A Page of Quickies

Here follows a series of concise reviews of books that I have read. They did not warrant my normal treatment because either they were books I did not quite manage to fathom, or were what one might classify as 'holiday' reads - what I would call fast food novels.

First up is Conclave by Robert Harris.

Even a seasoned reviewer in The Guardian was moved to write "I am about to use a word I have never knowingly used in any review of any book ever. During my 25-odd years of writing about books I have done my best to avoid cliches, slipshod summaries, oracular pronouncements and indeed anything else that might appear emblazoned on a book jacket. Nonetheless, there is only one possible word to describe Robert Harris’s new novel, and it is this: unputdownable."

In a nutshell, the pope is dead and cardinals are gathering to elect his successor in this portrait of power, corruption and deceit.  There you have it.  With a fabulous denouement.  I recommended this to my discerning doctor friend, in French translation.  

                                                                   ↝↝↝↝↝

When I was browsing bookshelves in a charity shop I spotted 

After Me Comes The Flood by Sarah Perry.

I recognised it as the debut novel of Sarah Perry.  She of The Essex Serpent fame.  It is a short novel and looked accessible 200+ pages, pages not densely printed.  For me the novel was a conundrum which I never got into because I could not quite make sense of the story, such as it is.  There is one section which takes place on a beach, near a saltmarsh which involves a lost child.  Here Perry is clearly at home: saltmarshes, tides which ebb and flow, once again an upturned rowing boat.  This environment in the natural world is clearly familiar to her.  (Perry grew up in Chelmsford, Essex, alongside the Thames Funnel)  When she is in that milieu where the land meets the sea she is utterly at home in her writing.  Later she describes a powerful rainstorm which brings about the climax of the novel, again her powers of description of natural phenomena are on show.  

The novel garnered some favourable comment from the likes of Sophie Hannah, Sarah Waters (whose writing I rate highly).  Adjectives like unsettling, intriguing, eerie, dream-like, creeping, gripping are used by reviewers.  I think the novel might warrant a second reading with attention to the calibre of the writing and less focus on a search for a story.  But not just now!

My Purple Scented Novel by Ian McEwan

Amazon says:  
A jewel of a book: a brand new short story from the author of Atonement. My Purple Scented Novel follows the perfect crime of literary betrayal, scrupulously wrought yet unscrupulously executed, published to celebrate Ian McEwan’s 70th birthday.

"You will have heard of my friend the once celebrated novelist Jocelyn Tarbet, but I suspect his memory is beginning to fade…You’d never heard of me, the once obscure novelist Parker Sparrow, until my name was publicly connected with his. To a knowing few, our names remain rigidly attached, like the two ends of a seesaw. His rise coincided with, though did not cause, my decline… I don’t deny there was wrongdoing. I stole a life, and I don’t intend to give it back. You may treat these few pages as a confession.

This is short story published as a stand-alone booklet.  It's a quick read and deals with plagiarism.  Everything you ever wanted to know to pull it off!

It was first published in The NewYorker Magazine in March 2016.  You can read a full transcript here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/28/my-purple-scented-novel-fiction-by-ian-mcewan

And the transcript of an interview with McEwan about the story in the same periodical here:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction-this-week-ian-mcewan-2016-03-28

TWO MERMAIDS: The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock and Elijah's Mermaid

A couple of days after fulfilling my obligations to book group etiquette and ploughing through my duo of thrillers I am able to refind good writing.....

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

I stumbled upon this title whilst searching on the internet for information about The Essex Serpent. I think probably it was mentioned in the context of being another novel about a mythical creature, set in a similar time-frame as the 'Serpent' and written with a real feel for the language and mores of the time.  It is authentic to the ear.  Once I had pulled up an image of the cover I was smitten ............ in shades of grey and yellow it features a scallop shell, one of the most beautiful forms in nature to my mind, and the shell which features most prominently in my shell collection.  The shapes, colours are so various.  There are some 300 species of scallop extant, and to read more about this fascinating shell and the way it features in our lives nutritionally and culturally (think architecture, furniture, décor, jewellery, utensils, religion) check out Wiki.

