A Work in Progress

This, That & a Little of the Other

Whew.  This past weekend's short story reading did me in a little.  I love Angela Carter but I think she is best taken in smaller doses.  Fireworks makes up in intensity and depth what it lacks in length.  It may have been fewer than 150 pages but I think I worked for each and every one of them.  I think "Souvenir of Japan" is my favorite of the bunch, but I am most intrigued by her imagery when it comes to mirrors and reflections.  I suspect that some of these stories are going to stay with me a long time.

I wonder if any of her stories are included in either of the Black Water story collections that are edited by Alberto Manguel.  If you like the fantastical then I highly recommend both Angela Carter and Black Water.  I think I am going to look for the more mundane when it comes to short stories for the next few weeks.  I've got a stack of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine issues that need attention.  The April issue just hit my mailbox, so I will pick and choose amongst the stories and find something interesting to add to my New Yorker reading for next weekend.

So a little randomness to start the week of, I think. 

This week's reading is going to be much like last week's as I didn't manage to finish any of the books in my piles (other than the Angela Carter story collection which wasn't in any of the piles--go figure).  I am making steady progress in Geraldine Brooks's March.  I had hoped to finish in time for Caroline's discussion, but hopefully will finish it very soon.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect as it is a fictionalized retelling of events in the lives of fictional characters.  It is about Mr. March's (of Little Women fame) experiences during the Civil War.  It moves back and forth between the war and his life before it--as an itinerent salesman, meeting and falling in love with Marmee and other bits and pieces from his life before the war.  I always like Brooks's writing, so I feel in capable hands.  I've heard very mixed reactions from readers when it comes to her novels--she seems to be someone who is either very much liked or not at all--but I have enjoyed all the books by her I've read (and there have been three or four now--both fiction and nonfiction).  So far I am getting on well with March.

I am also nearing the end of Simone St. James's An Inquiry Into Love and Death, which is a story of romantic suspense--in this case a ghost story.  I didn't set out to read so many ghost stories this month, but they seem to be popping up in my reading time and time again.  The James novel, however, is nothing too demanding or menacing--much more lighter fare I am happy to say.  I have already been contemplating which book I will choose next for my Canadian author and have been eyeing C.S. Richardsons's The End of the Alphabet and Gabrielle Roy's Street of Riches, which is a series of linked short stories about one Quebec (Québécois?) family.  I have long wanted to pick up another of her books.

Margaret Atwood is going to be in Omaha on April 13 and I am already planning the day.  Doors open just after noon and I am trying to decide how long the line will be and the logistics of getting a good seat to hear her speak.  I'm all tingly just thinking about it.  I had wanted to read someting by her in anticipation and now is the moment to do it, I think.  I am leaning towards Oryx and Crake, but maybe a reread of a favorite novel or something else as yet unread?  Always a dilemma!  What is your favorite Atwood novel?  Mine is The Blind Assassin, but everything I have read by her I have loved to some degree.  And then there is the question of which book to take to have her sign?  And what do you say to someone like Margaret Atwood?  I will be too tongue-tied, I'm sure, so say more than 'thank you'.  

Other add-ins for this week's reading is my current 'must finish before the impending due date' library book, Valerie Martin's The Ghost of the Mary Celeste.  Yes, another ghost story.  And I need to spend more time with Johanna Lane's Black Lake, which was meant to be my March Irish read, so I really must get back to it this week. 

A couple of other bits of news--at the end of April I will be going to Fort Worth, Texas for a library conference where I'll be taking a class from one of the catalogers at the Library of Congress.  I have never been to Texas before (other than in the airport and even that a very long time ago).  It will be a very busy few days there but I am hoping there might be a chance to see something--visit a museum of a botanical garden.  Is it silly that I am already contemplating which books I am going to take with me?  I will have two layovers in Denver (one three hours!) which is prime reading time if I can stay focused on my books. 

And I have discovered that Soho Crime does a monthly book subscription (an international crime club and a teen book of the month club) much like my NYRB Classics subscription.  I am a complete pushover when it comes to getting books in the mail each month.  It truly helps get me through the rougher patches of life to know there is a new book just around the corner.  Are you surprised to hear I have signed up?  I am going to give it a go and see if I like it.  I'll let you know how it goes.

It will be, as usual, a busy reading week with lots of good choices.  How could I ever face a Monday without a couple three good books packed away in my tote bag?

Short Story Sunday: Last 3 by Angela Carter

I've decided that as much as I like Angela Carter, and I like her very much indeed, she is not someone to read when you want to feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  She tends more towards someone who makes you feel a little uncomfortable.  She might even make you blush a little.  You read her to stretch yourself--your mind and your imagination.  And you bask in her most sublime prose.  Even as I was reading the last three stories, wondering where they come from (what sort of a mind comes up with such stories!), I would reread sentences and paragraphs impressed by how eloquently she expresses herself.

In "Master" a fierce hunter (who discovers that his only vocation is to kill animals) corrupts a young woman who he buys from her tribe, and in a reversal of fortunes the hunter becomes the hunted and both become more like the savage animals for whose blood they thirst.  Murderous and abusive he works his way up from smaller animals to larger, from "pastel-colored excesses" at home to larger and larger animals in the New World.  When he has decimated all that he can, the jaguar becomes his best prize. 

Friday is the name he gives his purchase, and she becomes his guide and mate of sorts.  Her tribal beliefs meant she regarded herself as an intermediary between the ghosts and fauna.  Her tribe never killed and only ate roots.

