The Talented Mr. Ripley

Wow, what a great and entertaining book.  I loved it and I want to know more about Patricia Highsmith.
 I can't believe she wrote this book in 1955.  It seemed so modern, stylish and fresh and really tense.  I read it on the train up and back from, Newcastle.  Visiting my good mate Nicky put an extra macabre twist on the whole event because I weirdly imagined  how I could bash  Nicky around the head  and get away with  her murder.  (Sorry, no offence Nicky, if you read this. It just proves how much this book got into my head!)  
At first I found it hard to get the actors from the film, Jude Law and Matt Damon, out of my head.  In fact Jude Law was well cast as the fun loving, dippy and rich Dickie but Matt Damon was just too good looking and clean cut.  Mr Ripley is a nobody, a faceless grey person who has no confidence until he takes on the personality and identity of the only guy he liked and killed, Dickie.  Ripley hates himself until he is in character.  He is a loathsome man really but Highsmith is amazing and twists the book so that you are behind Ripley all the way and just want him to get away with the murder. Also the repressed homosexual edge of Ripley's personality is  expressed in a really clever and totally repressed way!
This book was a  real page turner and so, so twisted. The manipulation and games played by Ripley are ridiculous but it works because you really believe it could have happened. He is so organised in his deception  and you, as the reader, become so involved in his plan that yes, in the end it is like you have become Ripley yourself.  When he makes mistakes you think...NO! NO! RIPLEY THE GAME IS OVER. It's a stressful and claustrophobic read but ultimately totally enjoyable.  Great!






 

A Game of Thrones

Yes, I was hooked onto this book within a few chapters.  I hadn't watched anything on the TV, so I didn't know anything about this series and I really enjoyed it.  My inner JRR Tolkien geek was really happy with this book whereas another part of me was horrified by how violent, gratuitous and degrading the storyline was. The author is obviously obsessed by histories and wars of the Middle Ages but hey, it worked.
As complete escapism it was brilliant. I loved the dwarf, Jon Snow, the dragon Princess, the completely imagined world with all the different families, the ice wall in the North, the zombies, the Dothkari with their voodoo magic, the outdoor prisons on the top of precipices, the direwolves, the tree face worshippers and  the evil characters.  The only problem I had was with the maps, which are hard to access on a kindle and also how much I have left to read.  This thick booked adventure is just 1/7 of the total. That's a huge investment of my time!

Music and Silence

I loved this book and read it really slowly.  It was like dark chocolate, a little goes a long way.  The story was  set in the King's court of Copenhagen in the 17th century and I  felt like I was there living amongst these characters. Denmark at this time was a cold remote place where people lived a life believing in myths and fantasies and I really felt the power of these in this book.  It was like Hans Christian Anderson for adults.
 The main character, who played the lute for the King, was British, handsome, talented, kind and in love with the Danish maid servant to the evil queen.  The king was highly educated and kind but naive and as ugly as a toad, and the women in it were mostly complete monsters. The King's mother hoarded up all her wealth and would do anything to hide it from her poor son. The way she hides her money and gold is hilarious.  His wife was a beautiful, intelligent, yet selfish bitch who was having an affair with a Lord and constantly getting drunk out of complete boredom. And there were other witches who held power through their cooking abilities, their sex drives or just through their desire to  just better themselves.
This book seemed more like a well written fairy story than anything too serious.  It had moments of complete bonkers madness in it and others of complete poetry. It was a book of absolute opposites:  Music and silence, love and hate, black and white, beauty and ugliness, modern thinking and belief in myths, funny and serious.
 Yes, it was great and to be honest I would quite happily read it all again! Rose Tremain writes like a dream. Thanks again Freia for the recommendation.  It's taken me about 4 months to get round to writing a review...but I haven't forgotten this book. Probably the best read of the year. (No, equal first with The Lacuna!)

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!