I turn thirty years old this month and there are a myriad of reasons why I am not okay with that but, making lemonade from lemons, it inspired a new feature for my blog.  In my twenty-nine years so far I have read a lot of books and obviously only books from two of those years have been shared with you in Paperback Reader posts.  In Thirty for Thirty I am going to take thirty books read during my almost-thirty years that have made an impression and highlight them.  This is the first of five installments.

I consider the top four books in the pile to be among the very best novellas I have read and have probably recommended them as such whenever some of you have been seeking out novellas to read, whether that be for general reading or for challenge or novella weekend reading.  I have a deep love for Irish literature and both Maeve Brennan and Keith Ridgway are Irish; the former I came across reference to when I was researching Angela Carter for my thesis and Horses was a set text for an Irish literature (since the 1950s) course. Both are original and difficult to define but have been written about by Simon and Kim, who has written about both, and who have fresher, more recent insights.  The same Irish professor who taught that course recommended TC Boyle and Drop City to me and gave a lecture on The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark earlier in my university career. As you may know, I am a huge fan of Muriel Spark and The Driver’s Seat is her darkest subject matter and most thought-provoking of novellas; it was also adapted into a film with Elizabeth Taylor. The Loved One is also a blackly humorous novella set in Los Angelean funeral home, Whispering Glades (I think I first came across mention of the novella looking at DVD boxsets of Six Feet Under years ago).  A satire on the (then) Anglo-American cultural divide and on glamorous Hollywood, The Loved One is refreshing and quintessentially Waugh with its dry wit.

I was reminded recently of Drop City by T. C. Boyle when I read Caribou Island by David Vann (review forthcoming), not only because of their mutual Alaskan setting or because of the direct reference to Boyle early on -uncanny when I was at that stage thinking the novel was reminiscent of him – but an overall similarity in tone and a deft balancing of light and dark themes. Both Boyle and Vann are thoroughly absorbing and compel you to read on.  Drop City is about a commune of artists in the 1970s who relocate from California to remote Alaska but there is only so much free love and tree-hugging one can indulge in with bears in the vicinity and subzero conditions.  If you have not read any T.C. Boyle then I cannot recommend Drop City highly enough but the same applies to all of my thirty for thirty selections.

Trumpet by Jackie Kay is a novel that you may not have heard about (for the most part I have tried to focus upon the lesser-reviewed works that have impacted me rather than add my voice to the large chorus of fans of Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca and Midnight’s Children, for example) although it won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2000.  Jackie Kay is a Scottish writer (half-Nigerian), brought up in Glasgow, and I enjoy her poetry because of the shared cultural identity and its focus on race.  Trumpet was her debut novel and is jointly set in London and -through memory flashbacks- in 1960s Glasgow and tells the story of acclaimed trumpeter, Joss Moody, who is revealed upon his death to have been a woman living as a man.  Exceptionally poignant, Trumpet explores the aftermath of the revelation of Joss Moody’s true sex and the impact that has on his adopted son, Colman, who is both grieving and struggling to accept his father’s huge secret.  It features on LGBT literature lists often and was recommended to me by a friend who grew up in the same suburb of North Glasgow as Jackie Kay.  Trumpet is an emotive exploration of transgenderism, race and loss/grief and is a beautiful, gentle alternative (or additional read, of course)  to Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

There you have it: the first six of thirty books that make up (almost) thirty years of impressionable reading -including being read to, if you want to be technical about it (seeing as I didn’t read alone for the first few years).

Happy New Year!  I hope you have all been having an enjoyable and indulgent festive period; may you have been bestowed with books and grey ones for those of you still awaiting your Persephone Secret Santa gift.

Santa Claus did not -sadly- bring me reinstated internet access so I am still limited at home for the time-being, which is frustrating me.  Posts at Paperback Reader will continue to be somewhat sporadic although I have scheduled another and will post from my iPhone where I can; I am hoping for a painless resolution but it looks like it will be the end of January before I am back online.

