Silk

I read this yesterday.  It was a thin book so it didn't take long.  I'm glad I read it in 1 sitting because I managed to stay in the atmosphere of life in 1850s France and Japan. It's all about a married French man called Herve, who has the job of buying silk eggs/worms/cocoons for the silk weavers in his French town.  As soon as the silk eggs in Northern Africa become diseased he is forced to take the gruelling journey to Japan. The long journey is described about 4 times during this book for the 4 times he travels.  The journey might be long but the trip is quickly described in one paragraph each time. Because this story is not about travelling, it is about his obsession with the mistress of a powerful clan leader in Japan.

The couple can't communicate or directly touch each other but through slight erotic actions it becomes clear how much they both lust after each other. She manages to hand him a short letter which he can't read until he gets back to France.  There is one Japanese woman nearby, who also happens to be a prostitute, who lives in Nimes. (Both Japanese women in this book are whores.  Probably the only paid professions for them at the time. ) his desire to go back to Japan begins to take over his life.  He is in a state of loss for experiences he's never had.  His boss and his wife try to find out what is wrong with him but nothing is shared. Each time he goes back to Japan things change a little with really atmospheric images of ways to show their love/ lust for each other.  But the last time he goes Japan is in the middle of a civil war and the silk worms are nowhere to be seen. A young boy risks his life to take Herve to her and he goes back to France without both silk worms and her.

All through this book there are two other characters.  Herve's boss and Herve's wife. Herve's boss is brilliant and even though he is one of the richest men in the town he is the least bothered by the money he creates  and just wants to hear about Herve's travels. He is quite an eccentric.  Herve's wife plays a back seat role. Well kind of...

I enjoyed this.  Reading it in one sitting was totally absorbing, like being in a fairy tale. Sometimes it was a bit pretentious and other times not.  ( it is translated from the Italian.)

 I liked the simple links to history.  The Brits  selling weapons to the Japanese for their imminent civil war, ( first at grabbing a lucrative gap in the  newly opened Japanese free market.) and Pasteur in France trying to work out how to stop locally cultivated silkworms from dying: Little details in the vast world of science, love and war. 

Plus the ending was a surprise. It made me cry. ( or maybe I was just over tired.) Today I have been thinking about this book more than I thought I would, and I some of the beautiful images will stay with me for a long time. 

The Girl Who Played With Fire

I read the girl with the dragon tattoo years ago and suddenly realised I had never read the sequels so suddenly last week I decided to finish the trilogy.  OK These books are now DATED.  Reading this seemed so old fashioned because, ironically,  at the time, Stieg Larson was trying to be so trendy. but even so it was a fun read.   I love Lisbeth Salander and I'm sure she must have been an inspiration for my all time favourite Scandinavian sleuth, Saga Noren. ( Danish autistic super cop from the Bridge on BBC 4) 

This is not great literature in any way.  Infact lots of this book is extremely dull but then suddenly out of the blue, every 40 pages or so, something really bonkers exciting happens and about 7 new characters hit the page and lots of death and/or sadistic behaviour happens. The story line is ridiculous, the characters are mostly straight out of a James Bond  movie but  Stieg Larsonn had a lot of time for Lisbeth Salander and every page she is on she shines out as a beacon of a young, feisty woman fighting against the system. She has anger, balls, and intelligence but she is is so, so, so vulnerable.  Her story is even more poignant as I think about the abuse which in reality many young vulnerable women have to deal with. This book is not outrageously violent.  Infact it's pretty damn BORING lots of the time but you're still weirdly hooked as you happily read about everyone just sitting about drinking about 100 coffees a day.   Another thing I didnt understand is why Lisbeth Salander had a boob job in South America in the first few chapters, it just seemed totally unnecessary. But the ending is a total hook for book 3.  I feel like I have to read it now.but I'll hold off for a bit, if I CAN!!! 

The Greek and Roman Myths

Wow!  I totally enjoyed this.  It has taken me an age to finish because it is such an informative book and many parts I have had to reread to get my head around plus I didn't want to rush it.  bloody hell, really interesting and funny too.  

When I was at Primary School I was fascinated by the Greek myths and lapped up lots of the kiddie friendly versions but I always knew I was being fed a child friendly version but as soon as I went to secondary school this kind of 'stuff' went  off the agenda.  It's so great at 44 to finally reconnect with my 10 year old self and get back into the nitty gritty of Greek myths. It's such fun to finally see it all as an adult and really think about what these myths meant to the ancients. 

 They are marvellous; thought provoking and mental all at the same time.  This book wasn't the stories but rather an analysis of the whole SHABANG. An overview of the main points.  It's from the library but I really think I need to buy it.  

My favourite parts were learning that LOVE , ie Eros and Aphrodite,  are two of the first created gods. 

Eros was the first proto-God to emerge from Chaos.  Cuddly cute Cupid is a Roman invention but Eros embodies not only love but the entire reproductive system. . Aphrodite ( Venus) is the oldest of the  major gods and she was born from the chopped off penis of Uranus where it seeded in water!!!  Wow, no woman involved in Aphrodite's birth...she's pure cock!  