"He taught her to each the meat he roasted over his campfire and, at first, she did not like it much but dutifully consumed it as though he were ordering her to partake of a sacrament for, when she saw how casually he killed the jaguar, she soon realized he was death itself.  Then she began to look at him with wonder for she recognized immediately how death had glorified itself to become the principle of his life.  But when he looked at her, he saw only a piece of curious flesh he had not paid much for."

If you believe in karma, this is a case where ill-intentions come full circle.  The master pours his skill into his student until she becomes more proficient than he himself.  And the ghosts of the jaguars watch with glee his downfall.

"Reflections" is another story filled with imagery and no doubt lots of symbolism and meaning.  It's told in first person by a young man walking in the woods one late spring morning when he comes across a most curious thing--a seashell so very many many miles away from the ocean. 

"When I looked at the shell more closely, I saw the nature of the teasing difference that had struck me when I first set eyes on it.  The whorls of the shell went the wrong way.  The spirals were reversed.  It looked like the mirror image of a shell, and so it should not have been able to exist outside a mirror.  But all the same, I held it."

When he lifts it up he finds it is quite heavy and is ready to spirit it away when a woman who he had heard singing earlier (but couldn't see) stops him.  She firmly places a rifle point in the middle of his back and forces him to go with her to a country house where he finds something even more curious.

There is an old crone there knitting away.  She tells him she had dropped a stitch and this caused an opening to another "system"--perhaps a parallel universe--and the shell fell through.  This other place is the Sea of Fertility and can be seen through the surface of a mirror.  This is a strange world where everything is seen in reverse and has a equal equivalence on the other side.  When the woman makes the young man go through the mirror terrible things happen there. 

These stories are filled with the macabre, with violence and unhappy sexual unions.  I thought "Elegy for a Freelance" might remain on more steady and familiar terrain with its post-WWII London setting, but once again this is not a happy world she describes.  Again the narrator is telling the story in first person of her relationship with a self-proclaimed political assassin.  They live in a building that is soon to be torn down but is filled with squatters and other inhabitants.    

"I went into his world when I fell in love with him and felt only a sense of privilege in its isolation.  We had purposely exiled ourselves from the course of everyday events and were proud to live in parentheses."

I struggled with this story in a way I had not with the others, though I sort of liked the dystopian feel to it and its ending that begins with a coup more likely to occur in a banana republic that they never saw coming.  These are such wild and weird worlds that to spend time in them even for a little while seems like it set me a little off balance.  I wonder if that was the point? 

Nine profane pieces was just enough.  I want to read more of Angela Carter's work, but she is someone who is best approached with a mild intensity and then a little time off to breathe and ruminate.  Now I need to read something more about her and her work to try and understand just what makes her tick.

* * * * * *

I'm running a little behind in reading my New Yorker stories.  It was bound to happen, but I am determined to catch up.  I won't choose a new short story collection until I've read the last couple of short stories that are waiting for me.  The March 17 issue contains a story by a writer I have long meant to read (have some of his books) and have now had a taste of what he's all about.  T.C. Boyle.  Have you read him?  Very tongue in cheek--at least that is how his Q&A comes off in This Week in Fiction.  I like that.  You know what this means now . . . must dig out some of the books I own by him.

"The Relive Box" is a statement on the way we live now.  If I owned a relive box I am not sure I would use it much to be honest, but then I remember a world without computers, Twitter and Facebook.  We've become pretty disengaged as a society, I think.  I sometimes will watch people who are with each other, but not really.  Physically they may be inhabiting a close space but in reality they are both actually locked into whatever mobile device they have in hand.  In Boyle's story there is an invention called a "relive box" that projects a time and place from the past of the viewer's choosing onto their retinas.  They can relive any period of their life already lived.  "Now the frustrating thing about the current technology is that you can't be an actor in the scene, only an observer."  If you could go back in time in a manner like this (from the comfort of your own home) would you do it?  And which period would you pick.  The father and daughter in this story are so addicted to their relive box that it takes on a life of its own.  The mantra becomes "reset" as happy, or not so happy experiences are lived over and over again.  To the exclusion of real life being lived in any real way. 

I'm often nostalgic about my childhood, but I am not sure I would want to relive any of it.  It would certainly be a curiosity, but to the exclusion of living my life now.  Then again, in stressful moments I might want to go back to happier moments.  Hmm.

The Curious Gardener: March

There's a rumor going around at the moment that it's spring now.  It must be a rumor as I am not seeing any signs of a change of seasons.  Maybe something strange is going on and the hemispheres have gone wonky and swapped weather patterns, because it is decidedly fall-like here.  Okay, maybe not exactly fall-like but winter is hanging all for all it's worth.  It is not going to depart quietly but is going to go out kicking and screaming.  Even our nice days, like yesterday, were accompanied by fierce winds (some gust up to 60 mph), which nearly blew me away on my walk home.  So if I can't experience spring (spring as we imagine it to be anyway), I can at least read about it, right? 

March is almost over so it is time to pull out Anna Pavord's The Curious Gardener: A Year in the Garden and dream about warmer, sunnier days.  I'm really enjoying this book.  It's pleasantly light and chatty, but neither to complicated to follow for someone like myself who only reads about gardening, or too simplistic for those readers who are serious gardeners either.  Each chapter is a mixture of practical tasks and gardening advice, bits of information and gardening lore and even anecdotes that seem initially peripheral at best to gardening, but Pavord always manages to return full circle to the theme at hand.  The topics run the gamut, this month for example she starts out with a piece called "Spring is in the Air" (if only), which makes even me want to dig my fingers in the earth and moves on to the Costa Rican railway and even a bit on parenting.  Parenting?  More about that one later.