However, I could not see 2010 end without posting my favourite reads of the year. Due to an extended reading slump from May onwards (which impacted my blogging) I managed to read 40 books less than I did last year and did not break the 100 books mark, which disappoints me.  These things cannot be helped though and I read some wonderful books throughout the year.  For 2011 I am following no set plans but will continue to read on a whim and hopefully manage to read more than three or four books a month as I have done recently (the amount of books read is not a competition, by any means, but I really can’t help but believe the adage: so many books, so little time).

The books I did read though were of outstanding quality and I revisited some favourite authors (and reread some beloved books) along with discovering some new ones that I will explore further next year and beyond.

My top ten books were (titles link to my reviews):

The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery

Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon

Love by Toni Morrison

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos

Blindness by José Saramago (not yet reviewed)

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Still Point by Amy Sackville (not yet reviewed)

Paper Towns by John Green

The City and the City by China Miéville (not yet reviewed)

Honorable mention must be made to: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham; Room by Emma Donoghue; To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf; Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde and A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood.

There you have it: some cracking good fiction.

]]> http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/2011/01/01/goodbye-2010-hello-2011/feed/ 19 http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/2010/05/12/review-a-thon-bone-blankets-and-the-finishing-school/ http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/2010/05/12/review-a-thon-bone-blankets-and-the-finishing-school/#comments Wed, 12 May 2010 15:40:19 +0000 Paperback Reader http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/?p=2063

In the aftermath of consecutive Angela Carter month and Persephone Reading Week, I have a lot of blogging to catch up with.  I have a few weeks’ worth of reviews to be scheduled and haven’t yet reviewed those books read during the read-a-thon that I participated in early April.  This post is actually micro-reveiws of three of my read-a-thon reads, to allow me to catch up that little bit sooner; the top book in the photograph, the play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange, I shall review separately as I want to devote a post to that one and my re-read of Black Venus during the read-a-thon has already been covered. Those were the two books that I started the read-a-thon with and the short stories (Carter) were a struggle to focus on and rather time-consuming before moving onto the play, which was far better-suited to read-a-thon conditions.

Following the play, I moved onto a novella (yes, I attempted to squeeze as many literary forms into the read-a-thon as possible and missed the novel itself), The Finishing School by Muriel Spark. I’ve been on something of a Spark kick this year and have a further four of her novel(la)s lined up on my immediate to-be-read -albeit mental- pile.  The Finishing School was less satisfying than my previous -and more recent- reads, Memento Mori (which is already a strong contender for my favourite read of the year) and The Girls of Slender Means; it was  last work published two years (2004) before death and may offer more in re-reading but immediately was lacking in comparison to Memento Mori and The Driver’s Seat, which are, in my opinion, Spark’s masterpieces.

The Finishing School is about a creative writing finishing school run by Rowland Mahler and his wife Nina Parker, on the banks of Lake Geneva in Switzerland.  Rowland is struggling with his latest novel whilst teaching aspiring writers; he discovers that one of their students, Chris, who is only seventeen, is also writing a novel and that it and he display extraordinary promise.  Rowland becomes professionally jealous  of the younger man’s talent and obsessed with Chris, putting himself, his marriage and the school at risk.

[O]f all the pupils Chris caused Rowland the most disquiet.  He was writing a novel, yes. Rowland, too was writing a novel, and he wasn’t going to say how good he thought Chris was.  A faint twinge of that jealousy which was to mastermind Rowland’s coming months, growing in intensity small hour by hour, seized Rowland as he looked.

This is a curious novella but very effective in its description of jealousy and how insane with envy people can become, driving them to do crazy things and destroy those around them, including themselves.  Spark does get under the skin of the situation and encapsulates in a short amount of pages the madness of Rowland.

