To infinity and beyond

To all those who got excited about our post a couple of weeks ago on retrospective displays at Central, a big thanks, and wow!  You guys are a little scary in your fandom.  You will be pleased to know that we now have a table full of sci-fi goodies just waiting to be browsed over and borrowed.  Next on the menu is Adventure – we’ll be digging up armfuls of McLean, le Carre, Wilbur Smith and assorted other stories featuring rugged middle-aged soldiers/scientists/archaeologists marooned in the desert/Arctic/South American jungle, who find mysterious artifacts/enemy spies/deadly germs, and who save the world with the help of exotic young and beautiful Russian professors of linguistics.  Oh, and a gun.

Once again, please overwhelm us with suggestions of authors and titles, and we will do our best to track them down for you!

 

Nights at the circus

A book recommendation for those cold Christchurch winter nights – the Times Literary Supplement calls it “A glorious piece of work… The narrative has a splendid ripe momentum, and each descriptive touch contributes a pang of vividness.”

Don't be fooled by the manky cover! This is a good read!

That is the review given to Angela Carter’s book called Nights at the Circus. Far be it for me to agree with the critics but this 1984 winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize was an entrancing read.

This novel focuses on the life and exploits of its main female character, known as Fevvers. Fevvers is – or so she would have us believe – a Cockney virgin, hatched from an egg laid by unknown parents ready to develop fully fledged wings. The story takes place in 1899 at which point she is a celebrated aerialiste, an outrageous performer who captivates the young journalist Jack Walser during an interview. Walser runs away with the circus to better pursue and understand his fascination with Fevvers but falls into a world that he is ill prepared for.

This novel contains an assortment of weird and wonderful background characters: a sisterhood of prostitutes, a one-eyed madam who dresses as Admiral Nelson, side-show freaks, circus performers, prescient pigs, contract writing chimps, dancing tigers, shamans and escaped female inmates of a Siberian prison, to name but a few.

Read this! Your regrets will be few and your wonder tangible!

 

Oldies and goodies

Seeing as we’re getting all nostalgic and historical round here this year, we at the Popular Centre thought it might be fun to dig around in the shelves and stacks and bring out some of those ‘oldies but goodies’ that might not get to see the light of day very often.

You know the ones I mean – the books you read as a kid (under the blankets, with a torch), or the ones you nicked from mum’s bookshelf (Peyton Place – sorry, mum!) when she thought you were reading the Hardy Boys; books read in baches on the West Coast during a rainy holiday; books that made you feel really intelligent when you were reading them (Leon Uris and Dostoyevsky, anyone?), and books that you read guiltily when you really should have been studying for that advanced physics exam.

Over the next few months we plan to bring out some of these old treasures so you too can revisit the past, renew old friendships, and maybe even make some new friends. Look out for retrospective displays of everything from early science fiction to classic 1950’s and 60’s romance (saucy or not), with a good helping of horror/western/adventure and even actual classic Classics for good measure.

Starting early next week, come and visit us on the ground floor at Central, and see what’s on display – we’ll even let you take stuff home. And if there’s anything at all that you’d just LOVE to chase down and reread, please let us know and we’ll see if we can find it for you!

 

M.T. Anderson

When Kate de Goldi recommended M. T. Anderson’s Feed on the radio a few years ago she put me on to the work of a truly remarkable writer.  Now I’ve seen the recommender and the recommendee on the same panel, a very pleasing turn of events.

All Anderson’s books for children and Young Adults are good but the two books that make up The astonishing life of Octavian Nothing truly are astonishing.

I keep pushing them at readers young and old because the story, the language, the utterly engrossing re-imagining of the past  makes them  extraordinary and while they’re not exactly hidden away in the Young Adult area they deserve to have as wide an audience as possible – these books are classics in the best sense of that overused word.

Anderson and fellow panellist Mal Peet  were described by chair Kate De Goldi, no slouch herself, as two heavyweights of the Young Adult writing world. At this juncture I would like to take time out to commend De Goldi on her considerable talents as a chair. She is quick witted, well prepared, willing not only to let the authors shine but to actively help them do so and she knows about books. It’s a pleasure to watch her work.

Anyway on to the authors. Anderson and Peet may be from different sides of the Atlantic but the hearts of their stories are the same; the journey of young men to adulthood, the rite of passage placed in context against the backdrop of big questions about power and politics and the eternal questions of who am I? Why am I here?

Octavian Nothing may be set in the past but he is making a point about the present day and the accommodations we all make to preserve our level of comfort at the expense of others.