Each little section segues into the next and this is a perfect book to dip into over the course of the month, but I was so inspired by the idea of nature and spring that I read the chapter in one sitting.  I have had little success when it comes to growing any sort of garden--flower or vegetable, and maybe it is just persistence that I need.  That and reading about how to create and care for a garden and lots of hands on work.  She reminds me why people love to garden.

"The real point of a garden is to increase the value of our lives.  It gives us the best chance we have of fitting ourselves back into a world that cities make us forget.  A garden locks you into the slow inevitable rolling out of the seasons, cycles of growth and decay, the lengthening of days and shortening of shadows."

Yes, please.  Bring on those lengthening of days.  It seems as though there is something very ruminative about working in a garden.  And I like the sound of this--another way to de-stress!

"Your mind goes into delicious limbo when you are doing jobs such as this.  They are undemanding, but in terms of improving the general look of things, very rewarding."

It's pleasing to think of these outdoor activities.  I won't go into detail about all the topics she touches on, but I do want to share a few more highlights.  And while I do feel inspired when reading to contemplate making some sort of attempt at a very small-scale garden, I have a feeling I won't manage to find the energy to do more than plant a flower box or two for the porch.  I suffer from lawn guilt, however.  I hadn't thought much about lawns in regards to gardens (which now sounds very strange) but lawn care takes up lots of time and effort it seems.  It's no joke when she notes "badly kept grass is a moral slur."  She feels that, too?  Maybe I should strive for a "Freedom Lawn" over an "Industrial Lawn", too.  In thinking of the latter:

"The authors [of an American thesis] argue for a less fascist approach to the garden lawn.  'Properly' maintained, that is, maintained according to the instructions issued by manufacturers of fertilisers, weedkillers, moss killers, lawn sand, lawn aerators and the like, a lawn is a monoculture.  The best-kept lawns are those with the least diversity of plants; several million blades of fescue living in a botanical ghetto, untroubled by interlopers such as daisy or celandine."

I hadn't thought of it that way.  And I certainly had never considered that lawns are actually the largest 'crop' that we produce here in the US.  According to Pavord lawns cover 20 million acres of land here.  And while many of us bemoan the state of our environment, we don't think of what we do to green up our grass and keep the weeds and pests at bay.

"The National Academy of Science in the States discovered that homeowners use up to ten times more chemical pesticides an acre than do farmers."

Yikes, that is quite eye opening.  I have the same high expectations for my lawn--that it be perfect and unblemished.  I might occasionally fertilize but I am not very good about doctoring things up to get rid of crab grass and dandelions and all the other 'nasty weeds' that are so fond of taking over my yard come mid-summer when the heat is at its most vengeful.  I wish I could say it was a thoughtfulness on my part for the environment, but mostly it is laziness.  I guess there is an upside to being lazy and will call my lawn a Freedom Lawn in the future--which means--"You mow, but not too close.  You leave clippings to feed the lawn.  You tolerate interlopers, as long as they don't get too bossy."

Oh, and the parenting thing?  That's in reference to propagating plants--taking cuttings from one and growing a new one.  She goes into the how-tos in some detail (but not too, too much).  I suspect I won't be getting into anything like that, but you can still learn from her experience.  I love that I always learn some little bit of fascinating information from each and ever chapter. 

"The point of cuttings is that each one will grow into a perfect replica of its parent--if that is what you want.  Nurserymen depend on this sameness.  But each seed in a seed pod may turn out to be a subtle variation of the parent, the progeny sometimes skipping back, as children do, to pick up a trait that has been suppressed for several generations."

Pavord notes that the variation is a safety device--your basic survival of the fittest.  But for an intrepid gardener it is often these oddities, the sickly plants, the mutations, that are the most appealing.  They are rare and therefore more prized than the fittest. 

The garden is just a world unto its own, isn't it.  So much to see and think about.  I need to slow down and look closer.

In a related note I am hoping to visit our local Lauritzen Gardens soon.  I might even become a member.  I am planning to attend a lecture next week (if I can still make reservations) by author Andrea Wulf who has written Founding Gardens: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature and the Shaping of the American Nation.  I had been eyeing this book earlier so am excited to see the author will be here to give a talk.  In the fall Lauritzen Gardens puts on an antique show and fundraiser and the Right Honorable Countess of Carnarvon is going to be one of the speakers.  She is the current countess of Highclere Castle of Downton Abbey fame.  How I would love to hear her speak, but tickets might be a little too rich for my pocket book. 

The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon

Here's one of the teasers on the book jacket for Jennifer McMahon's The Winter People: "some secrets never die".  The setting is a small town in Vermont.  The time is winter.  And strange things are  happening.  People are disappearing.  The novel opens with a series of diary entries ca. 1908.  The reader is plunged into a story that involves "Sleepers", or Winter People.  Sleepers are just what you are likely imagining they are--people who have died but still walk the earth. 

I think Jennifer McMahon did what she set out to do in writing this book.  She scared me enough this past weekend to set the book down just twenty or so odd pages from the end because it was late and dark and I was alone and a little too freaked out to keep reading.  I finished it Sunday morning in the bright sun and welcome surroundings of a busy coffee shop.  How silly is that.  I like a good ghost story, but I am not often scared by them.  It's hard to do 'scary' these days.  For me a nicely atmospheric story with a strong setting and believable characters is enough.   A few added chills is a bonus.

