"The Color Purple" by Alice Walker

 An epistolary novel of a sort in that the story is told as if the protagonist Celie is writing letters to God. This has the advantage that the novelist can use the conceit that they don't know what is about to happen next. But, despite the careful use of mis-spelt words to give an authentic feel, these snippets have too much controlled narrative to sound like letters. Later, there are letters written to Celie. These are even more obviously contrived.

Nevertheless, the voices of the two main characters, Celie and Shug, come through very strongly.

One of my problems with this book is that it is issue driven. We start off with child sexual abuse; it almost feels that the author has contrived to select a hook with the biggest shock value. Then the protagonist is married off to a man who wants a wife to work for him and to have sex with; he beats her. Before too long we have lesbianism, racism, colonialism, slavery, the true origin of the Uncle Remus stories, lynching, female circumcision ... It is almost as if the author can't think of an issue without being compelled to add it to the story. This means that some of the characters (eg Nettie) simply become channels to report on these things. This reduces them from potentially three-dimensional characters into mouthpieces.

There are characters. The core of the book involves the narrator, Celie and her relationship with Shug, a jazz singer who is Celie's husband's former lover and occasional boyfriend. It is by observing how Shug confronts the world that Celie learns how to stop being exploited, downtrodden and abused. There are also two other characters: Harpo, Celie's stepson and his wife Sofia, who have an on-off relationship. Harpo tries hard to treat Sofia better than his father treats his stepmother; Sofia version of standing up to the world gets her into trouble that even she can't handle. These four characters could have made an excellent novel on their own, but every time Nettie shows her face she preaches.

The other interesting character is that of Mr ------, Celie's husband. He's very much the villain at the start. Then we discover that when he was in love with Shug, he was a different person. By the end of the book he is tamed. He is not the only baddie to be redeemed. It is almost as if the author is saying that if you are true to yourself, if you stand up for yourself, then in the end goodness and righteousness will prevail. It makes a book that started with a shock into a feel-good novel by the end. But I found such redemptive character arcs unconvincing.

A potentially great novel spoiled by too many issues, too much plot and too little concentration on the characters. 

Selected quotes: 

(page references refer to the Wiedenfeld & Nicolson paperpack published in 2017)

• "I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive." (p 18)
• "Next time us see Harpo his face a mess of bruises. His lip cut. One of his eyes shut like a fist. He walk stiff and say his teef ache." (p 36) I love the eye that is 'shut like a fist'; both descriptive and hinting at the reason for his injury.
• "She weak as a kitten. But her mouth just pack with claws." (p 47)
• "Harpo sits on the steps acting like he don't care. He ... whistle a little tune. But it nothing compared to the way he usually whistle. His little whistle sound like it lost way down in a jar, and the jar in the bottom of the creek." (p 64)
• "She wearing a skintight red dress look like the straps made out of two pieces of thread." (p 69)
• "'Tea' to the English is really a picnic indoors." (p 123)
• "Nobody feel better for killing nothing. They feel something is all." (p 129)
• "There is a way that the men speak to women that reminds me too much of Pa. They listen just long enough to issue instructions." (p 146)
• "The God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful and lowdown." (p 173)
• "You better hush. God might hear you. Let 'im hear, I say. If he ever listened to poor coloured women the world would be a different place, I can tell you." (p 173)
• "Have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me." (p 174)
• "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it." (p 177)
• "People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back." (p 177)
• "Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?" (p 177)
• "Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it." (p 178)
• "I don't know who tried to teach him what to do in the bedroom, but it must have been a furniture salesman." (p 225)

January 2024; 261 pages

The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Still Life" by Sarah Winman

Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit (public domain)

The Waterstone's Book of the Month for March 2022.

A brilliant book. A group of oddball characters travel from a grey 1950s London pub setting to a technicolor Florence. There's a lot of banter, a lot of humour (I laughed aloud at several points, which I rarely do), some moments of sadness (I cried when one of the leading characters died) and a message that life is to be enjoyed.

I read it shortly before watching the film, Poor Things and this book and that film share (with Caravaggio) an artificiality of style coupled to extreme naturalism. This is signposted right from the start. In the first part (Man is the Measure of All Things 1944), a critical meeting between Evelyn and Ulysses which includes dialogue which sounds like sort of thing you wish you'd said at a posh dinner party if you hadn't drunk too much of that wonderful wine, is sandwiched between two sections where the dialogue has perfect verisimilitude, each speaker making short contributions which are often beside the point and fail to respond to the other speaker. During the middle section, the art movement Mannerism is mentioned ("the style is what we would call early Mannerist. ... a deliberate denial of realistic style, calculated and artificial.") and I think this is a clue to what the author is trying to do. 

Which is a fascinating start.

