A Work in Progress

New Books, Old Books & Borrowed Books

I have an abundance of books as you can see (though when don't I have an abundance?).  These are my newest acquisitions. 

I'm continuing to add to my diary pile with Mary Chestnut's Diary as my latest purchase.  I mentioned her recently and it sounded too interesting to pass up.  I read that the 1982 publication of her diary won the Pulitzer, so I'm not sure if this is the same edition or not, but I'm guessing the content should more or less be the same.  I'm still slowly making my way through Revelations, but I hope to finish soon and pick up another proper full length diary.

Caroline wrote about Underground Time by Delphine de Vigan last spring, and it finally has been published over here.  It's a novel set in contemporary Paris about the isolation people feel living anonymously in a big city.

Diana Abu-Jabar's The Language of Baclava is a memoir that weaves together stories of her childhood with reminiscences of the meals her "food-obsessed Jordanian father" prepared.  I've discovered that I really like food memoirs and am looking forward to this one.

I had checked out Sandy Tolan's The Lemon Tree from the library and then decided I preferred to own it.  It's a nonfiction book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Being such a slow reader of nonfiction I thought it best to have my own copy on hand.  "Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation."

I've talked lots about Alexandra Johnson of late, and now I have her The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life on hand and ready to read.

Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel came out of my reading about Saudi Arabia.  I'll be curious to read Mantel's take on the country even though this is a novel.

And Expats by Chris Pavone came compliments of Crown Publishers.  I couldn't pass up a spy thriller, so this one already sits on my night stand. 

These are used books, though new to me.  Thanks to John for the heads up on Half the Earth: Women's Experiences of Travel Worldwide by Miranda Davies.  I was wondering how I missed one of the "Women Travel" editions by Rough Guides.  This does indeed appear to be the missing link.

I couldn't pass up the lone Virago I spotted in my favorite used bookstore, Maya Angelou's Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, which is the third volume in her memoirs.  I've never read Angelou and I feel like I should have.

And a total impulse buy during the same used book shopping excursion--I found A Strange Death: Espionage, Betrayal and Vengeance in Old Palestine by Hillel Halkin.  "A tantalizing murder mystery, a dazzling meditation on fact and fiction, memory and invention, this journey into the past is also, for Halkin, a journey to discover once and for all the story of his home." 

And then we have the obligatory library pile, which is surprisingly small for me.

I'm tempted to start Berlin Stories by Robert Walser right now, but I should really finish the collection I am midway through first.  "Berlin Stories collects his alternately celebratory, droll, and satirical observations on every aspect of the bustling German capital, from its theaters, cabarets, painters' galleries, and literary salons, to the metropolitan street, markets, the Tiergarten, rapid-service restaurants, and the electric tram."

About Time by Penelope Mortimer is the first volume of her memoirs.  I had this book out from the library last year but didn't get to it, but hopefully will this time around.  Persphone Books and NYRB publish her works these days. 

Oolookitty recommended Sarsen Place by Gwendoline Butler to me.  Another book that I've just started and sits on my night table.  She described it as: "Sarsen Place is a great read: it's set in Victorian London and boasts kidnappings, charismatic pickpockets, dreamy artists and an aristocratic child hiding a dark secret from her feminist governess. I recommend it like crazy."  I was sold as you can see.

And Brooklyn Heights by Miral al-Tahawy was shortlisted for the Arabic Booker Prize in 2011.  She seems like an important Egyptian writer, so I'm looking forward to trying her work. 

New books.  Life is good.

The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

I don't read many YA novels, but when I do I am often surprised by how fun and entertaining and sometimes even very sophisticated they are.  I came across Maureen Johnson by way of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award.  The Name of the Star has been nominated in the Young Adult category.  While not a traditional mystery, and perhaps more playful than dark, it was an enjoyable read.  Using the Jack the Ripper legend Johnson spins an unusual tale with a paranormal slant.  I can see how appealing this story would be to YA readers and passed more than a few happy hours with it myself at the gym.