Thinking about the story now, it's not so much that it was necessarily a really scary story, rather there was just enough weirdness and unanswered questions that left to its own devices a reader's mind (well, mine, anyway) is allowed to fill in the blanks.  Or wonder about them anyway.  I have mentioned before how a good story will play on the imagination?  That's what this one does.  For me the true test is whether I will go down to my unfinished and very creepy basement to do laundry when reading a ghost story.  This one passed the test--(or is is truer to say failed it?).  Laundry first, and ghost story after--and neither the twain shall meet otherwise. 

There are two parallel stories in The Winter People.  One is set in contemporary times with several separate threads woven together and the other harkens back to a much simpler era.  A time when people might believe in things like the dead walking.  Or do people still believe?  Sara Harrison Shea's diary entries hint at something really frightening having taken place at the beginning of the last century.  Is it madness that instructed her, or did something truly unholy really take place?

Sara tells us she was only nine when she first saw one of the winter people.  Sara has always been a little different.  A free spirit--almost like a selkie or mermaid, someone who sees fairies.  She's breathtakingly beautiful but not meant to be understood.  Martin, her husband, is just happy to have been chosen by her.  When their first child dies she goes just a little mad in her grief.  So when Gertie comes along she is utterly dedicated to her and the two are inseparable.  Sara and Martin live on the outskirts of town near a wooded area known as the Devil's Hand.  It's not a place that is welcoming, a place you want to explore.  It's the sort of forest Hansel and Gretel got lost in.

Decades later those woods begin to encroach on the little farmhouse on the outskirts of town.  It almost seems as though the woods are ready to overtake the house.  Ruthie, nineteen and just out of school, lives there now with her mother and younger sister.  Something strange has happened however.  When she returns home from a date she discovers her mother is gone and her sister is alone.  Their hippie lifestyle leaves her hesitant to call the police, but surely it is too soon and her mother will return home any moment.  But the hours pass with no sign of her.  When she begins looking through the house for some clue of where he mother might have gone, she finds the closet in her mother's room nailed shut and a copy of Sara's diary under a loose floorboard.  This strange, eerie diary, which the reader has been privy to all along, offers some hints what might have happened, but there are pages missing. Pages that people are willing to kill for. 

If you are looking for something chillingly atmospheric, this might be the story for you.  McMahon knows just how to engage the reader, making them question what is real and what isn't, what is plausible and what isn't, but in the end not caring either way.  For me this one falls firmly into the thumping good read category. 

I told myself no more ghost stories for a while, but then picked Valerie Martin's The Ghost of the Mary Celeste as my next library read.  It was the seafaring/ocean setting that was the draw until I started thinking about the ghost in the title.  I'm not too far along yet, but the story is slowly drawing me in and it looks like this will likely be another unputdownable read.  Happily so.

March 24: This Week's Reading . . .

Isn't it strange that the work week often seems to drag on interminably yet here we are with just a little over one week left in March?  The year is zipping by and while I am ready for nicer weather to come and longer days to arrive I wish I could slow things down a little, too.  This year I've not been especially happy with my reading--not with the books I choose (lots of variety and lots of good stories), but how many languish and how slowly I seem to work my way through them.  Life has been hectic and a little stressful at times, which has been the main reason my reading has been off. 

So I've been thinking that maybe I need to approach it all a little differently.  If you visit here often you know I am a more than one book at a time reader, but I have been toying with the idea of paring things down considerably.  I am not sure I would ever be able to read just one book at a time.  Would I?  Maybe pick three books to read and do a rotation?  I'm  not sure. 

Then this weekend I was getting ready for the upcoming work week, contemplating which books need to be completed first, which books were grabbing my attention mostly, and which need attention for various reasons but I don't seem to reach for as often as I should.  This is no solution, but I have divided the reading pile into a few smaller piles.  Yes, I'm afraid the main pile is so large it must be subdivided.

This (above) is the main, 'must/would like to finish these books before the end of March' pile.

Then there is the 'just need to read a chapter (in the case of the bottom book) or two' pile. 

And then there is the 'I am really enjoying these but they require time and attention and thoughtfulness' pile.  The spirit is willing, but free time for reading is sadly limited.  I need to sneak in some very quiet reading time for these two.

And then there is the 'more or less for entertainment purposes' pile, which to be really honest is the pile I tend to pick from mostly of late.  There is no rush to get through these other than the general 'can't or don't want to put these down' quality to the reads.  At least one will go with me to work each day.

I still need to pare things down.  I say that in the same breath as I say I also need to pick out a new library book as I just finished one.  And that stack is tall and varied with lots and lots of temptations.  So I don't think I will ever be able to do just one book at a time (at least not right now), but I really do want to try and streamline my reading in some way.  My reading may be off, but it also reflects the craziness of life at the moment, and that's okay, too.   Books are my escape and I need them, even if they  tend to Mt. Everest size pile proportions.

What does your reading pile look like?  Should I ask if you even have a reading pile?  I know there are lots of 'just one book at a time' readers out there.  Who knows, someday I may well join your ranks.  But I don't think it will happen this week! :)

By the way, I don't know how it has been with other bloggers?  Maybe it is the time of year, but it has been very, very quiet here of late.  I am contemplating posting on an abbreviated schedule for a while, though I do have lots of bookishness in mind, too, that I want to share.  As you can see I have lots of books calling out to me, and having a little extra reading time with them would be a good thing.  I can't quite decide, but you may well see fewer updates here for a while.  Of course the doors are always open for bookish chat so feel free to drop in any time and leave a comment!