It was mainly, at this moment, a question of trying to keep Rowland’s state of mind from running away with itself.  Chris, only Chris?  Was Rowland an unconscious homosexual?  It would be strange if this were so, considering the very perceptive views of life that he held in all other respects.  To be sexually jealous over a man or a woman was something Nina understood, but jealousy over a book, a work of art, a piece of writing…  That was indeed a fact she was trying to swallow.  Rowland was simply going mad with jealousy about the writing of novels.

Early on in the novella I was reminded of Polly of Novel Insight’s feature, Things I Learn From Books; in The Finishing School I learned the etiquette of eating asparagus in England (like Spark herself, I am Scottish but living in England; I also love asparagus but never eaten it in the way described).

Listen: when you eat asparagus in England, as everyone knows, you take it in your fingers, but the secret of exquisite manners with regard to asparagus is to eat it held in your left hand.  Got it?

As my eyes grew more tired and my brain turned to mush, I moved to graphic novels, which are an effective use of time and do seem to involve less concentration simply because there are less words to grapple with on the page when all you want to do is sleep.  I started off by reading Bone: Out of Boneville by Jeff Smith, the first volume in the successful Bone comic series.  Bone has been on the periphery of my consciousness for a while now and I borrowed it last-minute from the library as I knew it would definitely be read during the read-a-thon; I enjoyed it and now have the second volume, The Great Cow Race lined up to read.  I don’t have anything more really to offer other than it is an original premise, it’s very much an on-going story (hence the second one being picked up), and to learn more please read the Wikipedia article linked to or this insightful and enthusiastic review (of the series) by Nymeth of Things Mean a Lot.

Speaking of Nymeth, she and Aarti of Book Lust posted an outstanding co-review earlier this year of Blankets by Craig Thompson.  Blankets seems to have blown up across the blogosphere in the last six months or so and I had requested it from the library (it’s a very expensive graphic novel, mainly because of its length at close to 600-pages) around the same time as reading that review; it then languished on my library pile until the read-a-thon came around.  In the closing two hours of the read-a-thon (after I had slept for around four hours), I read Blankets in one sitting and found it just as touching and profound as the reviews I had read of it  had made it sound.  Blankets is a graphic memoir of Chris Thompson’s childhood and adolescence, focusing on his first experience of love in the background of a strict Christian upbringing.  I find it curious that most of the graphic novels that I have read (Persepolis and Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi;  The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman; Fun Home by Alison Bechdel) have all been memoirs; I don’t read memoirs in any other form and it is interesting that the medium of graphic novels allows their stories to be told and for me to enjoy them.  In my opinion the combination of visual story-telling and subtle narrative heightens the tenderness of this story, a story that otherwise may not have had the same impact; comparatively, a graphic novel such as Maus is less intense because of its form but both suggest that the graphic novel medium is the most accessible -as well as the most touching- form for memoirs.

The same week as the read-a-thon I attended this quilts exhibition at the V&A museum, which deepened my appreciation for Blankets.  A patchwork quilt is a real labour of love and Craig is touchingly presented with one by his girlfriend Raina, with whom he has a bittersweet relationship.  The blankets of the title also refers to blankets of snow and connotes images of comfort, of being tenderly blanketed, or of blank canvases -in art, writing and life.  Blankets is tender, moving, and highly recommended.

]]> http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/2010/05/12/review-a-thon-bone-blankets-and-the-finishing-school/feed/ 17 http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/2010/03/18/the-girls-of-slender-means/ http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/2010/03/18/the-girls-of-slender-means/#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:00:39 +0000 Paperback Reader http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/?p=1782

I am still reeling from reading Memento Mori by Muriel Spark last month and I went into The Girls of Slender Means hoping for a similar experience; it is not nearly as vindictive or as sinister as its predecessor but it is as mordantly witty.  The ironic title (ironic in its double-play on the word “slender” which is meaningful once you read the book and realise that not all the girls are slender enough to squeeze through a window) refers to a group of girls living in The May of Teck Club, a boarding house for young ladies (below the age of thirty) living and working away from their families in London.  Set in Kensington in the immediate post-World War II period, between VE Day and VJ Day, the girls of slender means are a disparate group whose lives, loves and sociological condition in 1945, when rationing is still in effect, are examined in the novella.

