"This side of brightness" by Colum McCann

 From the first few lines you can tell that you are in the presence of a writer of quality.

In 1916, Nathan Walker is digging the first railway tunnel under the river in New York when a seal fails and he and two others are blown by compressed air up through the river; a fourth man dies. In 1991, Treefrog lives in the abandoned tunnels under the city. This book, a tribute to the working men who risk their lives on a daily basis to build our cities, and a chronicle of the heartbreak of everyday life, traces and connects these two men.

We had a brilliant discussion about this book at the Grove Theatre book club. One of our members felt 'tricked' by the author because she had been enticed (seduced? groomed?) into liking Treefrog before discovering his guilty secret, she then realised that Nathan could be guilty of the same failing which was of such a nature that she couldn't, or wouldn't, see it as a weakness but as an absolute irredeemable moral sin; two other members felt the revelation of this secret was 'contrived'. I disagree. It seems to me that Treefrog was driven underground by his guilt at what he perceives as his flaw and that the whole narrative is leading up to his confession and potential redemption. One could interpret his time underground as time in a very Dantesque purgatory. 

Indeed, the whole book could be seen as a religious allegory. It starts with a type of resurrection, as Nathan escapes from his tube underground to shoot upwards through water into the air; it could be an allegory of birth, or of rebirth through baptism. And there are the tunnels, which are hellish, where the lost souls dwell (the obsessive behaviour of Treefrog is a very Dantean interpretation of the interminability of hell), and there are the skyscrapers reaching towards heaven. And there are the ordinary men and women, living their ordinary lives, doing right and doing wrong.  And, in the end, there is confession and at least the possibility of redemption.

It is also a book about how the world in which we live has been built on the toil of its underclass. Nathan labours underground to construct the tunnels for the subway system. Clarence sacrifices an eye soldiering for his country. Treefrog, when younger, built skyscrapers. As the song says:

Once I built a railroad, I made it run

Made it race against time

Once I built a railroad, now it's done

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower up to the sun

Brick and rivet and lime

Once I built a tower, now it's done

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell

Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum

Half a million boots went slogging through Hell

And I was the kid with the drum

Say, don't you remember? They called me 'Al'

It was 'Al' all the time

Why don't you remember? I'm your pal

Say buddy, can you spare a dime?

Furthermore, I think that the way the author leads you through the story is masterful. The first hint of Treefrog's problem is subtly brushed into the narrative; even at the end when it becomes clearer, there are still ambiguities about what he did and why he did it. Subtlety is a hallmark of this book. He could make much more of the thesis that the city of New York was built on the toil of its underclass. He could go to town on the racism experienced by Nathan and Eleanor. Instead, he concentrates on his characters, all of whom are fundamentally good (there is no place for the doctrine of original sin in this novel) but with weaknesses, many of whom are destroyed by the pressures imposed upon them by society.

We also had a discussion about why the author chose a dual narrative, jumping backwards and forwards between time frames. A part of this was, of course, to create suspense as the reader tries to work out the exact connection between Nathan and Treefrog. But, more than that, I think there are intended to be parallels. Both of them toil to create the infrastructure that the city takes for granted. Both of them are ostracised by society for their love. 

What a book! I fully intend to read more books by this author.

Selected quotes:

• "They arrive at dawn in their geography of hats. A dark field of figures, stalks in motion, bending towards the docklands." (Ch 2)
• "If, at that time, Treefrog had made a map of the beats of his heart, the contours would have been so close together that the lines would almost have touched one another in the steepest and finest of gradations." (Ch 5)
• "Everybody is due despair in their lives, she says, and therefore everybody needs a remedy - it's a fact of life and it only costs two dollars to cure, a guaranteed bargain." (Ch 6)
• "They move like two chiaroscurists above the covers, black and white, white and black, then sleep under foreheads wet with sweat." (Ch 6)
• "The dust slips through the candlelight and descends lazily, landing on the spiderlimbs of wax at the base of the candles." (Ch 9)
• "There's a grave inside all of us." (Ch 9)

This is a book full of the joy and pain of everyday life.

September 2023; 239 pages

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

"The Keeper of Stories" by Sally Page

 Janice may be 'just' a cleaner, as her husband keeps reminding her, but she is an extraordinary cleaner and an extraordinary woman whose services are in high demand around Cambridge, UK. She cleans for an opera singer and an ex-spy, amongst others. Her neighbour used to play cricket for India, the shoe-shop assistant used to play squash for England. But then, Janice's own father was a university professor and the bus driver's dad ran a bookshop. It's quite a place, Cambridge!

I love the idea of writing about ordinary people: a cleaner and a bus driver, brilliant. But they weren't ordinary at all. Cop out.

Janice collects the stories which show that ordinary people have extraordinary backgrounds. She likes stories that show that good people aren't always perfect but she doesn't like stories that show that villains may have redeeming features. And, although she collects the stories of others, her own story is locked deep inside her.

The plot revolves around Janice's latest client, an old lady who tells her, in instalments, a true story about a Parisian courtesan. The old lady's son is trying to persuade his mum to move into sheltered accommodation. Janice also cleans for his wife and has fallen in love with his dog, whom she walks. She's also trying to help the son of another client come to terms with the suicide of his dad. At the same time, Janice's husband, 'the man of a thousand jobs', is seeking new employment and taking Janice for granted.

