Review: Georgia Blain’s “The Blind Eye”

I started this the other week but hadn’t read enough for it to sink in, so it was back to the beginning a couple of nights ago when I retrieved it from the Pillow Pile. Plot: Silas has a dark secret to do with his past fascination for the (literally) bewitching Constance. For salvation’s sake, his new shag Greta sends him to homeopath Daniel, who has dark secrets with Greta. Jealousy fangs around. Everybody’s nastier than they pretend. It’s dark then maybe light again.

OK, so, the plot’s not dazzling but the writing is quite good. Hypnotic, well weighted, powerful descriptions, simply written but often lyrical, absorbing. An interesting elucidation of homeopathy, too: sympathetic. Glad I read it, it bodes well for her other novels.

Where it came from: The Housesat Bookshelf again
Time taken to read: Two bed-nights and one bed-morning
Where it went to: Back home
Reminds me of: I saw an exhibition in Argentina called El ojo blindado, which means ‘the armoured eye’ (as in armoured car).
Who I’d recommend it to: —
Also reading: “The Heart of the Matter” by Graham Greene; “Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons; “Gertrude” by Hermann Hesse; “The Mountain” by Kate Llewellyn; “The Plumed Serpent” by D.H. Lawrence (rediscovered with bookmark in Pile No. 3); “The Reivers” by William Faulkner (likewise)

Review: David Mitchell’s “Black Swan Green”

I grabbed this one because I’d read Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, and found it an impressive stylistic achievement (although I found his message naff and overplayed). Anyway, it was good enough to make me get this one off the Housesat Bookshelf, and despite a sloooow start, it was worthwhile. Thirteen months in the life a 13 y.o. writer-boy, who seems to be 13 the way that Jonathan Safran Foer’s hero in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was 9, or Juno was 16 in her movie. (It’s considerably more elegant than Foer’s novel, btw, but I wasn’t quite as impressed). Solid rendition of Britain in 1982, all chronistic details in tact – eg., Falklands/Malvinas war; e.g., VHS vs Betamax; e.g., who’s allowed to dance to Madness songs; e.g., mean legal attacks on gypsies who are good deep down. An increasingly absorbing read, plot threads sneaked up on me (but not entirely convincingly), and Mitchell is clearly a master of voice. It was a good read and I’ll read more of his.

Where it came from: KT’s Housesat Bookshelf
Time taken to read: About four doses of bed-nights
Where it went to: Back to shelf
Reminds me of: Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”; Adrian Mole’s diaries
Who I’d recommend it to: No one particular, but it is good.
Also reading: “The Heart of the Matter” by Graham Greene; “The Blind Eye” by Georgia Blain; “Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons; “Gertrude” by Hermann Hesse; “Trash” by Dorothy Allison; “The Mountain” by Kate Llewellyn

Review: Arnold Zable’s “Cafe Scheherazade”

Martin, a “no-good scribbler”, makes his way to a café in St Kilda in search of a news story, but instead is entranced in the history of the café’s owners, three of the regulars, and the café itself. Avram and Masha have been running their small piece of Mitteleuropa since 1959, when they arrived in Australia as WWII refugees. Yossel, Laizer and Zalman come daily to drink their strong coffee, and slowly share their stories of war and emigration with the scribbler. Martin deciphers their various Yiddish accents as they trace their separate flights from Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) to Siberian workcamps, Shanghai’s shortlived Jewish ghetto, a Parisian nightclub rendezvous and reincarnation in Melbourne.

This is a wonderful book, hypnotic and historical at the same time. I wasn’t excited about the idea of another WWII tragedy, but each character’s tale was so absorbing, and Zable’s touch so deft, that this book was a delight. I kept finding myself stopping to reread sections that were written so limpidly that I’d lost the meaning in my urge to say with the rhythm of the language. The heartaches were powerfully written but not dwelt on in any callous way, and the vibrancy of each city and each scene makes this 1001 nights alive and rich. Zable obviously researched his wanderers’ tales quite thoroughly, but you never feel like you’re being forced through a lesson on Jewish migrations – and more importantly, you don’t come out of the book with a heartache yourself. Instead, Café Scheherazade sings of home, and community, and story, and sanctuary. It made me feel grateful, once again, to live far from war and near to the home of my heart.

