Wednesday 13 March 2024

"How Green Was My Valley" by Richard Llewellyn


When I was younger, I watched the 1976 BBC TV adaptation of this novel, starring Stanley Baker, Sian Phillips, and Nerys Hughes and loved it; I went on to read this book and the three sequels. But this is the first time I have reread the book.

Ii's a coming-of-age novel, a bildungsroman, in which young Huw Morgan  grows up into a large Welsh mining family during the later part of the reign of Queen Victoria. The pay of the miners is being steadily eroded by the pit owners and the beautiful green hillsides of the valley are being covered with slag heaps; the river is becoming increasingly polluted and the slag is threatening the houses of the men. There are problems with the unions and there are strikes and children start dying after one strike drags on and on. The tensions threaten to divide Huw's father from his more militant sons. At the same time there are the pressures of the 'chapel' morality that exists in the valley. Huw objects vociferously when a young girl is shamed in chapel for becoming pregnant out of wedlock but shame seems to be one of the principal ways in which good behaviour is enforced within the family and the closed society.  The day after Huw is beaten by a schoolmaster, two family friends, prize-fighters, invade the school and beat up the teacher with impunity; Huw's father employs the prize-fighter to teach Huw how to box; later, when Huw attacks a fellow pupil, breaking his jaw, he escapes prosecution. It seems that sexual morality is rigorously enforced but brute violence is encouraged. 

The principal characters (Dada, Mama, Bronwen, Mr Gruffydd, and Huw himself) are carefully drawn, in their complexity, although they are always seen from the point of view of Huw, whose understanding develops as he grows. Other characters are more tangentially glimpsed: inevitable, I suppose, when Huw's own family is so large and when you add to that all those who marry into the family and the other villagers. Thus, I found it difficult to distinguish between the characters of Huw's brothers Ivan (the choirmaster), and Ianto and Davy (the union leaders), and Owen (the mechanic), and Gwilym who married the girl that Owen should have married, and while Angharad his sister has a key place to play, I was less certain about the personalities of Ceridwen and Huw's last sister seems to be  forgotten almost as soon as she has been born.

But the principal joy of the reading lies in the prose and the descriptions which are lyrical and original. Sometimes, however, the exuberance that is Huw's love for life got in the way of the narrative. For example, I couldn't quite pin down the moment that Huw broke his leg. Nor was I certain whether Ceinwen actually does get pregnant; Bronwen hints at this but it isn't made explicit and later Huw hints that he has no children, again without saying so clearly. It's great to be impressionistic, but I felt that some of these points were important for me to know.

It is never easy working out exactly how old Huw is at any moment in the narrative but he seems sexually innocent and naive for far too long, not knowing how babies are made even after witnessing a woman giving birth. He has scarcely learned the facts of life before he is having sex on the mountainside. The morality is a little inconsistent although I feel that is an accurate depiction of the quandary that is adolescence. 

The strength of this book, which I suspect is what made it a best-seller in 1939 when it was first published (and a feature film in 1941), is the wonderful joie de vivre depicted in the descriptions of the taste of food and the beauty of the countryside (and the pleasure of sex). Llewellyn writes like a mixture of Dylan Thomas and Laurie Lee: the prose is lyrical and musical. 

Reading group questions:

1. What do you think of the character of Huw, the narrator? In what was is this a coming-of-age story? What are Huw’s positive and negative qualities?
2. What lessons does Huw learn from his father Gwilym? How does his father’s attitudes differ from those of his sons?
3. Discuss the ways in which justice is done in this valley community? How is it different from English justice seen more in the second half of the novel?
4. What do we learn about the social history of the South Wales valleys at the end of the 19 th and start of the 20 th centuries? What role does the chapel play in people’s lives? Does the realism ever get in the way of the story telling?
5. What do we learn of the National School? Why is Mr Jonas, the schoolmaster so nasty to Huw?
6. What do you make of the two most important women in Huw’s upbringing (leaving aside the life lessons taught him by Ceinwen)? How is his mother Beth portrayed? How like her is Bronwen, his sister-in-law?
7. How does the looming eco disaster mirror Huw’s growing up and loss of innocence? How do industrialisation and the actions of the mine owners change the lives of the valley’s people?
8. Why did Angharad fall ill and her hair turn white? What is her tragedy?
9. What are the beliefs of Mr Gruffydd the pastor? Why does he leave the valley?
10. Pick out a favourite character or incident or quotation to share with the group.

