Trespass

Rose Tremain sure knows how to write, her prose just takes you straight into the book   I enjoyed reading it because her style of writing is like an expensive and classy wine, but the writing couldn't quite disguise the after taste of a rather dull story.  All the characters in this novel were nasty and grim, and to be honest I wasn't really rooting for anyone to stay alive, apart from the young girl who appeared in Chapter One and then didn't materialise again until 200 pages later. 

I stayed with it because I just couldn't believe how awful the characters were and also, even though the modern day story was pretty dull, the history of each character was fascinating. Infact in places it was almost comic because everyone was so disturbed. I don't think that is what Rose Tremain intended.  In fact I think she was trying to write a 'deep' novel about all the ways you can trespass on land, people's emotions, their lives and their thoughts.  But I think what she intended to do and ultimately what she achieved were completely different.

This was a strange book for me because although I didn't like any of the characters I was able to understand exactly why they were behaving so badly because the psychological disection of each person was so clearly explained.  The whole book was dark and repressive with a constant presence of hatred and loathing.  Not a bundle of laughs at all but it was Rose Tremain's writing that held it all together. Some books you read are life affirming but this one sure wasn't.  It clearly showed people at their worst and the dark consequences of years of repression.

The Man in the Seventh Row

OK, I bought this book from an online publishing house called http://blastedheath.com/

I liked that that the company was bypassing the traditional publishing  system to get new writers out there.  I looked at a few of their books and decided on this one because it wasn't crime, wasn't set in the grim bad-lands of Glasgow and it didn't have heroin ravaged, beaten up faces on the ebook cover. (This being their kind of stock fiction).  I haven't checked the site in the last few weeks and would rather not...but maybe things have lightened up!

I'm glad it only cost 99p because this book had no plot, no direction and was dull.  Today I made the big decision to stop reading it and move on. just sitting doing nothing on my train journey to Oxford was more interesting than reading this.  It wasn't like a novel at all just a diatribe based on how much the 'author' knew about films.

There was the odd funny line in the book but ultimately I can't even begin to tell you what the hell this book was about.  It was like an abandoned buoy, just floating in the ocean.  The premise was good ( a guy who is transported into the movies whenever he sits in the 7 th row) but by 80 percent through the book I just couldn't take any more. I tried, I really tried to stick it out.   But  I just wish he had just got permenantly stuck in some 70s horror movie and never came out again. I sure felt like I was stuck in a shite movie though and this morning I had the great pleasure of deleting this from my kindle.

 Posted on 17.02.12 on posterous.com

The Sisters Brothers

Found out about this because it was on the Booker short list. I wanted something a bit different from 1850s Britain so jumped across to the 1850s in the USA.

Even though I read the kindle version I still like the cover, so here it is.  Books on the kindle are a really pared down experience because all the external factors are gone;  bending the spine, losing your bookmark,the smell of old pages and the worst sin of all, looking ahead and reading the last few pages. But I still love my kindle, I can actually read and concentrate for longer on it with fewer distractions and sharper print.

Right, about the book.  It's been a while since I finished it but I  really enjoyed it.  I felt like I was reading a film.  I don't know if this is a new genre which has arisen lately but it happened in a more simplisitic way when I read  'The Help'  . It's really like you are just reading a book which has been written for the movies.  I can see how the Coen Brothers are going to just take it and make it their own.

It was clever, hard hitting, sad and extremely darkly comic.   Charlie and Eli Sisters were two hit men brothers for hire travelling across the Wild West to California with the orders to kill a man -Herman Kermit Warm (what a name!) Everyday was full of mad adventures and  characters were just left and story-lines unfinished as the brothers moved across America to find the guy they needed to kill.

The book was totally lacking sentimentality.The characters were so well written it was like you could smell there gangranous wounds, bad breath and greasy hair.  I loved the section on Eli's festering tooth ache and how his jaw swelled up so much his brother could see it even when he was riding far behind him.

