The Salterton Trilogy by Robertson Davies

I really, really liked these novels. The trilogy was published in 1980, and set sometime earlier than that I think, so it’s dated –contemporary but, as somebody once described it, deals with the ‘universal now’. That’s such a great term to describe the continuing relevance of character and theme. The first tells the story of an amateur theatre group in the small Canadian town of Salterton who are putting on their annual performance. It’s the lightest of the three and focuses primarily on the characters and their relationships as they struggle to produce The Tempest. Some of these characters reappear in the other two novels. The second begins with the publication of an engagement notice pertaining to two of the characters, and then explores the ripples, including law suits and family feuds, that this causes. The main character in this book is the newspaper editor, an absolute delight of a character, who abhors the pomposity and wordiness of his colleagues and all the guff and politicking that goes on in small communities. The third begins with the death of one of the characters and the subsequent establishment of a trust to support a young artist and then follows her development, a break away from Salterton really and indeed from most of the characters we knew earlier. Robertson Davies writes that sort of social satire that I love so much, but with a generosity of spirit that you don’t find in some other harsher critics. There are some truly awful people in Salterton, and he doesn’t shy away from that, but there are also people who are a real-life mix of good and really quite bad whom he treats with compassion for the human condition. While his books approach the soap opera intensity of small town gossip and intrigue, he also talks about much bigger things, touching on the spirit and art and philosophy. What might sometimes tip over into didacticism is counterbalanced by wit and and an enjoyment of the outrageous (by the standards of the 1980s of course.) So while the trilogy is long – about 800 Penguin pages – it’s a page turner as well as being thoughtful and educated, and beautifully written to book.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

My friend Kathy, who lent me this book, suggested that it was a book to be read carefully and slowly. And she was right. Every word, and every idea, counts. The narrative is about Tony, who has a half baked affair with a girl Veronica when they are at university. After they’ve broken up she takes up with his friend Adrian. The second half of the novel takes place forty years later as Tony looks back on the relationship. I’m not going to write all the detail here because if anyone happens to read it, it will spoil it. While there are a couple of truly arresting moments in the plot, the book is not as much about the detail of the story (indeed anyone reading it for the narrative alone would struggle to maintain their commitment) but more about our perceptions of the past. Early in the novel the four friends at school, smart-arsed would be intellectuals, discuss history with their teacher. Adrian describes history as ‘that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.’ And that’s what I think this book is about – Tony’s flawed memories, which inform his attitudes towards other people and his subsequent interpretations of their actions, and the inadequacy of the documentation that he spends the whole second part of the novel seeking in Adrian’s diary. It is a novel about the loss of Tony’s certainty. And what a novel. Finely crafted, sparsely populated with almost Alan Bennett-esque characters, in an almost anonymous setting. Indeed I don’t think I’ve read a novel where setting mattered less any time recently. And the language – wow. Every word matters, and every word is carefully chosen even down to the title where ‘sense’ I am sure means ‘meaning.’ You must think and you must read every sentence. Now that’s brilliant writing.

The Citadel by AJ Cronin

This is of course a very dated book (published in 1937) and reminds me a lot of the Delderfield genre – British countryside, middle class professional, small town life, gossip and intrigue. I have a sentimental spot for books of that period though and so read this through this morning at 3.30am when I couldn’t sleep courtesy of too much rich French food last night. It’s a quick and easy bit of entertainment. The story is about a young doctor from a poor background struggling to make his way in the world, his marriage to a young schoolteacher and how he loses his ideals as he is absorbed into a medical world obsessed by wealth and status. It’s sentimental, at times almost melodramatic, but needs to be read as a period piece ie you have to suspend judgment of the sexism and other norms of that time. The BBC made a mini series out of it apparently, which probably says it all. Read it when you can’t sleep!

Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder

I think I’ll chuck this book out. It has won all these literary awards but I must be a philistine, because I struggled for weeks and weeks to get through it. It was ostensibly written for teenagers and is an introduction to all the different schools of philosophy through history. From my point of view it was almost like a textbook – an old bloke giving summaries of each of the different schools of thought to a kid who listens and asks obvious questions like ’ Can you give me an example’ or makes comments like ‘I’m beginning to see what you mean.’ Well I didn’t. It’s all strung together with a sort of mystery about the lead characters, Sophie and Alberto, and the solution is a strange philosophical trick involving existentialism (I think). It was lost on me, but I did persevere and hats off to those who did enjoy it and appreciate its content.

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.

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.

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.