Selected quotes:

  • There was never any talk while we were eating. ... And that way, I think, you will get more from your food, for I never met anybody whose talk was better than good food.” (Ch 1)
  • If I had not started to think things for myself and find things for myself, I might have had a happier life judged by ordinary standards, and perhaps I might have been more respected.” (Ch 3)
  • There must be some way to live your life in a decent manner, thinking and acting decently, and yet manage to make a good living.” (Ch 3)
  • It is a pity that real, well-meant tears cannot come with out the sounds that go with them. The scrapings in the throat, the fullness of spittle, the heavy breaths and halting, gulping sighs, are not fitted to be the servants of heart-felt grief.” (Ch 5)
  • He always said that God sent the water to wash our bodies and air to wash our minds.” (Ch 5)
  • All along the river, banks were showing scum from the colliery sump, and the buildings, all black and flat, were ugly to make a hurt in your chest.” (Ch 5)
  • There is a good dripping toast is by the fire in the evening. Good jelly dripping and crusty, home-baked bread, with the mealy savour of ripe wheat roundly in your mouth and under your teeth, roasted sweet and crisp and deep brown, and covered with little pockets where the dripping will hide and melt and shine in the light, deep down inside, ready to run when your teeth bite in.” (Ch 5)
  • It was then that I had thoughts about Christ, and I have never changed my mind. He did appear to me then as a man, and as a man I still think of him. ... If he had been a God, or any more son of God than any of us, then it is unfair to ask us to do what he did.” (Ch 7)
  • The clock rocked away, seeming to get louder at every stroke, as though it were rowing time towards us, until I was wondering why it was never heard at other, ordinary, times.” (Ch 8)
  • There is a fright you will have to stand up before lines of faces that have become wet and shaky through the nervous water in your eyes. Your mouth is dry, with sand on the tongue and in the throat, so that your breath comes hot and sore with you. Then it is time to sing and you have forgotten the words. Each one has grown a wheel and rolls away from you down into the pit of Forgot.” (Ch 10)
  • Beautiful was the valley this afternoon, until you turned your head to the right. Then you saw the two slag heaps.” (Ch 11)
  • Foolish is the mind of man to make bogeys for itself and to live in terrors of fear for things which lack the substance of truth.” (Ch 11)
  • So we breathed, both of us on top of the mountain, while the mists went to purple and rose, and the sun burnt through and covered us both with warmth and came out across the Valley in such strength that we could not bear to look. So it may be, I think, when we meet God. But worse.” (Ch 11)
  • In the clerking jobs we were supposed to dress like princes on the money of a maggot.” (Ch 12)
  • Hard it is to suffer through stupid people. They make you feel sorry for them, and if your sorrow is as great as your hurt, you will allow them to go free of punishment, for their eyes at the eyes of dogs that have done wrong and know it, and are afraid.” (Ch 16)
  • The everyday things, those little jewels that stud the action of living, we're making themselves known. A blister on the heel, sweat about the neckband, a wrinkle in the stocking, were coming to mean more than the feelings brought forth by that which filled the little white coffin.” (Ch 17)
  • O, Brandy Broth is the King of Broth and royal in the rooms of the mouth. ... Drink down the liquor and raise your eyes to give praise for a mouth and a belly.” (Ch 18)
  • “It is strange how you should hate the man, and yet pity him from the depths.” (Ch 19)
  • One night I heard a choir of a thousand voices singing in the darkness, and I thought I heard the voice of God. Then children began to die.” (Ch 20) What a juxtaposition!
  • Poverty is not a virtue, any more than poverty of the spirit. Life is good, and full of goodness. Let them be enjoyed by all men.” (Ch21)
  • I found a risen newness pillared in my middle, yet, for all its newness, so much a part of me that no surprise I had, but only a quick, sharp, clear glorying that rose to a shouting might of song in every part of me and drew tight the muscles of my body, and as the blood within me thudded through my singing veins, a goldness opened wide before me, and I knew I had become of Men, a Man.” (Ch 24) Huw’s first erection.
  • There is good to see happy faces round a table full of good food. Indeed, for good sounds, I will put the song of knives and folks next to the song of man.” (Ch 24)
  • No pig fits his skin better.” (Ch 24)
  • What is there, in the mention of the Time To Come, that is so quick to wrench at the heart, to inflict a pain in the senses that is like the run of a sword, I wonder. Perhaps we feel our youngness taken from us with the soothe of sliding years, and the pains of age that come to stand unseen beside us and grow more solid as the minutes pass, are with us solid on the instant, and we sense them, but when we try to assess them, they are back in their place in Time To Come, ready to meet us coming. ... Sad, sad is the thought that we are in for a hiding in every round, and no chance to hit back, fighting blind against a champion of champions, who plays with you on the end of a poking left, and in the last round puts you down with a right cross to kill.” (Ch 28)
  • The mouth reaches for newer fruit that seems to be near, but never to be tasted. The fingers are intent on searching to soft places, but the senses are too far from their tips and impatient of their fumblings. And at the middle, where the arrow steel is forged, there is a ruination of heat that seems to know, within itself, that coolness will come only in the hotter blood of woman. There is itch to find the pool, twisting to be free to search, momental miracles of rich anointments, sweet splendours of immersion, and an urgency of writhings to be nearer, and deeper, and closer. In that kissing of the bloods there is a crowding of sense, when breathing is forgotten, muscle turns to stone, and the spinal branch bends in the bowman's hand as the singing string is pulled to speed the arrow. ... Then the tight-drawn branch is weak, for the string has sung its song, and breath comes back to empty lungs and a trembling to the limbs. Your eyes see plainly. The trees are green, just the same as they were. No change has come. No bolts of fire. No angels with a flaming sword. Yet this it was that left the Garden to weeds. I had eaten of the Tree. Eve was still warm under me.” (Ch 30) Huw loses his virginity.
  • I knew from the way she said it, without feeling, an opening of the mouth with one word after another on a string, all the same size and weight, that it was no use to ask why. A wasting of time.” (Ch 31)
  • The air was a stink of blueness, sharp with the heat of bodies, and with the weight of puddled beer drying into boards that never knew soap and water, and soured with tobacco spit.” (Ch 37)
  • Born in the image of God, they were, every one of them, and some loving woman having pains of the damned to bring them forth, to sit there with their mouths open, like calves under the net in the market-place.” (Ch 37)
  • Big jaws he had, that seemed to come out of his chest without help of a neck.” (Ch 37)
  • For please to tell me what is better to look at than a lovely woman, and I will come from my dinner to see.” (Ch 40)
  • There is a wholeness about a woman, of shape, and sound, and colour, and taste, and smell, that you will want to hold tightly to you, all, every little bit, without words, in peace, with jealousy for the things that escape the clumsiness of your arms. So you feel, when you love.” (Ch 41)
March 2024; 447 pages