The framing story occurs in 1963 as Jane, one of the group and main characters, contacts her fellow housemates and acquaintances to inform them of the “martyring” of Nicholas Farringdon, a poet they knew in 1954, in Haiti; the novella flashbacks to events in 1945 and exchanges between Nicholas and the women. To begin with I found the structure a little disorientating and the novella is so short that, by the time I had adjusted, it was soon over.  Spark is so nuanced a writer that I find that reading her too quickly  or too casually will serve only to have most of the events go over my head and after the first forty or so pages I had to slow it down some and fully concentrate to appreciate the story and Spark’s caustic subtleties.

Each of the girls had something different to offer, each had their own unique personality. Jane, particularly, was my favourite girl of slender means; I found her use of chocolate as brain-food for her brain-work  amusing and later on as dutch courage.

Jane got up, ran to her room, and with animal instinct snatched and gobbled a block of chocolate which remained on her table.  The sweet stuff assisted her recovery.

Jane works in publishing and as a side-line she makes money from selling the letters of famous writers; she plots how best to con the writers into responding in their own hand, which goes for a higher price, by tailoring outrageous sob stories for each writer, with amusing responses, particularly that of Gerard Manley Hopkins.  Jane, like the other girls, is simply making ends meet in an impoverished period of history; the girls barter with tea, charm men for meals and clothing ration vouchers, and share a Schiaparelli gown amongst themselves, a dress they would retrieve from a burning building.

Although The Girls of Slender Means doesn’t pack quite the same punch as Memento Mori, it does possess a delightfully serrated edge.

As they realized themselves in varying degrees, few people alive at the time were more delightful, more ingenious, more movingly lovely, and, as it might happen, more savage, than the girls of slender means.

*I’ve gone home to visit family and friends for a few days; I have scheduled a few posts, including this one, but replying to comments and blog reading will be sporadic, at least.

It’s been a few weeks since my last Library Loot post as I am attempting to catch up on the loot I have already acquired.  Some books have been returned unread recently as I attempt to conquer an overwhelming immediate to-be-read pile; I did consider a blank slate but there are a few of the borrowed books that I am still anxious to read regardless of the deadline pressure.  A restriction of twelve books a month may seem so little to hardened library borrowers and fast readers but when I sometimes read less than twelve books -owned, borrowed and reviewed- in a slow month, those outstanding library books on the TBR begin to overwhelm me and begin to feel like a chore to read.

Anyway, my latest loot is rather conservative and even includes one audio-book, which is rare for me.

After reading July’s People by Nadine Gordimer for book group earlier this month I was keen to read more of Gordimer’s work.  I picked up a couple of secondhand Virago Modern Classic editions of her earlier novels and The Pickup came recommended in the comments to Kimbofo’s post on the book; I opted for the audio format as I have some upcoming travel and thought it would make interesting listening. The premise of The Pickup sounds compelling and its theme of racial issues in South Africa -extending in this novel to Africa as a whole- is what I found so richly communicated in July’s People.

My reading of Memento Mori by Muriel Spark fueled my desire to read more Spark; the only unread one of her novels that I had on my shelves is The Comforters, which doesn’t sound as edgy so I requested The Girls of Slender Means from the library instead, as it had been recommended as similarly cruel and vindictive as Memento Mori.

The book of plays by Ntozake Shange I borrowed to read one specific play in the collection: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.  The title in itself was tantalising and I thought that the poetic, feminist text would make perfect reading for the Women Unbound challenge.

My request for Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 by Lisa Appignanesi -a book that had been on my wish-list since its publication- followed reading an article on The Guardian a few weeks ago concerning fictional portrayal of madness in women characters. I have long been interested in the subject of mental illness in literature, real or imagined, ever since reading Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (I highly recommend it), a gothic novel about a woman imprisoned in an insane asylum by her husband; the subject fascinates me and Appignanesi’s non-fiction study has long appealed.