But to return to the book, here is what Amazon has to say:

‘A brilliantly plotted story of mermaids, madams and intrigue in 1780s London and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it become the Essex Serpent of 2018’ - The Pool'Imogen Hermes Gowar is a soon-to-be literary star’ - Sunday Times

THIS VOYAGE IS SPECIAL. IT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING.

One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock hears urgent knocking on his front door. One of his captains is waiting eagerly on the step. He has sold Jonah’s ship for what appears to be a mermaid.

As gossip spreads through the docks, coffee shops, parlours and brothels, everyone wants to see Mr Hancock’s marvel. Its arrival spins him out of his ordinary existence and through the doors of high society. At an opulent party, he makes the acquaintance of Angelica Neal, the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on… and a courtesan of great accomplishment. This meeting will steer both their lives onto a dangerous new course, on which they will learn that priceless things come at the greatest cost.

Where will their ambitions lead? And will they be able to escape the destructive power mermaids are said to possess?

In this spell-binding story of curiosity and obsession, Imogen Hermes Gowar has created an unforgettable jewel of a novel, filled to the brim with intelligence, heart and wit.

And for an extract of the book you can find the opening chapter here:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/find-your-next-read/extracts/2016/jun/the-mermaid-and-mrs-hancock-by-imogen-hermes-gowar/

And this is what I thought:

By way of introduction, well over twenty years ago, a friend and fellow conchologist with a special interest in curiosities of natural history asked me if I would arrange to go to the Booth Museum in Brighton and take photographs of the 'mermaid' they were holding in their collections.  He, David Heppell, was compiling a book of unnatural curiosities of natural history.  Often these would be Chimerae, imaginary monsters compounded of incongruous parts.  The Brighton mermaid was no exception being the melding of an ape head and torso complete with its forelimbs and the tail of a fish.  Extremely ugly but some of these artefacts were so well made they were convincing.  The first mermaid in Gowar's book is clearly of this type.  

In many ways a companion volume to The Essex Serpent of Victorian East Anglia, this debut novel steps back further, to Georgian London, and features as one of its principal characters, a 'mermaid'.  Gowar's  human cast is cleverly set in its various hierarchical milieu, with appropriate vocabulary, turns of phrase,  speech fashions and behaviour according to social class, and their respective susceptibilities and superstitions.

Gowar has written with wit and panache and in particular delivers a masterly interlude when the 'Madam',Bet Chappell, hires the wizened little mermaid to draw customers to her upscale brothel, the grotesque curio only emphasising the beauty of the women who frolic round it, draped in pearls, their privities dyed bright seaweed green, in a masque of the sea that turns into a carefully orchestrated orgy.   Without doubt this is an erotic piece of writing but with so much taste.......  Another vivid and moving passage occurs towards the end of the book when Bet Chappell faces retribution for connivance in pandering to the public appetite for sins of the flesh.

So I thoroughly enjoyed this book on many levels.  I found the notion of mermaids and the public fascination with the possibility of their existence, which flows through the narrative, to be captivating and, in a sense takes me full circle since the day I first gazed upon that ugly monstrosity in a glass case in Brighton Museum. 

LATER

…… Some time after reading this book my attention was drawn to another 'Mermaid' novel by Katharine.  Only too eager to indulge my fascination with mermaids I settled to read:

Elijah's Mermaid by Essie Fox

Check out this blogspot for a beautiful site about this book with some captivating illustrations:

http://elijahsmermaidreviews.blogspot.com/

This short blurb appears on Amazon:

Saved from the Thames one foggy London night, Pearl grows up at the House of Mermaids - a brothel that becomes the closest thing to home. But despite being cosseted and spoiled by the Madame, come her 14th year, Pearl is to be sold to the highest bidder. 

Orphaned twins Lily and Elijah are on a rare trip to London when they meet the ethereal Pearl. And the repercussions of this chance encounter will bind all their fates together, in a dark and dangerous way.

Bewitching, gothic and sensual, this is a tale of love and betrayal in a world where nothing is quite as it seems.

There is a longer synopsis/review on the web page of the author, Monique Mulligan

https://moniquemulligan.com/2013/03/02/review-elijahs-mermaid-by-essie-fox/

This review inevitably contains plot spoilers so should be read with that proviso. 