This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God



Tuesday 12 March 2024

"Plain Murder" by C S Forester


 Forester is more famous for writing the 'Hornblower' novels, about an officer in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars, and for writing the novel that inspired the film The African Queen. 

Less well-known is his exploits as a crime novelist.

This book isn't a whodunnit. There is no mystery about who committed the murder. Rather, it is a psychological portrait of the murderer. His victim is a work colleague. The murder itself is easy, the problems start in its aftermath as he struggles to keep himself safe from detection. It's a delightfully unusual take on the genre and is well-written and full of psychological insight. I also liked the way it was set in a very ordinary world and told of the mundane and sometimes joyless existences of those who worked in a small advertising agency and the domestic life of the murderer. It felt very real.

It was easy to read and kept me turning the pages: I read it in three sittings during the same day.

Selected quotes:

  • "Morris with his scowling brow, his woolly hair horrid with grease, his eyelid drooping and his mouth pulled to one side to keep the cigarette smoke out of his eyes." (Ch 1)
  • "Morris had that disproportionate sense of the importance of his own well-being as compared with other people's which is one-half of the equipment of the deliberate murderer." (Ch 1)
  • "Morris devising a murder was in the same lofty. superhuman state of mind as is a poet in the full current of composition. Thoughts poured through his brain in clear. rushing streams." (Ch 1) A very early description of the psychological state later known as 'Flow'. 
  • "We've got no more chance of getting it than - than we have of getting hell's advertising when hell sets up as a winter resort." (Ch 6)
  • "The main characteristic of the crime of which Morris was guilty is its tendency to reproduce itself. A second murder will occur no additional penalty if the first is to be discovered, so that fear of punishment does not act as a deterrent. Fear of discovery is very largely overridden by the knowledge of previous success, and any natural repugnance the criminal may feel towards the taking of human life is largely blunted by the time he begins to consider the repetition of the crime." (Ch 13)
  • "She was too busy looking about her for all the actresses - and worse - who are notoriously accustomed to living in Maidenhead." (Ch 20)

A well-structured, beautifully written and entertaining crime novel written from an unusual angle. Well worth reading

March 2024; 188 pages



This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God



Saturday 9 March 2024

"Poor Things" by Alasdair Gray



Winner of the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1992.

This is a charmingly bizarre feminist version of Frankenstein which begins in Victorian Glasgow.

It’s Gothic metafiction
Gray delights to play with literary form.

For example, in his earlier novel Lanark, Book 3 comes at the start, and in the Epilogue, placed within Book 4, there is a discussion about the plot between the author and the protagonist, there are footnotes, and there is an 'Index of Plagiarisms' directing the reader's attention to the literary sources of the novel.

Poor Things starts with an Introduction by the author in which he defends the truth of the subsequent material with ‘Michael Donnelly’, who considers it fiction. The bulk of the book consists of a narrative by McCandless which incorporates source material such as Wedderburn’s confessions and Bella’s letters, followed by a testament by Victoria McCandless which contradicts the story by McCandless, followed by chapter notes and a critical evaluation by the author. As well as the main sections of the book, many of the details, such as Baxter’s physical appearance, are introduced to the reader in a piecemeal way. Thus any such story as the reader can find has been put together from sometimes contradictory parts, which seems to be a metaliterary version of the Frankenstein story.

It’s a modern, and feminist, version of Frankenstein
The bulk of the narrative, by McCandless, tells us that Bella has been created by super-surgeon Baxter from the body of a drowned woman and the brain of her unborn baby.

Dr Godwin Bysshe Baxter is known to Bella, his creation, as God. The Bysshe was part of Shelley's name and Shelley was the husband of Mary Shelley nee Wolstonecraft who wrote Frankenstein.

The twist is that Bella is beautiful (though Godwin is incredibly ugly) and that Bella has a strong lustful desire for a sexual partner (as Frankenstein's monster wanted a partner).

Bella emerges as an intelligent woman with a strong character. She has an almost insatiable desire for cuddles and sometimes for wedding (her name for sex) and this is interpreted by the men around her as nymphomania to the extent that one of them wants her to have a clitoridectomy. Apart from Bella, a housekeeper and the madam of a French brothel, almost all the people around her are men and, apart from God(win) who wants to empower her with free will, they all want to control her, usually by marrying her.

