Barbed Wire and Babushkas

Really enjoyed this travel book. Two British canoeists decide to row down one of the longest and least known rivers in the world.( well , unknown to the West.)  The Amur-or Black Dragon river to the Chinese- is about 4, 400 km long,starts in Mongolia, separates the sensitive countries of China and Russia for over half it's length and goes through the least known parts of wooded Siberia. I loved it because I knew nothing about this part of the world and I have been googling the towns and villages they rowed through on their way.  It took them 107 days and mostly they camped along the Russian side of the river.  They were not given permission by the Chinese authorities to enter Chinese waters or lands and often had to guess in which country Islands,which popped up in the middle of the river,were in!  They only made a mistake once by camping on a Chinese Island but the guards in the Watch tower were luckily quite chilled about it. 

This book was not really about canoeing but about the people they met along the way. Whenever they came across a village or city they would stay in a hotel and restock  food and people were obviously totally intrigued by them.  They could not comprehend that they were travelling the whole length of the river at all but were totally flabbergasted that they had rowed down from the nearest town! Funny. 

There was obviously lots of beaurocracy and a few times they were locked out of villages with barbed wire fences  with patrolling guards along the perimeter,because the local Russian border police didn't want foreigners entering the village. The guards probably wanted something to do.  It wasn't clear when this exhibition took place  but I would say from the lack of mobile devices and from music references about 1999/2000. Obviously the writer was having a great time and the tone of the book is not serious at all. More like VIZ in places, especially all the stereotypical lusty Russian girl references. But hey, this guy was writing from his heart and it was obvious that he had spent a long time writing a diary! 

 you get a clear feeling of how Russian policy after the break up of the USSR had basically left this area of Siberia to rot. The river wasn't really used by the Russians to move anything because the Transsiberian railway was so nearby whereas Chinese barges were constant going back and forth and up and down. There was high unemployment amoung local Russian  river dwellers and a general fear of theEntrepreneurial Chinese. Also the towns on the other bank, in China, looked far more affluent. Luckily the guys paid for a travel visa to go into a Chinese town for three days and they were blown away by the trade, noise and vibrancy of the town. 

 Other problems the two guys dealt with were being shot at by over zealous guards, being told exactly where to camp every night. Not having decent enough maps, being flooded out in their tents, having packets of noodles and cigarettes thrown at them by Chinese sailors, being mobbed by Russian prostitutues( really?!) and often getting beautiful gifts whenever they left a Village or town by the suddenly friendly border guards. 

!! I often thought the references to pissed Russian men and horny prostitutes was far too stereotypical and I hope the author was just over exaggerating. There was not much at all about the politics and history between the two countries. Obviously relations were tense though!   Apart from the fact that Russians took away this land from Manchurian Chinese because of the lucrative trade in fur trapping. (A similar story to the Gold Rush in California.)  but there was enough to give me a taster to find out more about this interesting, yet completely unknown part of the world. 

Cheers Diana for this great birthday present! 

Gone GIrl

Wow. I have devoured this book and haven't really been able to do anything of any value over the last few days apart from read this.  Considering the film is out and the book was a runaway success in 2012 I have done well in not knowing anything about the story.  The twist in the middle worked for me. I managed to not flick through the pages at all.  If you read this ( and I really think you all should if you haven't yet) then I recommend that you never 'accidently' look at any pages in the second half of the book.

I can't write much apart from this was a great escapist read. Bloody scary, sick ,funny and bleak. Gillian Flynn does a fantastic job in creating a post 2008 economic crash, dystopian, dysfunctional marriage. All I can say after reading this is THANK GOD I AM SINGLE! 

Right time to get on with getting ready for Christmas. thank god I've finished. I was truely addicted. Great fun! 

