The Paying Guests

My biggest book drought in years is over.  I just haven't had the insomnia required to read like I used to! Plus most stuff I have picked up just hasn't grabbed me or kept me focussed. 

Anyway, I have finished this. Now, this book was definitely a book of three parts.  The first third which is based around life for a single woman and her mother in 1923 South London is brilliant.  I loved all the attention to detail, like silly things such as the description of thecrappy water system in their villa, which was cutting edge in the 1870s, and the spiky, repressed and formal lives these two woman of good breeding live.  Keeping up appearances is everything. I felt like I had been totally uprooted right  into a middle class life in 1922 London and I loved it. The clothes, the constant hard graft of cleaning because of soot, the boredom, the structure, the banality of it all, the greyness. Finding enjoyment in scraps, when you can, and going for it, is just so important!

Frances,the main character, is mourning the death of her two brothers in the Great War, and hates her  father who suddenly died leaving her and her mother in lots of debt.  To cover the debts they rent out one of the bedrooms to an 'up and coming 'newly married couple  and this is where the melo-drama begins. 

The second third of the book covers the budding love story between Frances and Lilian. This is done well. They start to have a secret, furtive and intense relationship in the house whilst  both Frances' aged mother keeps popping into the house between charity functions,  and Lilian's  aspirational husband is often clomping up and down the stairs.( Frances already has had one lesbian relationship but for Lilian this all seems like a new and exhilarating adventure.  )  This behaviour is not going to have a happy ending and I always knew  that lovely  Frances was being fed a line by modern flapper  Lil. Things were not going to turn out well for these star crossed lovers. Poor, poor Frances! 

Well, after a wonderful scene where Frances, Lil and Len play Strip Snakes and Ladders things all go very wrong and the  love story takes a different track and turns into a dramatic murder story. 

This last third was pretty poor and boring to be honest. After the wonderful social history and the fantastic tension of the murder, the last third went  a bit grey.  Yes, the murder was great. Full of tension! I almost felt like I was there witnessing it all. I love a good murder in literature! 

 But the aftermath was a bit of a burst balloon. It was as if Sarah Waters had lost her mojo. It was interesting   that Lilian and Frances as the potential murderers of Len was never even discussed by the police. That Lilian and Frances could have murdered Len was incomprehensible.  They were just feeble women for goodness sake! 

Anyway, this was a great read in parts and dull as ditch waters in others.  What I loved was  the hidden emotions which everyone was dealing with and the lack of social systems in place to help anyone. There was no NHS to help the wounded soldiers back from the First World War. No plan on what do with the sudden influx of physically and mentally wounded men.   Over night, woman who had been given freedom during the First World War, suddenly had to live in a much more conservative world. 'Moneyed' families were losing  their status as the 'working, clerk class' begin to gain more power and people were living incredibly secret lives. I'd like to read more about this time! Plus it will get me mentally prepared for when our National Health System crumbles into dust.

Quarantine

Wow, what a read!  I finished this last night about  midnight and then just kept  mulling it over for ages. I could not leave this novel behind me and I think that is one of its strongest pulls, its pitch perfect sense of time and place.  This is no mean feat considering we are talking about Jesus in the wilderness about 2000 years ago.  Infact by coincidence the time of the Christian calendar we are in now, the lent period before Easter. 

But don't be fooled, this is no biblical allegory of what it was like to be in the wilderness for 40 days and night without water and food.  This was the harsh reality, with a thumping fist, of what life was like for the people of this time, as the caves around Jesus were also full of fasting misfits trying to find peace with themselves and their existence. (Running off to caves in the wastelands of the Jericho hinterland for spiritual guidance seemed to be a bit of a 'thing' during this period. )

Now Jim Crace is passionate about his scenario and every time I read bits of this book my heart raced because life comes across as so unremittingly awful and harsh. Jesus arrives from the  Galilee to test his strength in god.  ( Crace always used a small case for God, not capital which I found odd to begin with, but could understand by the end...nothing was formalised. ) 

Jesus is young and unaware of his talents and as he is  walking through the scrubland trying to find a cave to sleep in he finds a dying man and innocently heals him and brings him back from the brink of death. Infact the man he cures is totally horrendous, a devil in human form. His wife is really frustrated that he is still alive because it means more subjugation and ridicule. But Jesus is unaware of his actions because he hides himself away in a cave for an unprecedented 40 days without food or water to fight his own temptations and have his own personal discussion with god. Jesus is hard core....he doesn't do what the other spiritual people do.  They all break the fast  after sunset because this is sensible, but not Jesus, and everyone knows that after just 30 days of no water or food you will die, especially in that heat.