Bella is a young mind in a mature body, much like a typical adolescent, and her early adventures in the world involve enjoyment, often sexual. But an encounter with abject poverty makes her, like the Buddha, renounce her pleasure-seeking life and seek to serve people. Her later life, as Victoria, is as a socialist doctor and controversial pioneer of birth control.

One of the delights of the book is the way it shows Bella maturing through her dialogue. Here is an example of her childish talk: “Sit on that bench, God. I am taking Candle for a walk saunter stroll dawdle trot canter short gallop and circum-ambu-lation. Poor old God. Without Bella you will grow glum glummer glummest until just when you think I am forever lost crash bang wallop, out I pop from behind that holly bush.” (Episodes 7)

The film
Poor Things has been turned into a film of the same name. Although some things had to be changed (we see Baxter all at once, for example) and the film delights in adding steam-punk settings in discordant technicolour after the initial, mostly black and white, part set in Glasgow, the fundamentals of the story are maintained. It isn’t metacinematic, though.

Selected Quotes:
  • Morbid anatomy is essential to training and research, but leads many doctors into thinking that life is an agitation in something essentially dead. ... But a portrait painter does not learn his art by scraping layers of varnish from a Rembrandt, then slicing off the impasto, dissolving the ground and finally separating the fibres of the canvas.” (Episodes 2)
  • The big dogs lay somnolent on a hearth-rug, their chin's cushioned on each other's flanks. Three cats sat as far apart as possible on the backs of the highest chairs, each pretending not to see the rest but all twitching if one of them moved.” (Episodes 4)
  • Bed bugs too must have their unique visions of the world.” (Making a Conscience 14)
  • Punch says only lazy people are out of work so the very poorest must enjoy being poor. They also have the consolation of being comic.” (Episodes 15)
  • Natives ... are people who live on the soil where they were born, and do not want to leave it. Not many English can be regarded as natives because we have a romantic preference for other people's soils.” (Episodes 15)
  • Prosperous parents tell their children that nobody should lie, steal or kill, and that idleness and gambling are vices. They then send them to schools where they suffer if they do not disguise their thoughts and feelings and are taught to admire killers and stealers like Achilles and Ulysses, William the Conqueror and Henry the Eighth. This prepares them for life in a land where rich people use acts of parliament to deprive the poor of homes and livelihoods.” (Episodes 16)
  • He told me that a clean, unexpected flesh wound, however painful, was a flea bite to one who had been educated at Eton.” (Episodes 17)
  • In Chapter 17 the madam of the Notre-Dame (a brothel) tells apprentice prostitute Bella: “This Wedderburn is obviously an oversucked orange. You will be a far better wife to your husband if you now enjoy some variety.” But in chapter eighteen, Bella contradicts this: “I will not be a better wife because of the variety enjoyed in the Notre-Dame, unless it pleases him to see me lying flat murmuring ‘Formidable’ in a variety of astonished tones.
  • I hate military training, of course. The sight of young men marching in regular rows, each imitating the stiff movements of a clockwork doll while their movements are controlled by a single screaming sergeant - that sight sickens me even more than the sight of young women in a musical-hall chorus-row, kicking up their heels in unison.” (A Letter to Posterity) Not sure here about the repetitions of both ‘movements’ and ‘row’.
  • She also hates “sham-gothic” structures such as St Pancras Station: because “Their useless over-ornamentation was paid for out of needlessly high profits: profits squeezed from the stunted lives of children, women and men working twelve hours a day, six days a week in needlessly filthy factories.” (A Letter to Posterity)
Delightfully off the wall. 

March 2024, 317 pages


This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Tuesday 5 March 2024

"Sherlock Holmes & The Christmas Demon" by James Lovegrove


This novel is an entertaining mash-up of Radciffean Gothic complete with the usual tropes of a castle with uninhabited rooms and a cellar, a damsel in distress, on the edge of madness, a dastardly villain and a Byronically wayward son, a family legend and, of course, the (eventually explained) supernatural with a Sherlock Holmes murder mystery.

All the classic Sherlockian moments are there including some wonderfully Victorian phraseology, the delightful misunderstandings of the stalwart Dr Watson and Sherlock's eclectic learning and incredible powers of observation, although the reader is given a fair chance of cracking the puzzle (I did!) which is often frustratingly absent in the Conan Doyle originals. 

It was quick and easy to read: I completed it in two sittings. It's  perfectly paced with a murder happening almost exactly at the half-way turning-point. Clues and red herrings are carefully scattered and there is opportunity for Watson to use his "service revolver"! An enjoyable and well-written tribute to the great detective, and the incomparable Mrs Radcliffe.