And what did I think:

Well...……… if you like seriously gothic, Victorian London, under-belly aspects of a demi-monde life in a story of love and betrayal , obsession and guilt, you may well find this an engaging read.  Women and children are exploited as victims of poverty, a male culture and the world of the Madame and her brothel.  There are family bonds that tie and relationships to be revealed as the story unfolds.  

What I do like is the several sections at the end of the book where Fox mentions real historical characters who have influenced those in her novel, real places which have influenced her settings, including the Grotto at Margate which I know well, and other themes relating to photography, health.  She also provides a glossary of Victorian slang which occurs in her prose.  I like it when authors bother to give that information to their readers.  This contrasts with an absence of such ancillary information in Imogen Hermes Gowar's book.  I thought she ought to have given a nod to the 'mermaid' which must have in part inspired The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock.  She has worked as a curator in the museum world, surely she must have come across an example of the 'monkey-fish' monstrosities that were contrived and passed off as genuine mermaids.  I am always impressed by authors who give the reader some background as to the origins of their works of fiction or non-fiction.

I found this novel sat quite nicely in the context of other recently-read titles such as the Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, also The Essex Serpent.  It also picks up on themes in A Year of Marvellous Ways.  Sometimes it is fun to read a gaggle of books whose plots and themes echo each other in some ways.  

Then again I am always a sucker for the stuff of mermaids...…..

The Ballroom and Wake

Two novels by Anna Hope, read in succession.  The debut novel following her second:

The Ballroom 

Compelling, elegant and insightful' Observer'Beautifully wrought, tender, heartbreaking' Sunday Express 5/5
'Moving, fascinating' Times
'A tender and absorbing love story' Daily Mail
'Unsentimental and affecting' Sunday Times
'Exquisitely good' Metro


1911: Inside an asylum at the edge of the Yorkshire moors,
where men and women are kept apart
by high walls and barred windows,
there is a ballroom vast and beautiful.
For one bright evening every week
they come together
and dance.
When John and Ella meet
It is a dance that will change
two lives forever.

Set over the heatwave summer of 1911, the end of the Edwardian era, The Ballroom is a historical love story. It tells a page-turning tale of dangerous obsession, of madness and sanity, and of who gets to decide which is which.

The Guardian review

In 1908, when the newly appointed home secretary Winston Churchill arrived in office, one of the social problems he was given to solve was that of the “feeble-minded” – individuals deemed incapable of self-sufficiency who often ended up in workhouses or prisons. Over the next two years, Churchill became increasingly favourable towards arguments for compulsory sterilisation, going so far as to circulate pamphlets on the subject among his cabinet colleagues.

Churchill’s ambitions for compulsory sterilisation ultimately failed but with the increased influence of the Eugenics Society, in 1913 the Mental Deficiency Act established powers to incarcerate those believed to be “feeble-minded” in purpose-built asylums, where men and women were segregated, ensuring their inability to reproduce without the need for controversial medical interventions.

Dr Charles Fuller's own troubled unconscious life leads him to fantasies of grandeur that have disastrous consequences

It is this fascinating historical backdrop that forms the basis of Anna Hope’s compelling second novel, The Ballroom. It begins with the arrival of Ella Fay at the Sharston asylum in 1911, her supposed “madness” being the breaking of a window in the textile factory where she works. Meanwhile, in the men’s wing sits John Mulligan, an Irishman suffering from depression provoked by the death of his daughter and the dissolution of his marriage. When Ella and John meet at a Friday night dance in the asylum’s unexpectedly beautiful ballroom, their feelings for one another transcend the restraints of their surroundings in what becomes a poignant and sensitive love story. The trio of voices narrating the novel is completed by Dr Charles Fuller, a failed medic and ambitious eugenicist, whose own complex and troubled unconscious life leads him to fantasies of grandeur that have disastrous consequences for Ella and John.

The Ballroom is shot through with insidious violence – that witnessed by Ella against her mother at the hands of her father: “She had been small, sitting with her back on hot stone. Inside, she had heard the thud of fist on flesh. Her mother crying, a low, animal sound”; that experienced by Ella as an eight-year-old working in the textile factory; and that imposed on asylum patients who are unable or unwilling to comply. And then there is the violence the patients inflict on themselves when language fails them and freedom is denied to them. Hope treats her subject – and her characters – with the care of an attentive therapist, imbuing the novel with psychological and emotional depth. Even Charles – arguably madder than most of the inmates – is portrayed by Hope with impressive understanding.