It must be a stock feature in young adult literature that the hero or heroine is in some way separated from their parents and must rely on their own wits to get out of tight situations.  What fun otherwise would it be for a young reader?  That independence is surely part of the excitement of a story.  In this case Aurora Deveaux, or Rory as she prefers to be called, has traveled to London ahead of her parents where she is to attend boarding school while they work in Bristol.  Coming from hot, humid Louisiana rainy London is something of a shock but she takes it all in stride.  So maybe she's not so adept at field hockey, and she's nowhere near as reserved as most of her classmates with stories of her eccentric family back in New Orleans, but she clicks with her roommate, Jazza, and even manages to catch the eye of Jerome, a cute prefect.

Before even stepping foot off the plane, a murder reminiscent of those committed by Jack the Ripper has taken place.   As more bodies pile up, each murder taking place on the same date as the original Ripper murders, it's not just fear that grips London.  While everyone waits for the next murder to happen, there is almost a party-like atmosphere in the city.  The idea of a modern-day Ripper takes on a life of its own, and the media gives the story constant coverage.  London has one of the most extensive networks of CCTV cameras anywhere, but the police have few leads and strangely, no one has seen anything.  Except for Rory. 

Though the students are confined to the school grounds, Rory, Jazza and Jerome sneak up to the roof to try and catch a glimpse of the activity not far from their school which is situated in Wexford very close to where the murders are occurring.  As Jazza and Rory are climbing back into a window after a disappointing evening spent Ripper-watching, a man approaches Rory asking if she should be that.  At the time he seems harmless enough though he gives her the creeps without realizing why.  And then the next day a body is found on school grounds, though the woman was not a student.  Since she seems to be the only person to see something unusual Rory is questioned by the police.  But it's a special branch of the police that Rory will get involved with.

I'm hesitant to share more and spoil the fun, but suffice it to say that ghosts are wandering modern day London, and Rory can see them.  How's that for a teaser?  Why she has the ability and what she does with it I'll leave to you to discover if you're curious.  Johnson sets the story up handily for a sequel, which I understand will be released later this year.  For me the attraction of this book, aside from being on the Edgar list, was the London setting.  Although Rory is part of a closed world mostly within the confines of her school, Johnson does a good job of setting the scene--dropping a young American girl into this very British environment. 

It was nicely atmospheric but not in any way heavy handed and detail-laden.  There was just enough to make things interesting.  I can imagine YA readers being interested in the cultural differences--like the way schools work or the fact that their British counterparts can drink alcohol when they can't here at the same age.  And I didn't realize that the Union Jack is only called the Union Jack when flown at sea, otherwise it's a Union flag.  You learn something new every day.  I might just have to keep an eye out for the second in the "Shades of London" series as this is known.   

I was also curious about The Girl is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines, also from the same Edgar list in the YA category, which I have checked out from the library.  The setting is WWII New York, however.  Two YA novels in a row.  Hmm, should I or shouldn't I?  I'd still like to explore some of the novels on main list as well.  The winners will be announced April 26, so there is still a little time to squeeze in another book or two.

Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

Okay, so I don't watch the Oscars, but I found this via Letterology--it seems so appropriate to share here.  If you've not seen it either, take a look, it is very cool indeed.  It won an Oscar for Best Short animated Film.  An award well deserved, I'd say.  Read more about it here.

Beauty and the Battlefield

I had planned on writing about Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way today, but I've not finished reading yet.  You can head over to Beauty is a Sleeping Cat now to get Caroline's take on the book.  I'm hoping to finish in the next couple of days, but I won't be able to write about it properly until the weekend, so I'll share a teaser with you instead today.  Although there are frightening scenes in this book, occasionally, too there are moments of beauty.    