The deliberate artificiality continues. There is a cast of eccentric characters, swiftly but indelibly drawn, including:

• Ulysses Temper, an incurably optimistic soldier from London whose superpower is making friends
• Evelyn Skinner, a lesbian art critic
• Peg, a brassy barmaid with attitude 
• Cressy, an old man who has dialogues with trees and an interest in philosophy; he has visions which lead to extraordinarily successful betting coups
• Pete the pub piano player and composer and occasional star of musical theatre, who has girlfriends across Europe
• Claude, a parrot who quotes Shakespeare
• Alys, the result of a one night stand between Peg and a GI, a kid with attitude growing up in Florence
• A cherry tree with a long perspective on time a farewells: a cherry tree "Think about it. Leaves." (Somewhere Between an Atom and a Star 1946 - 53)
• Col, the pub landlord, violently protective of his daughter who drives a second-hand ambulance which has a misfiring siren (in the UK ambulances had bells before 1963 which I presume is not an error but a deliberate introduction of artificiality).     
• Des, a businessman who can't help making money: "Two words ... disposable syringes"

This is a book about the joy that is in life. It is a joyous read.

Selected Quotes:

• "He was a recent scholar ... Covered in the afterbirth of graduation - shy, awkward, you know the type. Entering the world with no experience at all." (Man is the Measure of All Things" 1944)
• "A meagre stain in the corridors of history, that's all we are." (Man is the Measure of All Things" 1944)
• "Hair of the dog, she thought; she'd need the whole bleedin' pelt to get moving this morning."  (Man is the Measure of All Things" 1944)
• "Cherry blossom and a glass of stout. Hard to beat." (Somewhere Between an Atom and a Star 1946 - 53)
• "The world never turned out the way that you wanted it to. It simply turned. And you hung on." (Somewhere Between an Atom and a Star 1946 - 53)
• "I've never seen him in a hat before ... Me neither.  .... It'd look even better on his head." (The Stuff of Dreams 1953 - 54)
• "The salty porky chickeny-ness of it, said Col in a moment of rare epicurean elegance."  (The Stuff of Dreams 1953 - 54)
• "The music led Cress to his mum. Six kids, no money and only a view from the sink. Christmas just another day. The time he learnt that she too had dreams. Hard to reconcile that pain. Had taken a lifetime and still not there yet." (The Stuff of Dreams 1953 - 54)
• "They left the next day, Peg and Ted as early as decency would allow, and the margins on that were close."  (The Stuff of Dreams 1953 - 54)
• "She looked at her watch. Curtailed, once again, by the scythe of time." (The Most Unlikely-Looking Pair 1954-59)
• "The was an herbaceous hook to the spring air, the slow roll of a lawnmower moving methodically across the quad. It was the season of bloom and leaf growth, and the bare branches appeared bewildered by the vibrancy of emerging livery." (The Most Unlikely-Looking Pair 1954-59)
• "Time: mid-morning. Weather: sun blazing, no respite, no cloud. Gasping."  (The Most Unlikely-Looking Pair 1954-59)
• "She was a Michelangelo enthusiast and spent hours gazing at David's allure." (La Dolce Vita 1960)
• "Sunglasses hid the ten years older and the sun highlighted the ten years blonder." (It's Just the Way of Things 1962 - 66)    
• "He was still worried about the age difference, but the elderly contessa reassured him, saying, As long as there's still grass on the pitch ..." (I'd Love Nothing in the World So Well As You 1968 - 79)
•  "She taught Pete the stuck-in-a-glass-box mime routine and Pete spent the following week trying to escape from something he couldn't see."  (I'd Love Nothing in the World So Well As You 1968 - 79) Metaphorical?
• "His nudes look absent-minded, as if they've carelessly lost their clothes and need to go and search for them." (All About Evelyn)
• "So, time heals. Mostly. Sometimes carelessly. And in unsuspecting moments the pain catches and reminds one of all that's been missing. The fulcrum of what might have been. But then it passes. Winter moves into spring and swallows return. The proximity of new skin returns to the sheets. Beauty does what is required. Jobs fulfil and conversations inspire. Loneliness becomes a mere Sunday. Scattered clothes. Empty bowls. Rotting fruit. Passing time. But still life in all its beauty and complexity."  (All About Evelyn) I wonder whether the reference to rotting fruit hints at the Caravaggio Still Life which shocked viewers when it showed fruit past its eat-by date? Caravaggio's hyper-realistic style was in many ways a reaction against Mannerism while still maintaining a dramatic artificiality of composition, particularly in regard to his heightened 'tenebrist' lighting effects. 

Wonderful. I must read more by this brilliant author.