The narrative is third person past, told from the PoV of Janice. It is perfectly paced with the Parisian courtesan story starting at the 25% mark, a major change in Janice's life occurring at 50%, major revelations at around 75% and the end-game happening shortly afterwards.

This is the sort of book where the plot is very much in charge (there is a lot of foreshadowing!). The characters were carefully observed but were subservient to the needs of the plot and I'm not sure I ever fully believed in any of them, although I certainly enjoyed old Mrs B and the dog with attitude. The villains were too clearly villains, without redemption, and the heroes were heroes without flaw. Janice herself had issues with her self-esteem but she was fundamentally another in the long list of Mary Sue heroines who seem to litter modern fiction: good at everything she turned her hand at. The bus driver was not just a bibliophile but able to talk calm control in a crisis. Even the protagonist, Janice, didn't really have a character arc; rather she went on a voyage in which she discovered that her fears were fundamentally groundless. The ending was twee. 

Perhaps the best character was husband Mike. Everything he did was to take Janice for granted. But it was everything he did. There was not a single spark of redemption in him, except, perhaps, that he didn't hit his wife.

Perhaps the problem was that there were simply too many stories for the author to focus on developing the characters beyond the  superficial. 

Spoiler alert

There is a remarkable similarity between the heroines of this book and Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Both of them are overlooked women, both of them have remarkable strengths, and both of them get away with murdering abusive men, not just in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of the reader.

Selected quotes

• "the bus doors sigh as if exhaling and shudder closed." (Ch 1). Great, I thought. This is a nice original way to describe the bus doors. But then she uses the same description again. They doors shudder three times (in the first thirty pages) and sigh at least three times. 
• "At a funeral people were often lost, not just in their grief but, being English, immobilised by the fear of saying or doing the wrong thing." (Ch 3) The 'being English' annoyed me. Really? Isn't this rather an over-generalisation? Couldn't the sentence be as powerful if those two words were omitted? These two words turned an acute observation into a cliche.
• "This morning's driver looked like a geography teacher." (Ch 4) Another cliched observation. If this had been 'Janice's idea of a geography teacher' it might be reasonable but as it stands it isn't.
• "It still amazes her how much he swears. For a fox terrier." (Ch 7)
• "She wants to ask if he's having an affair but doesn't know how to say it without sounding hopeful." (Ch 16)

September 2023; 375 pages

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

"The Nibelungenlied" translated by A T Hatto

A castle in the modern Rhine

The 'song of the Nibelungs' is one of the classic mediaeval prose romances; it is most well-known today for forming one of the key bases from Wagner's Ring Cycle, although much of his tale is actually derived from other mediaeval poems.

The story

Siegfried (arrives in Worms to woo Kriemhilde, the sister of King Gunther of the Burgundians (who rules with his two brothers Gernot and Giselher). Siegfried helps Gunther defeat an army of invading Saxons. He then travels (with Gunther and vassals Hagen and his brother Dancwart) to Iceland so that Gunther can woo Princess Brunhilde, a lady of formidable strength who demands that Gunther beats her in three trials (throwing a javelin, throwing a boulder, and long jump) or lose his life. Siegfried helps Gunther by using a cloak of invisibility, ensuring that Gunther seems to have won. Brunhilde acknowledges defeat but, on her wedding night, refuses access to Gunther, tying him up in her girdle and hanging him from a hook on the wall for the duration of the night. So he again enlists Siegfried’s help who, the next night, using his cloak, subdues Brunhilde (but doesn’t violate her, leaving that to Gunther, after which Brunhilde loses her strength) and steals her ring and the famous girdle which he gives to his bride Kriemhilde.

Brunhilde has the mistaken belief that Siegfried is one of Gunther’s vassals and therefore begrudges him marrying Gunther’s sister Kriemhilde. She doesn’t realises that Siegfried is King of the Netherlands, the Nibelungs, and Norway. So when, after a few years, Siegfried and his queen Kriemhilde return to Gunther and Brunhilde’s court, the two ladies have a fight about who has precedence. Angry  Kriemhilde reveals that she has the ring and the girdle, implying that Siegfried deflowered Brunhilde. 

Hagen, arguing that this scandal has dishonoured King Gunther, and (as a bonus) that this will be a good way to get hold of the fabulous treasure of the Nibelungs, won by Siegfried previous to this story, conspires with Gunther to murder Siegfried, after tricking Kriemhilde into revealing Siegfried’s vulnerability (a patch between his shoulder-blades where a linden leaf landed while he was bathing in the blood of a dragon he had killed, so becoming horny-skinned). Hagen's plot works and Siegfried, a guest, is betrayed and assassinated, and his gold is stolen and then hidden in the Rhine.

After a dozen years or so the still beautiful Kriemhilde (who stayed at Gunther’s court rather than returning to the Netherlands and her infant son) marries King Etzel of the Huns. Later, seeking vengeance for her first husband, she invites her brother, and Hagen, and their men, to her new husband’s court. They go, despite realising that it is probably a trick. Following a lot of fighting, and many dead, finally Gunther and Hagen, the only survivors of the thousands of Burgundians on the trip, are captured by Dietrich, and imprisoned and then murdered by Kriemhilde, though they refuse to say where the Nibelung's treasure is hidden.