"The field flowers were just appearing; light rains washed and washed again the pleasing fields.  In those parts the farmers seemed to have decided that they might prepare to sow a harvest.  The little villages seemed queerly optimistic; perhaps the human hearts were infected with whatever infects the very birds of Belgium.  The sun lay along objects with indifferent and democratic grace, gun-barrel or ploughshare.  The war was like a huge dream at the edge of this waking landscape, something far off and near that might ruin the lives of children and old alike, catastrophe to turn a soul to dry dust.  It was change so big in the offing that there seemed as if nothing could be done except leave or continue.  Even in Ypres it was said citizens were trying to persist, mourning every bomb that fell, every apple tree in every ruined garden, every brick of every finely constructed house, every speck of ash from the fires of habitual love.  Nothing had changed just here where he found himself--utter change was just across the plains.  Nothing had changed.  But something had changed in Willie Dunne."

To have a war in one's backyard is unimaginable, yet so many people in Europe endured this and several times over.  The countryside will not have emerged unscathed and neither will Willie Dunne, I suspect.

February 26: Reading Notes

Not too long ago I mentioned that there is an exhibit of costumes used in a number of historical films at a local museum.  Yesterday morning, it being bright and sunny albeit a little on the brisk side, I decided it was time to go check it out.  If you are a fan of elegant couture, or if you just enjoy movies and like to see costumes close up, this is the place to be.  I love textiles and needlework and the dresses (and gent's clothing, too) that were on display were absolutely swoon-worthy.  I'm only disappointed that there was no exhibit guide to go with the show.  I would have snapped it up however much the price.

I should have taken notes, but who wants to walk around with a pen and paper in hand while visiting a museum.  So let me try and recall the films that were represented--Pirates of the Caribbean, The Duchess, Sense & Sensibility (the 1995 version), Jane Eyre (I think it was the 2007 version), The Phantom of the Opera, Casanova, The New World, The Golden Bowl, Finding Neverland, Mrs. Dalloway, Gosford Park, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, In Love and War, Goya's Ghosts and a few others that escape me at the moment.  In some cases there was only one costume from a movie, but in others there were several.  

A few things I noted.  The embroidery on most of the dresses was absolutely exquisite and elicited not a few oohs and aahs from me.  It would be hard to create just the right designs for these films and get all the period details right.  In some cases more than one version of the costume had to be made--for example Heath Ledger's costume in Casanova since he was jumping through windows and running from husbands (or from priests in the case of a nunnery, ahem), as there is so much wear and tear on them.  The hoops and corsets and other "underpinnings" that women had to wear look heavy and stifling and generally uncomfortable--especially the hoops that looked like cages (how did women sit with those one?)!  And actresses like Keira Knightly, Kate Winslet and especially Natalie Portman are tiny, waif-like creatures.  I already knew that, but seeing their costumes up close and personal brought home just how petite they are.  I'm hoping to go back and see it again before the exhibit ends. 

My morning out included a stop at the public library where I returned a very large and very heavy pile of books.  They kept looking at me accusingly, and they were stressing me out, so now I have a much more manageable pile.  The only downside is that I had just started reading one of them, Erin Kelly's The Dark Rose, which seemed so promising.  Unfortunately it is due in just a few days and I knew I couldn't finish in time, so I am back in line for it.  Now I need to decide on another library book to read.  Such a dilemma.  Maybe one of the new books I just picked up?  The Quiet Twin by Dan Vyleta or The Darlings by Cristina Alger?  Or one that I bought home not too long ago, Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi.  I finished Maureen Johnson's The Name of the Star, which I will be writing about very soon.  Sometimes I know exactly which book I am going to choose next and can't wait to start reading, but I'm not really sure what sort of book (library book that is) that I'm in the mood for right now.

There's been a little shuffling in my reading pile otherwise, too.  I've started reading the second Lydmouth mystery, The Mortal Sickness by Andrew Taylor.  His Inspector Thornhill series is set in post-WWII Yorkshire.  I liked his first book very much and think I have finally settled into a good mystery novel.  I'm thoroughly enjoying Dumas's The Three Musketeers.  I am just trying to read a chapter a day but I find myself wanting to keep going.  It's such a fun adventure story and very easy going.  Although D'Artagnan would be too young for me, I think I've found another fictional crush to add to my list.

