My Emperor’s New Clothes list

This morning in the newspaper ‘i’, in the daily letter from the executive editor, Stefano Hatfield talks about ‘the many things in life that so many other people love that we feel real pressure to join in, even though we find them boring or disgusting.’ He lists whisky, Twitter, Eastenders, Radio 4 and Pippa Middleton amongst others in his ‘personal Emperor’s New Clothes list.’ So it got me thinking about things that I’m not fond of that seem to be widely adored by the rest of the population – and the more I thought about it, the more I seemed to think of! And seeing as I’m nowhere near finishing Captain Corelli’s Mandolin yet and it might be a while before I am because lectures start properly next week, I thought I’d talk a little bit about these things that most people seem to enjoy but I somehow can’t stand! Please feel free to comment with your own Emperor’s New Clothes lists.

1. The Simpsons. This programme really does escape me. I obviously must be missing something fairly big here, but I just don’t get it. I really struggle to find it funny, I have yet to have it satisfactorily explained to me why they are all bright yellow, and the theme tune makes me want to throw something at the television. Hard.
2. Alcohol. Or more specifically, getting drunk. For the sake of full disclosure, let’s be clear about this. I am not teetotal – I do drink, but only very occasionally, I only like the taste of a very limited selection of drinks and I have never even been close to drunk. I don’t think I’ve even been tipsy. And do you know why? Because being drunk doesn’t look fun. Oh sure, while you’re drunk I’m told it’s the best fun ever. But this doesn’t really make up for the fact that chances are that while you think you’re hilarious and attractive, you’re actually being quite annoying and have drastically increased the possibility of doing/saying something you will ardently regret when the alcohol’s left your system – that’s if you even remember what happened after 10.30pm, that is. Also, it’s expensive. And once you’re past a certain point, you’re probably going to be sick. None of that sounds good to me.
3. The X Factor. Just put it to bed. It’s dying. And horrendously drawn out, and over-produced and scripted and possibly rigged. And half the reason people watch it is to laugh at deluded individuals getting their dreams crushed in quite possibly the most public way ever engineered by mankind. They should have stopped after the first series of Pop Idol.
4. Titanic. This film is quite possibly the most horrendous thing I’ve ever seen. Once again for the sake of full disclosure, my dad is a Captain in the Merchant Navy, so I have a particular horror of sinking ships. But MY GOD. How on earth people can watch that film and consider themselves entertained as opposed to traumatized I will never know. And I enjoy a good tragic film or tragic book – I don’t only like things that have happy endings. But Titanic is probably my worst nightmare in cinematic format. Not even Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, both of whom I quite like can save it from my own personal Room 101. 

There are quite a few more, but these are the most obvious ones that spring to mind. If you can think of anything that the rest of the world thinks is the best thing ever but makes you want to punch something or hide your head under your pillow, please comment!

Fatherland by Robert Harris

I seem to be getting through books at quite a rate at the moment. This is largely because, although I have been back in Leicester ready for the new term for a week now, I haven’t had any classes to go to because it’s exam period – and I don’t have any exams. I have had essays to write, but both have been finished and handed in relatively early on. So I’ve just been dossing around really – going to the gym, experimenting with cooking (I made an interesting mackeral kedgeree today. Results – basically very good, but too much rice), writing post to my busier friends outside Leicester and, obviously, continuing with my Radio 4 Bookclub Challenge.

I might as well admit it now. Fatherland is not the type of book I’d usually go for. If I picked it up in Waterstones’, it’s very unlikely it’d make it to the till with me. In one sense it appeals to my penchant for imaginative dystopia or alternative realities (that’s about as close as I ever get to science fiction), because it’s based in historial fact that has been twisted to a recognisable but uncomfortable parallel to our world. But it’s definitely what could be called a political thriller, and that kind of book has never really appealed to me. I think it’s because I don’t cope very well with tension.

Anyway, the premise on which the book is based is the idea that Germany won the Second World War. We as the readers are plunged into 1960s Berlin, where Adolf Hitler is alive, still in power, about to be visited by President Kennedy of America (J.F.’s father, incidentally) and to celebrate his 75th birthday presiding over a conquered or dependent Europe. The main character, however, is not Hitler (in fact we never meet him) but Xavier March, a detective of the criminal investigation sector of the police force who begins the book attending the discovery of an old man’s body washed up from a lake on the outskirts of the city. As March investigates further into the man’s death, who turns out to be a high-ranking Nazi official, political scandal and horrible conspiracy begin to unravel around him.