The sources

There is an awful lot of fighting in the poem but A T Hatto points out that there is very little technical detail about the fights, suggesting that the anonymous author was not a knight. Nor, given the lack of a Christian message, was he likely to have been a monk. The most likely explanation, especially given the prominence of two minstrels employed as messengers, is that the poet was a literate minstrel.

Hatto dates the poem using things mentioned. The bleeding corpse is a motive in the poem Iwein by Hartmann von Aue which was probably written in about 1198. The fabric from 'Ninnive' probably comes from a version of the Alexander legend written about 1190. Rumold, a minor character, is described as ‘Lord of the Kitchen’ which is a real title dating from about 1201. Etzel’s wedding with Kriemhild in Vienna may be based on the wedding in Vienna of Duke Leopold VI and Theodora Comnena, grand-daughter of a Byzantine Emperor, which took place in 1203. All this suggests a date of composition of about 1203.

Sources for the poem include the Lex Burgundionum (pre 516) and Latin chronicles which mention a Burgundian King called Gundaharius who has a brother called Gislaharius; these are probably the originals of Gunther and Giselher. Etzel is almost certainly Attila the Hun, said to have been murdered in 453 by Germanic wife Ildico. 

Another source, the Waltharius, probably written about 920 by Ekkehard, a monk of St Gall, records the escape of Burgundian princess Hiltgirt, her lover Waltharius, and Hagano, from the court of Attila, after Guntharius, King of the Franks, reneged on a treaty; Hagano and Guntharius conspire to steal from Hiltgunt and Waltharius the treasure they have stolen from Attila. In this story the Franks are described as 'nebulones' (rascals?) which may be the origin of the word 'Nibelungs'.

The Poetic Eddas contain part of a poem in which Brynhild, Gunnar’s wife, accuses Sigurd of deflowering her, perhaps because she is jealous that Gudrun, Sigurd’s wife, is pregnant. Guthorm kills Sigurd, perhaps acting on behalf of a conspiracy involving Hogni. Another poem in the Eddas, the Atlakvida, dated to about 900, tells the story of Atli, King of the Huns, who invites Gunnarr, King of the Burgundians, to visit him. Gunnar consults his brother Hogni: why did their sister, Gudrun, Alti’s wife, send a ring twined with wolf’s hair? Despite this warning Gunnarr goes. The Burgundians are seized (after Hogni kills eight men). Gunnarr refuses to say where his treasure is hidden. The Huns bring him a human heart, saying it is Hogni’s, but he refuses to believe it, saying the heart is too trembly. The Huns cut out Hogni’s heart, who dies laughing. Gunnarr now says that, since Hogni was the only other person who knew there the treasure is, the Huns will never find it. They throw him in a snake pit where he dies, playing the harp. Gudrun then revenges herself on Atli by (a) feeding him with the flesh of their sons at a banquet (b) killing him in bed (c) burning down his house. Many of these items are found in the second part of the Nibelungenlied. 

Poetic form
I read a prose translation into English. The original versions are written in verse. There is variation of form but the fundamental basis is that each stanza has four lines with an AABB rhyme pattern (there are also internal rhymes, particularly for the words just before the caesuras. The first three lines of each stanza have three metrical beats, a caesura, and then three further beats. The final line of each stanza has an additional foot after the caesura. The last word before the caesura is usually an iamb (stress/unstress) whereas the final word of the line is usually stressed. 

Evaluation

Morally speaking, this is a squalid tale. The author is firmly on the side of valiant fighting men and very misogynistic. Thus, the treacherous and indeed thieving and murderous Hagen, is praised for his last ditch stand against impossible odds. Meanwhile Kriemhilde is a she-devil, principally because she outrages the laws of hospitality under which you shouldn’t seek to kill your guests (though that is exactly what Hagen did earlier, prompting this symmetrical revenge). Furthermore, Gunther more or less escapes censure for his part in tricking Brunhilde. But this, of course, is to judge the story in the light of modern-day morality.

Judging it by modern literary sensibility is similarly anachronistic. There is a great deal of action, fighting in particular, and plot, and very little concern for character. Hagen is a villain according to modern sensibilities but is presented by the poet as brave and a great fighter whose morally dubious actions are realpolitik; the bereaved Kriemhilde is derided as a she-devil. Time scales don't work: Giselher is described as young despite being at least fifty, Kriemhilde preserves her charms over a similar period, Dancwart claims to have been a child when he was manifestly an adult. 

Much of the narrative is along the lines of: this happened and then this and then this. 

Selected quotes:

• "Siegfried loved his sister, though Siegfried had never set eyes on her." (Ch 5)
• "Siegfried son of Siegmund stood there handsome as though limned on parchment." (Ch 5)
• "He tried to win her by force, and tumbled her shift for her, at which the haughty girl reached for the girdle of stout silk cord that she wore about her waist, and subjected him to great suffering and shame, for in return of being balked of her sleep, she bound him hand and foot, carried him to a nail, and hung him on the wall." (Ch 10)
• "That evening, while the King sat and dined, many fine robes were splashed with tine as the butlers plied the tables." (Ch 13) This sounds as if the butlers were very clumsy but I think it is meant to show that the courtiers can afford to buy new clothes.
• "One of the warriors then went over to a corpse and, removing his helmet and kneeling over a wound, began to drink the blood that oozed from it and, little used to it though he was, he thought it very good." (Ch 36) Not vampirism; the warrior is very thirsty. But this passage adduces evidence for the partiality of the author: anything the Burgundians do (tricking women, murdering guests, drinking blood) is good but their enemies are continually characterised as evil. 