Eli is the narrator of the book and the less psychopathic of the two brothers. You get so engrossed in his world it's like you have been privileged, as a reader, to enter his inner thoughts and nothing he does can shock you.I loved Eli's compassion for his old horse and how he would do anything for him, but also he's prone to mad rages where nobody's life is spared.

The Don Quioxte travelling across the Sates was my favourite two thirds of the book.  I wish the whole book had been one long journey but no, they finally reach San Francisco at the height of the Gold Rush.

 Once Hermit Kermit Warm arrived on the scene, even though he's an extremely colourful character, the tone of the book changed ( I think I missed the witty banter between the brothers as they race through the townships leaving trouble behind them.)

There are a couple of naff plot devices which lead them to  H K Warm and suddenly the book changes  It becomes really sad and not darkly comic anymore, just dark and sad. I wish the last third of the book hadn't happened and that my memories could be of the Sisters Brothers just charging across America on their steads with total abandonment.

Posted on 06.02.2012 on posterous.com

North and South

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

I got this book for my birthday from Catherine Weller. We had been talking about it; how she had watched it on TV and I hadn't . I had never read any Gaskell before and had no idea of the story.

First impressions were positive because I loved the cover.  Lots of 'classic' books have fusty old- fashioned, worthy, boring pictures on them. (Penguin Classics are the worst culprits.) Those do not encourage you to pick up a book which you instantly visualise as a worthy tome. This cover, in contrast, was beautiful. 

Luckily there was no picture of Elizabeth Gaskell inside. Unfortunately her portrait isn't good at selling books, she looks a bit severe and dull.  It seemed like Vintage had done it's 21st Century packaging homework.  It worked for me!

Now for the content,

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. I often find reading Victorian novels a bit of a chore but this was an easy read and I feIt I could empathise with Margaret, the main character. She was a strong minded 19 year old, who seemed very mature.This was because her parents were really pathetic characters. They just just left everything up to their dutiful daughter. Luckily Margaret had enough balls and character for the both of them.

 I enjoyed the section when her father tells her he has lost his religion ( a problem for a vicar I presume) and they have to move from the countryside of Hampshire up to Darkshire. A euphemism for Manchester. Marg's Dad is too much of a coward to inform his wife about such life changing and momentous events and poor Margaret gets lumbered with informing her. So off to Darkshire they trot (literally). Poor Mother is beside herself with grief. Life is obviously very different up North for Margaret but even though she comes from a middle class and educated family she is not a snob.

John Thornton is a business man who wants to educate himself further.  He becomes a student of the ex vicar. (Lots of learning Greek) John never went to school and educated himself in business...luckily for him he finds Greek really interesting.(Or is it all an excuse to see Miss Margaret?!) There are then lots of discussions and high sexual tension between Margaret and John. He becomes obsessed by her hands and arms  and Elizabeth Gaskell gets carried away with  highly erotic language  for a page or two. After the super heroine flings her arms around John to protect him from a brawling gang of striking workers in his cotton factory things unfortunately calm down between them. She thinks she can not be  with a Northern business man, he thinks she is 'in love with another man'  John is aware that he is not a 'gentleman'  and Mother of John thinks she is too poor and aloof for her beloved son. There sure are lots of class prejudices for them to overcome.

Margaret puts her old Southern lifestyle onto a pedestal but finally it dawns on her that the lot of the average Southern farmer/worker isn't any better..infact probably worse, than life in Darkshire. Farm hands down South are nothing more than ignorant serfs and die really young from daily grind in the fields.   At least up North people seemed to  have a more industrious spirit and more freedom of mind.   (There's a great section on Witchcraft in rural Hampshire at the end of the book)

Of course Margaret and John get together, but along the way there are many tribulations, misunderstandings, fainting fits, discussions and deaths.(Lots of deaths)

I enjoyed reading it partly because topics covered are timeless: workers rights, health, depression, responsibilities, class,  love, lies and humanism. Luckily Gaskell doesn't turn the book into a preachy, worthy epic either. It's just a well drawn picture of life in Britain at that time.

Originally posted on 02.02.12 on posterous.com