Reading Summary Feb 2023

It’s been a busy month, although it started with a delicious little respite in my old ‘stomping ground’ on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. I have 17 books listed on Goodreads for the past month, although two of them were abandoned at the 40% mark. Seven of the books fitted into my #FrenchFebruary personal reading challenge – and in fact, all of them ended up being French from France, as the only Swiss author I attempted (Joel Dicker) ended up being one of the abandoned books. Eleven of the books were written by women writers (and none of them were in the DNF category), 12 were written in another language. Three I read for (Corylus) ‘work’, one was non-fiction, one will be reviewed for #ReadIreland in March, two were Book Club reads (Blood Sugar for the Virtual Crime Book Club, Embers for London Reads the World), and seven can be approximately put into the crime fiction category (although two of those I did not finish). Six of the books I read were from independent publishers, although I didn’t review all of them for the #ReadIndies challenge.

Please ignore Antoine Wilson’s Mouth to Mouth, which shouldn’t be in this screenshot, because I read it in January (and have already largely forgotten).

Here’s a quick recap of the books I reviewed (most of which also fell into the #ReadIndies category)

• Elsa Triolet, Violette Leduc and Lydie Salvayre
• Jean Teulé and Florence Noiville
• Cloé Mehdi
• Romain Gary
• Balzac’s Lost Illusions I read in December and January but reviewed this month

My favourite reads this month were probably Romain Gary and Violette Leduc, but Audrey Magee’s The Colony was very, very good as well. I’m still not quite sure about Embers by Márai Sándor – on the one hand, I interpret it as a beautiful example of self-delusion, yearning for a mythical past which never existed and the damage caused by bearing pointless grudges (and I can see historical/political parallels in that). It reminded me a lot of Browning’s My Last Duchess. On the other hand, I am not entirely convinced that Márai intended it to be read in this way: he may have actually shared some of Henrik’s beliefs and regrets for the old order. Anyway, I intend to review it together with two other novels about old mansions that I am currently reading.

I watched a few TV series this month: Wednesday with my younger son (which was entertaining enough, but rather predictable and forgettable), Borgen (watched Season 4 with oil in Greenland, then rewatched the first season, which reminded me why I stopped watching it back in 2013, because it was getting a little too close to the problems in my own marriage, despite my distinct lack of prime ministerial qualities and being considerably less busy than Birgitte Nyborg). It was quite eye-opening watching the documentary Fight the Power: How Hip-Hop Changed the World, with many political and social details which were either before my time or which I had forgotten.

For most of February, I barely watched any films, but then my older son came back for the last week and we more than made up for it. I thought Tár and Whiplash complemented each other well in their portrayal of bullying behaviour, problematic geniuses and the idea that art has to come from a place of suffering (it takes great pressure to create a diamond etc.). I can never resist films about artists and creators – and they also worked together well with the novel about ballet (and a lot else) that I read by Meg Abbott: The Turnout, which I really enjoyed. Claire Denis’ Beau Travail is a fascinating rare example of toxic masculinity but also the beauty of the male body perceived by the female gaze – with a breathtaking performance by the always watchable and enigmatic Denis Lavant. I also saw Barry Lyndon (one of my older son’s favourite films) in the cinema at the BFI, which is a very different experience from seeing it on a TV screen.

I don’t want to praise either myself or him, but I just wanted to say how delightful it is to have a grown-up child with whom you can spend a lovely day in London, having lunch in Chinatown, discussing drugs, political philosophy and film music while walking down to the Embankment, trawling the second-hand book stands on the South Bank, going to the Poetry Library mini-exhibition on clothes of women poets, watching Barry Lyndon at the BFI and then reading on the train on the way home in companionable silence.

March is going to be Nordic Reading Month for me, with a fairly broad definition of Nordic: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Canada. Of course, if I can fit any more into the #ReadIreland tag, I will, but it promises to be an extremely busy and tiring month at work.

This was the week that was…

Despite a very busy week at work (this is going to be my refrain over the next month or so), I managed to cram in a few extracurricular activities. I took my older son (or should that be: he took me?) to the Manga exhibition at the British Museum and this time it was not quite as busy as when I went with the younger one, so I managed to take some pictures.