I think the story gets much of its drive and energy from the shock factor, which reoccurs every time a fictional historical development is explained, of ways Harris has distorted history – almost into the ultimate “what if?” book. We discover that King George VI, his wife and children, and Winston Churchill fled into exile in Canada where they remain during the course of the story; George VI’s (in reality abdicated) brother Edward VIII reigns over a British puppet government with his queen Wallis Simpson; Reinhard Heydrich survived the assassination attempt that in actuality killed him; and most importantly the Holocaust is proported not to have happened, as the official German line explains the disappearance of Jews as mass relocation to Germany’s new Eastern territories where communication is poor (which is supposedly why friends and relatives in other parts of the world cannot get in touch with them). Quite aside from the tightly wrought conspiracy thriller of a plot, every time as a reader you encounter a little piece of warped history it gives you a jolt – a further reminder that this is an unfamiliar world, not the world as you know it.

About halfway through the book, March (and his American cohort, journalist Charlie Maguire) begin to uncover the real fate of Europe’s Jewish population. I thought this was very well-handled and well-written. Obviously I grew up knowing about the Holocaust, and have been able to further my knowledge by reading about it, watching documentaries and, when I was 17, visiting Auschwitz. But as March and Charlie uncovered documents detailing the sequence of events of the Final Solution, Harris really envoked what it must feel like to discover that this happened for the very first time – and furthermore that it had been hidden from public knowledge. I thought that was very powerful.

This leads me on to what we could safely term as my soapbox topic. Those of you who’ve read previous posts of mine will know I’ve got a big of a bugbear about historical accuracy in novels – see any of my Philippa Gregory reviews just for starters. At risk of repeating myself, I feel that authors writing about historical events should stick as close to known fact as possible, and write their stories in the gaps between historical knowledge. So, I suppose you’re wondering, how did I cope with a book which obviously changes history? Well, Fatherland is a different kettle of fish really because it isn’t a “historical novel.” It is based on historical fact, yes, but at no point are we as the readers under any illusion as to where reality ends and fiction begins. Harris even includes, at the end of the novel, an author’s note detailing exactly which key characters and documents were real, and how far their stories were fictionalised. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – all novels writing about the past should include one of those.

Aside from the historical gubbins, Fatherland‘s a hell of a page-turner. Towards the end I was reading so fast that I was missing out whole paragraphs and having to go back because I suddenly realised I’d skim-read a whole page. There also isn’t a traditional triumphant, happy ending – which I was very pleased about actually, because I think it would have ruined the plausibility of the narrative. One slightly awkward thing was that we only ever see things through Xavier March’s eyes, and from his perspective; we only ever hear conversations that he is a participant in. Harris does rather well getting all the important information to us under these restrictive conditions – it’s only towards the end that the strain begins to show, as March and Charlie are separated and we are left only with March imagining what is happening to her, which feels a bit weak.

All in all though, not bad at all. It’s always nice to read something that’s a bit out of your literary comfort zone, and even nicer when you enjoy the experience! Give it a try guys, see what you think.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

It’s bloody freezing here in Leicester this afternoon. Well, actually it’s one degree above freezing if you want to get technical about it. I’m currently sitting on my bed wrapped in a blanket, having just cut 700 words out of my essay on colonial India that’s due in on Monday and until just now was over 1,200 words over the word limit, and wondering what to do to fill the half an hour before I get up off my lazy behind and go to the gym. So seeing as I’m here (and my sister isn’t answering her phone) I thought I’d talk to you about Beloved, which is the second book on my Radio 4 Bookclub Challenge and which I finished some time last week.

This was the second time I’ve read Beloved - the first time was about three years ago. I wasn’t too keen then, but Toni Morrison herself says that a really good book should provide a better reading experience the second time around. She’s right – when I reread my favourite books, like The Time-Traveller’s Wife or anything by Lionel Shriver or even the Harry Potter books, I get something new out of them each time. And even though I wouldn’t say that Beloved is my favourite thing that I’ve ever read, I definitely got more out of it the second time.

