Last month I was doing four weeks of work experience at DK (Dorling Kindersley) in the Marketing and PR department; I am now temping as a Digital Licensing Assistant. As you were receptive to my last posts regarding my shorter internship at CCV in Random House (now referred to just as Vintage), I intend to dedicate another post or two in more detail to my enriching time at DK. In the meantime, I am sharing some acquisitions I made there last month.

DK is part of The Penguin Group, which, of course, includes Penguin Books. The publishing houses work separately from one another, having little to do with the other, but it does mean that I have been working in the same illustrious building on Strand as the most iconic of literary brands as well as the other literary, non-fiction and children’s imprints (Puffin) that the Penguin Group offer. For enquiring minds, the month’s internship did not come with staff discount but the temping does: a very tempting 60% (which applies to both companies).

A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with another book blogger who is now a publicity assistant for Penguin General (Penguin paperbacks, Viking, Hamish Hamilton, Fig Tree imprints). As she has not yet announced her wonderful new job on her blog I will keep her anonymous (um, I outed her on Twitter); suffice to say, I hope she will love her role as much as I imagine she will. Over lunch we discussed the trials and tribulations of finding that elusive job in publishing, with her recent appointment being a shining beacon of hope and encouragement for me. Following shop talk I was very kindly taken up to the floor above the one I work on, past the “pulp” shelf from which we are allowed to take two books from per day if we see something that interests us, to the literary hub of the building. I met Joe Pickering, publicist extraordinaire, and then my friend and I perused the new release shelves and cupboard to fill my “goody bag”, the contents of which you see above.

From the left:I could not resist snagging The Rotters’ Club by Jonathan Coe. I have read a couple of Coe’s novels and greatly enjoyed them but this seems to be his most widely-acclaimed.

Next comes The Postmistress by Sarah Blake, whose World War II setting sounds exactly my cup of tea.

Following that we have -for some bizarre reason, an upside-down copy of- The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore. Naughty Paperback Reader didn’t read this when it was longlisted for the Man Booker (even though she fully intended to); she even borrowed its prequel, The Siege, from Verity in preparation (do you really have to ask whether she’s read it yet or why she is insisting on referring to herself in the third-person? Really?)

Further along is a book that is entirely due to Thomas of My Porch. Thomas gave Polly of Novel Insights The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris when we met up with him last November and a book that had previously only on the periphery of my consciousness, entered it.

Does Caribou Island by David Vann require reasoning? I had the proof and wanted to own the paperback (it is the white cover as opposed to black). A review of this will be following shortly.

At the end of the standing books we have The Gaze by Elif Shafak, which I’m hoping will be more The Bastard of Istanbul than The Flea Palace.

Top of the stack is the trio of Penguin Mini Modern Classics that I have previously mentioned. You can read more about the fifty mini modern classics commemorating the 50th anniversary of Penguin Modern Classics here. Each volume is a collection of short stories by great writers from the last century. In the stash above I have The Widow Ching-Pirate by Jorges Luis Borges, The Tooth by Shirley Jackson and In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka; I am awaiting a couple more of these pocket-size editions in the post and -at only £3- I foresee myself purchasing several more.

Below those is a proof copy of There but for the by Ali Smith. I am a huge fan of Ali Smith and fascinated by the irregular title and synopsis.

The News Where You Are by Catherine O’Flynn lies beneath that. I think I am the last person to read What Was Lost, which has been languishing on my bookshelves since 2008…

Next up is My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira was recommended by anonymous publicity assistant/blogger friend. About a determined woman who dreams of becoming a surgeon during the American Civil War, this book has my name written all over it (well, not where Ms. Oliveira’s name is. nor that of Mary Sutter, but figuratively).

Penultimately is the second novel by Carol Topolski, Do No Harm. No, I have not yet read her debut, Monster Love, but long-standing intentions to do so (and am established place on my wish-list) count. Anyway, I’m really looking forward to this one when I’m in the mood for something grim.

Lastly, there is the well talked about and much-anticipated Great House by Nicole Krauss. I could not fill a goody bag with Penguin treats and not come away with this one. The History of Love is a favourite of mine as are her husband’s novels (not that it should have any bearing) and I have high expectations for this novel.

