Gradus Vitae

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes

A little book like no other, this 'sort-of' memoir from Julian Barnes is the story of his own closely-observed grief at the death of his wife Pat Kavanagh.  When she died.......

"Nothing had prepared him: not his parents' deaths, nor all the thinking about death that went into his book Nothing to Be Frightened Of, published just a few months before. And very little helped him cope.

Certain things that were said, or not said, only made it worse: the friends who suggest he get away while they look after his house and their dog has the run of the garden (this while his wife is not yet dead); the ones who pretend not to hear when he mentions her name; the ones who ask – convinced he is looking better – "Have you found someone?" The griefstruck rarely know what they want, he says, so these offences are lightly noted, not raged over. What do they matter, after all – what does anything matter – when the worst has already happened?

One by one, the classic consolations offered to the bereaved are considered and repudiated: that suffering makes you stronger; that things get easier after the first year, through repetition ("why should repetition mean less pain?"); that the two of you will be reunited in the next life (which no atheist can believe). He owns up to thoughts of suicide and explains the reason for resisting: he is his wife's chief rememberer, and if he kills himself he will be killing her too.

One grief throws no light upon another, he says, quoting EM Forster. But some aspects of grief are universal, or can be made so through the honesty and precision with which they are articulated. Denying himself woolly comforts, Barnes scorns the euphemisms of "passed" or "lost to cancer" (the linguistic equivalent of averting one's eyes). Even actions that others might find strange – his habit of talking to his wife, though she is dead – have their own irresistible logic: "the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn't mean that they do not exist."
Pat Kavanagh was my agent for 30 years; it is hard for me to be objective. But this is not a book written for people who knew her. Nor is it "Before She Left Me", a story of her life and last weeks. Candid about his own grief, Barnes remains protective of her privacy; though her photo is on the back cover, her name doesn't appear in the text. Distressed by how many memories of her have gone, as if she is slipping away a second time, he lists the things he does remember – the last book she read, the last wine she drank, the last clothes she bought. But he doesn't disclose what they were.
"Let me tell you something about her," he wrote of his wife in the half-chapter of A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, while giving away very little. Levels of Life, similarly, is a book that levels with us only up to a point. Its resonance comes from all it doesn't say, as well as what it does; from the depth of love we infer from the desert of grief. Even this essay is only one panel of a triptych – a form arrived at to "give sorrow words" when it might have been a mere stubbed-toe cry.

Review from the Guardian by Blake Morrison, 10th April 2013.

Tipping the Velvet

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.
A saucy, sensuous and multi-layered historical romance, Tipping the Velvet follows the glittering career of Nan King - oyster girl turned music-hall star turned rent boy turned East End 'tom'.

Tipping the Velvet is a historical novel pubished as Sarah Water's debut novel in 1998. Set in  Victorian England during the 1890s, it tells a coming-of-age tory about a young woman named Nan who falls in love with a male impersonator.  Nan follows her to London, and finds various ways to support herself as she journeys through the city.

The novel has pervasive lesbian themes, concentrating on eroticism and self-discovery. Waters was working on a PhD dissertation in English literature when she decided to write a story she would like to read. Employing her love for the variety of people and districts in London, she consciously chose an urban setting. As opposed to previous lesbian-themed fiction she had read where the characters escape an oppressive society to live apart from it, Waters chose characters who interact with their surroundings. She has acknowledged that the book imagines a lesbian presence and history in Victorian London where none was recorded. The main character's experiences in the theatrical profession and her perpetual motion through the city allow her to make observations on social conditions while exploring the issues of gender, sexism, and class difference.

I really enjoy Waters' fiction.  Through her writing she tries to convey what one might come to view as insights into what it is to form same-sex relationships, hitherto from the female perspective.  Quite apart from the compelling narratives of her stories that she creates, the heterosexual reader may begin to develop some understanding of the similarities and the differences between the lesbian life and more traditional adult relationships.

The Daydreamer and The Daylight Gate

The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan

I try and stay 'au courant' with the writing of my favourite authors.  And Ian McEwan is up there in my top 5.  Periodically I google to make sure there are no titles that have slipped me by.  I was intrigued to find this book listed and investigated further.  Well, I really loved this book.  You could view it as an adult book for children, or a children's book for adults.  The boundary between the two genres is completely fuzzy.  One story, The Cat, stands out as the celestrial gem around which the other astral bodies of this small constellation of stories cluster...... 