Short Story Sunday: More by Angela Carter

Three more "stories" by Angela Carter today.  I am quickly discovering that there is more to Angela Carter than meets the eye, but if you have read her already you'll know that.  These are not really short stories of the sort I've been reading so far this year, but creative works?  The subtitle of the book is "Nine Profane Pieces".  I had to look up "profane" as all that came to mind is profanity and I wanted to make sure I had it straight in my mind.  Profane is "characterized by irreverence or contempt for God or sacred principles or things, irreligious".  Yes, I can see where these would be considered profane pieces.  That pretty well sums up the feel of the stories I have gotten.

Angela Carter's writing is really interesting.  It's gorgeous and lush but it's also complex.  I love reading her but I think it is easy to get bogged down in trying to understand just what it is she is writing about.  Dare I admit that?  I understand superficially, but I am not sure I am getting at what is lurking beneath the surface.  I think a little additional reading, perhaps some criticism might be in order, when I've read the last of the works in this short collection.  What I feel so far is that they are all tinged by sadness and melancholy.  They are permeated with a sense of loss and longing.  Of love that is denied or not understood or doomed to failure.  I don't think I am going to be able to write about my reading properly, so what follows today are ideas I have jotted down, questions I have or little observations on her prose.  You'll have to forgive me if this all feels a little disjointed, but it might at least pique your curiosity, too, and spur you on to pick up her work, which I highly recommend. 

I mentioned last week that in her afterword she talks of mirrors and reflections.  Often the protagonist (Angela herself?) sees herself in others or tries to understand herself by how she is viewed by those she loves or longs for.  Is it real or is it playacting?  Take for example the third of the three works I read this weekend, "Flesh and the Mirror" where an unnamed woman has been away in England for three months--a death in the family--and has returned to Japan expecting to be met by her lover, who does not show up.  Perhaps the relationship is over but she cannot admit it to herself?  She meets another man in the street and goes off with him to a love hotel.  But she cannot stop thinking of her lover and goes in search of him and finds him in one of his old haunts. 

"His image was already present somewhere in my head and I was seeing to discover it in actuality, looking at every face I met in case it was the right face--that is, the face which corresponded to my notion of the unseen face of the one I should love, a face created parthenogenetically by the rage to love which consumed me.  So his self, and, by his self I mean the thing he was to himself, was quite unknown to me.  I created him solely in relation to myself, like a work of romantic art, an object corresponding to the ghost inside me."

Whew.  See, she's not always easy to pull apart and understand clearly, though I still love reading her.   So perhaps the mirror (or how she is reflected in how she sees him--how roundabout is that?) is showing herself as she really is?  She's writing about perception and reality.  The woman is acting in a show that is her real life.

"It was as if I never experienced experience as experience.  Living never lived up to the expectations I had of it--the Bovary syndrome.  I was always imagining other things that could have been happening instead, and so I always felt cheated, always dissatisfied."

I don't think I can adequately explain what any of that means, but strangely I understand it and can relate to it.  This is a work I could read over a few times and find more to think about and perhaps understand or build on with each reading.

Moving backwards to "Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest", I felt on less shaky ground.  This is a Graden of Eden story if ever I heard it.  À la Angela Carter of course, complete with flowers that snap and bite.  It's quite descriptive and detailed. 

"The whole region was like an abandoned flower bowl, filled to overflowing with green, living things; and, protected on all sides by the ferocious barricades of the mountains, those lovely reaches of forest lay so far inland the inhabitants believed the name, Ocean, that of a man in another country, and would have taken an oar, had they ever seen one, to be a winnowing fan."

The story is essentially about two siblings who go off to explore this fantastical forest and discover a world quite new and unexpected.  In true Angela Carter form the world they find is almost like that of the Garden of Eden and siblings or not they are the first man and woman.

"The Smile of Winter" is, I think, my favorite work so far in this collection.  Nothing really happens, it's all more a feeling that Carter creates--another unnamed narrator, a woman dealing with loneliness reflects on her situation.  It's beautiful in the presentation.  I just found it a lovely and moving piece of writing--quite descriptive again with many seaside images.

"Because there are no segulls here, the only sound is the resonance of the sea.  This coastal region is quite flat, so that an excess of sky bears down with an intolerable weight, pressing the essence out of everything beneath it for it imposes such a burden on us that we have all been forced inward on ourselves in an introspective somberness intensified by the perpetual abrasive clamor of the sea."

There's lots of this sort of writing.  She likens her emotions to what she is seeing and experiencing and the images are so very apt.  Again, I can relate very well to what Carter is saying.  It's quite a special piece and one that ends in hopefulness.

"Do not think I do not realize what I am doing.  I am making a composition using the following elements: the winter beach; the winter moon; the ocean; the women; the pine trees; the rides; the driftwood; the shells; the shapes of the darkness and the shapes of water; and the refuse.  These are all inimical to  my loneliness because of their indifference to it.  Out of these pieces of inimical indifference, I intend to represent the desolate smile of winter, which, you must have gathered, is the smile I wear."

Three more pieces left in this collection to tackle.  I'll let you know how I get on with them next weekend.  I have been reading short stories from the New Yorker, but will save those for another day!

Dark Tide by Elizabeth Haynes

The deciding factor for choosing Dark Tide by Elizabeth Haynes from the three books she has published so far (a fourth is due out soon) was the setting--a barge in Kent.  I've always thought it would be cool to live on a boat.  Imagine the waves gently lapping against its sides lulling you to sleep?  Of course Dark Tide is a novel of suspense, page-turningly so, so the setting takes on a rather sinister tone in this story.

Dark Tide is your classic--girl falls into the wrong crowd, makes some very unwise decisions and then gets herself into heaps of trouble--story.  You know the sort--the heroine hears something knocking against the side of her boat in the middle of the night and goes to inspect, and you are mentally willing her not to go.  Don't do it, you think, as you know she is going to regret it later.  And sure enough, this is the start of all her problems.