Pikachu and Pokemon is what most of us know in the West, but there was so much more on offer…

My boys are rather partial to Josuke from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures. He is so vain about his hair that he will pick a fight with anyone who comments about it.

Personally, I am more interested in exploring the Saint Young Men manga, which features Jesus Christ and Buddha as flatmates.

Scultpture made out of onomatopeia appearing in manga in Japanese katakana script

With more than 5000 manga artists active in Japan today, and with hundreds if not thousands of series appearing in weekly or monthly formats, it was impossible to cover all of my children’s favourites, so they were inevitably somewhat disappointed. However, as an exhibition exploring the origins of the manga (in the Heian scrolls, for instance) and showing the breadth of manga topics (from sports to adventure to love to classic novels or non-fiction), it was an excellent introduction to a Japanese art and literary form that has conquered the world.

After a short stop in Portsmouth for a conference…

The first time I saw the City Hall tower instead of the Spinnaker Tower…

… I warmed up for my birthday weekend with a trip to the theatre, to watch the charismatic Andrew Scott (aka Sexy Priest in Fleabag) in a Noel Coward play Present Laughter at the Old Vic. This was actually a preview performance, but the cast seemed to slip effortlessly into that blend of physical farce and caustic wit which is signature Coward. It is about an ageing matinee idol who seems unable to let go of his selfish ways and giant-sized ego. A stylish and very funny production, with one significant change to the original: a gender inversion, so that the main character Garry Essendine’s business partner is a woman and he finds himself having a one-night stand with her husband (in the original play the business partner is a man and he slips up with the wife). It felt quite natural and perhaps closer to what we know of Noel Coward and his entourage.

The play was written in 1939 and meant to provide a little light relief from the sombre storm clouds gathering over Europe. It went into rehearsals but the war broke out, so it wasn’t performed until 1942. At a time of not quite as severe uncertainty and gloom, it still provides a wonderful evening of escapist entertainment and belly laughs.

Andrew Scott proves himself a master of comic timing and exaggeration, but also imbues the character with a fundamental sense of loneliness. Photo credit: Manuel Harlan, Evening Standard.

In terms of reading this week, I’ve been cracking on with my selection of American authors: David Vann’s Aquarium very nearly broke me (I just cannot cope with sad children). Cara Black’s Murder in Bel Air was suitably entertaining, although I think of it as more French than American. I am also currently reading Sam Shepard’s miniature pieces in Cruising Paradise, which is very Dakota -American Midwest. By way of contrast, I had a craving to reread Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley – where American penchant for action and the self-made man meet European lifestyle and indolence.

Cultural Plans for 2019

I’m not quite sure what to call this post, because it is about far more than just reading (although reading plays a huge part). It’s also about writing, translating, attending literary events and far more. So let me just put the extremely broad label of ‘culture’ on it.

Reading

If you’ve read some of my posts about the #EU27Project, you will know what will keep me busy until end of March 2019. I have most of the books already sitting and waiting on my bookshelves (a couple maybe from the library, although our library does not do very well on anything foreign that is not a Scandi-thriller). Nevertheless, any tips for Cyprus and Luxembourg would still be gratefully received.

I’ve always had a bit of an obsession with the Paris Commune (perhaps because of its close association with Montmartre (where it started) and Belleville (where it ended), my favourite parts of Paris. So when Emma from Book Around the Corner reviewed a book about this topic (in no flattering terms) and suggested that Zola’s La Débâcle (The Debacle) would provide a better background to it. So Emma and I have decided to read Zola ‘together’ in May 2019 – and you are very welcome to join in if you like. I also have other historical and fictional accounts of the Commune that I want to read that month, so May will my revolutionary month.

There are two rendezvous that I never miss ever since I discovered them: Women in Translation Month in August and #GermanLitMonth in November, so I hope to take part in those this year as well. I also want to read and review critically at least one book of poetry a month – because that helps me rethink my own poetry.

Last but not least, I have to make a serious indent in the books I already own. The stacks my shelves, assorted pieces of furniture, floor are toppling over, while my Kindle hides hundreds of impulse buys. I may not read them all, but I need to triage, discard or read and not buy any new books. Of course, I’ll still visit the library on occasion.