Selected quotes:

There is one moment of description which impressed me with its careful and precise accuracy: 

  • "What can I say about the long, cold watch? Shall I mention how the frigid air seemed to seep through my muscles into my bones and made them ache? Shall I relate how the silence filled my ears as though it had actual substance? Shall I talk about the continual, stealthy shifting of feet and wriggling of fingers that was required in order not to lose all sensation in my extremities? What about the way that time, as though made torpid by the cold, crawled by?" (Ch 26) 

My other four favourite moments are all tongue-in-cheek examples of Watson as the genial, slightly pompous bumbler, at least in comparison to the superhuman if immensely arrogant Holmes:

  • "'You have a way with a proverb, old friend, as befits a wordsmith of your calibre.' Compliment? Or not? With Sherlock Holmes it was sometimes hard to tell." (Ch 7)
  • "Watson, you have done it again! In your chronicles of my exploits you often paint yourself as something of a dunderhead, but that does you a disservice." (Ch 10)
  • "It behoved me, as an author, to look for my own work amongst the multitude, but a cursory inspection turned up nothing. I consoled myself with the thought that my literary career was still in its infancy." (Ch 18)
  • "A touch louder, old fellow. I don't think the entire castle heard you." (Ch 19)

March 2024; 372 pages



This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God


Sunday 3 March 2024

"Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders" by Nathen Amin


 Henry Tudor, whose claim to the throne of England was tenuous, spent most of his early life in exile in Brittany and France before landing in England and, within three weeks, overcoming the superior forces of King Richard III to become King Henry VII. Not surprisingly, he never felt perfectly secure on his throne. Conspiracies throughout his reign endeavoured to topple him. Three of the most famous are those of Lambert Simnel, Perkin Warbeck, and Edward, Earl of Essex.

Lambert Simnel was probably the son of a joiner, or organ-maker from Oxford who was taken to Ireland when he was ten years old where he was proclaimed to be Edward, Duke of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence (the brother of Edward IV and Richard III whose rebellious activities during Ed IV's reign got him killed in the Tower) despite the fact that Edward was still alive and living in captivity in the Tower of London (and despite the fact that Clarence had been attaindered following his rebellion so that his son had no legitimate claim on the throne). Little Lambert was crowned in Dublin Cathedral and then brought back to England with an army of Irish and mercenaries which was slaughtered at Stoke Field near Newark.  Lambert himself was captured, confessed, and given a job as a turnspit in the royal kitchens; he later became a falconer. The priest who allegedly groomed young Lambert is a rather mysterious character whose confession is recorded but who seems to have had no independent existence either before or afterwards.

Perkin Warbeck lasted longer. A native of Tournois he travelled, via Portugal, to Ireland. He was a good-looking lad and supposedly the spitting image of Richard, Duke of York, one of the Princes in the Tower, sons of Edward IV, who, it was said, had somehow escaped captivity although his older brother had been murdered. Claiming to be Richard IV, he gained support at the court of the French King Charles VIII and, after Charles had signed a peace treaty with Edward IV, the Burgundian court, before trying to land at Deal in Kent (the advance troops were massacred by locals) and then going, via Ireland, to James IV in Scotland where he got married and accompanied James IV on a border raid towards Berwick but getting cold feet and fleeing back to Edinburgh. He then attempted a landing in Cornwall and mustered rebels, getting as far as Taunton before again fleeing. He surrendered at Beaulieu Abbey and was kept under guard in Henry VII's court before again escaping and being recaptured and flung into the Tower before yet another conspiracy attempted to spring both him and Edward, Earl of Warwick (the real son of Clarence) which got them both executed.

This history focuses on these (and other) plots against Henry VII. There are lots of other details about him and his reign but they are not necessarily in chronological order nor are they very detailed so if you want to learn about him, go elsewhere. But it is well written and a good read and as informative as it can be given the scarcity of reliable sources. It even-handedly considers the possibility that the claimants were genuine rather than imposters. For example, Amin points out the the huge amount of detail in Warbeck's account of his early life compared to the vagueness of his account of how he escaped from the Tower probably means that he was an imposter but could be seen as a well-written but fictional 'manufactured' confession and the fact that it contains discrepancies with other sources could be explained by the vagueness of the times (eg over names) but might suggest fabrication. On the whole, though, he comes down on the 'imposter' side: 

  • This is perhaps the clearest indication of Henry VII’s certainty that Warbeck was not Richard of York, for is there was any doubt in the king’s mind that a legitimate rival to his throne still lived, his death would have been arranged ... by overturning Titulus Regis, the act Richard III passed who de-legitimised Elizabeth of York ... Henry had also re-legitimised her brothers.” (Ch 15)
  • If there is any one indication that Henry VII believed Warbeck and Simnel to be the imposters he claimed they were, then it is in the stark difference between his treatment of them and his treatment of the unfortunate Warwick - confined deep in the Tower, out of sight.” (Ch 16)

But the whole of this history is delightfully murky. For those like me, who are sceptical that Richard III murdered the Princes in the Tower (there is evidence to suggest that it might have been Henry VII), the widespread acceptance of the claims of Simnel and Warbeck suggests that some people, aristocrats as well as commoners, did not believe that the Princes in the Tower were dead. And the idea that a ten year old or a handsome Fleming lad could be touted as possible kings is delightfully romantic.

Good fun. March 2024; 344 pages


This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God




Thursday 29 February 2024

"Uncle Vanya" by Anton Chekhov

 I saw 'Vanya', the one-man (Andrew Scott) version of this classic play, produced by the National Theatre, when it was streamed to cinemas on 22nd February 2024. I felt at the time that it was a superb showcase for Andrew Scott but that I needed to read the script and to see a more conventional production to be able to understand why it is regarded as one of the plays that made Chekhov's reputation.