The Mill on the Floss

I 

I started reading this coz it was free on my kindle and then slowly, drip, drip, drip I got totally mesmerised. So much so that I had to buy the book. When a book is amazing I need a proper copy of it in my hand. To be honest I thought this would be really dull and heavy going in places but I would just give it a shot. But for me it was never dull, but sometimes difficult to understand due to the language. It has taken me an age to read because often I read bits twice or three times,because the language was just so beautiful or I didn't quite understand it!  Honestly, I have been totally transported away reading this. 

Elliot has the skill of putting emotions, ideas and pictures into your head in a way that I haven't witnessed, probably since I read the Lacuna by Kingsolver. Her topics are universal and it all seemed so modern. Human nature doesn't change and Elliot had such great insight due to being banished from her own family for being a weird intellectual, who was living openly with a married man.

What can I say, I am actually sad I have finished it.It's not perfect in anyway. the ending is so bad.I'm still in shock by how Geoge Elliot finished it off but the rest of it is great stuff.

The beginning third is based around Maggie and her older brother Tom, growing up in a Mill near the village of St. Ogg's. St.Ogg's is brilliant, a great depiction of small town England. I loved MAggie's Aunties.  Constantly disgraced, gossiping and judging. Maybe I am mad but I saw lots of humour in the way Elliot wrote about these characters. 

Maggie is bright, her brother isn't good at book learning. But Tom has a private education,the type his Dad didn't have. Mr. Tulliver uses His son to show society  that he has ' come up' in the world. Tom hates it all and MAggie's brain is left to stew. She has no formal education and picks up stuff from Tom's discarded books. She gets so frustrated she has a fetish doll she grinds against the beams of her bed.  Bloody hell, when I read this I knew I was in for a good read!!  People don't write like that these days.

Maggie running away to live with the gypsies was another highlight. So funny, yet so sad at the same time. Maggies's Dad is in debt, lives beyond his means and ultimately loses his Mill and his money. The guy who takes the  Mill and wins the law suit becomes Mr. tulliver's arch enemy. Infact Mr. Wakem is hated so much by Mr. Tulliver that the whole family have to witness and sign a curse on his name written by Dad in his shaky hand, in the Bible, the only book which they still possess. Again an image that I have never seen before. Melodrama in the most boring town in England. love it.

The first third is all about MAggie's childhood. it cleverly explains the psychology behind why she behaves like she does when she is older. her fierce loyalty to her family and her older brother outway everything. Maggie grows up in isolation and poverty, totally discarded due to the shame of her Father's bankruptcy but she makes a secret friendship with the hated Mr. Wakem's son. Now he is a thoughtful, artistic hunchback.  Good God...George Elliot sure brings on the afflictions!

He is her intellectual equal,he falls in love with Maggie but of course Maggie only likes him as a friend. Yet more disaster befalls on Maggie. 

Due to Tom's wits and nerve( nothing related to his exclusive education) he manages to claw the family out of poverty and suddenly Maggie is back on the scene and her Aunties on her Mother's side agree to see her.  Suddenly Maggie meets Stephen Guest who is almost engaged to Lucy, Maggie's cousin. Stephen and Maggie fall madly in love with each other and the stolen glances, mad passions and drama of this part of the book were so good. yes, I'm the queen of Victorian literature but to be honest it wasn't melodramatic at all  just beautiful, honest and totally gorgeous to read and imagine. Infact, it all seemed strangely modern. Poor Maggie is totally bowled over by this gorgeous guy and just doesn't know what to do. As you have gussed things don't work out well and poor Maggie's emotions are totally pulled through the wringer. Infact George Elliot must have been emotionally fraught too by the last few pages of this book. She probably had no choice but to end it the way she did.

Another interesting point was how George Elliot writes about small town judgements on Maggie's behaviour. The differences between how men are women are treated is clearly shown but Elliot cleverly shows how everyone is treated so badly and how society loses so much potential from both men and women due to the way the ' World's Wife' judges everything. One other thing,Bob Jakin and his dog mumps. He is the kindest, most intelligent, funniest door to door salesman and entrepreneur in English literature. Why didn't  Maggie fall in love with him?!