Which of these have you read, plan to read or covet? (That sounds a bit like that game “kiss, “sh*g, marry”, without being gratuitous).

If you are really good I will also share with you those books rescued from the pulp shelf… My boyfriend gave me free reign to pick up a particular type of book, which may warrant a post in itself.

Strictly speaking this installment of Recent Acquisitions are not that recent but from early last month.  I forgot to post them whilst I was away (despite adding one of them to my summer reading pile) but wanted to share them with you before the latest -and Booker longlist heavy- acquisitions.

Kirsty of Oxford University Press generously sent me a couple more Oxford World Classics.  Candide and Other Stories was one I wanted to read after Amanda of The Zen Leaf told me how surprisingly funny she was finding it (her subsequent review); Voltaire has always intimidated me but I did not realise that Candide was a satire.  Nana by Émile Zola is a novel by another French great that I have been wanting to read since reading this review by Mae of Mad Bibliophile earlier this year.

Looking for Alaska by John Green is the book I have already shared in my summer reads post; after loving Paper Towns I bought both Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines and excited about reading them (both were loved by Nymeth).

Rosamund of Penguin Books kindly sent me a couple of their newest Viking titles.  I very rarely read memoirs and never any of this kind but After You: Letters of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and a Father by Natascha McElhone caught my eye; the actress continued to write letters to her husband (working in L.A. whilst he was in London, she regularly wrote to him) after his sudden death whilst she was seven months pregnant with their third child.  I’m a fan of McElhone for her role in the TV show Californication and I remember the news of her husband’s death; she has published her letters and diary extracts from a time of unrelenting grief.

Also from Penguin came The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer, which sounds like a beautiful love story; a magazine review of the book brought it to my attention.  I have to admit to find the sheer size and weight of it daunting.

Have you read any of these books or looking forward to hearing more about any in particular?

One of my very first reviews on Paperback Reader was of First Love by Ivan Turgenev and soon after I was gifted the complete Penguin Great Loves boxset.  When the Classics Circuit announced a tour of Imperial Russian literature, I was given the opportunity to read further about Russian love from the collection by opting for A Russian Affair by Anton Chekhov.

I have read Chekhov’s plays in the past and some of his short stories here and there; one of the stories, “The House with the Mezzanine” I read last year in the anthology, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off: Love Quarrels from Anton Chekhov to ZZ Packer also appears in this brief collection.  Consisting of only five short stories -all about love- A Russian Affair is a bite-size taster of Chekhov’s mastery of the short story form.  As a classic Russian writer, Chekhov can intimidate but he is surprisingly accessible and I am a great fan of his style; in the fashion of my favourite short story writer, Katherine Mansfield, Chekhov’s short stories are perfect little pieces of art.

Reading “The House With the Mezzanine” a second time in this volume was enriching; the first time it didn’t make a strong impression on me but rereading it I realised how powerful an evocation of first love it was.  An artist’s story, narrated in the first-person with hindsight, he recalls visits with two sisters seven years previously; he quarrelled continually with outspoken Lida whilst shy Zhenya was compliant and admiring of both her older sister and the artist.  Like the first story “About Love”, it is not about unrequited love but about love that is not acted upon, that haunts in its intensity and regret.  These first two stories struck me as being reminiscent of Turgenev’s First Love and wondered how much Chekhov was influenced by his successor; I also checked to see whether they perhaps had the same translator, but they did not share similarities in that technical way but more fundamentally in tone.

Also in included in this collection is one of Chekhov’s more famous short stories, “The Lady with the Dog”, which is the adulterous Russian affair to which the title alludes; this story moves from young love explored in the earlier stories to the more difficult, all-consuming love.

A Russian Affair provides an insight into Chekhov’s writing style, is easy to read and makes for romantic reading with emotional depth.  With only five stories, it is a mere sample of what Chekhov has to offer, but it is enjoyable glimpse of his work that draws you in with its exploration of the emotional complexities of love.

Since starting to blog I have begun to pay closer attention to translation; not simply reading more books in translation (although that too) but the quality of the translation and its bearing on my enjoyment of the book.  Pre-blogging,  the translation itself was not something I considered and, until now, it remained on the periphery of my response to the book.  Elif Şafak has changed that.