Other than that, I will rely more on reading by whim and happenstance. I’m cutting right down on my reviewing commitments. Although I’ll be very sorry to say goodbye to my long-term association (more than 6 years!) with the wonderful Crime Fiction Lover site, I want to follow in the footsteps of its previous reviewers who became writers, such as Luca Veste and Eva Dolan. And the only way to do that is to hoard my precious time more tightly to my chest!

I’ll still be following the Asymptote Blog, with its frequent interviews with translators and writers, and literary news from around the world.

Although my association with Asymptote Journal of literature in translation and its Book Club has been shorter (a year and a half), I am equally sad to cut my ties with a literary venture whose emphasis on quality (of both literature and translation) is second to none. I will hopefully still serve as a point of contact to help organise events for the Book Club, but am no longer able to keep up the daily second shift until late at night.

Writing

I’ll be blogging and tweeting far less. I won’t feel as pressured to review every single book that I read (which was perfectly fine for the first 2-3 years of my blog, but then I started to feel guilty about it). I will work hard on finalising the poems (and perhaps swapping out some old ones with some new ones) for the chapbook I hope to send out soon. I may share some of my progress (or lack thereof) on my novel. I don’t have a daily word target, or even a daily routine, but I will make sure to keep in touch with my own work far more regularly throughout the week, rather than treating it as a welcome but very distant relative who visits once or twice a year.

Other Plans

Manon publicity shot by Jason Bell, English National Ballet.

I still have a few theatrical escapades planned, but am again practising some restraint. Tickets are very expensive (and reviewing takes time, although I might still do it occasionally, as you get to experience shows you might otherwise not have come across). I will see the ballet Manon with the peerless Alina Cojocaru in January (one of my favourite ballets, so dramatic, so sad). In February it will The War of the Worlds with my older son.

Can I just do a proud Mum shout-out here? It is so rewarding to take him to a film or play, as he really dissects it and examines it critically (without being annoyingly nitpicky). We saw Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap yesterday in London for his birthday and we had such fun actually talking all the way back (no messing about with phones) about the play, favourite films of 2018 (Black Panther and Bohemian Rhapsody scored highly with both of us) and reminiscing about his toddler days. I really enjoyed his company, which is not always the case with children and teenagers, even though you might love them to bits. And I don’t think it has much to do with the way I brought him up, since younger son is not all like this.

No holidays abroad with the children this year and indeed very few holidays at all, but I will treat myself to a trip to the south of France around Easter time (if the planes will still be flying without a hitch after Brexit) to stay once more with the friends in Luberon where I’ve previously been amazingly productive.

I’ve also decided to be extravagant and treat myself to one crime festival this year. After carefully examining dates and pennies, I opted for CrimeFest in Bristol 9-12 May, so do let me know if you are planning to attend, as it’s always fun to meet up with people you know so well online.

One example of a Landmark Trust property which has caught my eye.

The final ‘treat’ will be a working holiday in July, i.e. going to a few university open days with my older son and taking in some of the sights in England along the way. It’s still a bit early to worry about university, but it gives us an excuse to meander and stay in some amazing locations, thanks to the Landmark Trust.

So those are my plans for 2019. Whatever your plans are, whether you make resolutions or not, I hope the year goes well for you, and that the pollution of world news and events does not impinge too much upon your daily lives.

Weekly Summary, 7 October 2018

The week started with an X-ray (no bones broken, luckily) and an ankle which got steadily better but still got painful and swollen at the end of the day, especially after a hectic commute or a long car ride. So I cancelled some of my plans, most notably the Winchester Poetry Festival, which I had been looking forward to for months. I bought the tickets back in April and was looking forward to seeing Kathleen Jamie, Pascale Petit and Rebecca Goss again, as well as listening to World Voices

There was another reason why I cancelled my trip to Winchester (which would have been an all day trip). Motherly guilt played a part.

At the time of booking, I thought it would be one of the weekends when the children would be with their father, but plans had changed. I’ve been going out quite a bit lately and not seeing them at all even on weekdays. I’d also just attended a parents’ evening about GCSE revision and felt I’d neglected my older son’s exam preparation. Although he is reasonably conscientious, he does need the occasional reminder or a check of his work. So in the end we spent Saturday going through all the exam topics and setting a timetable for revisions, especially with his mocks coming up at the end of November.