January 2024; 436 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Silver on the Tree" by Susan Cooper

 In the final instalment of 'The Dark is Rising', all the characters from the previous books come together to defeat the powers of darkness. Will and Bran (whose true nature is divulged) have to travel through time to the Lost Land where they will undergo a series of tests in order to win a sword. Simon, Barnaby and Jane have rather more minor roles. Great Uncle Merriman acts as guide and controller. The most important scene is given to a bit player, the ordinary human sheep farmer John Rowlands.

The book is the opportunity for the author to display her descriptive powers:

• "Grasshoppers skirled unseen from the grass, chirruping their solos over the deep summer insect hum" (1: Midsummer’s Eve)
• "Oak and sycamore and Lombardy poplar reached high on either side; houses slept behind hedges fragrant with honeysuckle and starred with invading bindweed." (1: Black Mink)
• "the face was fine-boned, kindly yet arrogant, with clear blue eyes that shone strangely young in the old, old cobweb-lined face." (2: The Bearded Lake)

She also delightfully captures the rhythm and structure of spoken Welsh.

Many weird and wonderful things take place; it is clear that the author possesses .considerable powers of imagination. This, I suspect, is this book is loved by so many.

But the fact that Will is able to do magic, and immortal, and the promise repeatedly made by Merriman that there is no mortal peril, undermines the tension of the book. We know things are going to be all right so that the monsters and the horrors fail to terrify. And, as with the other books, no test is ever failed. Everything is too straightforward.

At the end there are two decisions made that could go either way and these stand out for me as the moments when the book escaped from being no more than a decorative fairy tale and nudged its way towards being a myth.

The initial relationship between Bran and a newly pubescent Jane also produced some moments of edginess, although the rift between Will and Simon which was a feature of book 3 had healed. The character of the King of the Lost Land was also one of the strengths of the book.

Of course, this is a children's book and I am judging it by adult standards. But for my money this book, though prettily written, was too tame.

Selected quotes:

• "it cures the toothach being snift up into the nosethrils, especially into the contrary nosethril." (1: Midsummer’s Eve)
• "For all times coexist, you said, and the future can sometimes affect the past, even though the past is a road that leads to the future." (1: Black Mink)
• "The mindless ferocity of this man, and all those like him, their real loathing born of nothing more solid than insecurity and fear . . . it was a channel. Will knew that he had been gazing into the channel down which the powers of the Dark, if they gained their freedom, could ride in an instant to complete control of the earth." (1: Midsummer Day)
• "If you have seen the raising of fear, and the killing of love, and the Dark creeping in over all things, you do not ask stupid questions. You do what you are intended to do, and no nonsense." (2: The Bearded Lake)
• "there was more than a mood invading her mind; this was a strangeness she could not define, had never known before. A restlessness, a half-fearful anticipation of something part of her seemed to understand and part not . . ." (2: The Bearded Lake)
• "Maybe because the Dark can only reach people at extremes – blinded by their own shining ideas, or locked up in the darkness of their own heads." (3: The Rose-Garden)
• "For ever and ever, we say when we are young, or in our prayers. Twice, we say it, Old One, do we not? For ever and ever . . . so that a thing may be for ever, a life or a love or a quest, and yet begin again, and be for ever just as before. And any ending that may seem to come is not truly an ending, but an illusion. For Time does not die, Time has neither beginning nor end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in Time." (3: Caer Wydyr)
• "my useless life is the empty cawing of a crow, and any talent I once may have had is dead. Let the toys that it made die with it." (3: The King of the Lost Land)
• "Boy, callow boy, do not speak to me of life that you have not lived. What do you know of the weight that drags down a king who has failed his people, an artist who has failed his gift? This life is a long cheat, full of promises that can never be kept, errors that can never be righted, omissions that can never be filled. I have forgotten as much of my life as I can manage to forget." (3: The King of the Lost Land)
• "despair, which is the tomb of all your hope" (3: The King of the Lost Land)
• "‘Cowardly it is,’ he said in a cold adult voice, ‘to shelter behind those who love you, without giving love in return.'" (4: The Train)
• "Every human being who loves another loves imperfection, for there is no perfect being on this earth." (4: One Goes Alone)
• "The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past." (4: One Goes Alone)

January 2024

The previous books in the series are:

• Over Sea, Under Stone
• The Dark Is Rising
• Greenwitch
• The Grey King

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Edward the Elder" by Michael John Kay

 

The River Great Ouse at Bedford was once the frontier between the Saxons and the Vikings. Edward crossed the river to capture Bedford during his reign.

Edward the Elder was the son of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex. Alfred is justly celebrated for resisting Viking incursions into the territory of Wessex, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that covered most of southern England, and reaching a long-lasting peace treaty with the Vikings, albeit one that recognised a split between the Anglo-Saxon part of England (Wessex and half of Mercia, the kingdom in the Midlands, against the Welsh border) and the Viking part (called the Danelaw). But Edward was the King who, with his sister Aethelflaed who was Queen of Mercia) took the fight to the Vikings, retrieving the Midlands and East Anglia. Edward's son Aethlestan was to continue the fight, liberating almost all of what is now England, and creating the unified country that we now have.

