place until it was overrun one more time when the Royal Navy took it over as a major base in WWII.

This is a magical book, a saga to carry away all dreamers.

>31 SassyLassy: The book has arrived and it is in the reading pile.

>38 SassyLassy: I'm with Pollan re lawns. Great review!

ETA apparently we were writing at the same time!

>46 avaland: You'll probably get it read before I do! It got moved here, and then moved around to different places as books got put in order, but during that process some just seem to have vanished. I know it's here somewhere. I will make a more concerted effort to find it.

Pollan is always interesting. I wish I read like that.

It was a review by nickelini that sent me to this book.

qui tocca anche a noi poveri la nostra parte di ricchezza
ed è l'odore dei lemoni - Eugenio Montale

now it's our turn, us poor ones, to have a share of riches
and it's the scent of lemons - Helen Attlee translation



The Land where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and Its Citrus Fruit by Helena Attlee
first published 2014
finished reading June 30, 2021

Want to know just about anything about the citrus family? Read this book.

The publisher classifies The Land where Lemons Grow as travel. There's a certain amount of sense there, as the author has led 'elite' garden tours throughout Italy for many years. However, she is also the author of books on those gardens, and this background makes this book far more wide ranging than the classification would suggest. Here we have art, history, international trade, social history, physical geography, medicine, botany, and horticulture all bound up into an entertaining narrative that somehow never goes off track.

There aren't just lemons here. There's a whole range of citrus fruits from the citrons (esrog) brought from Jerusalem in the first century CE, to lemons, bergamots, tangelos and pomelos, grapefruit, and all the 4,000+ varieties of oranges.

I read this book in summer and it was enticing then. I'm sure in the dark days of winter it would seem even more so.

That sees me half way through 2021 by the calendar. Time is closing in to finish. I may wind up with just a bare list.

July's book club book and a reread.



Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe by George Eliot
first published 1861
finished (re)reading July 8, 2021

It was such a pleasure to be reading George Eliot again. Her quiet prose and the rural setting of Raveloe fostered a certain kind of immersion, one in which today's world ceased to exist.

Silas Marner had lost not only his religion, but also his community, for the one was bound up with the other. This dual loss sent him out on the road to seek a life of solitude in the countryside, carrying only his loom, his still cherished Bible, and his knowledge of herbs. He settled in Raveloe in the heart of England. The villagers, used to a communal and cooperative agrarian life, mistrusted this newcomer; a man who worked alone indoors in the gloom. Any one who had looked at him as the red light shone upon his pale face, strange straining eyes, and meagre form, would perhaps have understood the mixture of contemptuous pity, dread, and suspicion with which he was regarded by his neighbours in Raveloe.

After more than a decade of toiling away like this, Marner experienced a terrible setback, followed almost immediately by a drastic but decidedly positive change in his life. These two events served to foster acceptance by the villagers. As in all such places, he would never be thought of as one of them, but he could fit in with their lives.

Eliot understood the complexity of social structure in a village setting, and the restriction and codes of behaviour class imposed on its inhabitants. In Silas Marner, the countryside community, so soon to disappear, triumphs over both class and religion.

>50 SassyLassy: Your lovely review sorely tempts me to reread...but I think I will let your review stand in lieu of. I do love Eliot. Your last two lines are very well said..

>50 SassyLassy: I have a soft spot for Silas Marner. It was the first "classic" I read at school all those years ago and after a close reading I discovered it was the sort of reading I enjoyed.

>51 avaland: >52 baswood: Keep it in mind for when you do have the need for something like this.

>52 baswood: You made me wonder how I would have responded to this book in school. I think the latter part would really have appealed to me, but I may not have connected as much with the first part. Reading it now, I realize it sets up the whole second half.

Twelve Days in Persia: Across the Mountains with the Bakhtiari Tribe by Vita Sackville-West
first published 1928
finished reading July 12, 2021

Vita Sackville-West had visited Persia in 1926 to see her husband Harold Nicolson. She was so taken by the country that she returned the following year. Her goal was to traverse the Bakhtiari mountains in the southwest of the country. The major problem was an enormous lack of information about this largely unpopulated area, even though there was something loosely called a road through it.

The journey would be made by Vita, her husband, and three other men. She describes is as 'five Europeans setting out', but with the wilful blinkers attendant on her class, she fails to count the English mechanic in that number. The others who made up the caravan: 'three or four muleteers', guards, servants, all get the odd passing reference, usually for entertainment value, however, for the most part there's a wonderful conceit that this journey was accomplished alone by the five.

Despite this, her observations and descriptions of the trip and the Bakhtiari people are excellent. Her group was travelling in the opposite direction to the semi annual migration of the tribe, which was seeking grazing land in the mountains.

We were going against all that moving life, being always confronted with faces and never with tails, driving our wedge into the stream, that parted for an instant and then closed up and went on; ...
So many thousand faces. The long, silly faces of sheep, the satyric faces of goats with their little black horns; the patient faces of tiny donkeys, picking their way up under their heavy loads; and then, six or eight little heads of newly born kids, bobbing about, sewn up in a sack on a donkey's back... The older ones were obliged to run, skipping over the stones, kids and foals and calves and children, but the youngest had to be carried: a litter of puppies slithering about on a mule's pack, a baby in a cradle slung across its mother's shoulders. The hens travelled too, perched on the back of a donkey.