It is typical Chekhov in that it revolves around a group of upper-class people whose lives seem to have no meaning. The estate supports Alexandre Serebriakov, a professor, who has spent most of his life as an absentee landlord, using the income from the estate to pursue his academic career. He came into possession of the estate through his first marriage and technically it belongs to Sonia, his daughter by that first marriage. He has now retired to the estate with his new wife, Yeliena, who is much younger than him. Ivan 'Vanya' Voinitsky is Sonia's uncle; it was his father who originally owned the estate and he gave up his share of the inheritance in order to help Serebriakov; he now runs the estate with the help of Sonia and Ilyia 'Waffles' Teleyghin, an impoverished hanger-on whose family originally owned the estate.

Other characters include Sonia's old nanny Marina and Mikhail Astrov, a local doctor.

Both Vanya and the doctor are in love with Yeliena, who loves her husband. Sonia is hopelessly and unrequitedly in love with the doctor.

It's always difficult judging a play just from the script, especially when you are relying on a translation. But here goes.

It is constructed from four acts, each of a single scene. The first two acts set the scene. The play really comes alive in act three when Vanya discovers the doctor and Yeliena kissing, we discover Alexandre's plans, and a gun is fired. I felt that this came rather late in the play and would have been more appropriate in the middle, especially just before the interval. The final act deals with the aftermath which seems to be that everyone will return to the status quo before the start of the play. 

There were several moments which seemed to be clumsy ways of giving the audience information. For example, in the first few lines the doctor says: "By the way, Nanny, how many years is it we've known each other?" Later in the same act Vanya has a long speech in which he tells the audience about Professor Serebriakov's career. Later the nurse tells Serebriakov about "Vera Petrovna, Soniecheka's mother" which seems ludicrous given that Serebriakov was Vera's husband and is Soniechka's father, facts of which he is well aware. Clearly there is a problem for a playwright in having to impart information to the audience which the characters already know but these moments stood out as maladroit.

I was surprised by what seemed to be the 'green' message of the play. The doctor is a tree-planter and an ecofreak who gives a mini-lecture on the disappearing forests of the locality: "The Russian forests are literally groaning under the axe, millions of trees are being destroyed, the homes of animals and birds are being laid waste, the rivers are getting shallow and drying up, wonderful scenery is disappearing." (Act One) But I suspect that Chekhov, rather than propagandising in favour of sustainability, is in fact using the decline of the forests as a metaphor for what he sees as the pointless worsening of life because the doctor later goes on to say: "You may say that ... the old way of life naturally had to give place to the new ... and I would agree - if on the site of these ruined forests there were now roads and railways, if there were workshops, and factories, and schools. Then the people would have been healthier, better off, and better educated - but there's nothing of the sort here. There are still the same swamps and mosquitoes, the same absence of roads, and the dire poverty, and typhus, and diphtheria, and fires. Here we have a picture of decay due to an insupportable struggle for existence, it is decay caused by inertia, by ignorance, by utter irresponsibility. ... Already practically everything has been destroyed, but nothing has been created to take its place." (Act Three)

The overall message of the play is hopelessness. Not only is there the doctor's ecological despair. There are the lovers. Naturally, no-one is in love with someone who loves them back. The ending of the play brings us back to where we were before it started. Vanya says, in Act Two: "Day and night I feel suffocated by the thought that my life has been irretrievably lost. I have no past - it has all been stupidly wasted on trifles - while the present is awful because it's so meaningless." And, in Act Four, in the final speech of the play, Sonia says: "We shall go on living, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through a long succession of days and tedious evenings. We shall patiently suffer the trials which Fate imposes on us; we shall work for others, now and in our old age, and we shall have no rest. When our time comes we shall die submissively, and over there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we've suffered, that we've wept, that we've had a bitter life, and God will take pity on us." I think she thinks that will be a happy ending!

Selected quotes: 

  • "You were young and handsome then, but you've aged now. And you're not as good-looking as you were." (Act One)
  • "Ignorance is better ... At least there's some hope." (Act Three)

February 2024; 62 pages



This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Wednesday 28 February 2024

"Let the Great World Spin" by Colum McCann

Winner of the US National Book Award in 2009. My book group voted unanimously that this was a hit.

Based on a true story, as they say. On the morning of 7th August 1974 (the day before President Richard Nixon announced that he would resign because of the Watergate scandal), Philippe Petit performed an illegal tightrope walk on a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. This novel tells the linked stories of a number of New Yorkers: mother and daughter prostitutes Tilly and Jazzlyn, Corrigan, a monk-in-the-world, bereaved mother Claire, her husband Judge Solomon and her friend Gloria, and Lara, a drug-taking artist. And the walker himself.

The chronology is non-linear and it took me a long time before I understood that all these individual narratives are linked not only by the tightrope walk but also intimately to one another. But this isn't a book in which the plot is centre-stage. This is much more about a slow exploration of the characters and their relationships with one another, and building this up into a portrait of New York in 1974 in all its beauty and its ugliness.