One event I did attend this week was at a small community theatre in Islington, The Pleasance, where I saw Aid Memoir by Glenda Cooper – a satire about international aid and TV appeals, making us question our own often patronising attitudes towards humanitarian crises and the ‘deserving’ recipients of aid. A short but really powerful piece of work (which chimed with my personal experience at both the giving and receiving end of the equation). You can read my full review here. 

Well, if I couldn’t go out much, then the books came to me. A modest haul by my standards this week (and about time too, I can hear you think!). I received my Asymptote Book Club title for September, which is a short story collection from the Asian continent (I will say more once everyone has received their copy). I also got a French edition of Finisterra by Carlos de Oliveira, following the enthusiastic review on The Untranslated blog. My supportive community of L’Atelier Writers recommended Sandra Scofield’s The Last Draft to encourage me to finally finish my darn novels. Let’s hope that it does the trick! And Raven Books have sent me an ARC of The Flower Girls by Alice Clark-Platts, out in 2019.

I have also selected two NYRB titles to take part in #NYRBFortnight, as seen on Lizzy Siddal’s Twitter feed. Penelope Mortimer’s The Pumpkin Eater is proving horribly timely, ferocious and funny so far. Meanwhile, Jakob Wasserman’s My Marriage (the man’s side of the story) may have to wait until November, when I will inevitably take part in German Literature Month, as hosted by Lizzy and Caroline. Other authors I may use for that month (from my Berlin haul): Eva Menasse, Marlen Haushofer, Fred Uhlman and Martin Suter.

Events Summary for September

I started off writing a weekly summary of events for this post and then realised that it is the end of September, so a monthly summary might also be appropriate. But first the weekly bit.

Two rather lovely events this week. First, a literary evening as part of the Festival America events across London, with Canadian writers Heather O’Neill and Michael Redhill at the very beautiful Canada House in Trafalgar Square. They even had a throne under lock and key, made specially for George V when he visited Canada.

The main staircase at Canada House.

Both of them are prize-winning authors in Canada, less well-known over here, but there is such a contrast between the two of them. Heather O’Neill has been on my radar since I stumbled almost accidentally across her debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals in the McGill University bookshop while I was on a business trip to Montreal. I was so moved by that story that I automatically wanted to read everything else written by O’Neill. Yet when I got to The Lonely Hearts Hotel, I was equally entranced and repulsed by it. Hearing about Heather’s crazy childhood and parents who ‘had no idea how to function in the real world’, it is understandable that her view of the world is a combination of hardcore cynicism and childish wonder. She is extremely entertaining when she talks about her horrific experiences as a child, but she has clearly turned to fiction as a way to process trauma. As she said ‘Children have no language to express the bad things that have happened to them. My fiction tries to give them that language without taking away any of the nuances.’

She also had interesting things to say about literary prizes, having been a judge on the Giller Prize (the Canadian equivalent of the Man Booker) this year. She said that most of the books she felt strongly about none of the other judges liked – ever the rebel!

Michael Redhill is a poet and novelist, and seems at first glance to fit very much into the mainstream straight white male cannon. I didn’t quite get what he tried to achieve with Bellevue Square, but I thought it was an interesting and brave attempt, like Paul Auster’s New York trilogy. Then you find out that he has also published crime fiction under the pseudonym Inger Ash Wolfe – now I look forward to reading some of those. And there was quite a bit of subversion in the way he talked about literature and literary prizes – in his opinion the books that win most years are the second place vote for everybody. In other words, the book that all the judges mind least if it wins. He said that for him Bellevue Square is a clearing house for humanity, with such an assortment of characters from all walks of life, and he particularly admired how Heather gave such depth of character to the people in her novels – people that we would normally dismiss or avoid or run away from. 

Heather O’Neill (left) and Michael Redhill being interviewed by Georgina Godwin.

On Friday I had the unexpected good fortune to go to an evening of ballet at the Peacock Theatre. The New English Ballet Theatre, who are a young, energetic company very much open to innovation, had a double bill of Remembrance/The Four Seasons and I reviewed it for View from the Cheap Seat.

September has gone by even faster than the previous months, so what have been the highlights?

