How Easy Am I To Please?

On my last post, the lovely Ruthiella left a comment wondering whether it was easier to buy presents for book lovers, because there would always be, after all, any number of books we’d be lusting after at any given moment in time. When Mr. Litlove read through the comments, he found particular entertainment in this one and said, you should tell your friends just how easy it is for me to buy books for you.  And so I offer my humble strategies up to anyone who wants to give their loved one(s) a really good shove in the right direction:

1. The fait accompli

Such a pretty, pretty book

I was in the Fitzwilliam Museum before Christmas, doing some gift buying when I happened to come across this rather gorgeous book on the art of Japanese painter, Hokusai.  I knew instantly that I wanted it, and it occurred to me that it would make a splendid present. But, could I risk sending Mr. Litlove off on his own to tackle the really quite large shop they have in the museum? I could tell him exactly which table it was on, but what if the staff moved the display around in the meantime? Disaster! And it is so sad to have your wife look at you on Christmas morning and say ‘How can you possibly have got this wrong?’ So I bought it and gave it to him, saying, here, you can wrap this up for me and stick it under the tree.  Guaranteed success.

2. The ten ton hint

Twist your monitors, can’t figure out how to make it go straight!

When Notting Hill editions first started sending me publicity emails about their box sets, I tried to be strong. I looked at all the books I still have to read and told myself I could withstand. And then they offered me a discount as a special Christmas bonus. And it struck me that these books were exactly what I needed in preparation for more essay writing in the New Year. Mr. Litlove was right nearby, doing stuff on the other computer, and so I simply told my captive audience all about them, and read out the blurb and showed him the pictures and pointed out the discount. ‘Would you like a set for Christmas?’ he asked me. ‘Well, only if you’re sure,’ I said, no doubt looking desperately pleased. ‘I’ll order it for you right now, it will be no trouble!’ Take my advice: never leave the ordering to someone else, all sorts can intervene to make the order placer forget their laudable intentions.

3. The easy-access wish list

Some of my Christmas haul

I always have a fairly extensive amazon wish list on the go, after all, you want to offer people a bit of choice when it comes to present giving. You need to get this circulated around family and friends nice and early in the run-up to Christmas and birthdays. But it’s good to have one just as an aide memoire for the rest of the year. For instance, when Mr. Litlove behaves in a way that is annoying or thoughtless, relations can instantly be smoothed over by the purchase of a little something from the list. I purchase it and tell him about it later, usually when it comes through the door. ‘Look,’ I say, ‘this is what you bought me for that time you went to London and forgot to tell me you’d be home very late. Nice, isn’t it?’ And Mr. Litlove says, ‘I did? Then I am the most considerate of husbands.’

4. The commission

Such a bargain

Mr. Litlove hates doing the supermarket shopping. He’ll man up to it if he has to, but given he is a generally serene person, the supermarket on a Saturday morning is the only time you’ll see the whites of his eyes. I don’t mind it, not least because you can buy two books there for £7. On the whole I tend to resist book buying here, because I don’t want the supermarkets to control what gets published in the UK and we are distinctly headed that way. But just occasionally, because I know Mr. Litlove would want to reward me with a spot of commission for all that pushing and shoving and trolley wielding, I do indulge. Even better when one of the books on special offer happens to be a novel your husband has told you all about quite enthusiastically,  having heard some programme  on Radio 4 referring to it. ‘I saw that book you were talking about, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and picked it up for you as a treat,’ I say.  Mr. Litlove clearly wracks his brains to recall the event. ‘Oh?’ ‘Yes, and if it’s any good I’ll read it after you, if you like!’ Ahh, it’s special moments like these that keep a marriage together.

So there you have it, my top tips for making book gifting as easy and painless as it can possibly be. I mean, Mr. Litlove isn’t even aware he’s had to do anything at all most of the time. How could it be simpler?

 

Rook

For all of us in the Northern hemisphere, plunged into the bleak midwinter, what happens if you try to imagine summer? In my mind’s eye, I find a series of vignettes, slices of memory brilliant with light and heat, intense and real and yet oddly distanced, too. Well that feeling dominated the reading of Rook by Jane Rusbridge, a novel thick with the atmosphere of sultry midsummer heat and deeply imbued by the landscape in which it takes place, the mud flats, shallows and sand dunes surrounding the pretty village of Bosham in Sussex. It is an exquisitely lyrical novel whose rhythm is based on the ebb and flow of time and tide, of memory and history and of the relationships between the characters.

Nora has come home and no one, least of all her ageing mother, knows why. She has abandoned an international career as a cellist and is now teaching locally, promising schoolgirls and game middle aged ladies with whom she cannot really connect. In fragments of memory we begin to learn something of her trouble; an affair with a charismatic teacher, which resulted in a pregnancy, unwanted at least by him. There is clearly no baby now, though, which begs a question whose resolution Rusbridge will tease the reader with until the very end. In the meantime, there’s Ada to look after, her fragile but determined mother whose grip on rationality is slipping but whose interest in the young men around remains all too lively. An odd-job man, Harry, seems to have moved into a caravan on their property, helping out with changes to the garden, and, Nora fears, plying her mother with too much drink. And then jogging in the dunes one day she spots a man getting out of a smart car and mistakes him for Isaac, her former lover. Instead he turns out to be a producer from London, down to make a television programme about the unmarked graves in the local church.