So Edward (called the Elder by later generations to distinguish him from Edward the Confessor) is a very important figure in English history and one who has been unjustly overlooked, overshadowed, perhaps, by his father. This biography puts Edward back in the limelight.

It also tells his story remarkably well. My only quibble is that the writer frequently tells you the same thing twice, for example, when he describes the boundary between Wessex-Mercia and the Danelaw, the second time in slightly more detail. But if this is the price to pay for a complicated tale to be told with clarity, so be it, although it does make the book longer (and the print is quite small so my ageing eyes found it sometimes wearisome).

It is a complicated tale. A patchwork of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms battled against a miscellany of Scandinavian marauders. The situation was rarely coherent. Given that all this happened over a thousand years ago, the sources are often either missing, possibly inaccurate or incomplete. The author does a great job or pinpointing dates and places without being overly nit-picking (for example, he tends to summarise scholarly opinion without going into the details). The result is a readable history for the general reader.

I loved it. So many of the places that appear are places I have known, such as Kingston-on-Thames were Edward (probably) and Aethelstan (definitely) had their coronations, sitting on a block of sarsen stone. And Bedford, a frontier town, whose Viking stronghold on the northern bank of the River Great Ouse surrendered to Edward, at which point he built a neighbouring fortified burh on the southern bank. And London where, the Roman city having been abandoned, the Vikings ruled Lundenwic before the Saxons retook the city moving the centre (around 883) back to the Roman ruins as Lundenburh. 

But it's not all warfare. There are lots of other interesting tales and mysteries, such as: Why did Edward ditch his first wife Ecgwyn and send his son by that relationship to be brought up by his sister in Mercia? Was she a concubine as was hinted? And why did Edward's first heir die only fourteen days after Edward; was he assassinated by his half-brother? And who was the nun abducted from Wimborne Minster by Edward's cousin Aethelwold during his first rebellion; was she Edward's sister Aethelgifu and did Aethelwold marry her and if so was it consensual?

This is the story of a critical period in the founding of the country we now know as England and this great book rescues Edward from the neglect of history.

Selected quotes:

• “The slave trade was part of accepted practice, with slaves bought and sold across markets throughout the known world.” (Ch 16)

January 2024; 263 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Birds" by Tarjei Vesaas

 This book is the interior monologue of Matti, a 37 year old man living with his forty year old sister, Hege, in a small town in Norway. He is regarded by the others in his community as a 'Simple Simon' because he says strange things and he finds it difficult to concentrate (his inner life is by no means simple, being full of imaginative and spiritual thoughts) for long enough to hold down even the simplest of jobs. They tolerate him, even sometimes paying him for work that he cannot do and giving him free sweets, but he knows what they say about him and he is ashamed. Like anyone else he wants to be respected and admired. What he doesn't appreciate is how his sister has sacrificed her life to look after him, and he doesn't understand why sometimes she can be tetchy with him. 

In some ways the story is a picaresque, a series of loosely connected events, although Matti is scarcely a picaro; he's loveable but not a rogue. He is a bit like Don Quixote, having an unusually imaginative inner life, although this is not a comic novel. His adventures include a woodcock that flies over his house, sheltering in a privy during a thunderstorm, a disastrous day of working at turnip weeding, sinking in his rowing boat and having to be rescued by two girls, plying his trade as a ferryman, and the dreadful consequences of his encounter with a lumberjack.

There are moments when we fear for the consequences; my heart was in my mouth more than once. Matti is an innocent in the sense that he does not understand the rules and restrictions of society, but he still has the normal needs of a young man and danger is always lurking underneath the surface, though this is rarely the danger that Matti fears (eg being struck by lightning). His fundamental problem is that needs Hege to look after him for the whole of his life but she has needs too and he only vaguely understands that nothing lasts forever. 

The whole thing is written with a naive simplicity, in short sentences and short paragraphs, treating Matti's highly imaginative inner monologue with the same level of objectivity as actual events. This gives an indelible impression of someone who is simple in one sense and highly complex in another. The dialogue is full of ambiguous statements, achieving a high degree of verisimilitude, while at the same time brilliantly conveying to the reader, if not always to Matti, how others think of him, particularly the long-suffering Hege, torn between caring for Matti and finding personal fulfilment for herself. Matti, in particular, is prone to making gnomic statements which perfectly embody the gulf between his inner life and his ability to explain it using everyday words. Perhaps he ought to stick to the language of the birds.

It is a beautifully written book.