I read The Bastard of Istanbul a couple of summers ago and it was the perfect summer read (for me); a sprawling family saga with secrets, intrigue and an opening scene where a nineteen year old unmarried woman walks into a doctor’s surgery demanding an abortion, had hooked from beginning to end.  Ever since, I have been eager to read another novel by Elif Shafak and The Flea Palace appealed.  What I didn’t realise was that The Bastard of Istanbul was Shafak’s first novel written in English whereas The Flea Palace was written in Turkish (Bit Palas) a few years earlier and translated into English.  Is my disparate enjoyments of the two books simply due to translation? I can surmise that it is but I can’t be entirely sure.  In my haste to read the book  (and a long waiting time for it to become available in the library) I neglected to realise that the novel was out-of-print because Penguin are issuing it later this summer; whether it is a different translation or whether it has been re-written by Shafak herself, I can’t tell you but what I do know is that the Penguin edition will undoubtedly be of a higher quality than the Marion Boyars published edition I read. Translated from the Turkish by Müge Göçek, the translation itself was dry and also American English (garbage, emergency room, etc. all jarred with me);  it was published by  the same publisher in both the US and UK -presumably the same edition- explaining the language but there were so many typos that I began to look out for them, hence affecting my enjoyment.

The Flea Palace was nominated for the Independent Foreign Prize in 2005 and has been critically well-received but I really struggled to finish the book; (I ultimately did but it was time-consuming). I would be interested in comparing the forthcoming Penguin edition of the book as I am fascinated whether translation and stylistics are the root causes of my struggles with this book.  On paper, this is a book that I should have loved -an author I had previously really enjoyed; a dilapidated block of flats (apartments) inhabited by ten different families and individuals with a central intrigue; an interesting story-within-a-story structure with each chapter narrated by different inhabitants of Bonbon palace- but, ultimately, I was bored and thought the narrative dragged.  The Bonbon palace flats are numbered from one to ten, as is the list of characters, with chapters headed “Flat Three” or Flat Ten” etc; there is a quirky cast of inhabitants including Hairdressers Cemal and Celal; Me (the primary narrator); The Blue Mistress; Hygiene Tijen and Su; Madam Auntie but some engaged me more than others and Me (a drunken divorced Professor who calls his ex-wife “the C*unt”, minus the asterix) initially exceedingly irritated me before becoming more sympathetic.

The premise of The Flea Palace is that Bonbon palace has become infested with bugs, bugs appearing in each chapter/flat in different ways and forms; the infestation is blamed on the accumulating rubbish (garbage, as it is frequently referred to in the translation) dump surrounding the building.  However, there is also a pervasive stench coming from the building itself, a central mystery that is the focus of most of the characters and one that is revealed towards the end of the novel, and also a case of missing bags of rubbish.  The novel opens with Injustice Pureturk, who owns a pest removal business, before moving back in the narrative to give some historical context of how the flats came to be (a Russian emigre built them for his dying wife).  Creatively the novel is impressive in its scope and style but I found it very dry, even turgid, and the ending let me down but that is more of a personal concern; the ending was ambitious and tied in well with the structure but not to my satisfaction and I also predicted the mystery reveal so that did not sustain my attention.  I have written extensively about the translation because my instincts tell me that I would not have found this novel dry if it wasn’t for the translation, based on my experience of Shafak’s later novel; I advise anyone attracted to the novel to hold off to the Penguin edition, in the hope that it is a different translation.

I shrugged.  It doesn’t make any difference anymore if I open or close the windows.  With the weather warming up every passing day the garbage smell gets worse.  If exposed to this maladour on the street, one walks faster, if in the car, one rolls the windows up.  However, if the house you live in, the morning you wake up into, the night you sleep through, the walls, the windows, the doors and every direction you turn to stinks, then you are trapped.  There is no way of stepping outside the yoke of smell.

Does anyone else treat themselves to a little birthday something? It’s not a tradition of mine but this year I could not resist the Penguin Decades edition of The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter, especially as it was released the day after my birthday and on the first day of the Angela Carter month I am hosting.  This is one of only two Carter novels that I haven’t yet read hence the treat; you can expect my thoughts at some point this month.