I don't really know how to put into words the affect this book had on me.  Crace is not a religious man at all, he is a story teller and he does a fantastic job at telling us what starvation and thirst does do the body but what I really liked about this book is that Jesus and his personal torments were not a a major part of the book.  People's lives were going on around him and ultimately when something 'biblical' happens, other mundane lives and relationships of equal worth are building/breaking.  But Crace's incredibly linguistic and poetic way of writing did turn this book into quite a weirdly spiritual experience for me. The human devil is clearly expressed via Musa, the awful guy whom Jesus innocently brings back from the dead, Jim Crace sure knows how to write enigmatically about evil!   But  I'm not sure what Jesus role is in this book.  We know he is meant to embody the opposite of evil, but does he? To me he embodies people's hope and wishes. other people have told you what he has done, so you want to believe it yourself.  this is so true when Musa tells his tale of rebirth to the other cave dwellers and then they all hang around outside Jesus' cave hoping that he will come out and cure them.  But he never does.  He is too immature at this time and self possessed with his own demons,  a kind of religious  fanatic. But the ending is strangely ambiguous. To Christians it will be  sacraligous, to me it made a kind of perfect sense BUT it is something Iwould really like to talk to with someone who has read the book!   Freia?! 

The Summer Book

Another quick read for me. Insomnia has its advantages. This book was strange and rather otherworldly.  I know it's a Scandinavian classic and yes, I did enjoy it a lot but one thing is, I didn't find it funny. Many of the reviews say it is humorous, but I never found it to be so! 

I thought it was beautiful, comforting, philosphical and oddly zen like. Like reading and meditating at the same time, but not funny.

Tove Jansen, of Moomin fame,  wrote this after her own mother died and based it on her mother and niece, who used to spend the summer months in the Gulf of Finland on their little Island. The Grandmother is very old, extremely independent and also wise and fair and the little six year old grand daughter, Sophia is 6 and prone to mad tantrums, wild out bursts and full of imagination.  Their relationship together is brilliantly told. Jansen gets into the childlike inquisitiveness of Sophia just as well as the end of life stillness of the Grandmother.  Both seem to spend a lot of time on the ground, Sophia coz she is inquisitive, grandmother because her legs are too weak to move very far. They both end up cheating together whilst playing cards,  going out on boat trips, breaking into houses and talking about heaven and death. grandmother  says that there are no ants in heaven and that Angels have day trips away to go and see their friends in hell. The two of them also seem to spend of a lot of time doing nothing and just sleeping. I suppose this is because the sun must be up for nearly 24 hours a day so their body clocks are a bit screwed! 

The island is also a main character in the book and almost every flower, bit of bark and forest is described in great detail.  It seems like a vast and exciting world and obviously to these two it is!  The introduction is interesting too, written by Esther Freud. She visited the island and was shown around by the now adult Sophia and it took just 4 minutes to walk around!   I think that is what I like the most about the book, the joy of greatness to be found even in the  smallest of places. It all depends on how you view things! I also loved the character of the rather crotchety old grandmotherShe is absolutely brilliant. But as for a good read, I'm in two minds, lots of the little chapters were just rather weird. I just couldn't get my head around what was/ wasn't going on. The stories were not in any order, time was all mixed up and the father figure, who never said a word, was just a brooding figure in the back ground who just worked at his desk whilst mourning his dead wife. For me this was all a bit unsettling because there was a lot being said through absence of writing. 

I can't explain what I mean... An interesting book which I found uplifting, extremely calming and just a little bit odd! 