There are two graves; one smaller belonging to King Cnut’s illegitimate daughter, according to local legend, and another larger one belonging, some suggest, to King Harold. Nora’s father was an archaeologist, and Ada who still has his archives, and her own racy memories of the dig team, feels importance finally beckoning. The arrival of Jonny from London will bring to the surface all the tensions between mother and daughter, as Nora silently but relentlessly undermines Ada, telling Jonny about the possible link to King Harold and stepping into the flirtation that her mother would dearly like to have with him.

The unspoken battle with her mother is one of a number of ways that Nora blindly but instinctually tries to come to terms with her past. The other is in her adoption of an abandoned fledgling rook, which she frees from the cruel teasings of a gang of young boys and takes home as her own. Rook becomes her endearing, eccentric baby, the chance he offers her for nurture and companionship providing a counterbalance to the losses and sorrows in her life.

This is quite a tricky book to talk about as a lot happens in it, but it’s not about the plot. The events that take place are often ways of rehearsing possibilities that turn out to be dead ends for the characters, or of releasing ghosts from the past. Elements of the narrative recur and echo, illegitimate children, passionate affairs, the elusive truth of what lies under the surface, the impossibility of reversing tides or fate. Atmosphere and sensuousness dominate the narrative, which pays delicate and close attention to physical things: an arrowhead dug out of the mud flats, the first glamorous dress Nora performed in, Rook hiding scraps of food in the crumbling plaster walls of the kitchen. It’s a mosaic of a story, in which scenes are vividly rendered but little is explained, the physical world carrying the freight of memory and meaning. This isn’t a book for psychology or even for abstract truth, it’s a book to live in and to feel in all its textures and layers. Jane Rusbridge can do this because her lyric writing is excellent – accurate, potent and evocative. Definitely a book for the connoisseurs of language.

On this unseasonal note, I will wish everyone a very happy Christmas – I’m going to have a brief blog break now until Christmas has passed as there’s just too much to do to blog properly. However, I really hope to catch up with you all over the holidays and with your comments. Have a wonderful festive season!

Wednesday Mishmash

I should really be writing a proper review of Rook by Jane Rusbridge, which is a beautiful novel, slowly and delicately unfolding like a paper flower in water. It’s also a book set over the course of one feverishly hot summer, which made reading it feel like a jolt and a surprise, the swiftness of being transported from one climate to another. However, given that I am in the thick of Christmas madness at the moment, rushing around shopping and spending half my life in post office queues, I feel I don’t have the focus to do it justice. So, another day then.

I’d been planning a more austere Christmas than usual and had intended to make some gifts. However, when I had a go at craft with Mr Litlove on the weekend, I realised why I am more qualified to walk into shops and hand over money. First of all, you’ve got to watch those craft blogs – they lie! Oh it’s all so easy, some deft-fingered person coos at you, a doddle, a piece of cake! The experience really reminded me of watching Blue Peter as a child, and longing to make one of their models out of sticky back plastic and cereal cartons. Some professional artist had produced them for the show, and the perplexity one felt attempting to create the same thing at home, and the unrecognisable specimen that was cobbled together by the end really came back to me. I borrowed Mr Litlove, who is the practical one, as the instructions called for use of a sharp craft knife and I know my limitations. Well, he’d managed to cut his finger before we even got started with the knife, so we had to pause to bind the wound. Then I remembered why I don’t sew: cotton snarling up into bunnies’ ears that won’t come loose. We made a prototype, about which the less said the better, and one example that wasn’t too awful. Then we called it a day in order to rethink our strategy. I can’t tell you what we were making as people read this blog who might be on the receiving end – unless we continue to create them bloodstained and falling apart at the seams, of course. Not even our mothers would want those ones.

I wonder how many people remember, back in the summer, me sending a teasing and somewhat misleading text to the window cleaner? Well he’s only turned out to be Casanova reincarnate. I’d never been propositioned by text before, but as I am growing older I’m always grateful for new experiences that keep me up with the times. And the window cleaner is quite nice, sort of a cheeky chappie with biceps of steel. At first I was mortified, until I was reminded that these things are very rarely personal. Indeed, I am thinking that the window cleaner’s work with me is done, and he may be moving onto Ms Thrifty. When he came in to the bookshop this week, and I didn’t have enough time to run and hide out back, she gamely said she’d deal with the interaction (as an ex-head teacher she is quite fearless with renegades and mavericks). The conversation moved to birthdays, and when it turned out that both were Scorpios, the window cleaner was quick to point out that they belonged to the sexiest sign in the zodiac. Even Ms Thrifty had to pause for a moment to think how best to respond to that one. Note to self: remind manager NOT to hang mistletoe.