Perspectives:

• It's a book showing how all creative people are supported so generously by those who go out and do the work.
• It's about how women support men.
• Mattis is neurodiverse and this explores that.
• Mattis has superstitions and lives in an almost magical world; don't we all?
• It's about the loss of innocence.
• The village with its lake are the Garden of Eden ("If this isn't a paradise you're living in, then I don't know what is."; 2.21); Mattis is Adam and Hege is Eve and Jorgen is the serpent.
• "We are presented the world strictly from Mattis’s perspective, and typically from his often inaccurate perceptions. He struggles to understand what others are thinking, and by extension their identities. ... It’s a terribly lonely world in which he lives, if one filled with a beauty that only he sees, from the lake he lingers on, to the birds flying over his house, which only he bothers to look at and appreciate, despite his very best efforts to tell others about them." Daniel Kushner 2016 in The National Book Review
• "a masterful, haunting novel ... Mattis ... becomes frustrated very easily, he struggles to express himself, he has strange obsessions (about birds) and finds it very difficult to understand why other people do not share his interests. On a personal level, he is lonely, and both scared of approaching people and over-confident when he does." Scottmanleyhadley 2015 in Triumph of the Now

Selected quotes:

• "He was certainly lost in contemplation and let the twilight grow deeper and deeper, in so far as you could call it twilight and not just something unspeakably gentle." (1.5)
• "He sat surrounded by baffling problems, waiting with an important question." (1.11)
• "Some shining cars rushing past restored his courage. It was so easy meeting cars you didn't know. No one sitting inside them knew he was Simple Simon." (1.13)
• "Over the years Mattis had collected a large number of stories about lightning and what it did - but it had never struck a privy. Strange, but true." (2.24)
• "He wriggled his fingers furiously round his ears. Flash and thunderclap were coming together now. One, two, three. It wasn't the interval between lightning and thunder he was counting, it was the time he had left to live." (2.24)
• "It's a question of life and death. If it isn't Hege, it's me. Which would you rather? said a voice inside him." (2.25)
• "He was being given sweets like a child - although he knew great things like shattered trees and lightning and omens of death. ... He had been made to feel small. The worst of it was that the storekeeper had only been trying to be kind." (2.25)
• "His thoughts flapped helplessly around while he remained sitting still. The world was full of forces you couldn't fight against which suddenly loomed up and aimed a crushing blow at you." (3.37)
• "Isn't it odd that you only become clever when it's too late? he thought." (3.44)
• "He glided away from the shore. He was rowing and the things he was leaving behind remained in view the whole time." (3.46)
• "Across the desolate water his cry sounded like the call of a strange bird. How big or small the bird was, you couldn't really tell." (3.47; last lines)

January 2024; 186 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Puppet Show" by M W Craven

 

A murder victim, burned to death, the third in a series of killings, has the name of a police officer and the number '5' burned into his chest. The officer, Washington Poe, joins the investigation. 

This murder mystery ticks all the tropes. The hero is a loner who has been suspended from the force, is repeatedly insubordinate, repeatedly breaks the rules (I've labelled it as a police procedural but there's very little procedure) and, indeed, the law, and is, of course, always right. The crimes being investigated are horrific (many new entrants to this genre seem to substitute the shock value of extreme violence for any sort of cleverness in the plotting). The only originality lies in the hero's relationship with the data analyst, a geek who is stereotypically 'on the spectrum'. 

Even the first lines are cliched: "The stone circle is an ancient, tranquil place. Its stones are silent sentinels. Unmoving watchers." Ho hum. Time to unleash the horror.

It's not really a whodunnit because there are no red herrings. I guessed the villain well before the half-way mark. 

The pacing conforms to the four part plan. At 25% we get the key lead which is going to be crucial for discovering the identity of the killer. At 50% we discover the motivation for the crimes (surprise, surprise, it is another horrible crime committed years ago whose victim is now seeking revenge). The 'reveal' comes at the 75% mark, at which point the book becomes a straightforward thriller (more extreme violence).

Selected quotes:

• "If he were forced to spend time there, he knew that within the hour he'd be using the word 'fuck' like a comma."(Ch 8)
• "Maths had ended for him as soon as they'd replaced numbers with letters." (Ch 11)
• "He cursed himself for not having had the foresight to bring a working torch. He had one in his car but it was little more than a tube for making dead batteries." (Ch 20)
• "The walls ... were adorned with expensive-looking tat. Her philosophy seemed to be, if it shone, she should own it." (Ch 41)
• "His mind went into screensaver mode." (Ch 49)

Standard fare.

January 2024; 374 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Grey King" by Susan Cooper

NotFromUtrecht, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The fourth and penultimate book in the sequence 'The Dark is Rising'. Will, the young boy who is an Old One of the Light, goes to Wales to recuperate from a serious illness and to fulfil a quest which involves finding a harp and playing it so that a sleeper will be awoken. Of course he encounters dangers and obstacles, but he also meets another schoolboy, the albino Welsh boy Bran, the raven boy, who is a mysterious figure who seems to belong outside the battle between the Light and the Dark.