I'm also enjoying Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way.  Initially I was reading very slowly (which means I won't be finished before Caroline's discussion), but now I am making quick progress (strangely I read less on weekends than during the work week.  Go figure.).  It is set in WWI Flanders and includes battle scenes and a sympathetic character placed in one of those excruciating positions where he is faced with a moral dilemma.  I love Barry's prose, though, and the story is very good, but I am always a little trepidatious with books like this.  War stories rarely end happily.  I want to read them, of course, but then I do and almost 'can't look', if you get my meaning.  I'm dipping into other books here and there (like good old, Q) and hoping to start Elizabeth Taylor's Palladian very soon (really liked At Mrs. Lippincote's--another book I need to write about). 

As you can see I have lots of good books on the go.  I shouldn't even think of picking up another book, library book or not.  But I can't ignore those accusing looks.  So I'm off to read and decide.

Lost in the Stacks: The Flint Anchor

I don't remember now what the impetus was for me to pull Syvia Townsend Warner's The Flint Anchor down from my library's shelves last week.  I'm sure I saw a reference to her somewhere and the name clicked as someone I've seen mentioned on blogs (I'm guessing Simon was the mentioner).  No doubt I looked her up in the catalog, saw what we owned and then went looking for more information.  When the lone Amazon reviewer of this novel calls all of Warner's books "superb" and this one specifically one of her "two masterpieces" then her work is obviously something I need to explore. 

Sylvia Townsend Warner was an English novelist and poet who worked in a munitions factory during WWI.  She gained fame in the 1920s with her first novel Lolly Willowes about a woman who "moves to a country village to escape her controlling relatives and takes up the practice of witchcraft."  It should be enough that not only did Virago publish her work but that now NYRB does.  Definitely need to sit up and listen now.  But is The Flint Anchor the best place to start?  My library only owns this, a book of short stories and a biography by her and several of her translations of Marcel Proust. 

The Flint Anchor appears to be her last book which was published in 1954, and while the subject matter seems somewhat dour the reviews I've read in the New York Times are very favorable.

"Satirical, witty, cheerfully grim about the prevalence of of knavery and folly, Miss Warner's comedy in intellectually amusing without being humorous."

This is one of Warner's historical novels about a Victorian family, which spans the life of one man and his wife and follows the fortunes of their children over the course of time as they grow up and mature.  It sounds as though Warner excels in creating convincing and timeless character studies.

"The Flint Anchor is a satire that flirts with fantasy.  Miss Warner has made no effort at realism, has included many blithely improbable events and circumstances and has left the historical background against which the Barnard family lived nearly a blank.  Except for the greater power of the head of the family, the greater importance of conventions and the greater role of religious observances, the Barnard family's story might take place in the present century."

In a way this story doesn't sound like one I would normally pick up, but I am strangely intrigued by the element of fantasy which seems to run through her books.  Whose read her?  And which book is her best?

Q's Legacy by Helene Hanff: A Teaser

I really like Helene Hanff.  With her acerbic wit she's a delight to read, or in this case, reread.  She's got this slightly irreverent humor yet she's very down to earth.  I think I own all her books, or almost all of them and will continue to keep working my way through them.  Last year I decided it was time to revisit 84, Charing Cross Road, and then I had to follow it up with her account of finally visiting England with The Duchess of Bloomsbury.  I was all set to move on to Q's Legacy, but you know how those reading paths veer off into new directions. 

It was calling out to me now, and I couldn't resist.  Books about books, which this sort of is are always appealing to me, though I don't read them often enough.  Hanff grew up during the Depression.  She spent a year at university but then wasn't able to afford to continue when her scholarship wasn't renewed.  It was actually something of a relief, but she decided to find her own English tutor by way of a book in the library.  She searched for a book of lectures, looking for a tutor with the right credentials and more so someone who wrote clearly and understandably.  Making her way through the alphabet in the section on English literature, specifically textbooks, she found only one book under 'Q".  On the Art of Writing by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, professor of English Literature in the University of Cambridge.