I was the delighted recipient of an Amazon giftcard from my lovely in-laws and deliberated over the remaining books that you see above.  I ordered books from my wish-list, ones that had been tempting me for some time.

Caramelo by Susan Cisneros has been on my radar for a few years but it was this review by Eva that more than convinced me that I had to read it.  I’m a huge family of epic family sagas and this sounds like my type of book.

I was a big fan of Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri last year and I’ve been wanting to follow that experience up by reading her novel, The Namesake and then her newest collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, which I already have on my bookshelves.

I’ve already picked up a copy of Don’t Tell Alfred by Nancy Mitford in the new Penguin designs and added a copy of Wigs on the Green to my collection.  I will, however, be discovering Nancy by reading her more famous and popular works first.

I am currently reading Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola for The Classics Circuit and have been desiring The Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) for some time.  A novel about a department store?  Of course that would be one I’d need to read (I worship at the alter of shopping).

I have documented my discovery of Shirley Jackson via blogging, the best author discovery to date.  Since reading “The Lottery” and Penguin’s reissue of Jackson’s work, I have been coveting her collection of short stories and I am delighted that I now have a copy in my possession.

Speaking of Shirley Jackson, I read somewhere that The Well by Elizabeth Jolley was similar to Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.  I read a Jolley short story in a collection last year and sought out her novel-length work; The Well won the Miles Franklin Award in 1986 and sounds intriguing.

Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred has been on my wishlist for a few years and when Kimbofo opted for Fledgling as one of her choices for the Not the TV Book Group, I decided to start with that instead.  I have since read some very compelling reviews by Eva and both Teresa and Jenny from Shelf Love, and I am very excited to read it (vampires? there just aren’t enough of them in literature and popular culture, if you ask me /tongue in cheek).

Lastly, I opted for Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery, which is the first in a trilogy.  Even though I devoured the Anne of Green Gables/Avonlea/The Island etc. series as a child, I have never read any more of Montgomery’s work and it is about time that I rectify that.

Have you read any of these or looking forward to finding out more once I do?

I also have some other recent acquisitions of the review copy variety but I will share those separately at a later date.

]]> http://www.paperback-reader.co.uk/2010/04/12/recent-acquisitions-10/feed/ 30 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.

When India Knight posted about the new Nancy Mitford editions published next week by Penguin (Fig Tree Press) I was apoplectic with excitement.  The covers are cute and quirky and I covet them.  Now, hold onto your jaws people, I have a confession to make … I haven’t read any Nancy Mitford yet. To be honest, I haven’t read any of the Mitfords (the other sisters do seem to be overshadowed a little by Nancy) but this is the year that I will finally do so, along with Barbara Pym and Iris Murdoch; it will be the year for reading great English women writers who have fallen out of fashion some. I know that Nancy and I are going to become firm friends; I loved her blink-or-you-will miss it cameo in The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice and so many of you love her and have told me that I will too. I have a feeling, however, that these editions may help some.  Have a look at the forthcoming titles (March 4th in the UK); her most famous ones are there as well as Don’t Tell Alfred and a re-published early novel, Wigs on the Green, which Time Out describes as “Intoxicating… Middlemarch high on champagne and Viagra”. I wonder whether my birthday next month will bring me these?  If not, I know what I’ll be wishing for when I blow out the candles.

This week’s Claire’s Corner has turned into (almost) a weekend miscellany as opposed to a midweek one but I hope that it will blend nicely into my next order of the day, which also has to do with birthdays…

I had high hopes for this weekend because somehow I got it into my head that the 28th was my first blog birthday. The 28th is playing havoc with my memory (it may have something to do with there being a family baby due then); yesterday I was convinced my stepfather’s birthday was on Sunday also but it’s actually a day earlier and just as well I was prepared.  As it is, my blog birthday has been and gone last Saturday! On the 20th of February 2009 I posted for the first time about the film adaptation of Persephone Books‘ Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and three days later -a post that also saw the influence of Persephone Books- saw my first comment by the very lovely Simon T of Stuck in a Book.  Serendipitously, Simon’s was a blog that I had read for months before I began my own and I never commented until I had my own space.   I came to  Simon through this post by Danielle of A Work in Progess which I discovered when googling the Virago Modern Classics 30th Birthday editions (it’s all about birthdays, isn’t it?!)  This post by Danielle led me into the blogosphere and it also brought Persephone Books to my attention for the second time; I promptly bought Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winnifred Watson and that brings us back full circle to my first blog post a number of months later (the post I found was an old one and I then proceeded to read all of their archives and bookmarked their blogs).  So, a big thank you to Simon and Danielle.