We started off the month in one of my favourite places in England, Cambridge, then continued with another mother-and-sons trip down memory lane to Vienna. Although it is always bittersweet to go back to the places where you were once so happy, I hope that I’ve inspired a future generation to take advantage of opportunities and expand their horizons.

I had the bestest of times singing and dancing along to one of my living heroines, Janelle Monae. I did a short workshop with Isabel Costello and Voula Tsoflias about developing your resilience as a writer, which made me decide to focus more of my energy on submissions once more. I saw another of my writing heroines, Sarah Moss, and was inspired by the Poetry Book and Magazine Fair. And, alongside all that, I’ve been learning a new (and very counter-intuitive) events management system at work and helping roll out a new initiative, getting the boys settled into their new school year and starting contemporary dance classes. 

October is set to be just as busy, so let’s hope that this sprained ankle which has laid me low this weekend is nothing more serious (X-ray to follow tomorrow) and won’t slow me down at all.

Weekly Events and Giant Poetry Book Haul

When I said that I’d be cutting back on cultural events for financial reasons, I may have forgotten to mention that I’d already pre-booked myself pretty solid until mid-October. So there is still plenty to keep you and me entertained until then. Plus, I keep forgetting about my healthy resolution, as attested by this picture of all the poetry books I bought at the Poetry Book and Magazine Fair on Saturday.

But before I write about the Poetry Fair, let me mention the delightful evening with Sarah Moss at Waterstones Gower Street on Thursday night. Sarah Moss is one of my favourite living writers in the UK at the moment and I’ve become a completist about her. In fact, I’d just ordered the only book in her back catalogue which I haven’t read, Names for the Sea, but it didn’t arrive in time to get it signed. [I have yet to buy and read her latest one, Ghost Wall, but I am pacing myself, because what will I do when I finish all she has written to date?]

Sarah is every bit as intelligent, humorous, quirky and modest as you would expect from reading her books. I won’t say any more at this point, because I want to write a proper article about her books and include the things I learnt that evening. But let me just say that we all gasped out loud when she said that her process for writing a novel was to write the first draft then delete it and empty the trash folder so that she isn’t tempted to dig it out again, before embarking on ‘doing it again properly’.

On Saturday I trekked back to my workplace to take part in a workshop on how to put together a poetry pamphlet for publication with the lovely Rachel Piercey, who was until recently at Emma Press. It was a very informative, hands-on session, and I greatly enjoyed it, but it did mean that the afternoon wasn’t quite long enough to visit all of the stands, nor did I get to go to any of the poetry readings.

I was there as a multiple personality: 1) reader who loves poetry; 2) poet who wants to get a pamphlet out soon; 3) collaborator at a literary journal seeking to connect with other literary journals or find new translations/translators. I think I did well especially in the first category, because I soon ran out of both cash and space in my backpack. Here are some of my discoveries. 

Burning Eye Books specialises in publishing spoken word artists. Given my interest in cultural displacement and being the eternal outsider, I’m particularly looking forward to reading Amani Saeed’s work.

Brooklyn-based Ugly Duckling Presse has an Eastern European Poets’ series, and I couldn’t resist this little-known essay by my beloved Marina Tsvetaeva (in which she convinces herself to abandon her female lover and return to her husband), as well as the beautifully-produced 6X6 (6 poems by 6 poets) magazines.

Stranger Press is an up-and-coming small indie (not to be confused with Strangers Press at UEA), which produces simply exquisite illustrated poetry pamphlets and art books, as well as collectors’ objects. This particular book (in white, with a postcard beside it) by Steven J. Fowler is entitled I Fear My Best Work Behind Me and dances on a border between art and poetry.

A Midsummer Night’s Press is the lovechild and brainchild of American writer and translator Lawrence Schimel, who now lives in Spain. I snapped up books in the poetry in translation series, but the press also focuses on works inspired by folklore and mythology, and texts exploring sexual identity and gender. I got a poet from each of the Baltic States, plus Spanish/Catalan author Care Santos, who is best known for her novels.

I have examples here of each of the areas that Bad Betty Press specialises in: the Shots series, a small-format publication of a single long poem; pamphlet for a single poet; anthology with fifty poets writing about mental health issues.