No, let me back up.  The start of her problems really goes back to her life in London.  During the day she works in corporate sales which is a high-power, high-stress job.  She's very good at what she does, and she is one of the few women in the company which means life is doubly difficult.  It's the sort of job you can keep up only so long before burning out and paying a price one way or another.  Either you keep going and give up your life (and sanity) to work or find a way out.  Genevieve wants out.  She wants to buy a barge and take a year or so off to fix it up.  Maybe longer.  Maybe she'll even stay and find another job, perhaps commute to London.  But it takes money, much more money than she has even with a successful job.

Her first bad decision is taking a part-time job as a dancer in a men's club.  It's a high-end sort of club where supposedly the owner and staff look after the women and make sure it's all just looking and no touching.  Or not much anyway.  The sort of dancing Genevieve is expected to do is pole dancing and as it turns out she has a knack for it.  She performs on stage, but it's the private/VIP side of the club where the clients can buy attention from the women of a more personal nature (though still hands off).  This is where the real money is to be made.  Genevieve is almost stunned that she can make so much so quickly--she's getting paid to do something she actually sort of enjoys, getting paid to essentially work out--albeit in front of an audience.

It's when her work life and her after work life intersect and bump up against each other that the choices she has made make living the way she is so untenable.  The story opens with Genevieve already living on her barge, Revenge of the Tide, in Kent.  She spends her days fixing her boat, making improvements and settling into life in the marina.  The other residents are laid back and welcoming, life being so very different in Kent than in London.  She's preparing for a 'house-warming' party having invited friends from London down and her new marina friends.  But she's a little apprehensive to have the two groups mix.

There is something else weighing on her mind.  She has two cell phones.  One is her own private phone.  The other is a phone dedicated to just one caller.  She's only to answer it if she sees GARLAND on the ID.  For the reader this is the first inkling that not all is right in Genevieve's world--this new away-from-London-following-her-dream world.  Narrated in the first person, this is always a warning sign that either the heroine is not telling the reader everything, or maybe not telling everything accurately.  This may not be the case, but the reader is left wondering, and of course this is also classic edge-of-your-seat stuff.  

Swiftly and skilfully Haynes grabs the reader and then lets Genevieve tell her story.  The plot moves back and forth between now, life on the barge, and how she ended up there.  Genevieve quickly fills in the story describing her work and the club, which is seedier than first thought, and whose owner is perhaps involved in something illicit. 

That knocking on the side of the barge that wakes Genevieve up?  It happens on the night of the party when everyone has left.  Revenge of the Tide is her refuge.  It's her dream and where she feels most safe.  She likes the sun streaming in through the skylight and has no preoccupations with the uncovered portholes.  And she doesn't give it a second thought when she goes outside to see what is caught between the barge and the dock.  She grabs a pole to clear away the detritus, thinking that some garbage has washed up and gotten stuck there. 

But it's a body.  The body of a woman.  A woman she recognizes.  And now Genevieve's carefully executed dream begins to unravel. 

Dark Tide is perfect escapist reading.  Haynes tells a good story, undemanding but just provocative enough to draw you in and keep you wondering.  Despite my hesitations over Genevieve, she won me over in the end.  I will most certainly read her other books and am especially curious about her forthcoming novel, which is the beginning of a detective series (and you can never have enough of those, right?).  I still think it would be cool to live on a barge.

More New & Notables

You know, I put these new books posts together as much for me as I do for you.  See, I am very near maxing out the number of books that can be requested at one time at the library.  How crazy they have a limit, right?  Then again, the limit is forty books.  Yes, I am nearing forty book requests (keeping in mind that quite a few of the books are not yet published so they are just hanging in the system until they are ready to circulate).  I should really go through and refine my list, as I tend to add titles pell mell.  Part of the beauty of library books is borrowing whatever strikes my fancy.  If it sounds good . . . sure, add it to the list.  Then when I check it out and I discover maybe it's not really one for me after all, no harm done.  It can go back and I need not feel guilty about it.  I often go back and refer to my lists and see which books have since been published that I might want to get in line for (or buy in some cases).

Here are ten soon to be published books that I am on the lookout for right now:

The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams -- "Manhattan, 1964. Vivian Schuyler, newly graduated from Bryn Mawr College, has recently defied the privilege of her storied old Fifth Avenue family to do the unthinkable for a budding Kennedy-era socialite: break into the Madison Avenue world of razor-stylish Metropolitan magazine. But when she receives a bulky overseas parcel in the mail, the unexpected contents draw her inexorably back into her family’s past, and the hushed-over crime passionnel of an aunt she never knew, whose existence has been wiped from the record of history."

Under a Silent Moon by Elizabeth Haynes -- "In Under a Silent Moon, Elizabeth Haynes interweaves fictional primary source materials—police reports, phone messages, interviews—and multiple character viewpoints to create a sexy, edgy, and compulsively readable tale of murder, mystery, and unsettling suspense."  I've just finished Darkest Tide, which I enjoyed very much and will write about soon--so am in the market for another book by Haynes!

The Book of You by Claire Kendal -- "Masterfully constructed, filled with exquisite tension and a pervasive sense of menace, The Book of You explores the lines between love and compulsion, fantasy and reality, and offers a heart-stopping portrait of a woman determined to survive. Claire Kendal’s extraordinary debut will haunt readers long after it reaches its terrifying, breathtaking conclusion."