Hope skilfully and subtly deconstructs our notions of madness, revealing how inextricably linked those definitions are to questions of class and gender. Ella knows her only chance of escaping the asylum is to “be good… She knew about being good. Had known it since she was small. Being good was surviving.” She allows contemporary resonances to filter through the narrative: when Charles attends a meeting of the Eugenics Society, the speech he hears – railing against the rights of those in receipt of poor relief to reproduce – sounds disturbingly familiar to the arguments of far-right voices in our own age.

As with Hope’s highly acclaimed debut novel, Wake, the writing is elegant and insightful; she writes beautifully about human emotion, landscape and weather: “There was no wind. It was as though they were all simmering under the great grey lid of the sky, like water almost brought to boil.”

Like all successful historical novels, The Ballroom tells us a story of the past in order to shed light on the present. As Charles proclaims at one point: “The future was coming. Even here. Even here in this island ship of souls, cast away on the green-brown seas of the moor, even here it would find its way through.”

What I wrote to a fellow reader:

"Thanks so much, Jane, for recommending The Ballroom.  You were a bit hesitant as you had not read it but I have to say I found it a brilliant read.  Sure it was a love story as it said on the tin, but so much more and I thought the author steered her way to the conclusion skilfully, keeping her reader wondering how a 'satisfactory' ending could be achieved as I felt it could not be a traditional happy ending, nor would it all end in tears.  Well, tears of misery anyway.  It did end in tears of another kind for me as I listened to the narrator Daniel Weyman (who is so good on Audible) read the letter that John had written to Ella. I am going to write it up for my blog when I can find a minute amidst all the last minute preps.  Hope you are on top of things chez vous!

Wake

Five Days in November, 1920: As the body of the Unknown Soldier makes its way home from the fields of Northern France, three women are dealing with loss in their own way: Hettie, who dances for sixpence a waltz at the Hammersmith Palais; Evelyn, who toils at a job in the pensions office, and Ada, a housewife who is beset by visions of her dead son.

One day a young man comes to her door. He carries with him a wartime mystery that will bind these women together and will both mend and tear their hearts. A portrait of three intertwining lives caught at the faultline between empire and modernity, Wake captures the beginnings of a new era, and the day the mood of the nation changed for ever. 

Goodreads website says:

A brilliant debut for readers of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, in which three women must deal with the aftershocks of WWI and its impact on the men in their lives—a son, a brother and a lover. Their tragic connection is slowly revealed as the book unfolds.

Wake: 1) Emerge or cause to emerge from sleep 2) Ritual for the dead 3) Consequence or aftermath.

Hettie, a dance instructress at the Palais, lives at home with her mother and her brother, mute and lost after his return from the war. One night, at work, she meets a wealthy, educated man and has reason to think he is as smitten with her as she is with him. Still there is something distracted about him, something she cannot reach...Evelyn works at the Pensions Exchange through which thousands of men have claimed benefits from wounds or debilitating distress. Embittered by her own loss, more and more estranged from her posh parents, she looks for solace in her adored brother who has not been the same since he returned from the front...Ada is beset by visions of her son on every street, convinced he is still alive. Helpless, her loving husband of 25 years has withdrawn from her. Then one day a young man appears at her door with notions to peddle, like hundreds of out of work veterans. But when he shows signs of being seriously disturbed—she recognizes the symptoms of "shell shock"—and utters the name of her son she is jolted to the core...

The lives of these three women are braided together, their stories gathering tremendous power as the ties that bind them become clear, and the body of the unknown soldier moves closer and closer to its final resting place.