And there is Cafall, Bran's sheepdog, who is threatened with being shot for sheep worrying. 

It's a swiftly written story, with little fat on it, and all the usual tropes. I always feel, with books like this, that the possession of magical powers gives the protagonist an unfair advantage. Will is never really in any peril, there is no sense that he might just fail with devastating consequences. Of course, this is a children's book, so nothing terrible can happen. But the presence of a safety net inevitably dilutes the tension. 

One of the pleasures of this book is that author has crafted the rhythms of the sentences that the Welsh men and women speak, when they are speaking English, so that I could really hear the lilt of Welsh, and the care and precision of the way that they pronounced their word. 

Selected quotes:

• "Will felt that he was in a part of Britain like none he had ever known before: a secret, enclosed place, with powers hidden in its shrouded centuries at which he could not begin to guess." (1: The Golden Harp; The Oldest Hills)
• "The body of Cyngen is on the side between where the marks will be. In the retreat beneath the mound is extended Cadfan, said that it should enclose the praise of the earth. May he rest without blemish." (1: The Golden Harp; Cadfan’s Way) A classic riddle. What a shame that it doesn't seem to be used later in the book.
• "Like life it is, Will – sometimes you must seem to hurt something in order to do good for it." (1: The Golden Harp; Cadfan’s Way)
• "All that could be seen in him was the urge to hurt, and it was, as it always will be, the most dreadful sight in the world." (1: The Golden Harp; Fire on the Mountain)
• "Wish on a star – the cry of a pleasure and faith as ancient as the eyes of man." (1: The Golden Harp; Bird Rock)
• "that is the price we have to pay for the freedom of men on the earth. That they can do the bad things as well as the good. There are shadows in the pattern, as well as sunlight." (2: The Sleepers)
• "With a man like that, it is dangerous – when at last he loves, he gives all his heart without care or thinking, and it may never go back to him for the rest of his life." (2: The Sleepers)
• "At the centre of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the centre of the Dark there is a great black pit bottomless as the Universe." (2: The Sleepers; The Pleasant Lake)
• "In a great rush his mind filled with pictures of Cafall as a wobble-legged puppy, Cafall following him to school, Cafall learning the signals and commands of the working sheepdog, Cafall wet with rain, the long hair pressed flat in a straight parting along his spine, Cafall running, Cafall drinking from a stream, Cafall asleep with his chin warm on Bran’s foot. Cafall dead." (2: The Sleepers; The Cottage on the Moor)
• "Bran could think of no words to say. His head was crowded with jarring images and questions: a crossroads with a dozen turnings and no sign of which to follow." (2: The Sleepers; The Cottage on the Moor)

January 2024

The other books in the series are:

• Over Sea, Under Stone
• The Dark Is Rising
• Greenwitch
• Silver on the Tree

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Anna of the Five Towns" by Arnold Bennett

 

The 'five towns' are a fictional representation of the towns that later amalgamated to become Stoke-on-Trent, at the heart of England's pottery industry. This story follows Anna as she comes of age. Living with her young sister in a household dominated by her rich but miserly father, Anna comes of age and into an inheritance. But the demands of wealth, such as squeezing rent out of businesses on the brink of failure, are at odds with the teachings of her Methodist upbringing. There's a young businessman wooing her too. Both father and church have brought her up to see personal sacrifice and duty as more important than personal fulfilment. Should she follow her head or her heart? 

But it seems to me that the author's message is fundamentally a religious one. Towards the end of the book, one of the characters, Willie Price, is described thus: "His eye had the meek wistfulness of Holman Hunt's Scapegoat." (Ch 12) The painting is shown above.  The scapegoat was a real animal that the early Jews used to metaphorically load with their sins and cast out into the wilderness. Some people see the crucified Jesus as a human version of a scapegoat. Is Willie Jesus? That doesn't seem likely, given that he confesses to having committed a crime. And yet, he and his father are persecuted by the Methodist businessmen of the Five Towns, who are hypocrites, like the Pharisees, being somehow able to be religious on church days and ruthless businessmen on others. Anna's father is one of these, a capitalist who makes his money through investments and loans. But when Anna comes of age she discovers that it is she who owns the Price's factory, and she is bullied by her father into demanding the rent of them even when they protest they cannot pay. She regards Willie's father, Titus, as a hypocrite because he says he can't pay and then he finds the money after she threatens him with bankruptcy; she regards him as a hypocrite because, despite owing her money, he is Superintendent of the Sunday School. But isn't Anna, ironically surnamed Tellwright, the hypocrite? Tempted by her father, she tightens the screws on the Prices. The only thing that can be said in her favour is that, after the tragedy, she has a feeling that perhaps what she has done isn't good. But she has done it.

