Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson

This is a deeply personal book and I was not surprised when I read at the end that it had been written in real time. Winterson’s emotions are so raw and so uncompromising that it couldn’t have been any other way. At times I felt voyeuristic, looking into the torment of feelings that she goes through, but I came away admiring her enormously for the honesty of her struggle, her clear sighted view of herself (through all the doubt and confusion that every human being suffers) and her absolute almost bloody minded determination to survive. So it’s not an easy book to read: a book of self searching and self analysis interspersed with illustrative narrative about her life with the dreadful Mrs Winterson. Mrs Winterson reminds me very much of one of my aunts with slight hints of my own mother, so for me she is a very believable person. And despite the horror of her, all through the story you can see that both the young Jeanette and the older one still love her and are desperate to be loved back. Reflections again of family relationships I know well.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

This is the sort of book you might want to read a couple of times over. I am surprised it is so popular because it is not a quick and easy read: it’s a book that requires attention and thought. Edmund de Waal is tracing his family history, using the collection and passing on of Japanese netsuke as the thread. The Ephrussi family began in Poland, moved to Odessa and as grain merchants then became bankers and then moved to Paris and Vienna. The netsuke were collected by art connoisseur and bon vivant Charles Ephrussi, passed on to his cousin as a wedding gift, saved during the holocaust by the family maid, passed on to the writer’s great grandmother and from her to his great uncle Iggie and finally inherited by him. It’s a fascinating story of the family, of the times they lived in – for example Charles was friends with Renoir, with Proust, his circle contains every important name of the period – and the people who were in Viktor’s circle in Vienna were similarly famous. I’ve read a few holocaust accounts as well, but this one was very moving because it was so deeply personal and painful. The story also underscored the long-standing nature of anti-Semitism: this didn’t start with Hitler and that’s something we tend to forget I think. But the anti-Semitism part of it was only part, and there’s a lot more to this history than that. I liked this book a lot. I struggled to concentrate on it for some of the time, especially at the beginning (not helped by reading it on a kindle while travelling, hateful mechanism) but the effort was worthwhile.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Queen Lucia by EF Benson

This is an utterly delightful satire of middle class pretension written in the 1920s. It’s of the same ilk as Crome Yellow but on a more domestic and perhaps I should say more bitchy scale. It deals with Lucia, who is the ‘queen’ of her small village out of London and her devoted friend Georgie and the circle of other middle class village dwellers who she has revolving around her every whim. Lucia is the one that sets the standard, the one who everybody wants to impress, the one who arrives last at every event to make then wait. She’s a little like Hyacinth Bucket. In this story another lady moves into the area and the trouble begins as Lucia is unwittingly outclassed and outmanoeuvred by the new arrival. It made me laugh out loud in so many places – EF Benson has a deft hand and understated witty style that I just adored.