Beautiful and highly recommended.

Where it came from: KT’s Housesat Bookshelf
Time taken to read: Three bed-nights
Where it went to: Back on the shelf
Reminds me of: Its poetic tone is similar to Annie Dillard’s “The Maytrees”
Who I’d recommend it to: HG
Also reading: “The Heart of the Matter” by Graham Greene; “The Blind Eye” by Georgia Blain; “Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons; “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce, “Gertrude” by Hermann Hesse; “Black Swan Green” by David Mitchell

Post-Script: A version of this review appears in the June-July 2012 edition of the Terania Times.

Review: Helen Fielding’s “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason”

Spoiler alert: It’s all about Bridget getting to keep her Mr Darcy. Who’d have thunk it? Anyway, it has the same cringe-making laughs as the first one, and certainly lots of the same plot devices, but I’d probably have liked it better if I weren’t always comparing it to its older sister or the movie(s) with their po-mo casting witticisms. She needs an awful lot of rescuing, our Bridge, and I think she’s even flakier and less employable than before, but it was pretty entertaining and a lot more fun than the other books I’m managing not to finish on the Pillow Pile.

Where it came from: KT’s Housesat Bookshelf
Time taken to read: Three bed-nights, the second of which was a under five minutes of reading: the Colin Firth interview was so hilarious but embarrassment it nearly killed me, and I had to put it off till another night.
Where it went to: Back on the shelf
Reminds me of: Surprise, surprise: Helen Fielding’s “Bridget Jones’ Diary”
Who I’d recommend it to: Anyone in need of chick-lit smartarsery, with a dose of Pride and Prej fan action thrown in
Also reading: “The Heart of the Matter” by Graham Greene; “The Blind Eye” by Georgia Blain; “Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons; “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce

Review: Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s “The Cloudspotter’s Guide”

This book’s main issue is that Gavin Pretor-Pinney is simply not cool (a condition I can only empathise with). Judging from photo, bio and text, he’s middle aged, (upper?) middle class, drab and kind of smug. He’s also obsessed by clouds, which is a redeeming feature, so he founded The Cloud Appreciation Society. Anyway, so someone who is inherently not cool cannot fake it, and this book – fantastic cover aside – just couldn’t hit that quirky yet informative note it was aiming for. It never failed to bore me to sleep over several nights, and I still can’t tell the names of any clouds. Abandoned at around p.100.

Where it came from: KT’s Housesat Bookshelf
Time taken to read: Various bed-nights, none with great enjoyment
Where it went to: Back on the shelf in shame
Reminds me of: That weird play we did in Year 4 or Year 5, where my friend Lisa played the hero and all the characters were named after clouds.
Who I’d recommend it to: —
Also reading: “The Heart of the Matter” by Graham Greene; “The Blind Eye” by Georgia Blain; “Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons; “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce

Review: Kate Llewellyn’s “Dear You: A Novel”

I suspect that the most fictional element of this book is the sub-title: it sure don’t read like no novel, it reads like a writer drawing out and analysing every pain-smeared blood vessel in her body as she misses her True Love, especially in the book’s first half. In some way advertised as erotica (yes, she admits she wants sex and occasionally writes her fantasies), but it’s more of an emotional dissection of lovelorn grief and distressingly inevitable survival. Terribly accurate and terribly terrible, i.e. wrenching to read. Which wasn’t what I wanted.