Have you read any of these books or interested in any?

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg encouraging library use and its promotion.

A blogging friend mentioned at the weekend that she didn’t know I was Scottish; I was quite surprised by that as I thought I was always rambling on about trips home to Glasgow and the books that are left there but apparently I have not been as upfront about my heritage as I had thought.  So, in the tradition of fellow Scots who have asserted their nationality and declared their patriotism, I thought it was time to dedicate a blog post to the underrated literature from home.

Does anyone else who lives away from their home city or town find that your love for it becomes all the deeper and stronger once you are living away from it? I have discovered that I am far more passionate about my nationality and more about the heather and honey now that I am living in a metropolis so far removed from home.  I have only been here for eighteen months and still suffer home-sickness for the dear green place from time to time.  Of course I’m lucky that I’m only 400 or so miles away and can manage home fairly frequently (speaking of which, I’m going home in a couple of weeks and then again a few weeks after that) so the longing for home never becomes too saddening as I’m only half an hour away from one of London’s biggest airports.

However, I have tended away from any Scottish literature in the past year (excluding this beautiful love-letter to Scotland and this quirky gender-playing mythical tale) in the event that it makes me feel too far away from home.  I have read some Muriel Spark recently but Spark set many of her novels in London.  My bookshelves though overflow with books by other Scottish writers: Alan Warner; Alasdair Gray; Ali Smith; Jackie Kay; Edwin Morgan; Louise Welsh; Irvine Welsh; A. L. Kennedy; James Kelman; Janice Galloway; Kevin MacNeil; Iain Banks; Anne Donovan; Laura Marney… What I have read is rich and engaging, original and darkly humorous. Scottish fiction is rooted in a tradition of oral storytelling and the new stories are just as compelling as the old; I tend to read only modern Scottish writers unless their name is Arthur Conan Doyle or I am doing my party trick of reciting some Robert Burns.  I haven’t been able to  locate a successful access point into Alexander McCall Smith nor Christopher Brookmyre who are both missing from my list.

On my immediate to-be-read pile I have Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman to read, which I have been wanting to do for  some time; I also intend to re-read  The Sopranos by Alan Warner in preparation for its forthcoming sequel, which will be published by Jonathan Cape in a couple of months, and I plan on reading more Spark in the near-future.

Which, if any, Scottish writers are you familiar with or would like to see me read? How do you think  Scottish literature compares with the canon of neighbouring England? You can’t offend me … I’m a Scot who studied English literature as both undergraduate and postgraduate level; I did pick up Scottish literature as an elective but it didn’t hold the same sway  for me as Austen, Shakespeare and Dickens did.

“Memento Mori” is a Latin phrase translated as “Remember You Must Die” and it is that phrase which is anonymously uttered in a series of insidious phone-calls to a group of elderly friends, the premise of the novel by Muriel Spark.  This macabre tale was only the third of many novels published by Spark and yet is highly accomplished and vividly realised.  Memento Mori is a cruel tragicomedy surrounding Dame Lettie Colston and her circle; it is exceedingly funny but it is very much a black humour.  Spark is highly observant and even writing in her middle-age, she depicts old age to a tee with all its indignities and poignancies. In the hunt for the anonymous caller, who is reminding the recipients of that which they need not -nor seek- to be reminded, the circle are exposed for their sordid pasts, their past and present duplicities and their self-delusions.

None of the characters are likable, which I have no issue with, but I did sympathise with them.  Spark’s “memento mori” to the reader is harshly achieved; I could find the characters amusing but there exists an underlying sadness to their plight as it is one we all face and the sadness of old age another (nature willing). The cast of septuagenarians and octogenarians are petty in their disputes and Spark makes caricatures of them; they are catty towards one another, frequently changing their wills, with the disembodied warning on the telephone and its preceding ring sounding like a death knell.