Corrigan is most important character who doesn't narrate; what we learn of him comes mostly from his brother, Cieran. Following the abandonment of the family by his father, Corrigan becomes a very religious boy who loves to hang out with the homeless, drinking with the down-and-outs. He reminded me very much of Sally Trench, author of the memoir Bury Me In My Boots. Having travelled from Dublin to New York, he becomes a friend of prostitutes, allowing them to urinate in the bathroom in his flat. He is a fascinating portrait of a modern-day St Francis. His scarcely-understanding brother says: "I recalled the myth that I had once heard as a university student - thirty six hidden saints in the world, all of them doing the work of humble men, carpenters, cobblers, shepherds. They bore the sorrows of the earth and they had a line of communication with God, all except one, the hidden saint, who was forgotten. (All Respects to Heaven, I Like It Here)

Another key character is Claire whose privileged world, living in an art-strewn penthouse apartment overlooking Center Park, is destroyed by the death of her only son in Vietnam. The depth of her sorrow hollowed me out. Colum McCann deserved awards just for this gut-wrenching portrayal of grief: "Death by drowning, death by snakebite, death by mortar, death by bullet wound, death by wooden stake, death by tunnel rat, death by bazooka, death by poison arrow, death by pipe bomb, death by piranha, death by food poisoning, death by Kalashnikov, death by RPG, death by best friend, death by syphilis, death by sorrow, death by hypothermia, death by quicksand, death by tracer, death by thrombosis, death by water torture, death by trip wire, death by pool cue, death by Russian roulette, death by punji trap, death by opiate, death by machete, death by motorbike, death by firing squad, death by gangrene, death by footsore, death by palsy, death by memory loss, death by claymore, death by scorpion, death by crack-up, death by Agent orange, death by rent boy, death by harpoon, death by nightstick, death by immolation, death by crocodile, death by electrocution, death by mercury, death by strangulation,  death by bowie knife, death by mescaline death by mushroom, death by lysergic acid, death by jeep smash, death by grenade trap, death by boredom, death by heartache, death by sniper, death by paper cuts, death by whoreknife, death by poker game, death by numbers, death by bureaucracy, death by carelessness, death by delay, death by avoidance, death by mathematics, death by carbon copy, death by eraser, death by filing error, death by penstroke, death by suppression, death by authority, death by isolation, death by incarceration, death by fratricide, death by suicide, death by genocide, death by Kennedy, death by LBJ, death by Nixon, death by Kissinger, death by Uncle Sam, death by Charlie, death by signature, death by silence, death by natural causes." (1: Miro, Miro, on the Wall) I don't normally enjoy what seems to be a common practice in American writing of offering lists. The book begins: "Those who saw him hushed. On Church Street. Liberty. Cortlandt. West Street. Fulton. Vesey." I don't think this list of streets adds anything; if its objective is to anchor the narrative in verisimilitude, it doesn't. But the list of deaths ... Wow!


Selected Quotes:

  • "A flying chocolate wrapper touched against a fire hydrant. Taxi doors slammed. Bits of trash sparred in the darkest reaches of the alleyways. ... Revolving doors pushed quarters of conversation out into the street." (Those who saw him hushed)
  • "She turned at the door and smiled. 'There'll be lawyers in heaven before you see somethin' so good again'." (1: All Respects to Heaven, I Like It Here)
  • "When you're young, God sweeps you up. He holds you there, The real snag is to stay there and to know how to fall. All those days when you can't hold on any longer. When you tumble. The test is being able to climb up again.(1: All Respects to Heaven, I Like It Here) 
  • "I recalled the myth that I had once heard as a university student - thirty six hidden saints in the world, all of them doing the work of humble men, carpenters, cobblers, shepherds. They bore the sorrows of the earth and they had a line of communication with God, all except one, the hidden saint, who was forgotten. (1: All Respects to Heaven, I Like It Here) Lots of tightrope-walking imagery although, of course, when you perform between the Twin Towers without a safety line you're never going to get up after you fall. The tightrope-walker is described elsewhere as an angel, or perhaps a demon, and Lucifer was the angel who fell to earth. There's also a mention of Dante and Jigsaw, a pimp, is buried in Potter's Field, which is a burial ground for paupers and the unknown, so named because in the Bible a Potter's Field was purchased to be a burial ground with the money that Judas had accepted for betraying Christ.
  • "Nothing holy is free." (1: All Respects to Heaven, I Like It Here)
  • "Pain's nothing. Pain's what you give, not what you get." "I recalled the myth that I had once heard as a university student - thirty six hidden saints in the world, all of them doing the work of humble men, carpenters, cobblers, shepherds. They bore the sorrows of the earth and they had a line of communication with God, all except one, the hidden saint, who was forgotten. (1: All Respects to Heaven, I Like It Here)
  • "The overexamined life, Claire, it's not worth living." (1: Miro, Miro, on the Wall) A clever version of the maxim attributed to Socrates: that the unexamined life is not worth living.
  • "He calls me his little honeybee sometimes. It started from an argument when he called me a WASP.(1: Miro, Miro, on the Wall)
  • "If you stand in the same river for too long, even the banks will trickle past you." (A Fear of Love)
  • "A row of smokers stood out in front of Metropolitan Hospital ... Each looked like his last cigarette, ashen and ready to fall. (1: A Fear of Love)
  • "It was the type of hospital that looked like it needed a hospital. (1: A Fear of Love)
  • "BEAUTY IS IN THE WALLET OF THE BEHOLDER" (1: A Fear of Love) 
  • "Coming to the city was like entering a tunnel, he said, and finding to your surprise that the light at the end didn't matter; sometimes in fact the tunnel made the light tolerable. (1: A Fear of Love)
  • "When I was seventeen, I had a body that Adam woulda dropped Eve for. ... and Jesus himself woulda been in the background saying, Adam, you're one lucky motherfucker." (2: This is the House that Horse Built)
  • "I don't know who God is but if I meet Him anytime soon I'm going to get Him in the corner until He tells me the truth. ... And if he says Jazz ain't in heaven, if He says she didn't make it through, He's gonna get Himself an ass-kicking. (2: This is the House that Horse Built)
  • "It was so much like having sex with the wind. It complicated things and blew away and softly separated and slid back around him." (The Ringing Grooves of Change)
  • "Every now and then the city shook its soul out." (3: Part of the Parts)
  • "New York kept going forward precisely because it didn't give a good goddam about what it had left behind.(3: Part of the Parts)
  • "When he was young and headstrong, he'd been sure that one day he'd be the very axis of the world, that his life would be one of deep impact. But every young man thought that. (3: Part of the Parts)
  • "The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own." (3: Centavos) 
  • "She wasn't a godly woman, mind; she used to say that the heart's future was in a spadeful of dirt." (3: All Hail and Hallelujah)
  • "People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time.(3: All Hail and Hallelujah)
  • "It was like they had spent their lives breathing each other's breath." (3: All Hail and Hallelujah)
  • "Sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear." (4: Roaring Seaward, and I Go)
  • "We stumble on, now, we drain the light from the dark, to make it last." (4: Roaring Seaward, and I Go)