What I thought:

A story of three women’s life experiences as Britain surfaces after the Great War.  With a well-drawn cast of supporting characters I thought.  I did enjoy this book.  As I was drawn further and further into the story I recognised that although here was yet another novel set around the First World War, the structure, unfolding and telling of the story (the stories of the three women protagonists) was indeed novel, engaging and as the characters were bit by bit fleshed out by the author, they became credible people.  Towards the end I was very moved by the account that a war-traumatised Private delivered to one of the three female principals.  As he recounts the last moments of a fellow soldier who is executed for desertion and who calls out for his mother, I wept buckets because, having sons, I think now of all those mothers who gave birth to and reared their sons (and daughters too of course) in great optimism for their future lives, only to be cut down as they had barely matured into young men.  Those generals in their tents, their field headquarters where they conducted the war, in relative safety, pushing their soldiers around for King and country, like so many chess pieces on a board, I feel such anger when I am reminded of it.  The more I read of episodes like this in the literature, the sadder it makes me each time.  I thought the narrative as it related to the choosing of the Unknown Warrior and his transfer to Britain and the burial gave a fascinating thread to run through the book because I did not know the background and I had not really imagined that there was a real body under the tomb in Westminster Abbey.  (needless to say you can read all about it on Wiki!) 

I do think carefully about who of my fellow readers will want to read novels such as this one by Anna Hope’s.  Someone once said, none of us Splinter I think, "Not another book about the World War…….".  But I thought a recommendation was called for because the writing is really good, the text flows, it is full of humanity and it is an excellent debut too.

When God was a Rabbit

When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman

1968. The year Paris takes to the streets. The year Martin Luther King loses his life for a dream. The year Eleanor Maud Portman is born.

Young Elly's world is shaped by those who inhabit it: her loving but maddeningly distractible parents; a best friend who smells of chips and knows exotic words like 'slag'; an ageing fop who tapdances his way into her home, a Shirley Bassey impersonator who trails close behind; lastly, of course, a rabbit called God. In a childhood peppered with moments both ordinary and extraordinary, Elly's one constant is her brother Joe.

Twenty years on, Elly and Joe are fully grown and as close as they ever were. Until, that is, one bright morning when a single, earth-shattering event threatens to destroy their bond forever.
Spanning four decades and moving between suburban Essex, the wild coast of Cornwall and the streets of New York, this is a story about childhood, eccentricity, the darker side of love and sex, the pull and power of family ties, loss and life. More than anything, it's a story about love in all its forms.

What Sarah Winman writes about her own book:

Elly is the kind of girl who grows up too fast. She doesn’t like to play with little girls her age; she prefers the company of Mr. Golan, her elderly neighbour. But her friendship with Mr. Golan takes a dark turn, and only Elly’s brother, Joe, knows her secret. Joe gives Elly a pet rabbit, which she names god, to alleviate the loneliness of her childhood. Elly soon finds another best friend: Jenny Penny, a new girl in town who has a chaotic home life. But Elly and Jenny are soon separated, too --- Elly’s parents decide to open a bed-and-breakfast in Cornwall, and Jenny disappears without a trace. Friendless in her new town, Elly leans on her family for support, especially Joe, who is struggling to come to terms with his sexuality.

Even as an adult, shadows from childhood haunt Elly’s life. She learns that Jenny Penny murdered an abusive husband, and they renew their friendship through letters Jenny writes from jail. Elly finds her calling as a newspaper columnist, writing about the relationships she has lost and found. Joe tries to start a new life in New York, but he disappears in the chaos of 9/11. Elly manages to track Joe down, but he has lost his memory and feels stifled by his sister’s devotion. As Joe’s memory gradually returns, he reveals Elly’s childhood secret: Mr. Golan molested her. Elly’s loved ones can finally help her heal, and she learns to rely on the family and friends who have stood by her during her years of silence.

What did I think:

This book has so much of real life crammed into it: childhood friendships, child molestation, abuse of women, a lawyer's guilt at betraying a victim by his clever defense of the guilty perpetrayor, homosexual love, attachment to pet animals, terminal illness, hostage taking and ransom, life-shattering events on a grander scale, mystic stuff which defies rational explanation, marital contradictions and idiosyncracies.  That is a long list but never did I have the sense that the writer was trying to pack in as much drama as she could.  Because sometimes writers can over egg their pudding and lose the attention and credulity of the reader.  It was a highly plausible narrative of love and loss, I turned the pages feeling absolutely engaged with the characters.  I thought her narrative around the 9/11 event was well done, not over-dramatized and the lost and found story around Joe was well judged.  I thought the events around Arthur and the errant coconut was a nice touch, what was bad had been turned around.  Joe had been lost and found.  Arthur's sight had been lost and found.  And I thought her ending was masterly because really we have no idea where Elly and Jenny Penny will go from there.............  I loved it.