This is sort of precursor to 84, Charing Cross Road as it is thanks to Q that she first began her correspondence and then friendship with Frank Doel and the ladies at number 84, Charing Cross.  She began reading Q's lectures, but authors and books would pop up that she had not read, so she would stop, find said book and read it (more like them).  And that's were Marks & Co., Antiquarian Booksellers comes into the picture.  I've only just started reading myself, but I have to share an excerpt, as it gives me such a warm and fuzzy feeling.  She wanted to find nice editions, reasonably priced, of the books she was studying and found an ad for Marks & Co. in the book column of the Saturday Review of Literature.

"London had held a special glamor for me from the time I was eight or nine and my parents began taking me to the theatre.  London was The Barretts of Wimplole Street and Berkeley Square and Pygmalion.  It was also Private Lives and Design for Living because whether Noel Coward's characters were disporting themselves in Paris or on the Riviera, you knew they lived in Mayfair."

"Then Q brought English literature into my life and my passion for London grew.  Sam Pepy's London might be gone, but Leigh Hunt's was still there.  I wanted to take the walks he took at night.  I wanted to stand on Westminster Bridge and look at the view, because Wordsworth said Earth had not anything to show more fair.  But it was all day-dreaming.  Between my hand-to-mouth income and fear of travel, I never really expected to see London.  Staring at that ad, I thought it would be a lovely prize to hold in my hands books that actually came from there.  Marks & Co. might be another Chaucer Head, but while I was afraid to walk into such a bookshop I wasn't afraid to write a letter to one.  I wrote to Marks & Co., requesting three books and warning the shop that I couldn't pay more than five dollars for each for each of them."

I can so relate to what she writes, which I suppose is why I always enjoy her books so much.  This is a slim book, but one to read slowly and savor.

A Brief History of Diaries: From Pepys to Blogs by Alexandra Johnson

There is so much useful and interesting information in Alexandra Johnson's A Brief History of Diaries I could go on and on about it.  As a matter of fact I think I've probably milked this little book for as many posts as I dare, so perhaps it's best if I wrap things up now.  I do plan on reading her book The Hidden Writer which I suspect will flesh out the topics she discusses in this overview, but it looks so good I've ordered a copy to keep and returned the library copy.  In the interim, while I wait for my copy, I've decided to take a short rest between diaries to reread Helene Hanff's Q's Legacy for something a little different, though no less bookish. 

The last three chapters cover writers and artists diaries, war diaries, and digital diaries and cyberspace.  I think these chapters have all the really juicy bits, so how about I share a few snippets that caught my eye.  A few things I knew but it was nice to read about them again, but lots was new to me, too.  I like Oscar Wilde's take on diaries:

"'Do you really keep a diary?' Algernon asks Cecily in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.  'I'd give anything to look at it.  May I?'  'Oh no,' she replies, covering it with her hand.  'You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication.  When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy'."

I had a good chuckle over that.  Diary keeping seems an integral part of a writer's life and working process.  They are the place where writers find inspiration, try new styles or are mined for material.  And writers find inspiration from reading other writer's diaries.  "Woolf read Fanny Burney's diaries; Plath read Woolf's, Sarton read about herself in volume five of Woolf's diary."  I am already familiar with Woolf's diaries and her famous rivalry with Katherine Mansfield.  I've heard about the strange relationship the Tolstoys had--each reading the other's diaries and writing comments in them.  I didn't realize that Fanny Burney kept diaries, however, which I imagine must make for fascinating reading between her work as a writer and her time spent at Court.   

"Few diarists have moved faster from confession to craft than Fanny Burney.  Four novels, eight plays, a biography, volumes of letters detailing London's literary and theatre life owe everything to the journal begun in 1768.  The diaries, written in three stages over seventy-two years, show that process wasn't an easy one.  By its final entries in 1839, her eight-volume diary had become a major literary work.  More than any early journal keeper, hers shows the solitary diarist moving from private to public voice.  At their core, Burney's diaries involve the deep permission to begin and sustain creative work."