What happened was this. I devoured the first memoir (see earlier review), dropped it by the side of my bed, diligently wrote the review before moving on to the next book, and leapt into this one, No. 2-eroonie. And had to stop it, because what I wanted was the continuation of the wry, sharp voice I’d loved, not this longing dismembered on the page, this yearning made language. Which – let’s be clear – is an achievement and a half, ’cos I was feeling those resonances of her pain deep down in the heartlands; the problem was, I wanted to be uplifted and charmed and entertained with cooking and gardening anecdotes, and I didn’t care about her man who’d done her wrong. It was also such a straight-one-eighty narrative that it was extra hard to care; as they said in certain circles in Buenos Aires, it was just too paqui. So I read about 40pp with increasing dismay, and my cynical eyebrow notched itself into its wonted home high, high on my forehead, then I dumped it ’cos she’s discomfited me. Well, for a few days, until I felt I should try again, and appreciate that she’s a writer of many gods and many voices (like the sea), and that I was the wrong audience for this book today. Then I had a post-garden bath this afternoon, and read one chapter, and another, and I was bored but nearly finished, and the water was hot and bountiful, and then I was finished and it was 3pm and studying the future of the library sector hadn’t had a look-in on my Friday.

It felt like this was the book that lived underneath the first of her Blue Mountains books and had now been given a page count of its own. This was the story knocking to get out, as my friend HG terms it. And about halfway through it wavered on its love-centric narrative, and journalised on food and travels and outings, but it didn’t have the winsome tone I’d so enjoyed in Book One. All of which makes me simultaneously nervous and curious about the third one, “The Mountain”, also helpfully on KT’s Housesat Bookshelf. Gone is my facile and probably insulting assumption that what once was always will be, now I have no idea what to expect. For which I do thank her; it’s great to get your assumptions shaken up, and her ability to do so so richly marks her out as a skilful writer.

I can’t honestly say I’d recommend this one, especially compared to “The Waterlily”, but perhaps ask me again when I want to wallow in heartbreak and I may have changed my mind. Stay tuned for the third and final instalment of Llewellyn’s Blue Mountains writings…

Where it came from: KT’s Housesat Bookshelf
Time taken to read: One bed-night earlier this week, then a concerted (illicit) effort in this afternoon’s bath
Where it went to: Back home on the shelf
Reminds me of: —
Who I’d recommend it to: —
Also reading: “The Heart of the Matter” by Graham Greene; “The Cloudspotter’s Guide” by Gavin Pretor-Pinney; “The Blind Eye” by Georgia Blain; “Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons

Review: Andrew Miller’s “The Optomists”

When I grabbed this from Pile No.2 (KT’s Housesat Books), I must have been seduced by the pretty glory of the cover, ‘cos when I reread the blurb, I found I’d entirely forgotten that this was a post-massacre novel. Not exactly the mood I was in, but he’d been shortlisted for the Booker for another book, and I trust the aggregate quality of the prize if not the individual winners (Anne Enright, anyone?).

So, post-massacre recovery novel in 1993 London. Simply written, absorbing, tactfully addressing complex issues of international politics and mental health, a somewhat weird ending that comes out of the blue – nothing like a Messiah complex to get you through a time of trial.

What most powerful impressed me about this novel was how lucky I was to not be in the hero’s situation, that I’d never — not in the worst situations I lived when working in human rights — ever, remotely come close to experiencing anything as horrific as a church of dismembered bodies and unfilled graves. I’m so lucky not to live in war, I’m so lucky my sensitive soul has not had to recover from such demands, I’m so lucky I have the choice to not be in situations that grim and that lethal. This was the feeling that accompanied me through the first 60 or 100 pages, but then, as with all wise sensations, faded, and I was left following Clem’s incremental approach to blankness and newness.

Recommended, and I’ll read others of Miller’s as I come across them.

Where it came from: KT’s Housesat bookshelf
Time taken to read: two nights in bed, then early morning after an overnight in town
Where it went to: Back home on the shelf
Reminds me of: —
Who I’d recommend it to: Perhaps other post-human rights workers. It deals well with the complex and the equivocal that is the legacy of the field.
Also reading: “The Heart of the Matter” by Graham Greene; “The Cloudspotter’s Guide” by Gavin Pretor-Pinney; “Dear You: A Novel” by Kate Llewellyn; “The Blind Eye” by Georgia Blain