Peet denied using soccer as a metaphor, claiming that as all existing books about  soccer were crap he had to write a better one, breaking the conventions about soccer books being for young men and having to be written in a crudely journalistic style.  What he wanted was to write a fantastical lyrical book about football that women could read. And I would have to say he succeeded in Exposure.

For both authors it’s all about the voice; language is as much a part of the books as story, the words determine the world of the novel and the production of character and reality within it.  As a teenager Anderson felt underestimated by the stunted form of the YA novel and an irritation at being talked down to but both writers feel that there is something of a renaissance in YA writing happening, possibly because whatever is profitable is beautiful and H.P. (the boy wizard, not the sauce) is nothing if not profitable.

Why did they choose the genre? Peet puts it down to immaturity – he does write for a teenage boy and that boy is him.  Anderson took the less sanguine view that writers in general are broken so they have to re-hash things in their lives that the less talented of us just get over.

Both do other stuff, Peet was a cartoonist and would still like to do a Graphic Novel, Anderson’s other stuff is music. He has written children’s books about Handel (so many children were clamouring for a life of the master of the Baroque fugue) and Satie.

 Advice to young writers? Peet’s first piece of advice is don’t, but if you absolutely have to, read a lot because the more words you know the more you have to choose from. Books are words, not ideas. Anderson’s advice is to apply yourself to it practially and constantly. And READ.

De Goldi was agian to be commended for asking the panellists what they read. Peet is still voracious and he likes the tough laconic American crime writers like Elmore Leonard. Penalty even has a couple of characters who are an homage to Leonard.

While writing  The astonishing life of Octavian Nothing Anderson read lots of 18th and early 19th century novels, not that here’s anything wrong with that, but the first thing he read when he had finished was Raymond Chandler.

These two writers share a serious obsession with understanding history, with using it to learn about who you are in the light of who you were and who we all were. It was a privilege to hear them discuss their work  and I look forward to hearing them read it tomorrow.

 

A small book with big ideas.

Andrew Sean Greer’s novel, The Story of a Marriage has created quite a stir in the reviewing world.  Some have loved it, some have labelled it trite and predictable.  I seem to fit somewhere in the middle, veering towards the former.

This is a small book that is big on themes and ideas.  It is certainly a story of a marriage, be it a rather unconventional one, but is is also a story of the effects of war, of 1950s America, prejudice, parenting and what it means to love. 

Seeing is believing: How Hollywood taught us to stop worrying and love the fifties.

Perhaps the book tries to cover too many themes, and that certainly has been some of the criticism, but the 1950s were a time when issues such as racism and sexuality were beginning to fester, when the world was full of suspicion and fear, as well as recovering from two wars. 

Greer  manages to inject all of these issues into his book via the main character Pearlie.  As the book progresses we realise that although she is naive, she unwittingly represents major upheaval, and is symbolic of everything that 1950s America was fearful of. 

 It is hard to write about this book without giving away the plot and some of the surprises, however I can say that it grew on me, and that I was intrigued to find out what would ultimately happen to this rather tenuous, but strangely compelling marriage.

 

I’ve got a crush on you – literary crushes

You can rely on The Guardian’s fab books section to come up with some entertaining mind teasers. This one is fun Who is your literary crush?  (my favourite answer comes from filleperdu ”I wouldn’t mind trying to make Morse happy”).

Rebecca and Rowena

Alas I discovered it too late to add my pick. I hate to be a cliche and pick a bad boy but … my once and future lit lover is Brian de Bois-Guilbert from Ivanhoe.

1. He is Norman (French = saucy).
2. He is a Templar Knight.
3. Can’t resist a chap in armour.
4. He’s a lover and a fighter.
5. Tormented, conflicted, suffering.
6. He is madly in love with Rebecca and this drives him to all sorts of acts of passionate endeavour, especially the scene in which she threatens to jump from the ramparts rather than give in to his desire. Mills and Boon would kill for such romance.
7. He has been played by hot actors Sam Neill and Ciaran Hinds (Ralph Fiennes needs to be cast next!).
8. Yes Ivanhoe and Rowena are the heroes, but de Bois-Guilbert and Rebecca are far more alluring. And very very sexy.

What literary character do you swoon for?

 

Book geekdom – new books from Peter Ackroyd and Michel Faber

London

You know you’re a book geek when you punch the air, yell “YESSSS” and get generally all excited when you find your favourite author is coming out with something new.