What Lies Beneath by Sarah Rayne -- "The Poisoned Village. That’s the grim nickname the locals have for Priors Bramley, emptied of its residents when a Cold War experiment with chemical weapons went badly wrong. But the nightmares in Priors Bramley have been festering a lot longer, going back to the long-abandoned Cadence Manor. What happened there in the years before the first world war? And what is the source of the eerie music drifting down the crumbling village streets?"

Black Lake by Johanna Lane -- "A debut novel about a family losing grip of its legacy: a majestic house on the cliffs of Ireland."  I've lucked out and have a review copy of this--will be starting to read it soon!

Landing Gear by Kate Pullinger -- "From the award-winning author of The Mistress of Nothing comes a highly imaginative story of colliding worlds and extraordinary connections.  Inspired by real-life accounts of airplane stowaways, Landing Gear is about the complex texture of modern life, and how we fight the loneliness of the nuclear family to hold on to one another."

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr -- "A blind French girl on the run from the German occupation and a German orphan-turned-Resistance tracker struggle with their respective beliefs after meeting on the Brittany coast."

The Untold by Courtney Collins -- "With shades of Water for Elephants and True Grit, a stunning debut novel set in the Australian outback about a female horse thief, her bid for freedom, and the two men trying to capture her."

The Unwitting by Ellen Feldman -- "Set in the literary Manhattan of the 1950s, at a journal much like the Paris Review, The Unwitting evokes a bygone era of burgeoning sexual awareness and intrigue and an exuberance of ideas that had the power to change the world. Resonant, illuminating, and utterly absorbing, The Unwitting is about the lies we tell, the secrets we keep, and the power of love in the face of both."

The Forbidden by F.R. Tallis -- "The Alienist meets The Exorcist in Tallis’ new novel of psychological suspense, as an ambitious young doctor explores the dangerous border between science and the supernatural." Hmm.  The Tallis of Max Liebermann fame?

Call me silly, but . . . new books?  They make me giddy with excitement!  Is there a book you are waiting for now that makes you giddy with excitement, too?

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Two other small pieces of business.  I have been a bit snowed under with the general busy-ness of work and life and so have fallen behind in emails and blog visiting (more than normal on the latter).  I am hoping to catch up soon. 

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Okay, I have plenty to read.  Really.  Plenty.  But it's crossed my mind (I just watched for the seemingly millionth time--a favorite movie--Crossing Delancy Street.  I was thinking I read very little "Jewish Literature"--not books on the Holocaust at the moment, but novels about Jewish life in general--contemporary or historical.  It's always good to have a list of titles tucked away in the back of my mind for later consumption, so any suggestions are (as always) most appreciated.

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And, yay.  Tomorrow is Friday!

Little House on the Prairie

And so the adventure continues.  I'm finding the Little House books to be thoroughly 'gulpable', and if I don't make myself ration them out I think I could easily read my way through the rest of the set without so much as a pause.  The story, of course, begins with Little House in the Big Woods--the big woods being in Wisconsin.  Farmer Boy is something of a divergence, but a good one, and a story I never bothered with when I was a child.  Almanzo's story takes place in New York state at about roughly the same time. 

When we last were with Laura and her family she was Pa's little Half Pint, a mere six or seven years old, trying to be good but struggling with naughty moments, wholly aware of her plainness measured against elder sister Mary's goodness and golden ringletted prettiness.  Laura is such a wonderful, sympathetic character.  Her love of her family, Pa especially, makes you feel all warm and happy inside yet the storytelling is tempered by her shortcomings.  Reading the books brings a lovely nostalgic feeling yet the hardships the Ingalls family endures is a reminder, too, that though these are children's books, life was not easy on the Prairie in the late 1800s.

The tone of the story and the way it's told is much the same as the previous two books, but life for the Ingalls's has changed drastically.  They have left everything and everyone they know behind in search of vast open spaces where families are not crowded up against each other and where land and its bounty is more plentiful.  After an anxious crossing of a rather furious creek, they travel to and settle in Indian Country--Kansas.

"No road, not even the faintest trace of wheels or of a rider's passing, could br seen anywhere.  That prairie looked as if no human eye had ever seen it before.  Only the tall wildgrass covered the endless empty landand a great empty sky arched over it.  Far away the sun's edge touched the rim of the earth.  The sun was enormous and it was throbbing and pulsing with light.  All around the sky's edge ran a pale pink glow, and above the blue the sky was no color at all.  Purple shadows were gathering over the land, and the wind was mourning."

Laura and her family must now start from scratch.  They travel in covered wagon for weeks until they find a plot of land to build their new home--one so very, very far from any other settlers where they can live off of and make a new and hopefully prosperous life.  While the stories so far followed the rhythm of the seasons in already established communities, now they are living all sorts of new and mostly exciting, occasionally a little terrifying, adventures.  The covered wagon, their home on wheels for so long, folds down and is collapsed into smaller parts, and Pa with the help of Ma, begins to build their log cabin home and barn. 

They discover that they are not quite as alone on the prairie as they had first believed, though their neighbors are many miles away.  Trading work (the work ethic and independence of families--not being beholden for so much as a single nail--is a strong theme in the books) means their home becomes quite warm and cozy and they slowly become 'comfortably' self-sufficient.  What to modern sensibilities would be a frugal, very simple and pared down existence was just enough for the Ingalls family.  It's such a reminder that 'stuff' does not bring happiness. 