There was a BBC Radio 4UK 'In Our Time' programme about the Nibelungenlied; click on the link for the podcast.

September 2023; 290 pages

Translated by A T Hatto and first pubslished in 1965

My Penguin paperback edition, with revisions, was issued in 1969

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Passau

The text says: Passau: A literary centre of the High Middle Ages. The Nibelungenlied, a major European epic, was written here around the year 1200, at the court of Bishop Wolfger von Erla (who was bishop between 1191 and 1204). It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2009. The outstanding position of the Bishop's court in mediaeval literary life is also evidenced by the fact that Bishop Wolfger's travel accounts mention 'five long shillings' for a fur coat, which Walther von der Vogelweide received in 2003 as a singer in the episcopal court. This note is the only documentary evidence of this greatest poet of the German Middle Ages.

I'm writing this on a river cruise while the boat is docked at Passau, the town in modern Germany where the Danube meets the Inn and the Ilz. Being at the confluence of three rivers made Passau an important town in the Holy Roman Empire. In Chapter 21, which describes Kriemhild's journey to Hungary where she will marry Etzel (Atilla the Hun), we are told that she travels through a place where there is a cloister and where the Inn flow into the Danube, a place called Passau, where "Bishop Pilgrim" holds sway. Many scholars believe that this is a sort of product placement, or mention of the sponsor, who may have been renowned literary patron Wolfgang von Erla who was bishop in Passau between 1191 - 1204, dates coinciding with the expected dating of the poem. 

Selected quotes from 'An Introduction to the Second Reading':

• “Although the poet wrote on parchment, he was not composing in a vacuum ... but, instead, he was writing and then reciting under the pressure of live and far from unanimous audiences who somehow had to be appeased.” (Introduction to a second reading: the poem as an entity)
• “Various poems about Siegfried’s younger and wilder days must have been circulating in Germany at the end of the twelfth century.” (Introduction to a second reading: inconsistencies, obscurities, prevarications)
• “What ... was the poet going to do with a king who dishonestly married a queen beyond his own wooing and who then connived at the murder of his brother-in-law, but who afterwards fought and died as a hero?” (Introduction to a second reading: inconsistencies, obscurities, prevarications)
• “The trait which explains most of Hagen’s deeds is political clear sightedness followed by ruthless action. ... It is always Hagen who forces the pace when important decisions have to be made.” (Introduction to a second reading: characters)
• “Etzel [ie Attila] ... is far from being a Scourge of God. Rather does he remind us of other great kings of medieval literature, of King Arthur and Charlemagne, in his role of an amiable roi faineant.” (Introduction to a second reading: characters)
• “Although we must assume that the Nibelungenlied was written by a Christian poet for Christian audiences, and that he leaves loose ends for thoughtful Christians who take up if they so please, the mood which the theme induced was not a Christian mood, and the result is not a Christian poem.” (Introduction to a second reading: the ethos of the poem)
• “The old alliterative measure gave way everywhere to rhyme during the ninth century, and so the ancient epic formulae, in which much might have been conserved, were disrupted.” (Introduction to a second reading: the two-fold texture of the poem; footnote)

"Lotharingia" by Simon Winder

 

A very personal history of the lands along the border between France and Germany, from the Benelux countries to Switzerland ("a region that is both the dozy back of beyond, and central to the fate of humanity"; Introduction) written by the funniest historian I have read (I also loved his Germania and I'm looking forward to Danubia). 

This book is made glorious by the utter and total irreverence that this historian shows towards the past. Repeatedly describing monuments as fantastically weird and grotesque, repeatedly showing that most wars aren't won but lost through one side being even more hopelessly incompetent than the other, he views the past through affectionate modern eyes, proving that people then were just like people nowadays, just trying to survive the hurricanes of history. 

Of course the patchwork madness of the Holy Roman Empire, representing everything from kingdoms down the individual monasteries, makes it easy to mock Lotharingaria for most of its history.

He's funny about himself, too, for example: "It does not reflect well on me that at an age which is for most boys an eye-rolling frenzy of coughed-over cigarettes and self-abuse I was enjoying making a little cardboard wheel go round." (Ch 8: Fencers and soap-boilers)

Selected Quotes:

• "Here I was in a bus filled with the great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of those who had experienced 'historical' events of various, terrible kinds and who were - with their jolly backpacks and untiring ability to laugh helplessly when one of their number farted - happily oblivious." (Introduction)
• "'Palatinate' in the sense of 'of the palace' ... indicated territory with special, defensive connotations, as in the County Palatine of Chester ... the French word 'paladin' has the same root." (Introduction)
• "Human life in much of Europe is dictated by trees. Pine and beech forests were the great enemies, their seeds creeping forward and within a generation stamping out any areas abandoned by humans." (Ch 1, Ice -sheets to Asterix)
• "Hildegard's ... cure for jaundice by carefully tying a stunned bat to your loins and waiting for it to die seems beyond improvement." (Ch 3, The Sybil of the Rhine)
• "Strasbourg became a great hub for reform ideas, but this was preceded by the inexplicable episode in 1518 when all together some four hundred people danced themselves to death.No plausible explanation has ever been given for what happened: people simply kept dancing until they had seizures or heart attacks." (Ch 6: The life and adventures of Charles V)
• "The nadir of his existence was probably being defeated while fighting in Brittany, pretending to be dead on the battlefield and then being unfortunately recognized." (Ch 6: The Oranges)
• "A very strange emblem of two burly mermen with their suffused and muscular tails interwined. It was completely impossible not to see this as an early-modern thumbs-up for male love, albeit of a specialized kind, but I fear it may just have been some tedious allegory of different rivers joining their courses." (Ch 7: Whitewash and clear glass)
• "Ferdinand's advisers flapped their arms about with excitement, not knowing whether to pray or self-flagellate first." (Ch 8: 'A harvest of joys')
• "Most famous was Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Royalist general, whose stylish clothing, corkscrew locks, soft-leather accessories and damn-your-eyes manner came to define Cavalier chic before the inevitable fashion change of Cromwell's no-more-Christmas, black-and-white collection." Ch 8: Elizabeth and her children)
• "How startling it would be to find an elaborate sculpture of a nymph on her way to the bath, with a sensible gown on and a little basket for her shampoo, rather than being 'surprised' in the bath in a skittish naked pose." (Ch 8: Uncle Toby's hobby-horse)
• "The series of civil wars that wrecked the British Isles from 1639 to 1653 killed a greater percentage of the population that the First World War." (Ch 8: 'Too late to be ambitious')
• "A bedlam of aristocratic spongers and weirdos who were not used to earning a living but who, cut off from their estates, soon ran out of money." (Ch 10: 'The old times have gone')
• "There is a pub partly on Dutch and partly on Belgian territory which, reflecting different licensing laws, allows you to keep drinking just by jumping over a line on the floor." (Ch 10: 'What is there to fear if you are a slave?')
• "Neutral Moresnet was so small that if there was a fire it had to call in the Prussian fire brigade." (Ch 11: Strange happenings underground)
• "Luxembourg battles with Edinburgh or Budapest in any Most Craggy City contest." (Ch 11: Grand Duchies, Empires and Kingdoms)
• "The Prussians would only ever pause because they assumed they were being led into a cunning trap, which in each case turned out to be simply a piece of rank incompetence." (Ch 12:Kilometre pigs)

September 2023; 470 pages

"Time Shelter" by Georgi Gospodinov

 This book won the International Booker Prize in 2023.

The author and narrator (GG) meets a mysterious man called Gaustine (G) at a conference. Gaustine tries to treat dementia patients by taking them to 'time shelters': rooms which are authentic replicas of some moment of their past, the time they 'want' to live in. Gaustine's clinic has a floor for the 1940s, another for the 1950s, and so on.

The idea catches on. Bulgaria holds a referendum to determine whether it, as a nation, shall turn the clock past to its glorious nationalistic past (pre World War II) or its post World War 2 socialist heyday. Soon, nations across Europe are choosing the decade in which they want to live (although each referendum is divisive and prompts some to secede from the national era and choose their own time zons). Europe becomes a chaos of different nations returning to different times. Of course, the spectre haunting Europe is the Second World War. 

As the narrator starts to lose his own memory, re-enactment groups set out not just to replicate but to recreate the trigger points of the first and second world wars with deadly consequences.

This is very much a novel of ideas. It is strong on ideas. However, I felt it sacrificed characters and narrative to the ideas. For example, section 4 is devoted to explaining which decade was chosen by which country; the narrative of the rest of the book (such as it is) being suspended for about twenty pages. The only character I could imagine as flesh and blood was Demby; even the narrator seemed an intellectual construct, despite the information that dribbled out about his previous life. I felt that this distanced me emotionally from the story; in the end I didn't really care what happened.

The translation had some quirks (eg the use of the words 'gotten' and 'ass') which made me suspect that it had been rendered into American English.

Selected quotes:

• "The times is coming when more and more people will want to hide in the cave of the past." (1.11)
• "For us the past is the past, and even when we step into it, we know that the exit to the present is open, we can come back with ease. For those who have lost their memories, the door has slammed shut once and for all." (1.11)
• "Isn't it truly astonishing that there is no recording device for scents? ... we don't even have names for smells ... Rather, it's always through comparison ... It smells like violets, like toast, like seaweed, like rain, like a dead cat ..." (1.14)
• "A forgetful God, a God with Alzheimer's, would free us from all obligations. No memory, no crime." (1.20)
• "The most terrible thing about hide-and-seek is realizing that no one is looking for you anymore." (1.21)
• "Time doesn't nest in the unusual, it seeks a quiet, peaceful place." (1.27)
• "We are factories for the past. Living past-making machines, what else? We eat time and produce the past." (1.37)
• "Does the past disintegrate, or does it remain practically unchanged like plastic bags, slowly and deeply poisoning everything around itself." (1.37)
• "If hate were the gross domestic product, then  the growth of prosperity in some countries would soon be sky-high." (2.2)
• "fellows of an undefined middle-age (but with well-defined potbellies)" (3.12)
• "In short, that's how the sixties ended, like a college party where you've gotten drunk, just gotten your buzz on, and suddenly the cops bust in." (4.5)
• "God is not dead. God has forgotten. God has dementia." (5.4)
• "When I write, I know who I am, but once I stop, I am no longer so sure." (5.5)

August 2023; 302 pages

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

"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" by William Shakespeare

This shows the moment when Valentine rescues Silvia from Proteus with 'Sebastian' (Julia) looking on. It was painted by Angelica Kauffman in 1789 and is in the public domain.