Tapsalteerie is based in Aberdeenshire (Tapselteerie is Scots for ‘topsy-turvy’) and publishes poets based in Scotland, in English, Scots, Gaelic, with a focus on new writing.

I’d met V Press before, at the Flash Fiction Festival. In addition to flash fiction, they also publish poetry. V stands for ‘very very’ and it appears they are very, very good at what they do, as Rice and Rain has won the Saboteur Award for Poetry Pamphlet in 2018.

Sad Press is anything but sad: they publish really interesting experimental, graphic poetic work, as well as debuts and more established names. They have also just published Roz Kaveney’s translation of Catullus and Adam Roberts’ version of Vergil.

I read a little bit of this book during the workshop, as the person sitting next to me had it, and was captivated once again by the theme of bilingualism and losing one’s cultural identity. Ignition Press is based at the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre and has started publishing only this year: three poets with three very different (international) outlooks on life.

These two books I got for my sons: a haiku anthology by The British Haiku Society and an anthology of women poets for my older son, to counteract the lack of women writers on his GCSE curriculum. The latter is published by Seren, based in Wales, one of the presses I aspire to be published by one day.

Let’s not forget the poetry magazines! Modern Poetry in Translation is always inspirational and I nabbed the last copy of a special edition on Korean poetry. Ambit is a well-established magazine publishing prose, poetry and art, ‘sometimes shocking, sometimes experimental, sometimes comic, always compelling’. Butcher’s Dog is a biannual poetry magazine in the North East of England.

It was lovely to see how many people were at the fair, although I suspect most of them were poets themselves. The poetry world is a world fuelled by passion and hard work rather than money, so it’s important to support other poets. And I think it can be said that I certainly did that! I also want to start reviewing poetry more frequently on the blog, as well.

Weekly Summary 16 September 2018

Back to work, school and literary life! I do love September and its routines, although this week has been very tentative about routines so far.

I was still recovering from my trip to Vienna at the start of the week and pleased that my older son is now a Mozart fan as well (thank you, Amadeus the film, despite all your inaccuracies!). On Wednesday night I was blown away by Janelle Monae live. On Thursday I trialled a contemporary dance class and enjoyed running low and artistically from one corner of the gym to another (yep, I’ll be going regularly). On Saturday I attended a workshop organised by The Word Factory and run by Isabel Costello and Voula Tsoflias on developing your resilience as a writer. A very necessary and helpful session, which I hope will act as a kickstarter for me, as I’ve stopped submitting for about a year now, when the double dollop of rejection from writing and job applications got too much. Good news, however, about the one piece I did submit – one of the pieces I wrote during the Flash Fiction Festival in Bristol this July, was accepted!

Another news item which made me very happy was that two Asymptote Book Club titles are on the first-ever longlist for the National Book Award for translated literature in the US. That is a HUGE achievement in just 9 months of existence of the Book Club. We clearly have a very wise team of editors who know how to pick the right titles (I can be immodest because it is not me that is involved in the final choice). We are going to be expanding the membership to the EU countries shortly and also organising some events, so plenty of exciting work ahead! If you are thinking of joining or renewing your membership, we have a flash sale going on this weekend. To ring in our milestone 30th issue, sign up for a three-month subscription by 2359hrs today (in your timezone) and get 10% off. And if you are wondering how you can fit in 12 additional books from all over the world to add to your tottering TBR pile, there is also an ‘every other month’ subscription option if you sign up for a whole year (with the corresponding price reduction, of course).

Had to include the Italian edition, because I love the cover.

Last but not least, here are the three books which will be joining my bedside table pile this week.

1. Asymptote Book Club’s August title is Brice Matthieussent’s Revenge of the Translator, translated by Emma Ramadan, which sounds like a postmodern confection of utter delight (a translator tries to justify the changes he makes to the novel’s plot and then blurs the lines between reality and text).
2. Endo Shusaku’s Scandal, transl. Van C. Gessel, is also about a novelist, keeping up appearances and disturbing sexual appetites (it will make an interesting comparison with Leila Slimani’s Dans le jardin de l’ogre, which I’ve just reread for a review).
3. Patricia Laurent: Santiago’s Way, transl. Geoff Hargreaves. A huge hit and prizewinner in Mexico, this one was translated a while ago but hasn’t received much attention here. The blurb makes me think of Zero by Gine Cornelia Pedersen.  “Imagine that all your life you’ve been guided by someone else. Someone who’s steered you away from trouble, taken you across the world, brought you success. He’s called Santiago and he lives in your head—and now he’s turned against you.”