Headhunters

After my last intense read it was pretty cool to curl up in my bed and read this book literally from start to finish in one big book binge. I do have a soft spot for Jo Nesbo, if that is the right word.  I find his world view of a place infested with super sickos a comforting read and I'm secretly in love with the alcoholic, dark, twisted genius of a detective called Harry Hole but this book didn't have Harry Hole in it.  INfact this book was not about the murder of vulnerable women but rather about repellant guys who are out to kill each other. ( not quick enough in my opinion!) Guys with egos the size of rhinos and personalities the size of shrivelled nuts.  Everyone in this book was FOUL but that was part of its ridiculous charm, how revolting everyone was.  Parts of it were funny though, if you are prone to laughing at sick jokes and find toilet humour amusing, which obviously I do! 

  I'm glad I finished it in a night though.  I wouldn't have wanted it hanging around in my vicinity for too long.

This book is  Nesbo at his weakest but still a total page turner for me. I hated everyone but still needed to know what was going to happen to them.  I think  I'll just stick to my Harry Hole addiction in the future!  But  I'll give Nesbo the benefit of the doubt. For some unexplained reason I just love reading the sick, twisted nonsense he writes about. I find it incredibly funny and parts of this book did make me howl with laughter!!! 

The Emperor of all Maladies

Wow, what can I say.  This book has been a phenomenal read. I have been engrossed in it every night now for over 2 weeks and it has been an unbelievable experience. It has been , and you might not believe this, a true pleasure to read. 

Yes, parts have been incredibly moving and sad, other bits have been uplifting and joyous and other bits have been like reading a detective novel. Every page I have found out something interesting and thought provoking and I'm kinda sad  it's finished now.

One thing is for sure, this doctor knows his stuff!  He has complete reverence for his patients, a great deal of historical knowledge about cancer and amazingly he is an EXCELLENT writer, who can make complicated science understandable whilst at the same time writing such beautiful sentences.

It sounds a bit sick but this book has smashed my serious scary fears I had about cancer because this guy has just laid everything bare and written down the  history of how humans have been fighting this disease to the best of their abilities over the last 4000 years. Reading about the best endeavours of focussed, almost obsessed, doctors and scientists  willing themselves to cure such a complicated disease ,whilst balancing these scientific advancements against the psychological needs of the patients themselves has been fascinating. 

My favourite parts were 

 when Victorian British doctors suddenly realised that chimney sweep boys were getting lots of scrotal cancer and that soot must be some kind of carcinogen.

How Mr Doll came up with the link between smoking and lung cancer, and was fought all the way by the tobacco companies. 

How the nonorganic dyes produced in the industrial revolution could be used so successfully to stain cells and see them so clearly. 

The power of X Rays to both see inside the body and also give you cancer.

How mustard gas and the periwinkle flowers were discovered to be great chemotherapy drugs because they are two of the best targeted cell poisons. ( Mustard gas killing off all white blood cells in healthy bone marrow was a side affect detected in dead soldiers and civilians in the First World War.)

How you shouldn't give marmite to someone with leukaemia because it speeds up the cancer cell replication. Marmite is full of folates and leukaemia sufferers need anti-folates.

How viruses, genetics, hormones, carcinogens and random mutations all play a part in the game called cancer and how scientists through the ages came to these conclusions. 

How a cancer only found in chickens helped scientists prove that cancer structurally changes our DNA.

How important mice have been for testing on and how some scientists just tested certain drugs on themselves because they were so desperate for human guinea pigs.

How a mad scientist studying the reproductive cycle of  real guinea pigs suddenly came up with the idea of the smear as a preventative test for cervical cancer.

How random trials should be carried out on humans to prove a drugs worth.  This part was fascinating for me because doctors are biased by the very nature of being human.  Putting pure mathematical and statistical data into practice when people's lives are in the balance is a tough balancing act.

The importance of screening programmes to save lives before the cancer even takes a hold. The first breast cancer screening trials in the 70s were a disaster because they were not random enough. It was a small Swedish village which produced the data that breast screening is only worthwhile in society for women over 50. 