Peter Fortune is a quiet boy with a busy head. His teachers think he's dull, staring off into space all day, but he has nothing worse than an excessive imagination. He is a daydreamer, a quiet ten year old who can't help himself from dropping out of reality and into the amazing world of his vivid imagination.  His world seems limitless - think of infinity and double it. In his dreams he fends off wolves, wrestles with dolls and exposes burglars with the aid of that perfect wonderland haven - a real mousehole. He can magically become a cat, or a baby; he even spends a few traumatic moments as a grown-up. Trying on all these lives for size is both flighty and educational: when he infiltrates the black fur of the family cat - after a brilliant unzipping scene in which the pair swap bodies - he enjoys a day of gorgeous feline laziness and fierce nocturnal vitality. As a baby he drowns in banana and plastic toys and comes to see the narrowness of the huge little boy (himself) who is being so unfriendly.  These imaginary journeys leave Peter bruised but wiser.

In the end the book ends well, with an uneasy waking-up scene that both embraces and celebrates an authentic adult impulse. In a parody of Kafka's Metamorphosis, Peter wakes after a night of troubled dreams to find himself transformed into a 21-year-old. This happens during the holiday in Cornwall where the children - the Beach Gang - have been having adventures while their parents plan the barbecue. The Kafka echoes reinforce the sense of alienation: it is as if all adult life were a treacherous setback. And, at first, Peter is bemused. But then, in a lovely turnaround, he finds himself trembling in a railway tunnel with a 19-year-old girl called Gwendoline ('Morning sunlight, broken by the leaves of the apple trees, bobbed about her shoulders and in her hair'). Unimaginable pleasures rush upon him, and he hits on a big truth: that even adults have secret dreams. Suddenly the grown-up world, which all along has seemed a diminished version of the fantastic imaginary places, doesn't seem so bad after all.

Acknowledgements to The Independent review of The Daydreamer.

The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson
"This novella began as a Dare.
Hammer Horror used to be a part camp part scary British Horror Movie outfit that made Draculas and Frankensteins’s and classics like My Wife The Zombie.
Hammer dropped down dead for years and was assumed buried, but was lately revived by entrepreneur Simon Oakes who made Woman in Black and Let The Right One In.
They decided to start a publishing deal with Random House. Simon said to me: You lived near Pendle Hill didn’t you? Write me a novella about the Lancashire Witches.’
Nuts, I thought. And then I did."  Jeanette Winterson.

Good Friday 1612. Pendle Hill.
A mysterious gathering of thirteen people is interrupted by a local magistrate. Is it a witches’ Sabbat?
In Lancaster Castle two notorious witches await trial and certain death, while the beautiful and wealthy Alice Nutter rides to their defence.
Elsewhere a starved child lurks. And a Jesuit priest and former Gunpowder plotter makes his way from France to a place he believes will offer him sanctuary.
But will it? And how safe can anyone be in Witch Country?

Brilliant writing, spare yet descriptive and so full of atmosphere and chill.  Loved it.

The Road to Little Dribbling

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

I first encountered Bill Bryson's writing decades ago, when I read his first travel memoir, Notes from a Small Island.  I remember there were many moments when I laughed out loud.  Bryson's ability to look at the English, to sum them up and share his observations and his humorous perspectives on the traits which characterise the inhabitants of these European island outposts was something refreshing.  We could laugh with him at ourselves whilst at the same time celebrating our customs, foibles and contradictions.

So when I came across this latest contribution and because I needed to find a travel memoir to fulfil a category in my Read Harder Book Challenge, I ordered the book.  I reasoned it would be entertaining to revisit the pleasure of seeing ourselves reflected in Bryson's mirror.  The book started well, I did indeed laugh but after a while I came to see a snide side to his narrative.  What a disappointment.  

Either I am remembering Bryson's earlier book with far more charity and less discrimination than I have now, or Bryson has developed a rather small-minded approach to the encounters he had with natives of the United Kingdom.   Maybe with age Bryson has become less tolerant and more curmudgeonly.  I think he is also rather full of himself.  He revels in being recognised and in one place in the book he laments the failure of an assistant in an outdoor clothing emporium to recognise him:  He fantasises:  'Bill Bryson was in today.  He was stocking up for an expedition to Cape Wrath'.  and that they would reply 'Goodness he's brave.  I think I will go and buy some of his books'  But he didn't recognise me so that fantasy was still born...............  

He is critical of two couples who leave, in his opinion, a small tip in a café.  He is rude about the level of donations to a Cathedral fund.  And if someone thwarts his intentions or fails to rise to his expectations he then has a petty and rude imaginary conversation in his head which he nevertheless is quite happy to commit to print. 

He does himself no favours in showing his mean side.  It did not surprise me at all when he mentions in his narrative that he is involved in litigation in America.  Just not a nice man any more, if he ever was.  I won't be reading any more of his offerings.  I think he has outstayed his welcome as a commentator on the British way of life and the inhabitants of our lovely islands.