One of Shakespeare's earliest plays, this comedy explores the betrayal of friendship.

The Plot

Valentine and Proteus, the two gentlemen of Verona, are best mates, having grown up together. Valentine is about to travel to Milan and wants Proteus to come, but Proteus is in love with Julia (who, despite her protestations to the contrary, reciprocates his love) and he wants to stay in Verona. So they part.

In Milan, Valentine falls in love with the Duke's daughter, Silvia, and she with him, but her dad the Duke wants her to marry Thurio, who is richer. Meanwhile, back in Verona, Proteus is told to go to Milan by his father. Proteus and Julia say their fond farewells, exchanging kisses and rings and promising eternal fidelity.

When Proteus arrives in Milan he meets Silvia and falls in love with her. (His namesake, Proteus, was the 'Old Man of the Sea', a figure from Greek myth famed for his shape-shifting. It is from this that we get the word 'protean' meaning changeable.) So when Valentine tells Proteus of his plan to elope with Silvia, using a rope ladder to rescue her from the tower her father shuts her in at night, Proteus sees his opportunity to pinch his mate's girl. He betrays Valentine to the Duke, and Valentine is banished from Milan. In the countryside he is captured by a band of outlaws but they are impressed by his gentlemanly looks and his ability to speak more than one language and they make him their captain.

Meanwhile, back in Verona, Julia decides to travel to Milan in search of Proteus. To “prevent/ The loose encounters of lascivious men” she decides to disguise herself as a male page. 

Proteus pretends to assist Thurio who serenades Silvia. Julia arrives and realises that Proteus is in love with Silvia. Silvia, who knows that Proteus has betrayed Valentine, berates Proteus: “Thou subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man”. 

Sebastian employs pageboy 'Sebastian' (Julia in disguise) to take a present to Silvia: it is the ring Julia gave Proteus. Silvia refuses the ring.

Silvia flees Milan searching for Valentine. The Duke enrols Proteus and Thurio in a posse to capture the absconders. 

Silvia has been captured by the bandits but Proteus frees her. He thinks she should be grateful but she still refuses him so he decides to rape her. At this point Valentine, who has been lurking in the undergrowth, steps forward. He's a bit cross with Proteus who begs forgiveness. Val grants this and says “All that was mine in Silvia I give thee”. Sebastian (Julia), who witnesses all this, swoons. Recovering she tells Proteus that she failed to deliver his ring to Julia and then gives him the ring that he gave to her. She reveals her identity. Proteus, still protean, realises he really loves her.

The outlaws come in with captives: the Duke and Thurio. Thurio claims Silvia but when Valentine threatens to kill him, renounces Silvia. The Duke, unimpressed by Thurio’s cowardice, gives Silvia to Valentine and unexiles all the outlaws.

Added to this are two (three?) other key roles. The servants of Valentine and Proteus are Speed and Launce (who has a dog, Crab) respectively. Speaking usually in prose (often reserved by Shakespeare for lover-class characters) this pair comment on the action and have solo and paired comedy routines. But it's classed as a comedy because of the happy ending.

Shakespeare at his most misogynistic?

Modern sensibilities have difficulty with the scene in which Valentine, having prevented Proteus from raping Silvia, then appears to offer her to him as a gesture of friendship with the words: “All that was mine in Silvia I give thee”. This sounds utterly patriarchal. On the one hand there is love at first sight and on the other hand marriage as a dynastic partnership between two patriarchies. Silvia is a very strong women, refusing to marry the man her father has chosen for her, contracting a secret relationship with another man, running away to be with him when he is sent into exile; will she acquiesce to become a mere body gifted by Valentine to his inconstant mate? This is either Shakespeare at his most misogynistic or Shakespeare the tyro dramatist who hasn't yet realised that plot must follow character.

The sources Shakespeare may have used

Aspects of the Julia-Proteus courtship (the business with the letter and Julia’s annoyance with her maid in 1.2, Proteus being sent away by his father in 1.3, Julia, disguised as a boy, becoming the page of her lover and being used to carry messages to his new sweetheart in 4.4) are drawn from the story of 'Felix and Felismena' in Los Siete Libros de la Diana by Jorge de Montemayor originally published in Spanish in Valencia in 1542 but translated into English by Bartholomew Yong in 1598. 1598 is later than the normally accepted date for 2GoV but Yong claims in his preface to have finished his translation in 1582, so it is possible that Shakespeare saw a manuscript copy; alternatively he saw the French translation which was published in 1578. A third (and I think the likeliest) possibility is that he saw a play (by anon) called The History of Felix and Philomena which was performed at Greenwich Palace by the Queen's Men on 3 January 1585. This is likely to have starred Richard Tarlton, the best-known clown of the time, a leading player in the Queen’s Men (and possibly the original of Yorick), who was known for working with a dog; there are suggestions that Shakespeare wrote the part of Launce for Tarlton but that Tarlton never performed it because he died in 1588.