The world was such a very different place, and even a children's story told through the eyes of a young girl is a reminder of just how different.  Neighbors were not just other families or bachelors making their way west, but being Indian Country, Native American tribes were in abundance.  Little House on the Prairie was published in 1935 and set some time in the latter years of the 1800s.  Indians were a palpable presence and at times a fearsome one at that.  The views and attitudes of the white settlers were not always the most enlightened ones--these settlers would have been trying to (perhaps not always successfully) coexist with them.  Ultimately it is the question of who gets to settle where that will push on the Ingalls family to their next adventure at the end of the book.  

I think this is my favorite book of the set so far (I seem to like each new read just a tiny bit more than the last), though there is so much to love about all these stories.  They are simply told, but beautifully told as well.  It's all the little details that make them so interesting, the family dynamics and general enthusiasm of Laura that turn the books into page-turners.  I've had to look a few things up, by the way.  I remembered well the sugar snow (made from the sap from the Maple trees) in the first book, but there are some new dishes to contemplate now.

"Breakfast was ready.  When Pa came from the creek they all sat by the fire and ate fried mush and prairie-chicken hash."

Fried mush is fried cornmeal mush, or hasty pudding.  It would have been chilled, sliced and fried in fat--I would have opted to eat it with maple syrup!  Food seems to play a prominent role in these stories, though less so this time around.  I would have enjoyed the little pickles and the sweet potatoes cooked in the ashes of a fire, I think.  Remind me, however, not to complain about slow mail.  Living on the prairie, two days ride from the nearest town of Independence, you don't get mail or even any supplies unless a special trip is planned. 

" . . . Charles, I'd like to write to the folks in Wisconsin.  If you mail a letter now, they can write this winter, and then we can hear from them next spring."

Now that is patience.  It's a mostly happy existence for the Ingalls family, and certainly their year in Kansas is an exciting one, but the book's cover illustration is apt since it fits both the beginning of the story as well as the end (witout giving too much away).  Next up is On the Banks of Plum Creek--I'm not sure how Laura is going to be (ten or eleven perhaps?), but I am ready for her new adventures.  Bookmark is already at the first chapter and it sits ready on my night stand!

Teaser Tuesday: How the Heather Looks

Do you remember about a year ago I read a marvelous book about a British family who went in search of storybook Europe?  It was called Heidi's Alp by Christina Hardyment and it was a mixture of travel narrative and literary history.  The Hardyments traveled through Europe in the mid-1980s and Christina wrote about their experiences.  I have found a perfect companion book and it is something of a reversal of 'narrators' though of a similar subject.  I just started reading last night and I think it is going to be as interesting and entertaining as Heidi's Alp was.

Joan Bodger published How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey into the British Sources of Children's Books in 1959 after she, her husband, and two small children traveled to Britain to find the places they had read about in children's books which they have been raised on and loved.  Both Joan and her husband, American by birth, each had one British parent.  The pair were confirmed Anglophiles and it seemed as though their children were following suit.   A modest windfall the year before meant they could pursue a dream of spending a summer holiday in England.  They had spent time there as children and were "steeped in English history and literature."  Would it be possible to find the imaginary places they had read about--places not listed on any map but firmly part of their memories. 

None of the general inquiries they made netted anything concrete from their British travel sources, but Bodger remained undaunted.  How handy to have a husband who was a reference librarian!  She compares their explorations to an Emily Dickinson poem.  They only needed faith (and no doubt a sense of adventure and inquisitiveness).

After a weeklong journey aboard a Cunard liner, where Joan had read an article about Randolph Caldecott, they decided they would begin their journey in Whitchurch.  Now I have a confession to make.  I very recently ordered the most recent Caldecott Award Winners and the books sit on display in the library where I work.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I must have known this?  But to be honest I can't say I have given just who Caldecott was much thought.  (Hanging in head in shame for just a moment now).  The Caldecott Medal was named for Randolph Caldecott--the first award was given in 1938.  He was himself a children's book illustrator.  And Whitchurch is where he lived as a young man.

"Suddenly, before we expected it, we saw a small brick building marked Whitchurch Council School standing by itself along the roadside.  John stopped the car so Ian and I could go in and ask the teacher to direct us.  I wondered what it would be like to talk to children who walked to school each morning over the very fields and country lanes made famous in the Caldecott illustrations.  Did every household own a dog-eared copy or two, or did the teacher have the thrill and pleasure of introducing the books?  If so, the experience must be akin to holding a child up to the mirror for the first time and letting him recognize what it is the rest of the world holds dear."

Obviously the Bodgers were not just readers but Readers.  As it turns out no one really knew who Caldecott was (granted he was born in 1846 and died less than 40 years later--so very far away from his beginnings--in Florida).  They found traces of his work, but nothing concrete.  Where they found him was in the beauty of the countryside--the inspiration for his drawings and paintings.  And somehow that seems just as it should be.

Like Heidi's Alp, this is going to be a mixture of literature, travel, history and social history.  What is going to make it even more interesting is that the Bodgers traveled to England in the 1950s--such a different world then than now even.  A world where "nothing comes ready-wrapped", "it cost threepence for a flimsy paper bag to carry one's purchases" and where each item had a proper place selling it--butter at the butcher's, fruit at the florist's and frozen food at Woolworth's.  I might have to keep my notebook handy to write down references--like Hovis Bread(?) to look up later.

I can already see new paths my reading might well take as I make my way through How the Heather Looks.  As you can see I had to go look up Randolph Caldecott's books (below are a few photos of his illustrations in case you are as curious about them as I was).  They are going in search of Narnia next.  Wouldn't it be fun to read the books along with their travels?  I may have to read a Pooh story or about Jemima Puddle-Duck.  And then I could check out each Caldecott winner from the first to the most recent . . .  Ah, yes, this might well be a dangerous book to read.  (But in a good way).