Stones from the River

It's taken me a while to read this book it's  kept me company on my train journey to work every day for the last month and I'll miss it even though it irritated me in places.
Anyway, this is a story totally based on the life and inhabitants of a  fictional village  in Germany between 1921 and 1951.  It was a story about families, mental-illness, love,loss, heart-break, fear, guilt, betrayal, ignorance, knowledge and strength.  (Phew!!)   All told through the view point of Trudi.   Trudi loses her Mother to mental illness when she is four and is bought up by her fabulous Dad, Leo.  For me, Leo was a the star of the story along with the unnamed benefactor, who's always leaving needed gifts for people on their doorsteps...finding out who he was at the end of the novel was bitter sweet.
Trudi literally isn't your 'average' narrator, she's a dwarf who spends the majority of her young life hanging from door jambs trying to stretch herself. Obviously being so different isn't good in Nazi Germany but she manages to survive by taking a back seat...remaining in the shadows and watching the world around her disintegrate. People treat her like a child but she finds a lover, hides Jews, refuses to join the Nazi party and collects secrets about people.   That she actually survives these years is astounding. (Would she really have survived? )
I found her initial constant moaning about being a dwarf pretty irritating and boring to be honest but as she becomes older and sees the life around her it's interesting to see how her perceptions change. I really like her by the end of the book.  And my God, I feel like I've really spent over 30 years in her company.  This is a real village book, totally engrossed with village people's lives, relationships and personalities.  There are so many characters it's hard to keep up with who is who and sometimes it was just totally confusing.
It was the simple acts of kindness and bravery which affected me...the kid who gives a loaf of bread through the window of a train bound for the camps, who is then bundled onto the train herself and never seen again; the old woman who is constantly beating up young Nazis with her umbrella and  the people who dig unsafe tunnels between their houses in which they try to hide their Jewish neighbours.

Ursula Hegi is an amazing writer but for me the story was just too vast with too many characters. I found it hard to keep a track of every relationship. it was a long book and would have been better with fewer people in it, although maybe that was the purpose, a total immersion into village life during this period.

Jerusalem, the Biography.

My favourite quote is at the beginning of this book.

   

The city has been destroyed , rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt again. Jerusalem is an old nymphomanic who squeezes lover after lover to death, before shrugging him off her with a yawn.  A black widow who devours her mates while they are still penetrating her.

Amos Oz.  A Tale of Love and Darkness

Wow,right!! I'm as prepared as I'll ever be now for my trip to Jerusalem!  I read this book a year or two ago but I've reread it and enjoyed it even more this time.  This book is IMMENSE.Over 3000 years of history in one book is a challenge!  Respect to Simon Montefiore for even attempting such a task, being balanced and neutral  and also an amusing narrator.
 I didn't find it scholarly , just a good , yet violent read about a city populated by many mad men down the ages. The characters are what makes this book so interesting and their lusts for religious, political and earthly powers.

What I love about  Jerusalem is its ability to rebuild itself again and again out of the ashes under different leaderships. Jews, Babylonians, Greek, Persian, Romans, Christians, Pagans, Muslims, Crusaders,  Turks, French, Russians, Germans, British, Arabs, Zionists, Americans...they've all played their part and left their mark. The passions this city arouses are truly astounding!
It's crazy to think that just in 1918 Jerusalem was yet again  in squalor with only 50 ,000 inhabitants,many suffering from malaria and venereal disease. But this city is like a Phoenix and keeps on rising again and again.

What a city , what a history. I am both excited and apprehensive about what awaits  me in Jerusalem's  modern, deeply divided incarnation.





                                                                                   

National Poetry Day

OK, it was national poetry day today. Poems are not really my thing but it has had me thinking today and I have one favourite that I know,remember and love. here goes....

Love, seeketh not itself to please
Nor for itself hath any care
But for another gives its ease
And builds a heaven in hell's despair

Love  seeketh only self to please
To bind another to its delight
Joys in another' s loss of ease
And builds a hell in heaven's despite.

W. Blake

Pure

Wow a book set in Paris in 1785  just before the French revolution. There is no real mention of the upcoming carnage and terror which will hit the country but you sure get a clear message about  the filthy  and awful conditions people lived in at this time.   In fact, like the book Perfume, this book was smelly!  One of the memorable parts of the first chapter was how the people's breath smelt of rotting corpses.  In fact the title is great because there is no purity here...no one washes and there are rotting bodies of various states of decay seeping into the walls and cellars of people's houses...ummm, delightful!

A young, intelligent and forward thinking engineer moves from Normandy to Paris  to coordinate the movement of bones out of the over flowing cemetery.This cemetery is literally stuffed full of bodies, mostly from plagues and the whole area just stinks of death and decomposition. The authorities want something to be done...slowly they are becoming aware that sharing personal space with thousands of rotting bodies is not healthy and the guy from Normandy is ready for the mammoth task!

Jean-Baptiste is amazing and totally dedicated to his project I really loved him and his lovely green coat he buys by mistake when drunk.    He tries to ignore all the superstitious locals, becomes good friends with the alcoholic organist and  falls madly in love with the local high-class prostitute.  Through all the traumas of almost being hacked to death in his bed and having to find men who are willing to dig and excavate the plots he finally manages to clear the land and the feeling of achievement at the end is pretty uplifting after all that grave digging! (The chapter when the guys are digging deep down in the pits is incredibly claustrophic and totally creepy.   I obviously loved it!)

I have to be honest that the first thing I enjoyed about this book was the  cover...it really is beautiful. (This was not a kindle experience book for me) and also the first few chapters of the book were absolutely amazing. Andrew Miller's descriptions were pure poetry and I was totally transported  to the time of Louis XVI.  I liked Jean-Baptiste, his ideas and enthusiasm were engaging but many of the other characters were a bit flat.   It's as if Miller was really only interested in descriptions of places and activities rather than development of character. But I think that was the main purpose of the book;  to show how amazing and life changing events  can  take place at the hands of quite ordinary people.
 By the end of the book I felt like I had been there too,  digging and emptying out the pits, and the sense of satisfaction when the air was clean and the land purified was pretty uplifting.

This book took me ages to read and was tough going in places but I feel like I have read it twice...many bits I had to read again.Sometimes  the words were so beautiful I had to read them again!

 It was a strange and weird book, unlike anything I have read before because it was totally dedicated to death and decay but in a poetic yet realistic way. Nothing like a dose of 18th century living to give you a reality check on how much we have to be thankful for in modern times!
  By the end it had painted a pretty optimistic view of the future. (Well, any future is good when you don't have to live next door to thousands of rotting corpses any more!) Yes, I enjoyed it!