Another likely source was The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, a narrative poem by Arthur Brooke, published in 1562, which contains a character called Friar Laurence and the device of a young man attempting to meet with his forbidden love using a rope ladder.

Another source is thought to be Arcadia by Philip Sidney published in 1590 which contains a woman dressed as a page who follows her betrothed and another character who becomes captain of an outlaw gang.

The friendship of Valentine and Proteus may have been inspired by the intimacy of Titus and Gisippus in The Boke Named the Governour by Thomas Elyot published in 1531 (which is based on a story in the Decameron but there are more verbal similarities between 2GoV and The Governour than the Decameron). In The Governour, Titus and Gisippus are inseparable until Gisippus falls in love with Sophronia. He introduces her to Titus, but Titus is overcome with jealousy and vows to seduce her. Upon hearing of Titus' plan, Gisippus arranges for them to change places on the wedding night, thus placing their friendship above his love.

Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, a novel by John Lyly, published in 1578 also mentions two friends, inseparable until divided by a woman. Lyly (whose younger brothers went to school with Christopher Marlowe) was private secretary to the Earl of Oxford - thought by some fools to be the author of Shakespeare’s work - and leaseholder of the Blackfriars Playhouse where his boy-company performed plays, some of which he wrote, including Midas, performed in 1589 - 1590, which contains a scene similar to that between Launce and Speed discussing the pros and cons of a woman.

Date when Shakespeare wrote 2GoV
2GoV was mentioned in Palladis Tamia by Francis Meres which was published in 1598, so it predates this.

If we accept the theory that one of the sources was The History of Felix and Philomena then 2GoV must date to 1585 or later. If Richard Tarlton was the original player for Launce, 2GoV was written before 1588 when Tarlton died. But If Shakespeare also used the material from Lyly’s Midas the earliest date for 2GoV is 1589. So it may be that Shakespeare wrote the part for Tarlton but hadn't completed the play before Tarlton's death and maybe went back to it at a later date.

Many experts argue that 2GoV is one of the earliest plays Shakespeare wrote, possibly the first. There are a variety of flaws:

• Whenever there are three participants in a dialogue, one tends to fall silent, making it a duologue. Shakespeare employs duologues, soliloquys and asides almost entirely. 
• The conversation between the outlaws is less a conversation and more an arrangement of speeches. 
• Proteus is not the only character to be inconstant: Valentine is the perfect romantic gentleman until he seems to hand Silvia to his rival; Silvia is a strong women until she fails to protest against being handed over; Sir Eglantine is reputed to be brave but is a coward at the first opportunities

Furthermore, much of the blank verse is end-stopped; in his later plays Shakespeare made much more use of enjambement and caesuras. He also is much stricter with his iambic pentameters in 2GoV than in his later verse. 

All these things argue for an early date of composition. Shakespeare is thought to have arrived in London in about 1590 so 2GoV probably dates to around 1591 or 1592.

Flaws and errors
Some snobs refuse to believe that a lower middle-class oik like the son of a glover from Stratford could possibly write the wonderful poetry contained in the plays; instead they postulate that they must have been penned by an aristocrat. They suggest that Shakespeare's knowledge of Europe could only have come from somebody who had been on the Grand Tour. 

In 2GoV (Act 1, Scene 1) Valentine says his father seeks to see him “shipped” (1.1.54) from Verona to Milan and Proteus, near the end of the scene, tells Speed, Valentine’s servant, to “be gone, to save your ship from wreck” (1.1.145). But to travel from Verona to Milan by ship would be crazy. You’d need to go to Venice first (that's heading in the opposite direction from Milan) and then sail all the way around Italy, land at Genoa, and then travel overland to Milan. The overland section of the journey alone would be longer than the direct land route from Verona to Milan. Perhaps Valentine knew about the bandits and was trying to avoid them, and when he went into exile (travelling overland) he didn't much care about being caught. On the other hand, Julia, when she goes off in search of Proteus, travels overland. Perhaps she didn't know about the bandits which might explain why she didn't get caught.

Other geographical errors include the Duke of Milan, in Milan, who says he fancies a “lady in Verona here” (3.1.81) and Speed who welcomes Launce to "Padua" (2.5.1) when they are in Milan.

I, personally, love it when Shakespeare makes mistakes and when his plays are flawed. I don't want to think of him as the "immortal" bard. He isn't born a genius. To me he is a lad from Stratford who has a talent for writing plays and poetry. He reads voraciously and watches lots of rival plays and is a reasonable actor who specialises in the second-string roles. He has to learn his craft and his plays get better and better. He's quick at taking the ideas of others and improving them; in particular he learns blank verse from Kit Marlowe. He writes for the actors he knows and for the playhouses in which they perform; he writes for the audience and he becomes expert in knowing what will work on stage which is why he is so good at adapting the work of others. This is a portrait of a real writer rather than the impossible 'icon on a pedestal' fantasy so beloved by so many.