A book to treasure for the writing and for the characterisation.

Colum McCann also wrote This Side of Brightness, also about New Yorkers

February 2024; 349 pages



This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God



Friday 23 February 2024

"The Council of Justice" by Edgar Wallace

 This is the sequel to Wallace's debut novel, The Four Just Men, starring three of the original quartet (Manfred, Gonsalez and Poiccart) who recruit a fourth whose alias is Courtlander. The FJM are vigilantes dedicated to murdering those who are getting away with criminal activities (a bit like the eponymous hero of the Saint books by Leslie Charteris).  In this novel they are up against the Red Hundred, an anarchist group. Various adventures ensue while Scotland Yard looks on helplessly. Finally, justice having been meted out and a proposed assassination averted, Manfred is captured while meeting his arch-rival and potential love interest The Woman of Gratz. He is tried for murder and convicted. Can he escape the hangman's noose? 

It is a naive thriller relying on expert chemists creating swift-acting poisons and wonderful explosives, me who are masters of disguise, fluent in many languages, rich and well-supplied with information from a huge range of naturally impeccable sources. Modern readers are usually too sophisticated to suspend their disbelief so easily. But it does give wonderful insights into London in the year before the First World Wars, a place well used to terrorist 'outrages' (through bombs being dropped from Zeppelins were a little premature), a country where anarchists held their conferences and everyone had access to a revolver. 

Told in mostly simple language, in short chapters, with a very direct style in which 'tell' is often privileged over 'show', this is very easy to read. With the exception, perhaps, of the Woman of Gratz, the characters are one-dimensional and clearly divided into goodies and baddies, despite the moral ambiguity of making vigilante outlaws the heroes. (But on the other hand, what else is the classic English folk hero Robin Hood?) There is an even-handedness in making both heroes and villains exotic foreigners which was rarely emulated in contemporary and subsequent alternatives, such as Sexton Blake and James Bond where the English goody commonly battles baddies from abroad. The fundamental motivation for continuing to read is not to find out whether the heroes will eventually triumph but to solve the convoluted puzzle of how they will achieve their aims. The focus is therefore on why a huge hole has appeared in the building in which two bodies are found, why a strange house has been constructed in the Spanish countryside, and how Manfred will effect his escape?

Selected Quotes:

  • "There are no straight roads, and you cannot judge where lies your destination by the direction the first line of path takes." (Ch 2)
  • "His liabilities were of no account because the necessity for discharging them never occurred to him." (Ch 5)
  • "Eden in sight - he pleaded for an Eve." (Ch 6)
  • "He was as close ... as the inside washer of a vacuum pump." (Ch 7)
  • "Possessed of the indifference to public opinion which is equally the equipment of your fool and your truly great man." (Ch 9)
  • "The sons of fathers who were the sons of fathers who had some time ruled by might, and left the legacy of their dominion to their haphazard progeny." (Ch 10) Wallace is clearly in thrall to aristocrats and royals and great men, perhaps because of, perhaps in spite of, his own humble and confused beginnings ... but he could see the other side of the argument.
  • "If in England you race a horse and it wins your Derby, must the stock of that horse be acclaimed winners of the race from birth?" (Ch 10) It's a good argument against a hereditary monarchy!
  • "Spoken like a cheap little magazine detective." (Ch 18)

NB: An electrolier is a chandelier in which the lights are electrical (rather than candles).

One of the classic progenitors of thriller fiction. 

February 2024; 310 pages



This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God