At  the end of the first quarter, Anna is shown as going to a revivalist meeting and there finding herself unable to embrace Jesus, perhaps because she is at least aware of her sinfulness (there are degrees of hypocrisy). This inability to convert is contrasted, close to the end of the book, in chapter 11, when there is a scene between Willie Price and Anna in which something transcendent occurs. He is crying, he tells her she is an angel. "He was her great child, and she knew that he worshipped her. Oh, ineffable power, that out of misfortune canst create divine happiness." The next paragraph starts: "Later, ..." One wonders what went on in those missing moments. It seems to me that this is the moment when Anna is converted. But it's too late, at least for Willie. He is going to Australia, loaded with dishonour, and driven out of this world. Just like the scapegoat.

The five towns are described as "mean and forbidding of aspect - sombre, hard-faced, uncouth; and the vaporous poison of their ovens and chimneys has soiled and shrivelled the surrounding country" (Ch 1). Sounds like a vision of Hell. 

The plot is simple enough and, apart from the protagonist, Anna, and perhaps her wooer, Henry, the characters are scarcely complex: the father is miserly and domineering ("sinister and formidable", Ch 1), the best friend Beatrice is a flibbertigibbet with a heart of gold, sister Agnes is a cheerful and willing workhorse etc. It's very much a Victorian novel, despite being written in 1902. There are hints of melodrama ("without the support of the walls she might have fallen"; Ch 2)and there are passages of stodgy prose ("The latter, boasting lineage and a large house in the aristocratic suburb of Hillport, gave to the society monetary aid and a gracious condescension. But though indubitably above the operation of any unwritten sumptuary law ..."; Ch 1)). Its only real concession to the twentieth century is the careful depiction of the industrial landscape which invites comparison with, for example, Hard Times by Charles Dickens, Germinal by Emile Zola and The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell. 

When Bennett wrote it, he was heavily influenced by the school of 'realism' professed by Zola.

The situation of the miser and his daughter seems derived from Balzac's Eugenie Grandet, which was published in 1833. 

In terms of socialist fiction, the obvious comparison is with H G Wells, not as a science fiction writer, but as the writer of Love and Mr Lewisham (1900) and Kipps (1905) which were published at around the same time as 'Anna ...' but seem rather less formal in style, less Victorian, more modern.

Once one has drudged through the first chapter, the pacing picks up. There are two triggers: firstly, in the first chapter when there are the first hints of a romantic relationship between Anna and Henry, but principally in the third chapter when Anna receives her inheritance and all the moral responsibilities that go with it. The first quarter ends with a revivalist prayer meeting in which Anna resists being converted. The mid-point is the School Treat, presided over by Mr Price, who has to leave the event suddenly; it is the last time we meet him. Henry's long-expected proposal is at the 75% mark. The final twist comes in the very last lines.

Selected quotes:

• "Her mind, stimulated by the emotions of the afternoon, broke the fetters of habitual self-discipline, and ranged voluptuously free over the whole field of recollection and anticipation. To remember, to hope: that was sufficient joy." (Ch 1)
• "It was Ephraim Tellwright who reduced the cost per head of souls saved." (Ch 2)
• "She had never looked beyond the horizons of her present world, but had sought spiritual satisfaction in the ideas of duty and sacrifice. ... she had rather despised love and the dalliance of the sexes. ... Now she saw, in a quick revelation, that it was the lovers, and not she, who had the right to scorn. She saw how miserably narrow, tepid and trickling the stream of her life had been ... Now it gushed forth warm, impetuous and full, opening out new and delicious vistas." (Ch 2)
• "On the grey distempered walls hung a few Biblical cartoons depicting scenes in the life of Joseph and his brethren - but without reference to Potiphar's wife." (Ch 4)
• "Blessed are the meek, blessed are the failures, blessed are the stupid, for they, unknown to themselves, have a grace which is denied to the haughty, the successful, and the wise." (Ch 6)
• "She was lovable, but had never been loved. She would have made an admirable wife and mother, but fate had decided that this material was to be wasted." (Ch 7)
• "The mysterious begetting of money by money ... The elaborate mechanism by which capital yields interest without suffering diminution from its original bulk is one of the commonest phenomena of modern life, and one of the least understood. ... to Anna ... the arrival of moneys out of space, unearned, unasked, was a disturbing experience, affecting her as a conjuring trick affects a child, whose sensations hesitate between pleasure and apprehension." (Ch 8)
• "The blunger crushed the clay, the sifter extracted the iron from it by means of a magnet, the press expelled the water, and the pug-mill expelled the air." (Ch 8)
• "He belonged to the great and powerful class of house-tyrants, the backbone of the British nation, whose views on income-tax  cause ministries to tremble." (Ch 9)
• "Anna tried to be at ease, but she was not. She could not for a long time dismiss the suspicion that all these people were foolishly blind to a peril which she alone had the sagacity to perceive." (Ch 10)
• "Anna had noticed that in families the youngest, petted in childhood, was often sacrificed in maturity. It was the last maid who must keep her maidenhood, and, vicariously filial, pay out of her own life the debt of all the rest." (Ch 11)
• "She had fraternized with sinners, like Christ; and, with amazing injustice, she was capable of deeming Mynors a Pharisee because she could not find fault with him." (Ch 11)
• "It's a sign of a hard winter ... when the hay runs after the horse." (Ch 12)
• "After fifty years of ceaseless labour, she had gained the affection of one person, and enough money to pay for her own funeral." (Ch 12)
• "She had sucked in with her mother's milk the profound truth that woman's life is always a renunciation." (Ch 13)