And this week I’ve done it twice. First I heard about Peter Ackroyd’s The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein. Ackroyd is amazing – he combines the rich detail of historical fiction with literary style and technique of the highest order.  The first book of his I read was The last testament of Oscar Wilde, a retelling of the last days of Wilde in Paris. These are novels to lose hours in, and he specialises in endings that are almost spiritual and transcendent.

Ackroyd is very much a man of letters, and has written biographies of figures such as Thomas More and Charles Dickens, and books for children and teenagers. Oh, and a biography of the city of London no less.

The Apple

Michel Faber has also written a book set in Victorian times – The Crimson Petal and the white is a big, swirling book detailing the life of Sugar, a 19 year old prostitute. The Apple is a collection of short stories that revisits some of the same characters.

His new book is called The fire gospel. It sounds a bit crazy:

Theo Griepenkerl is a modest academic with an Olympian ego. When he visits a looted museum in Iraq, looking for treasures he can ship back to Canada, he finds nine papyrus scrolls that have lain hidden for two thousand years. Once translated from Aramaic, these prove to be a fifth Gospel, written by an eye-witness of Jesus Christ’s last days …

 

Victoriana – Modern Victorian novels

There’s nowt like a Victorian novel for a meaty read. There’s the actual Victorian writers – I’m not a fan of Charles Dickens, but love George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. But in recent times you’ve got another option – the modern Victorian (or neo-Victorian) novel. These books draw on the Victorian storytelling traditon and settings, adding modern concerns and perspectives.

I’m currently engrossed in The Journal of Dora Damage. It tells the story of Dora, living in Lambeth, London, in the year 1859. Her bookbinder husband has arthritic hands, her daughter suffers from epilepsy and our plucky heroine finds herself illegally binding expensive volumes of pornography commissioned by aristocrats in order to keep her family solvent.

There’s a neat description that explains a bit about the appeal of these modern Victorian works:

Despite – or perhaps because of – its setting, The Journal of Dora Damage is an unashamedly modern novel, whose themes seem just as relevant today, and which seeks to prove A.N. Wilson’s assertion that we are all still living in the Victorian age. 

The themes of the modern Victorian novels are sex, the authorial voice, the role of women, emancipation and freedom, sanity/insanity, power, suffering, poverty, courage – it is no wonder that can enrapture readers with such ideas to draw upon. It is worth noting too that women are often the main characters in these books.

A wonderful read is The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber. It has the telltale elements – doorstopper size, a colourful cast of characters, and as with many modern Victorian works it looks at the seedy underbelly of Victorian life (in this case prostitution) and has a feisty and fascinating female lead character (Sugar).

Sarah Waters has also mined the vein with novels such as Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and Fingersmith – stories involving crime, orphans, music hall and other Victorian trademarks.

Other classics of this type:

• Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
• Possession – A.S. Byatt
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
• Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
• Nights at the circus – Angela Carter

 

Avast there ye swabs!

Growing up in an age where there were precious few teenage novels, what could an avaricious male reader devour in those tender years? Well, I and many others, loved the Hornblower novels of C.S Forester. Our love was increased by the stirring film with Gregory Peck and James Robertson Justice.

Now following the T.V. series all the novels have been re-issued in a handsome package and after nearly thirty years I’m loving them once more. Much of the technical stuff still goes over my head and maybe they could benefit from one of those maps that tell us where a mizzen mast or for’castle is situated (but your fingers would only get sore from flipping backwards and forwards!).

The main character is a far more complex character than I remember and the French far more perfidious, but the books are as gripping as ever.  All have a helpful  number to indicate what order in which to read them and they’re far more readable than the works of such pale imitators as Patrick O’ Brian or Bernard Cornwell; the latter providing a useful introduction to each of the novels. 

 

Star of Roman poetry

Those lucky enough to have learnt Latin at school might remember Catullus with affection. Or possibly not. Somehow he seemed a bit livelier than some of the other poets whose work we slaved over and slaughtered in our translations.

Helen Dunmore uses his poems to retell the story of his love affair with the glamorous older woman who used the pseudonym Lesbia in Counting the Stars.

Dunmore sets her scene well, effortlessly moving from the slums of Rome to its high society, and the story is a compelling one as Clodia Pulcher, Catullus’ Lesbia, is supected of killing her husband.

Was it an accident or was it murder? And what about the death of Lesbia’s pet sparrow, immortalised by Catullus in two poems?

The story takes a while to get going, which may be understandable given it is based on poems thousands of years old, but once Dunmore moves on to the deaths it picks up momentum and becomes positively exciting. And it just might inspire a return to the poems themselves.