Cultural Summary 12 Aug 2018

No big events or travels this week, but I did get to see four films – unheard of record! These are not serious or lengthy reviews, merely my initial reaction to them.

Ocean’s 8

I so much wanted to love this, and it was indeed an entertaining, frothy caper, but it felt rushed. There was too much focus on the heist itself and not enough on the relationship between the women, so it really was a bit of a waste having so many talented women together in the same room (literally and metaphorically).

45 Years

Superlative acting by Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, a film that really takes its time and explores nuances. It’s almost a play – very few characters, mainly composed of the dialogue between the couple. The way the wife puts up with all the grumpiness and eccentricities of her husband (aside from the drama that befalls their marriage). One scene that critics have not commented upon but which really struck a chord with me was that scene with Kate helping out on a tourist tour on the Norfolk broads – and all the visitors are old women. So many people stay in an unsatisfactory marriage for fear of being alone in old age – and yet for most women that will be the case anyway. Made me glad that I only wasted 20 years on a marriage instead of 45…

Mary Shelley

Luminous performance by the two young leads – Elle Fanning and Douglas Booth, but full of historical and biographical inaccuracies which irritated me. I can see the point of some of them, how they were used to heighten dramatic structure. For instance, Mary did not meet Shelley in Scotland and knew from the start that he was married, since he came to dinner with his wife at her father’s house. She had more than one child who died in infancy. Others elements were excluded because they were inconvenient truths – even nowadays. Her relationship with her half-sister, Claire Claremont, was not quite as loving and caring as portrayed and there was a lot of jealousy there (plus, there was another half-sister on her mother’s side who also fell in love with Shelley and committed suicide). Shelley’s first wife had two children with him and fell pregnant at the same time as he was embarking upon his relationship with Mary.

Other film choices are harder to understand. Why use a boring generic manor house instead of the actual Villa Diodata on Lake Geneva? Lord Byron was camp rather than charismatic – Tom Sturridge has the looks and acting chops to make him more subtly menacing and attractive, but the part was not designed that way. Also, the group did actually get to read their stories in the evening in 1816 and also got caught in a storm on the lake which is like a premonition of Shelley’s untimely death.  Most annoying: the interpretation of Frankenstein as being about a woman feeling abandoned is a bit simplistic. There is a lot more depth there: social commentary about how we treat outsiders, science vs. humanism, the dangers of trying to play God etc.

Mamma Mia – Here We Go Again

Question: with so many Skarsgård offspring in the acting profession, why couldn’t any of them have played their father as a young man? A missed opportunity there. Other than that – well, it’s incoherent, milking the franchise, but a jolly bit of musical fun.

No more room to tell you about my book haul this week, so I’ll post about it tomorrow!

Cultural Events and Book Haul Summary 5th August 2018

Not quite sure what the tower is for, but it certainly makes it easier to spot the theatre from wherever you are in Stratford.

This week was simply working flat out and getting home at 8 p.m. – so much for my relaxation week without the boys! However, there was one event from the previous week, when I was attending a course in Warwick, which I didn’t get to write about. I went up there the evening before, stayed at an absolutely charming AirBnB in Stratford-upon-Avon and went to the RSC’s production of Romeo and Juliet. Although I’ve been to Stratford before (as a bookwormish child, I dragged my mother there on my first trip to England in my early teens; as a bookwormish adult, I dragged my freshly-minted husband there as soon as we signed the papers at the registrars’), I’d never seen a play there and the theatre looked nothing like what I remembered it from nearly two decades ago. I later learnt that it has been extensively refurbished since.