Some words I had to look up:

• erysipelas = a form of cellulitis, a bacterial skin infection which could have fatal consequences in the days before antibiotics.
• eleemosynary = charitable
• shardrucks; A 'shord' is a a faulty piece of pottery, and a 'ruck' is a rubbish tip.
• saggar: a box or container which can have a variety of shapes whose purpose is to protect the pottery from excessive heat during firing
• pug-mill: a machine containing rotating knives in a metal barrel to chop up the clay and force it through a grid into a vacuum chamber
• blunger: a mixer and blender to mix clay and water to ensure homogeneity
• peddling = small, paltry, petty. Presumably it comes from the fact that peddlers sold small goods. This word is nowadays pronounced and spelt 'piddling'.

January 2024; 245 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Middlesteins" by Jami Attenberg

Attenberg's third novel, this was one of the ten best-selling books on Amazon in 2012; it also made the New York Times best-seller list.

It centres around Edie, a grossly obese Jewish-American woman living in Chicago but it is mostly told from the perspective of those around her: her husband who leaves her, triggering shock waves across the family, her son and daughter, her daughter-in-law who puts her own family on a strict diet, and other members of the community. In general, the women are strong-minded and determined and the men are weak and compliant, which could be regarded as stereotypical, but most of the characters are well-drawn and convincing, especially the husband, the daughter, the daughter-in-law and the grand-daughter. 

It is refreshing to read a book focused on the characters and the relationships. There is a timeline along which the story develops but the story isn't driven by a plot. This is a portrait of normal, everyday life. That's not to say that nothing happens; rather, the things that happen are part of everyday lives. The drama and the tension comes from the ordinary things that happen to all of us, from the strengths and weaknesses of the characters, and from their interactions. Although I wasn't racing through the pages, desperate to know what happened, this quiet, gentle story had more than enough to grab and hold my interest. After all, it was about day-to-day life, the mundane stuff that I and every other reader experiences all the time. I couldn't help but empathise and identify with at least some of the characters, and recognise the others. This is a book about my own experiences, my strengths, my weaknesses, my hopes and my hidden despairs.

It was enlivened with terse prose that went straight to the point, witty prose that often sparkled and sometimes made me laugh aloud, prose that could capture a description or make an original observation in a few perfectly-chosen words.

It is told from multiple, third-person perspectives in the past-tense but allowing the author to make comments, such as fast-forwarding to tell the reader what will happen in the future to that character.

Selected quotes:

• "A child should be squeezable. She was a cement block of flesh." (Edie, 62 pounds)
• "After they made love, she would lazily watch the skin that covered his heart bob up and down, fast, slower, slow." (Edie, 62 pounds)
• "They agreed that food was made of love, and was what made love, and they could never deny themselves a bite of anything they desired." (Edie, 62 pounds)
• "She ... had grown up in a town of drunks, fighting her way to the middle class while the rest of the roommates did nothing but hover there." (The Meanest Act)
• "She had no poker face. All day long she flinched."  (The Meanest Act)
• "Real adults left their homes and went somewhere to work."  (The Meanest Act)
• "She was in three book clubs but she only showed up if she liked the book they were reading." (Edie, 202 pounds)
• "His wife had made all household decisions since the day they'd married, crushing him like a nut when he offered the slightest opinion." (Middlestein in Exile)
• "With grace he offered her his love and protection, and she accepted it, tepidly, warily. It did not bring them closer together, but it did not tear them apart." (Edie, 332 pounds)
• "If her mother could adjust the color of the sky to match her own eyes, she would." (The Walking Wounded)
• "Once you really know how the world works, you can't unknow it." (The Walking Wounded)
• "Emily made a bitchy little noise, a noise she had only recently started practicing and one that would get much, much better with age." (The Walking Wounded)
• "He was pretty sure he had not failed at anything in his life, even if he hadn't really succeeded at that much either." (Middlestein in Love) Doesn't that sum up life for 99% of us?

January 2024; 272 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God