Then came the men and women herding all these animals.They were all too weary or too apathetic to stare much at us.

One night there was a colossal thunderstorm, followed by hail. Anyone who has ever camped in these conditions knows the sheer terror; will lightening strike us -- will the tent blow down? In the morning there was snow all around, soon melted, but granting a welcome free day while everything dried.

The isolation in the area provoked thoughts of what it would mean to lead a solitary life.

What ...would become of one's capacity for emotion? would it become stultified through disuse or sharpened through denial? What would become of one's power for thought? Would that become blunted in the absence of any whetstone whereon to grind itself? Or would a new, high wisdom arise, out of an inhuman sense of proportion, accomplishing nothing and desirous of no achievement, but attaining through contemplation a serene and perfectly tolerant estimate of the frailties of mankind?

It was not just a sense of isolation that this trip engendered. There was also the feeling of living an anachronism, of having gone back centuries in time.

Emerging onto the plains once more was not only emerging back into the present, but also seeing Iran's future. There, in the distance, was the smoke from the oilfields of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company*. She wondered, would they too join in time the ruins of the ancient cities of Persia?

______________
*later BP

There Leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, in the deep
Stretch'd like a promontory sleeps or swims
And seems a moving land; and at his gills
Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.

epigraph to Moby Dick from Paradise Lost



Moby Dick by Herman Melville
first published as The Whale in 1851
finished reading July 17, 2021

Well I finally did it - I read Moby Dick. It has taken me years of contemplating doing this, but never getting around to it, frightened off by its reputation, then devising a strategy of announcing to all and sundry I was going to read it, and now, finally this summer, just doing it.

Was it worth all the preliminary angst? That I don't know; it will probably take me as long to figure that out as it did to getting around to reading it. I'm not sure it is a 'great book'. It is, however, a remarkable compendium of anything remotely related to cetology. There are sections on zoology, ship building, Jonah, Leviathan, the seven seas, quotes from mariners' accounts, and discussions of comparative international whaling practices. Interspersed among all this are chapters pertaining to the actual hunt for Moby Dick.

Reading and reading and reading, I wondered along with those whalers just where that creature could be, for this voyage was not going to end until he was found. He appeared on page 482, and then it was a mad rush to the finale.
_______________________

sample of Melville's frenzied writing describing the crew rendering blubber:

As they related to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.

Posted on my earlier 2021 thread, but mentioned again here to remind me of the year's chronology of reading.



An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector translated from the Portuguese by Stefan Tobler 2021
first published as Uma Aprendizagm ou O Livro dos Prazeres in 1969
finished reading July 22, 2021

reviewed on the book's page

>55 SassyLassy: Congrats on getting through Moby Dick. I have never been able to get into it. Yet I read and enjoyed In the Heart of the Sea, which is the nonfictional account of the whaleship Essex, upon which Melville based his tale.

>54 SassyLassy: Despite the trappings of the travelling rich class, this still sounds like a fascinating account. I have one of her travel books somewhere, must dig it out.

>55 SassyLassy: congrats on finishing Moby-Dick. An extraordinary book.

>57 labfs39: The Heart of the Sea was a good one, but now that you mention it, it didn't occur to me while I was reading Melville's book. Odd, as I have also read The Loss of the Ship Essex, Sunk by a Whale. Maybe I was more absorbed in Moby Dick than I thought!

>58 baswood: It certainly was an excellent account. I would hate to take anything away from her skill as a writer. I have to read Freya Stark now.

One of my favourites of the year



The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene
first published 1939
finished reading July 23, 2021

A man known only as D, from an unnamed country, travelled 3rd class on a ship from somewhere in Europe to Dover. His country was fighting a civil war. His mission was to buy urgently needed coal for his side's war effort through friendly merchants in London, and to arrange the shipping with them.

However, D had spotted L onboard, the agent for the other side, bent on the same mission. What follows is a tale of dread, unrelenting suspicion, and despair, for the price of failure would be death for whichever man failed.

This is one of Greene's best 'entertainments', and in my mind possibly a forerunner for The Third Man.

Keeping the House by Tice Cin
first published 2021
finished reading July 30, 2021

It's difficult to know how to describe this first novel. Perhaps one of the best ways is to just quote blurber Kate Ellis (Brick Lane Bookshop) who calls it a "swirling cabbage".

Basically it's narrated by Damla, born in 1991 into North London's Turkish Cypriot community. Damla's world is full of women: mother, grandmother, aunties, cousins, sister. There are men in this world, just not in her house. All kinds of prohibitions and warnings are attached to these men and any others who may appear. The main focus of life was earning enough money to exist. The drug trade beckoned. There are lots of men in the drug trade.

Cin is an interdisciplinary artist. Her book is written with skill merging narrative, poetry, play formatted dialogue, Turkish language and translations of it, and humourous marginalia. Not only was it an insight into her community, it also gave me a whole new perspective on cabbage.

That it grows around its centre I knew. That you can open that centre at about twenty days, put something in it, and then have the cabbage grow around that object was a new thought to me. Despite the wonderful foods in the book, I'll never look at an imported cabbage the same way again.