And a quick word on reading: I’m three-quarters of the way through Candia McWilliam’s long and intricate memoir, What To Look For in Winter; a Memoir in Blindness. I’ve had all sorts of shifts of feeling with this book as I’ve slowly worked my way through it. It requires patience and commitment from the reader, as I was tempted to give it up during earlier sections that seemed obsessed with status and achievement. But now I’m so glad I stuck with it, and feel instead that the author has almost moved through the several people she has been in her lifetime, some healthier than others. Now I’ve done a complete u-turn and think it’s a significant book. I dread the size of the review I may have to write to get in everything I’d like to say about it. In other news I have also begun Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Yes okay, I can see why people love this book so. It’s testing for me, though, as I know next to nothing about history and Mantel is as allusive as a good literary writer should be. I will obviously learn a great deal about the Tudors. Finally, apologies: I am a bad commenter but will make up the defecit soon, and I DO hope to persuade my computer support to change those pictures in the sidebar which are now desperately out of date!

Best Books of 2012

Yes! It’s that time of year again. I used to write my Best Books list right before New Year’s, but I enjoy other people’s so much as guides for possible Christmas presents that I offer mine up in the spirit of festive helpfulness too.

I thought that 2012 hadn’t been such a good one for reading, but when I began to look back over my blog posts, I realised that there have been all sorts of excellent books. I think this year there have been more ‘meh’ books than usual. Very few outright disasters, but quite a lot that barely left an impression. Still, with no more ado…

 

Best literary fiction

Web of Angels by Lilian Nattel – a mother with DID finds the courage to intervene when the behaviour of a local family raises her suspicions. Beautiful psychological portrait and gripping tale.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett – a trip down the Amazon to find out what is really going on in a remote research location raises all sorts of questions about scientific research. Wonderful writing and storytelling.

The Forrests by Emily Perkins – an unusual family story told in a series of detailed, profound vignettes, each a snapshot of a different moment in the ongoing saga of life. Exquisite writing.

The Truth About Marie by Jean-Philippe Toussaint – the best innovative novel I’ve read lately, about a man whose obsession with his ex-lover leads him to imagine her life in extraordinary detail.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - a brilliant haunted house ghost story that’s high on psychological thrills and social comment, with everyone’s favourite, the unreliable narrator.

 

Best crime fiction

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz – a ‘new’ Sherlock Holmes story on prose that glides like silk; great characterisations and clever plotting in this modern update of the classic stories.

The Obsession by T. V. LoCicero -  gorgeous Italian professor of literature spends a sabbatical term on an American campus and finds her life turned upside down by a stalker in this gripping novel.

 

Best comfort reading

The Hypnotist’s Love Story by Liane Moriarty – a romance novel with a twist, in that the hero is being stalked by an ex-girlfriend; this novel treats the situation with great humour and compassion.

The Women in Black by Madeleine St John – life in the ladies’ frocks department of an Australian store in the run-up to Christmas; four women find their lives changed by surprise events; touching and funny.

Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple – the glorious Whipple in family saga territory focuses on the relationship between the matriarch of a family and her granddaughter as they grow through the tempestuous early years of the 20th century.

 

Best classics

Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler – a German couple confess their sexual secrets to one another, provoking the jealous husband to start out on an erotic odyssey that will last a day and a night, from which both tragedy and reconciliation will blossom.

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner – the lone female in her family endures half a lifetime as the spinster aunt before setting off on her own as a witch. Wonderfully written with such quirky humour.

 

Best foreign language book

The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir – a group of intellectuals engage in turbulent post-war politics as they try to put the integrity they found in the Resistance to use in creating a better world.

 

Best re-reads

(This is such a cheat because I only read two – but they were even better second time around.)

My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather – this bittersweet novella tells the story of a mismatched marriage from the point of view of a young woman both fascinated and repelled by the couple.

Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler -  a middle-aged woman walks away from her family on a crowded beach and finds herself starting a life in a small town elsewhere. With all Tyler’s characteristic insight and humour.

 

Best General Non-Fiction

Deep Country by Neil Ansell – gorgeous account of bird-watching in the Welsh countryside by a man who decides to take his life back to basics. Gentle, serene and inspiring.

Willful Blindness by Margaret Heffernan (review to come) – why is it that tragedies occur that could so easily have been prevented? Compelling account of why people ignore what’s staring them in the face.

Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace by Kate Summerscale – an Edwardian Madame Bovary and the dynamite diary that turned her into a sensational trial case in new divorce laws.

 

Best Memoir

What To Look For In Winter; A Memoir of Blindness by Candia McWilliam (review to come) – a novelist who was considered a hugely promising talent describes her relationship with alcoholism and the strange illness that afflicts her eyelids, making her functionally blind. Fascinating and complex.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson – Winterson tells the story of her crazy early life in a deeply religious community and the homosexuality that made her an outcast from it. She then brings the story up to date with her search for her birth mother.