Anne Frank's diary begun just before she went into hiding in the secret annex is the most widely read diary in history.  Having only ever read the end product and not read much about the young girl who wrote it, I didn't know she actually revised and edited it while in hiding.  She had heard on the radio that first hand accounts of the war were wanted, which gave her the idea of becoming a journalist.  She grew from a diarist writing for herself to someone recording her experiences for others.  This makes me want to pull out my copy of the book and read it again more carefully.

I was pleased to see (after so few women were represented in the travel diaries chapter), though perhaps a little surprised, that the focus in the war diaries chapter was more on women writing --Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum, Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Origo (according to Johnson her War in the Val D'Orcia is "arguably the finest writer's war diary  seen through civilian eyes--I have to agree with that), and American Civil War diarist, Mary Chestnut.

"Chestnut's 800 page diary is a vast social canvas--of auctioned slaves, misguided generals, lowly soldiers and the elite architects of a doomed war that left one million dead and four million slaves freed.  The diary's originality lies in its perspective--Chestnut is an insider who writes with the perspective of an outsider.  As a diarist she was in a unique position, recording Lincoln's Washington and the Confederate South to which her United States Senator husband returned.  Witnessing war in four southern states, she dined often with Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, who were both unaware of her anguish over slavery."

When her diary was published in 1982 it won the Pulitzer Prize.  Of course I have to read it now, and it is winging its way to me even as I type.

The last chapter on digital diaries was of less interest to me, but Johnson still surprised me by sharing a few thoughts and facts that were, if  not unexpected, at least new to me.  I didn't realize that there were so many online diary websites.  You don't need to keep a paper diary anymore, there are a number of online places to track your thoughts and daily routines.  Diary keeping used to be something private but now it's something very public.  The Tolstoys probably would have loved all the possibilities the web brings.  I'll leave you with just one more thought that I found comforting (at least if it works for book bloggers, too).

"A recent issue of Scientific American acknowledges, 'Besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits.  Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery'.  As millions of megabytes shoot into cyberspace, diarists are rearranging the very structure of neural cell activity."

The Gastronomical Me by M. F. K. Fisher

M.F.K. Fisher's The Gastronomical Me is something of a hybrid of a book.  It's part memoir and part travelogue, though not wholly either, and with food at its heart.  It is a series of essays presented mostly chronologically that shows the making of a true gourmand, which is what Fisher was.  Her writing is exquisite and sensual and often very witty.  I felt a little bit of a fraud reading it, since my idea of a delicious meal in no way mirrored Fisher's experiences, but it was still a delight to read even if I am something of a philistine when it comes to eating. 

My first encounter with Fisher came a few years ago when I read one of her essays in Philip Lopate's The Art of the Personal Essay.  I knew I was on to something good and now I'm sure of it.  So sure I've been acquiring her memoirs and essay collections and hope to add her diaries to my pile soon, too.  I've heard The Gastronomical Me is one of, maybe even her best, book, but with some authors even a so-so book is head and shoulders above the rest, so I'm going to keep reading. 

The world she lived in and wrote about has changed and disappeared, but it's one I seem able to read about endlessly.  First published in 1943 when she was only 35 the book is made up of loosely connected essays from her childhood in California to her marriage and the years they lived in Dijon (the gourmet capital of France?) and on to her life after her divorce.  She doesn't reveal everything, as a matter of fact much of her life is quite subtly presented making me as curious about what she doesn't write about as about what she does.  Her essays criss cross the ocean as she travels by ship, living mostly in France and Switzerland until the war comes and changes everything.

Each essay is dated beginning in 1912 with her first food memory and following through to 1941 covering various milestones of her life--people and places as they're associated with her experiences with food.

"The first thing I remember tasting and then wanting to taste again is the grayish-pink fuzz my grandmother skimmed from a spitting kettle of strawberry jam.  I suppose I was about four."