Spark seems to be rather sneering and scathing of her characters and it is for this reason that I call the novel cruel and not for its resounding memento mori. If I hadn’t read and enjoyed previous novels (and some exceptional short stories) by Muriel Spark then I may have been left disliking her for her darkness; as it is I love the macabre but it does leave me feeling unsettled and there is one scene in the text that shocked me considerably.  What is lacking in Memento Mori is compassion and that is where the reader comes in: I pitied the characters even if I did not particularly like them.  Spark shows no remorse in exposing the characters and all their flaws and it was  like being privy to the juiciest, damaging piece of gossip and experiencing schadenfreude.

I admire Spark’s ambition in writing this novel so early in her career as it reads like a novel by a more seasoned writer who has nothing to lose. It has been a number of years since I read the wickedly delightful The Driver’s Seat but I remember being left similarly reeling by its dark brevity.  The unsavoury geriatrics in Memento Mori are a wonderfully witty creation and the memory of them will not die.

Some favourite quotes:

After the first occasion Mrs Pettigrew had imagined, almost with alarm, that his request was merely the preliminary to more daring explorations on his part, but by now she knew with an old woman’s relief that this was all he would ever desire, the top of her stocking and the tip of her suspender.  She took the pound note off the table, put it in her black suede handbag and loosened her stays.  She had plans for the future.  Meantime a pound was a pound.

Mrs Pettigrew, though she had in fact, one quiet afternoon, received the anonymous telephone call, had chosen to forget it.  She possessed a strong faculty for simply refusing to admit an unpleasant situation, and going quite blank where it was concerned.  If, for instance, you had asked her whether, eighteen years before, she had undergone a face-lifting operation, she would have denied it, and believed the denial, and moreover would have supplied gratuitously, as a special joke, a list of people who had ‘really’ had their faces lifted or undergone other rejuvenating operations.

]]> http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/2010/02/22/memento-mori/feed/ 16 http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/2010/02/06/recent-acquisitions-6/ http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/2010/02/06/recent-acquisitions-6/#comments Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:30:00 +0000 Paperback Reader http://paperback-reader.co.uk/2010/02/06/recent-acquisitions-6/

I would have entitled this post “book cover coveting” but have purchased all of the ones published thus far. This week saw the re-issue of both The Comforters (her debut novel) by Muriel Spark and Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym, hence the timely post.

The Muriel Spark copies are photographed above and I have read the first to be published, Symposium and Loitering with Intent. Expect to read a review of The Comforters soon as I expect that it will be a book that I love based on the fabulous synopsis:

As yet I have not read any Barbara Pym novels but I have heard delightful things and look forward to reading these funny novels.

The cover illustrations in their case are courtesy of Jessie Ford and I think they are fabulously colourful and amusing. An article this week accused these covers of belonging to the ‘”chick-lit” genre’ (the photograph featured is the cover for A Glass of Blessings, which will be published later this year as well as other Pym titles) but I don’t agree. Virago have been guilty of publishing dubious covers for other VMC reissued titles that can be completely misleading (see this) but I think that the Pym covers are fresh and fun and to be taken in the witty light of their content.

The commissioned covers for both Spark and Pym are reminiscent of the wonderful covers and typography for Virago’s Angela Carter titles by Roxanna Bikadoroff, some of which are photographed below. These are by far my favourite illustrated covers and I upgraded my Angela Carter collection to include these editions as they encapsualte her rich, lush, and bizarre creations. I think this is an admirable marketing ploy and coup for Virago.

Roxanna Bikadoroff is also the illustrator for the North American Penguin copies of Angela Carter’s work, a fact that I am amazed I did not realise sooner as I also have a couple of those copies from across the pond. I found a great blog post by Caustic Cover Critic that features images of some of those editions (look at the very clever Penguin logos). It interests and pleases me greatly that Carter can now be universally identified (well, despite for the Vintage editions of her work. I love Vintage Books but their Carter covers don’t excite me nearly as much as the ones photographed).

I hope you have enjoyed today’s foray into the wonderful world of cover art.