Portrait of the Man Himself in Lego bricks

It must be hard to think of a new way in which to present Shakespeare’s best-known plays – although it was rather sweet to hear a young girl say tearfully on the way out ‘I wasn’t expecting that ending’ – but this production certainly went for the modern and diverse approach. The Capulets and Montagues are two rival gangs (although not along racial lines, unlike West Side Story). The cast was very diverse, and so were their accents (although at times that made it even harder to understand the text). I really liked the star-crossed lovers: Romeo was so obviously young and rather naive, quick to anger, even quicker to fall in love, while Juliet was clearly the driving force, fragile and young, but so much more mature. However, I did not like the way Mercutio was played (or is that because Mercutio is one of my favourite characters in Shakespeare?). I had no problems with Mercutio being portrayed as a butch lesbian in leather, but I think the director made the actress exaggerate those traits so much that all of Mercutio’s fey charm, loyalty and quicksilvery nature got lost.

All of my books arrived in one go this week – the poor postman could only stuff two through the front door and just flung the others over the side gate, hoping for the best (which is fine when it’s not rainy).

Felix Francis and Lin Anderson were unsolicited ARCs from publishers, which might be a bit of a waste of hardbacks in my case, as I am unlikely to get around to reviewing them. I finally got The House by the Lake, which has been calling to me for ages. Guy Savage’s recent review tipped me over into ordering it, especially since I have Jenny Erpenbeck’s Visitation, which is also about a house witnessing Germany’s history over the past century. So I will read the two together.

It was on Twitter that I heard about Frangello’s A Life in Men, someone saying it was one of the books that deserved to be better known, so I will persevere with it, although the title alone is enough to set my teeth on edge. It sounds a little bit like Eat Pray Love, but for younger people and with a lot more sex. Last but not least, the two at the top I bought because Influx Press was having a sale. Clare Fisher’s How the Light Gets In is in fact a flash fiction collection about modern Britain, while The Foreign Passion shows us Europe through the eyes of a non-European in equally short vignettes.

Summary of Cultural Events 10 July 2018

Although national and international events risk making all my personal events seem insignificant or obsolete, I wanted to write up some of the events of the previous week before they escape my memory.

On Friday I went to see The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a dark comedy by Martin McDonagh (writerwith plays such as The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Beauty Queen of Leenane, as well as the film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to his credit). I have to admit I went mostly for Aidan Turner, who is pretty much exactly my type of romantic male interest, but it turned out to be much more than just a showcase for him and his pecs. This is a play designed for a strong ensemble cast, and it certainly had it, including a young RADA graduate Chris Walley, who was by turns a grumpy teenager, intimidated, sensitive, very proud of his long hair, but also terribly dim and therefore hilarious. On paper, the story seems grim. Northern Ireland in 1993. Mad Padraic is deemed too brutal for the IRA, but he is getting impatient with the splinter group he’s in and thinking of starting his own splinter group. He has some torturing business to resolve and leaves his beloved cat Wee Thomas in the care of his father. The cat dies and his family and friends back home try to cover the fact, for fear of what he might do… And he does! This is a bitingly funny satire about twisted ideals and violence, sentimentality coexisting with ferocious brutality. Written in 1993, when this was still anything but funny, its black Irish humour was only appreciated in 2001, when it was first performed. Highly recommended, if you can get tickets! Also, a good chance to hear Aidan Turner speak with an Irish accent rather than a fake Cornish one.

Image from Delfont Mackintosh Theatres.

After a fun evening out with the girls (or Fellow Mums, as we call each other, for we all met through our babies) on Saturday, I went chalking on Sunday. The White Horse of Uffington needs to be periodically maintained, so the National Trust has asked for volunteers to help rechalk it. You spend an enjoyable hour or two in the scorching sun bashing at chalk with a hammer and smoothing it into place, very therapeutic. My friend and I did part of the lower front leg. It’s much steeper than it looks in the picture…

The White Horse, from Oxford Mail.

It was also a great opportunity to catch up with my friend, who has sold her house and lives in a camper van, driving around the country and doing whatever takes her fancy. She had just spent a week in Snowdonia, another in Dorset and was off to the Latitude Festival. A part of me was slightly envious, and another part terrified of this kind of lifestyle, which takes nomadic to the most extreme!

Upcoming events include watching some Wimbledon, some World Cup, and celebrating 14th July with Tartuffe in London. But if you are in London and free on Wednesday 11th, you should go to the Hayward Gallery at the Southbank, which will be celebrating its 50th birthday with entry fees of only 50p that day.

P.S. Late entry – my friend took a picture of me chalking like someone who loves crime fiction!