Now, to celebrate my bloggiversary -almost a week late or not- I would like to offer one lucky reader a book of their choice but not any book, one that I have either blogged about in the past (you can find a list of books reviewed under my Books Reviewed tab) or that I have recommended to you personally.  My only other condition is that the book is available from The Book Depository and you can enter by commenting with your choice between now and Friday 12th March 12pm GMT when I will draw the winner.

Speaking of my first commenter, Simon, please visit this post if you are a UK book blogger interested in a meet-up in May. I’ll be there and I’m  looking forward to meeting Simon again as well as some other familiar and unfamiliar faces.

With the miscellany links that a number of bloggers indulge in weekly I have been inspired to begin my own feature, which will be called “Claire’s Corner” (I love alliteration!)  I have had this in mind for a while but I didn’t want to launch it until I had unveiled my new living space.  Like others, I wish to use this time to highlight some things that I have found online or comment on other literary things that wouldn’t warrant their own post.

This week’s visual is of one of my beloved book-bags and notebooks (I collect both); in this post I mentioned my love for both the text of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and for the merchandise imitating the iconic Penguin edition.  I am sharing this because a) I couldn’t resist showing off two of my favourite things (like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens) and b) it was a representative image for the first thing to be featured on Claire’s Corner.  Almost a month ago, Mae of Mad Bibliphile drew my attention to this article by Rachel Cusk in The Guardian; the title, “Shakespeare’s Daughters” is an allusion to A Room of One’s Own, in which Woolf created Judith, Shakespeare’s sister.  This excellent piece discusses “Women’s Writing” in relation to the two texts that “shaped the discourse of 20th-century women’s writing, a shape that is still recognisable today”: A Room of One’s Own and The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir; one is a book/essay that I could read over and over and always glean something new and the other is a title that so far I have only ever read extracts from but has been chosen as next month’s book for my feminist book group.  Following the two recent Woolf in Winter discussions and my re-acquaintance with Virginia Woolf, I found this illuminating; I regularly engage with Women’s Writing, literature written by women, and I find the subject as pertinent now as it was eighty years ago.  Reading a “book of repetition”, of domesticity and family life, interests me and I was not aware that modern women writers where being prevented the choice to write about issues of their sex that interested them.

Via Caustic Cover Critic and Frances of Nonsuch Book, I became aware of the forthcoming (April in the UK) Penguin Decades series, which consists of  re-issues of “[f]ive seminal novels from each decade from the 1950s to 1980s inclusive, with cover artwork by high-profile artists and designers” to celebrate Penguin Books’ Seventy-Fifth birthday.  The Zandra Rhodes textile designs for the 1970s titles are stunningly eye-catching and the titles (or their authors) appeal more to me; perhaps this appeal is because the authors are still well-known and one of the titles has been coincidentally longlisted for The Lost Man Booker Prize. Of course the title that immediately pops out at me is The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter, one of only two of her works that I haven’t yet read and a book that has been out-of-print in the UK for some time; seeing as the series is being issued the day after my birthday, I have pre-ordered a copy as a gift to myself as the copy I do own is old and battered. Virago issued eight beautiful hardback editions with textile cover designs in 2008 to commemorate Thirtieth birthday of Virago Modern Classics; I own five of the eight and think they make a beautiful addition to my bookshelves; I wonder how many of the Penguin Decades series will find a place on our shelves and feature on our blogs.