I love how brothers marry sisters, dads eat their children and their pregnant wives and then regurgitate them or in the case of Athena, her pregnant, water nymph mother is eaten by her dad Zeus and then the God of fire, Hephasteus, comes and chops open Zeus head and out walks a fully formed adult Athena.  A woman who will be a god of both war and wisdom!  

I also enjoyed reading about the trials of Theseus and Heracles and the myth of the Queen who fell in love with a bull, managed to dress up like a cow and got pregnant.  Her hideous offspring was the minatour which had to be hidden away in a maze.

So much in this book, too much to remember, but for someone who hasn't really connected with the myths for over 30 years...a lot of fun!! 

The Runaway

Well I have finally read a Persephone book!  I have 6 of these beautifully designed books on my shelf. But so far I just haven't ventured near my small pile of Persephone books. INfact it's so ridiculous, I actually got this book from the library!   Yes, the ridiculously tiny 'make do whilst the city centre is demolished and rebuilt' library in Oxford city, with the most amazing books in a tiny space! 

This is a children's  book written in 1872.  It went into oblivion until1936 when an artist, who had loved it as a kid, got it reprinted.  in the 40s it was pulled again until Persephone revived it in 2002. 

I really enjoyed it.   Infact it was a great read for be being stuck in the sun on OXford Parkway station.  All the trains were delayed, I soaked up the rays and finished this.  Infact Parkway comes up trumps for places to get stuck at in the sun! 

This book is about a young bored teenage girl who suddenly has to hide a runaway in her house.  Olga has runaway from school as its boring and they feed her dog meat.  The runaway, Olga, is one of the best characters ever! she is full of spirit, life, energy and quirkiness.  I loved her.  OK! The plot is of its time and a bit lame in parts but it is still bloody funny.  It is not full of prudishness, sexism or constraints, It's just two  girls having a bit of a laugh and pulling the wool over the eyes of the adults. It is a bit leftfield though and I think written p before its time. One of the girls  is as mad as a hat and leads the other 'astray' into a world where she has to lie, yet both realise they love deceiving the adults.  Pretending to be a ghost, alarming the butler and almost killing the governess off.  Getting on the roof, being a gem thief, hiding in dark cupboards, pretending to be the ghost of a horse and dressing up as an old woman are all part of this book. Plus the story proves that adults in positions of power are not always right.  Here is a great example of  young women not just bending to the face of authority but actually questioning what justice is and who it is for.  It is not a preachy book at all,  unlike The Water Babies, which was printed at the same time, but is full of humanitarian wisdom and fun, which I really liked.  

An interesting read. 

An Ice Cream War

Bought this ancient paperback years back and finally have read it and totally enjoyed it.  It is based around the lives of people who got involved in the East African campaign during the First World War.  German East Africa against British East Africa: Tanzania and Kenya today. 

The characters are great. They are well described down to the way they walk, their revolting attributes and attitudes,  their strange sexual habits and their total ineptitudes and weaknesses. Occasionally someone does something pleasant and these little actions of kindness really shine out in this deeply darkly humorous and rather twisted book. 

It's the madness of the war that really becomes the main subject of  this book.  INnocent people killed for no reason and the blind belief that what they are doing is  correct.  The war is horrific, total savagery in a beautiful yet hostile environment with what looks like a total lack of guidance.  Nobody is respected and the lack of communication between people on all sides becomes apparent. 

This book is a sweep of a story and really is based on how the life of a posh lazy teenager, who just wants to study and lounge about at Oxford, is pulled into the whirlwind of this war.  It was interesting to read how the colleges at Oxford all turned into garrisons and guys did military manoeuvres on Port Meadow. By the end of the book his life had been turned upside down by this war.  This guy is not a hero, he is a nobody, but this is his story and really highlights how everyone: men, women and children are all affected by the ripple affect of war. 

This quote from near the end of the book sums it up really.

He realised that he'd been a soldier now for nearly two and a half years, since July 2016, and he had never fired a shot in anger.  What kind of war was it where this kind of absurdity could occur? And yet he'd been sick, half starved, insanely bored, had seen his brother hideously murdered, shared a house with a syphilitic Portuguese who spoke no English and been almost killed by a bomb fired by his own side. 

Totally mad and kind of funny if you knew it wasn't probably all true.  This book pulls no punches, this war is a colonial war and the locals are treated universally like dogs.  Infact the lack of insight about the local people, lack of care, lack of interest in how the locals might know more about the lie of the land than they do, and the  lack of a role which local people play within this book, highlights their total disregard.One of their local slaves is called 'Human' WTF? The British total disdain for South African and Indian troups is highlighted well too with the botched landing at Tanga in German East Africa.  Where  through polite protocol the English telegraph the Germans to let them know where they will be landing. WTF?  Thousands die because of this lunacy. 

To top it all off the British gallivant around Portuguese East Africa trying to kill the last few remaining Germans and they are not told until a few days later on about November 14th 1918, that the war is finally over. 

Obviously having been to some of the Tanzanian places in this book I could picture everything really well. Infact the sense of place is really well described by Boyd.  He's a great writer. 

The horrors of what happened on the beaches at Tanga are barely known to us.  Kind of forgotten maybe because the majority of the dead were Indians and South African and we botched up! but I'm happy that I can now put a picture and a history to the war graves which   I visited whilst in Tanga.