Her grandmother had a lot of food issues, so she was expected to eat and mostly served a bland diet. 

"My grandmother, who oddly seems to have been connected with whatever infantine gastronomy I knew, spent the last thirty years of her life dying of some obscure internal ailment until a paralytic stroke finished her in four days.  She was a vigorous woman, tight with repressed emotions, and probably had a 'nervous stomach.'  She spent a lot of time in sanatoria, often genuinely ill, and when she was with us, we had to follow her dietary rules, probably to our benefit: no fried things or pastries, no oils, no seasonings."

But there were moments of inspiration, which probably set her off on the track she was to follow in life.

"Ora was a spare gray-haired woman, who kept herself to herself in a firm containment.  She took her afternoons and Sundays off without incident or comment, and kept her small hot room as near as her person.  The rest of her time she spent in a kind of ecstasy in the kitchen."

"She loved to cook, the way some people love to pray, or dance, or fight.  She preferred to be let alone, even for the ordering of food, and made it clear that meals were her business.  they were among the best I have ever eaten . . . all the things we had always accepted as food, but presented in ways that baffled and delighted us."

"Grandmother hated her.  I don't know any real reasons, of course, after such a long time, but I think it was because Ora was not like the friendly stupid hired girls she thought were proper for middle-class kitchens.  And then Ora did things to 'plain good food' that made it exciting and new and delightful, which my grandmother's stern asceticism meant that Ora was wrong."

*****

"My little sister Anne and I had come in Ora's few weeks with us to watch every plate she served, and to speculate with excitement on what it would taste like.  'Oh, Mother,' we would exclaim in a kind of anguish of delight.  'There are little stars, all  made of pie crust!  They have seeds on them!  Oh, how beautiful!  How good!'"

I especially loved reading the parts about Dijon in the 1930s when she and her first husband were living there, he as a student and she as a careful observer of French society.  Over time they became part of the community.  Fisher conveys the feeling that the people of Dijon are serious about their cooking and meals and once it was accepted that the Fishers were just as sophisticated, they were invited to join in and invited out. 

"Probably the most orgiastic eating we did while we lived there was with teh Club Alpin.  Monsieur Biarnet proposed us for membership soon after he had decided for himself, over the dinner table in his stuffy little dining room, that we were amusing and moderately civilized.  It was supposed to be an honor, as well as making it possible for the club to get better rates on its feasts by having a larger number of members, and certainly it was a fine although somewhat wearing experience for us."

Although the reason for the club is ostensibly to travel around the region to walk and hike, more time was spent exploring the restaurants and eating.  She writes about the lengthy meals including one on Ascension Day, which lasted a full six hours.  Imagine.

She only hints at some of the personal things that were going on in her life.  The essays creat a mosaic of her life and the reader is left to infer from what she does write about, a little of what she has also left out.  It's a style that works for me. I feel like I know Fisher just a little bit, even if all the details haven't been filled in.  That'll come later as I read more.

"It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.  So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about the love and the hunger for it, and the warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it . . . and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied . . . and it is all one." 

Traveling Saudi Arabia: Women Travel

Well, it just goes to show you how closed Saudi Arabian society is.  Of the three Women Travel volumes I own, which I mentioned yesterday, Saudi Arabia appears in two of them.  Upon closer scrutiny, I have discovered it is the same writer/traveler in both editions.  Five years separate the two editions, and I had hoped for newer information, but it is more or less the same.  Although I have dipped into my books at random over the years, I have never laid them side by side and compared.  Not all the same countries appear in the books and not all the same essays, though there is some overlap, as in the case of Saudi Arabia.  Even with the repetitions I still think the books are wonderful resources as there is still lots new to discover with each edition, but I guess I'll have to keep searching for a more contemporary view women in Saudi society.