Fund raising and awareness raising in the community, especially in 1950s America when you couldn't say the words breast, cancer or prostate on TV or radio and the absolute dedication of high society people to raise funds for children's cancer wards. Things were/are funded so differently here in the UK! 

Interviewing a woman in her 60s, who was one of the first children to be cured of childhood leukaemia through chemotherapy. This was incredibly moving. 

How new drugs target rogue genes and proteins in certain cancer cells and turn off their desire to talk to each other and replicate. How cell biologists spent such long hours finding about how these switches on genes worked and then often didn't communicate their findings so well to oncologists.  The lack of communication was often horrifying as well as the pitfalls of getting drug companies to fund trials on humans. 

How cancer touches everybody, rich and poor, old and young. How it is a disease which is a mutant copy of ourselves, a disease which has managed to gain immortality.  A disease which we will never beat completely, but one that we can control, live with and often cure. A disease which as a society ages becomes more and more prevalent.  A disease which many of us will live under the shadow of but luckily these days kills fewer and fewer children.

This book is a true testament to everything good about humans and a true testament to the author's passion and dedication to his chosen career of helping people understand and fight this terrible disease. 

How to be Both

I hated this book.  I hated this book so much I have stopped reading it.  I hated it so much I don't even want to waste time writing about it.   Critics loved it, raved about it, swooned over it.  All I can say is WTF?   Did they really read it?  It is pretentious bollocks...the only thing I might have learnt is that I should maybe look at a piece of art in a gallery for longer before deciding I don't like  it and that just because there are words on a page it doesn't mean they actually mean anything.   I decided today that half of the book is enough. I have stopped reading it after the end of the first story.  I skim read the second half and got nothing but eye strain. I have since found out that different versions have the two stories printed in the opposite order.  What a bloody gimmick.
    I have realised, thanks in part to my friend Tanya, that life is far too short to waste on shite books.  For gods sake, I only have about enough time in my life to read about 0.000001% of the books I would like to read.  So this is going in my charity bag.  The one thing I have learnt here in spades is JANE, DONT get swayed by critics.  On the plus side it only cost me a quid from a charity shop.

The Well of Lost Plots

This is the third book in the crazy Thursday Next series and yes, I did enjoy it but the first half was pretty slow to be honest and then suddenly it picked up and the last two thirds was great fun and totally bonkers. I love this series because it is so ridiculous.  Here Thursday is hiding out in a  kinda crap third rate unpublished novel in the lower basement of the book placement depository (known as the Well of Lost Plots.) so she can hide from the evil Goliath company. She has done an exchange with one of the minor characters in the book so that the bored female character can have a sabbatical from her mind numbing  and cheesy role. (The book is called Caversham Heights and involves lots of boring police procedure action around Reading.)  

This book is impossible to describe but basically Thursday is trying to find her eradicated husband but along the way she uncovers a dastardly plot (concocted by an evil politician in the real work who is really just an escaped book character living a secret double life) to make all books 'ULTRAWORD Trade mark' which will force all books to become interactive ereaders where words, plots and storylines can be edited simultaneously and used as tools for mass propaganda.  Miss Haversham helps Thursday rocket between the two worlds and together with the help of cliched characters from unpublished novels, the witches from Macbeth and Solomon (judgement of)  they manage to foil the dastardly deed. The Goliath company are beginning to track agent Thursday down to the crap Well of Lost Plots  so right at the end of the book Thursday has to hide in the 'Footnote sewer' to successfully reveal the evil plan.  Of course I love the mad play with language and the jumps from high brow to low brow references. I especially loved the scene of Rage Management for the characters in Wuthering Heights, the strike by oral traditional characters who felt they were not getting their true recognition due to their status of not being well known in the world of print.  (Humpty Dumpty was their shop steward) and the incredibly dangerous Mispeling Vyrus where suddenly, if you were unlucky enough to be caught in its net, floors change to flour and walls change to balls. (Uriah Hope got caught up in the vyrus and got his personality and surname changed forever.)   The thing I love about these daft books is Jasper Fforde's incredible imagination.  Reading these is exactly the same joy I got as when I read Terry Pratchett novels as  a teenager. MADNESS and a lot of geeky fun, which feels very comforting.