The book contains one tragic incident, based on a real event, around which all the characters and all the subsequent plot revolve: the murder of a child by her mother Sethe, an escaped slavewoman who thinks her family’s forced return to the plantation is imminent. The family is subsequently haunted by the ghost of the dead child, until the 1880s when only Sethe and her other daughter Denver remain in their home, Sethe’s mother-in-law having died and her two sons having run away, driven off by the ghost. Then, coming to interrupt the pair’s precarious, spirit-ridden existence, a young woman arrives at their house with little memory of where she came from and saying her name is Beloved – the one word Sethe could afford to have engraved on her murdered daughter’s gravestone.  As James Naughtie said in the Bookclub programme on this book, Beloved is real in that the other characters can all see her, interact with her and be moved by her, but she also seems to be a manifestation of the guilt that Sethe feels but tries to suppress about what she did. It is from her presence that the story unfolds and the memories of Sethe’s past life are revealed.

I certainly wouldn’t say this is an easy read. This is not just because of the difficult subject matter – the murder of a child by her mother and also the terrible cruelty of slavery – but as well because the story is not told chronologically but in flashbacks and recounted memories. It is also told by a variety of characters in their own voices, regularly using contemporary words I didn’t immediantly recognise or turns of phrase I didn’t understand. You kind of have to piece the story together yourself, sifting through all the stories and all the memories to work out what was actually going on. I found the process enjoyable, but it’s definitely a book that required concentration!

The first time I read this, I found the characters of the women in the book vastly more interesting than the main male character – Paul D., a man who was enslaved on the same farm as Sethe and begins a relationship with her quite close to the beginning of the book. He seemed quite dull and one-dimensional. But he vastly improved in my estimations the second time around. There’s a beautiful phrase about him: “he was the kind of man who could walk into a room and make women cry.” He adds a bit of balance to the book I think, because otherwise it focuses entirely on the warped, distressing, difficult dynamic between Sethe, Denver and Beloved shut up in their house together.

I have to say, I found some of the characters, particularly Denver, quite frustrating. At first at least, Denver is desperate for Beloved to stay and not to leave, even when it becomes apparent that there is something not quite right with her, and guards her jealously. I felt like she was depicted as a much younger child, not an 18 year old as she was supposed to be. And I also had to keep reminding myself why she wanted Beloved to stay – she’s so lonely and isolated, she hasn’t been to school since she was a child and the rest of the community don’t talk to the family because of what Sethe did, and of course she is terrified of her mother as well as depending on her because she might well decide to kill Denver herself one day.

But despite all that, it’s a great story. You really get a sense of the way the cruelty and pain most of the characters suffered when they were slaves was an everyday, ordinary occurrance, which makes it worse somehow. And what could be called the “finale” scene (you’ll know which one I mean when/if you read it) is very powerful. I think when I first read it I didn’t expect to read it again, but I’m very glad I did.

Over and Out.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, and my new reading challenge

So, my first finished book of the new year! I finished Birdsong last week, and I’ve been chewing it over for the last few days. I’ve also finished re-reading Beloved by Toni Morrison, so hopefully I’ll be able to whack out a review for that too soon.

I’ve tried to read Birdsong before now and given up after a couple of pages. But there’s a reason I’ve tried it again. I’m quite a fan of the Radio 4 programme Bookclub, that’s on on the first Sunday of every month and involves an author coming to discuss one of their books with an audience. I always enjoy listening to the programme, but more often than not I haven’t read the book that’s being discussed. So I’ve decided that I’m going to try and read as many books as I can that’ve been featured on Bookclub, starting with Birdsong, which was the chosen book for the first ever programme. Obviously there are a couple of problems with this idea. Firstly, there have been over 160 programmes! And secondly, there’s a new programme every month, so I’ll never have finished! But I think I’m going to set the perameter that I’m going to do it until this time next year, and see how far I’ve got. Wish me luck!

Anyway, back to Birdsong. It begins in 1910 with 20 year old Englishman Stephen arriving in northern France, as part of a business trip, to stay with the  wealthy Azaire family. During this stay, he develops an ardour for Isabelle Azaire, the unfulfilled and mistreated lady of the house, which she soon returns – and complications ensue from there. The second section finds Stephen, now an infantry officer, in 1916 on the Western Front. We follow his experiences along with those of his friend Michael Weir, who is the head of a division of tunnellers, and also those of Jack Firebrace, a tunneller – including Stephen’s participation in what I think must have been the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Dispersed within this second section is the third narrative, in late ’70s London with Elizabeth, who we eventually discover is related to Stephen, on her own voyage of discovery about WWI and her own family.