Selected quotes

• “For he was more than over shoes in love” (1.1.25)
• “I think him so because I think him so.” (1.2.24)
• “They do not love that do not show their love." (1.2.31)
• “Thus have I shunn'd the fire for fear of burning,
  
• And drench'd me in the sea, where I am drown'd.” (1.3.78-79
• “O, how this spring of love resembleth
• The uncertain glory of an April day,
• Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
• And by and by a cloud takes all away! (1.3.84-87)
• “Ay, but hearken, sir; though the chameleon Love can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have meat.” (2.1.164-7)
• “I'll be as patient as a gentle stream,
• And make a pastime of each weary step,
• Till the last step have brought me to my love,
• And there I'll rest, as after much turmoil,
• A blessed soul doth in Elysium." (2.7.34-38)
• “Wilt thou reach stars because they shine on thee?” (3.1.156)
• “For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
• Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
• Make tigers tame and huge leviathans
• Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands. (3.2.78-81)
• I wonder whether the ‘huge leviathans’ were inspired when Shakespeare read John Stow’s Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles ... Abridged which had multiple edition, including one in 1590 and which mentions on page 314 a “monstrous fish of the sea did shoot himself on shore, where for want of water beating himself on the sands he died” in 1574 at the Isle of Thanet.

August 2023

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

Other Shakespeare plays reviewed in this blog can be found here.

"Gold" by Chris Cleave

 

Zoe and Kate are Olympic-standard cyclists, rivals on the track, and for the affections of Jack, another Olympic cyclist. Tom is their coach. Sophie, Kate and Jack's little daughter, is suffering from her second bout of leukaemia. Will Zoe or Kate make it to the London Olympics? Will Sophie die? Will Zoe self-destruct? This tear-jerking story chronicles the dedication, the obsession, and the reality behind sporting success.

It is told in the past tense and in the third person from the shifting narrative viewpoint of each of the five main characters. The author has clearly done a huge amount of research (sometimes it showed) both into cycling and leukaemia. The plot is carefully structured with some nice foreshadowing. There is a certain sense of artificiality about the way the characters have been opposed: Zoe (a very extreme character) and Kate are opposite sides of a coin, Tom is the stereotypical wise old man, Jack the flip-flopping husband. Nevertheless, it was genuinely tense and I did not know which way the plot was going to twist and there were two occasions when I really had a lump in my throat and any writing powerful enough to move this cynical old critic must have something. It punched. Otherwise, it was very much in the mainstream of contemporary novels. 

Selected quotes:

Page numbers for the 2013 Sceptre paperback edition

• "This new breed of men with cyclonic souls that sucked like Dysons and never needed their bag changing in order to keep on and on sucking." (p 57)
• "Time and space were training wheels on a bike - you were pretty limited until you could ride without them." (p 61)
• "This was just one of those unfortunate moments in life, like going to dinner parties. You didn't need to enjoy it to survive it." (p 67)
• "He waved the idea away. You get to a certain age and kindnesses become these invisible flies to be swatted." (p 70)
• "There were multiple protocols to treat leukaemia, but the only known cure for being eight was being nine." (p 170)
• "Phil Collins' lyrics held meaning the way a pocket mirror held the moon." (p 262) It's a great phrase but I'm not certain if it's good or bad.
• "If later really cared, it should try turning up at places sooner." (p 281)
• "She and time were oil and vinegar shaken up and left to stand." (p 285)
• "This was the nature of time: it was a wide, elegant and gently descending spiral staircase whose last dozen steps were unexpectedly rotten." (p 345)
• "The anaesthesia had stilled even the echo of character that her face showed in sleep." (p 371)

My overall reaction is that it is a great page-turning novel creating genuine emotional involvement so I can't deny it five stars but there was a slight feeling of disappointment that there wasn't something a little bit more to it. I'm hard to please!

Chris Cleave also wrote The Other Hand

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

"The Edge of the World" by Michael Pye

 This history purports to tell the story of 'how the North Sea made us who we are' (its subtitle) and there are indeed chapters about the Frisians, the Vikings and the Hansa but other chapters, while continuing to focus on the countries bordering the North Sea, are about the development of literacy and lawyering, fashion and nature, and plague. I suppose that the idea is that the communications enabled by travelling across the North Sea shaped these developments, but I felt that the focus was lost.

Having said this, the book was well-written and, as with all well-written histories, I learned not just about the topics being examined but also more, in delightful asides. I certainly learned how ruthless the Hanseatic merchants were in enforcing protectivism for their own trade: they even blockaded Norway till the population started to starve to bring the King of Noway to heel (Dealers rule)

Selected Quotes:

• "The North Sea is much more than the water between a thousand beaches." (Introduction)
• "Before there were passports and papers and notions of national identity, or even national history, you identified with where you happened to be, not where your mother and father were born. Your identity was lived in the present tense." (The invention of money)
• "The rules of the sea: the best sex is available sex" (Making enemies)
• "They were wilderness people out on the moors ... warriors who went howling into battles like wolves." (Settling)
• "Monks were particularly forbidden to wear anything split, tight, short, pleated, or, worst of all, with the new-fangled buttons." (Fashion)
• "Clothes cost so much that men couldn't marry, which was leading to sodomy, so fashion was distracting people from the serious business of replenishing the population." (Fashion)
• "Eleanor was not a lady, not if she was working Cheapside when the light had gone on a Sunday night in December in 1394. Mind you, Eleanor was not a woman, either." (Love and capital)
• "Plague became the reason, just like terrorism today, ... for taking away a worker's right to choose what work he wanted, for deciding which of the poor are worthy of help and which are just wastrels."  (The city and the world)

Many fascinating moments. August 2023; 328 pages

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