Tonight with I a friend I am off to see Wicked: the Musical, which I first saw in 2006 and adore.  I have never read the book by Gregory Maguire that it is based on so I picked it up at the weekend fully intending to read it but regrettably I developed a headache and put the book away for another day; are there any fans of the book reading to tell me that I must attempt it again in the near-future?  I may not have managed my themed reading this time around but I know that I will have occasion to again.  In the meantime I will be defying gravity tonight and share with you a clip from the delightfully cheesy show Glee and my favourite song from the musical.

Glee – Defying Gravity

The Day of the Triffids was published in 1951 and, like  much post-WWII, post-atomic bomb literature, it is post-apocalyptic.  Set in London, Bill Masen wakes up in a hospital bed following eye-surgery; all is quiet and no nurses are attending to him even though today is the day he is due to have the bandages removed and it will be determined whether he can see.  It soon transpires that nobody is coming to Bill’s assistance and he removes his own dressings, is delighted he has vision and goes to investigate what has happened to everyone else.  Whilst Bill has retained his sight through the protection of post-surgical recovery, ironically most of the population has been rendered blind from having witnessed a meteor shower the previous evening.  Dystopian literature at its earliest, the novel focuses on the immediate aftermath of the apocalyptic blindness and immediate devolution of society.

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

From its foreboding (yet lightly amusing) first line, The Day of the Triffids moves from what is at first the catastrophic fall-out from a freakish cosmic event to something  far more sinister.  The nightmarish scenario becomes all the scarier when Bill discovers that the Triffids, walking carnivorous plants that kill with a stinger to the eyes, are now preying on a humanity that are unable to protect themselves.  Along with other luckily sighted people, Bill escapes the eerily desolate streets of London where survivors are scavenging and looting and the triffids converging, to the country; it is soon apparent, however, that the Triffids are multiplying and intentionally stalking survivors.  Although the threat of the Triffids is built up to gradually the portent exists from the outside and the suspense grips, except for the rather dry chapter “The Coming of the Triffids”, which explains their origin and at its close sets forth the plants’ intelligence, their means of communication amongst their species and the danger they would pose to the human race given the opportunity.

In what is frighteningly prescient, Wyndham has in essence employed the dangers of genetic engineering at the core of his novel; Wyndham implies that the Triffids were bio-engineered in the Soviet Union and upon accidental air-borne release their superior vegetable oil was discovered and the world began to cultivate them for this resource.  At the beginning of the novel it is assumed that the Americans are going to come in and save everyone but it is soon clear that this has been a worldwide event and the survival instinct kicks in.  Many of the blind commit suicide and many of the sighted realise early on that to save themselves, the blind must perish; a commune of sighted and blind is quickly established to repopulate the world whilst other vigilante organisations materialise.

The Day of the Triffids is an accessible and addictive novel that I was on the edge of my seat reading; although written in the early 1950s it is not dated, excluding the socially-conscious commune.  I highly recommend Wyndham for light (if heavy subject matter) and absorbing reads and especially to lovers of Dystopian fiction.  Whatever you do though, do NOT watch the recent BBC adaptation; or, if you do watch it, do not -as I did- watch it promptly on the back of reading the book.  Starring Dougray Scott; Joely Richardson; Brian Cox; Eddie Izzard (yes, even Eddie couldn’t save it) the modern updates came over as immensely cheesy and hyperbolic.  I was very irritated by the changes made to the novel especially the ludicrous Vanessa Redgrave corrupt nun sub-plot and the exaggerated emphasis on plant-rights activists and the corruption of the government.  Moreover, the onscreen representation of the Triffids was far removed from the one in my imagination.

Back to the text and here are some favourite quotes:

A nasty, empty feeling began to crawl up inside me.  It was the same sensation I used to to have sometimes as a child when I got to fancying that horrors were lurking in the shadowy corners of the bedroom; when I daren’t put a foot out for fear that something should reach from under the bed and grab my ankle; daren’t even reach for the switch lest the movement should cause something to leap at me.  I had to fight down the feeling, just as I had to when I was a kid in the dark.

There is an inability to sustain the tragic mood, a phoenix quality of the mind.  It may be helpful or harmful, it is just a part of the will to survive – yet, also, it has made it possible for us to engage in one weakening war after another.  But it is a necessary part of our mechanism that we should be able to cry only for a time over even an ocean of spilt milk – the spectacular must soon become the commonplace if life is to be supportable.