I thought Birdsong is, for the most part, very powerfully written. The whole thing is very evocative, but a couple of sections really stand out. One is a scene near to the beginning of the book, before Stephen and Isabelle confess their feelings for each other, on an uncomfortably hot day where the Azaire family, Stephen and another family take a boat ride along a canal – there is almost excruciating sexual tension between Stephen and Isabelle, as Faulks makes the simple accidental  touching of lower legs and ankles seem incredibly erotic. The later sex scenes are very sensual also, but I actually think this part tops all of those that come after.

The second stand-out section is almost at the end of the book, where Stephen and Jack Firebrace are trapped after an explosion in the tunnels below no-man’s land that have been dug by Jack’s team to attempt to listen to German movements. That, a much longer and darker section than the first one, is really quite brilliant writing. You really catch the desperate, claustrophobic feelings of the characters as they attempt to free themselves or alert people above ground to their presence, both of them wounded. As a more general point (and as some people in the Bookclub programme on Birdsong mentioned), I knew nothing about the tunnellers and their role on the front line before reading this book, and it made me feel a little bit guilty actually that there was this whole other group of men doing a job involving a whole other different kind of hell than the infantry men and I had no idea.

The parts of the book set in the modern day are perhaps inevitably less powerful, and I felt kind of resentful being dragged away from Stephen and Jack and their struggle to get through each bombardment, but I think without those sections all the war and killing might have got a bit much, a bit overwhelming. And there’s quite a nice detective element to those sections too, because as soon as you discover that Elizabeth is related to Stephen, you begin to try and work out what the nature of that relationship is and it soon becomes clear that all is not as it seems, which is quite fun!

There’s a strong theme running throughout the book of pushing boundaries and of how much a human can stand. Stephen is, as Faulks readily admits, quite a perverse character in a lot of ways in that he seems more determined to survive, to “see what will happen” the more horrendous the war becomes, the more death and dismemberment he sees. There’s also a strong contrast between the destruction a human body can wreak in war, and the physical ecstasy it can create in love or sex, as with Stephen and Isabelle’s affair, which I thought was very moving.

If you don’t have the stomach for blood and guts, you probably won’t get much past the first few pages of the second section. There’s someone being blown up every few pages, in graphic detail. And if you’re one for happy endings, this probably isn’t the one for you either – although I suppose that’s kind of obvious, people who like happy endings generally don’t go for books about the First World War anyway. But if aren’t either of those kinds of people, then I urge you to give Birdsong. In amongst the vast swathes of novels and poems written about WWI, this one really is a gem.

Over and Out.

New Year’s resolutions, of course

I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions. To be honest, I’ve always been a bit sceptical about the whole concept of New Year’s Eve, “Happy New Year”-ing etc. It seems to me that our calender has evolved over thousands of years to be set up how it is, but it could just as easily have evolved to be longer or shorter or to be split up differently. So, all this significance seems to have been heaped on one night to be the moment where everything can change in a fairly arbitary manner.

But when I get to thinking about it, I guess us humans need a few new starts from time to time. I could never count the number of times I’ve lain in bed at night and thought “well, I wish I could just start that day again!” And sometimes we just get fed up of all the things that get us down about ourselves – all the ways we don’t try hard enough, all the ways we aren’t good enough to the planet or to other people, all the ways we fail. And we carry all this around with us, this heavy burden of disappointment, adding another lump every time we don’t get out of bed and go to the gym, every time we spend money on something we don’t need, every time we get essays back that aren’t 1sts (disclaimer: at no point did I say these dissatisfactions were rational.) I don’t know why we can’t just let go of these things when they happen. Maybe some people do, but I know I don’t. I hoard away in some gloomy corner of my mind all the things that I’ve done or haven’t done that have disappointed me. So perhaps it’s good that the New Year has grown into an occasion for new starts and optimism.

This is not to say that I don’t think we should only try and be better, happier human beings on the 1st January. That’s another thing that’s always got me about the new year – why don’t people try and eat healthier, do more excercise, give more to charity etc throughout the year? But I guess it comes back to all that junk we’re carrying, all those times we haven’t lived up to how we want to be. We just need telling, every so often, to let it go and try again – and at new year it seems that that’s what the world’s doing.

So this year, I’m going to break the trend and make a couple of resolutions. I’m not going to tell you what they are, because maybe they work like wishes and if you tell each other then they won’t happen for you! But I think they’re going to be about trying my very best to be better, and not beating myself up if I don’t quite manage them all the time, but just brushing myself off and trying again.

Happy new year, guys and gals!

Over and Out.

This is a picture my friend Hannah took on New Year's Day last year. I like the sea.