It's likely due to the fact that Saudi Arabia does not allow tourism which makes it hard to write about experiences of traveling within the Kingdom by Westerners (the fourth and most recent eidtion of the Women Travel series does not contain a section on Saudi Arabia).  According to the introduction about the country in More Women Travel (1995 edition) only Muslims who are making a pilgrimage to the holy sites of Mecca or Medina or family members of Saudi citizens are allowed to travel into the country.  Western technology is courted and accepted but not Westerners themselves.  There is a large number of foreign workers, however, who work in the oil industry.  Most of the foreign women are wives of foreign workers, or if they are alone they are teachers, doctors, nannies or nurses.  It sounds as though life for women is very restrictive and single women have to put up with harassment from Saudi men for "not conforming to the role expected of women" or from foreign bachelors.

"Saudi women are expected to lead traditional, secluded lives, their roles strictly confined to that of wife and mother.  On the rare occasions when they go out, they are heavily veiled and accompanied by their husbands, fathers or brothers.  Their participation in the open labor force is one of the lowest in the world, though, with the widespread introduction of female education in the 1960s, changes have started to take place."

Alice Arndt went to Saudi Arabia in 1975 on a teaching contract and a decade later returned with her husband to live.  The Wahabite tradition of Islam is practiced in Saudi Arabia and it dominates all aspects of society there.  When Arndt returned in the mid-80s she was sure that a more liberal attitude would arrive along with Western technology and that with so much travel outside the country with so many Saudis educated in the West that the East-West gap would narrow.  Women still couldn't drive or ride bikes, shops must close during prayer times and it wasn't uncommon for the matawa (religious police) to reprimand those not adhering to the strict rules.

As a matter of fact when Arndt returned for the second time to Saudi Arabia it seemed if anything more conservative than before.  As guardian of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina there is the idea that Saudi society must be even more stringent in following closely the principles of Islam.

"Most of the Saudi women I met were disapproving of their sisters in the West.  They see Western women as unprotected, living in dangerous cities, and unable to rely on the  men of their family to escort them on the streets.  A strong sense of sisterhood has always been a part of Arab culture, and constant familial support buoys Saudi women throughout their lives.  In contrast, Western women's lifestyles seem full of risk--of loneliness, promiscuity, and abandonment by their children in their old age."

Of course, the author notes, not all women agree with the restrictions placed on them.  There are those who do not wear the veil and disagree with the level of censorship imposed by the government as well as what's viewed as religious coercion.  It's interesting to read this Western perspective in light of Rajaa Alsanea's novel, Girls of Riyadh, which is (mostly but not entirely) what prompted me to dig out my copies of Women Travel.  It seems as though some things have not changed at all, since the Saudi society portrayed in Alsanea's book is also very segregated and is still very much guided by religious thought.  It seems, though, as there might be more opportunities for women to study and work within the confines of the strict Saudi culture.  As materially most Saudis are provided for, perhaps people can "contemplate, among other things, the role of women in this modern manifestation of their ancient culture."  And certainly Alsanea's book has pushed and broken boundaries.

I realize this is a little off the beaten path for me in terms of my usual sort of read (middlebrow fiction between the wars and lots of crime fiction and mysteries), but variety is good and I find the Middle East really fascinating at the moment. 

For more books to explore these are the titles suggested in the travel notes:

Freya Stark, The Southern Gates of Arabia -- "Classic tale of explorations of the wild desert mountains, palaces and cities of the Hadhramaut and South Arabia by one of Britain's most famous women travel writers."

Lydia Laube, Behind the Veil -- "Amusing account of an Australian woman's experiences working as a nurse in Saudi Arabia."

Arab Women's Solidarity Association, Women of the Arab World -- "With an introduction by Nawal el Saadawi, this collection of essays brings together feminist writings from the entire Arab world."

Hilary Mantel, Eight Months in Ghazzah Street -- "Gripping, often funny novel centering on a woman who joins her engineer husband in Jeddah, only to find herself embroiled in a mystery based on her investigations of the empty flat upstairs.  Full of insights into the restrictions of being an expat wife."

I'm going to add another book to the list that came by way of Stefanie, who wrote about it here.  In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom, which looks like an interesting and perhaps more recent memoir.  More books for my wishlist.