Shadow of the Hedgehog

The holidays are receding rapidly into the past (sadly) as are the memories of the books I took with me, so I had better make some notes whilst I remember!

I broke off in the middle of Waugh's Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, there being so few pages left that it wasn't really worth taking away with me. I read some of his collected short stories on the outbound plane - that is, when I could read: the two and three year-olds sitting behind me were totally undisciplined by their parents and spent the entire journey kicking the back of my seat and catching my hair as they grabbed onto the top of it. Not conducive to concentration! I did manage a few stories though, which were a fairly engrossing representation of a particular echelon of society at a particular time in history.

We spent less time just lazing about this year, so I didn't read as much as I did last year, but it didn't take me long to dispatch Alexander McCall Smith's Corduroy Mansions. It was a warm, fuzzy holiday read, as are all his works, but the new cast of characters aren't sufficiently well-defined in my head to warm to yet. Additionally, there seems to be some overlap between characters in this latest offering and the Isabel Dalhousie series: another older lady caught in an unexpected romance with a beautiful youth? I also kept getting mixed up between the young men in the book....they're all so unbelievably sensitive and in touch with their inner selves!

I started on Dan Simmons' Children of the Night, but the setting was so dark and bleak (post-Ceaucescu Romania) that it was not consonant with the holiday mood and I once more retreated to dip into the brittle world of Waugh.

On my return home I polished off Gilbert Pinfold and moved rapidly on to Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Shadow of the Wind, which I'd picked up in a Waterstones' three-for-two offer. It would actually have been the ideal book to take on our city-break last autumn, set as it is in the very city we visited, Barcelona.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I've read a lot of reviews on it since finishing it (to have read them before would have prejudiced me, I feel) and find myself agreeing with most of the views expressed. The characters - particularly the female ones - are thinly padded stereotypes, the protagonist, Daniel, seems colourless and unsympathetic. The character that some reviewers enthused most about (and an equal number hated), Fermin, I found to be a highly irritating caricature of a lecherous cod-philosopher who - if I were Daniel - I'd have dropped quicker than a hot potato. Or punched into unconsciousness and silence. The way Fermin was accepted (and this in the paranoid post-civil war Spain) by the father without murmur or question into the family business was incredible. The 'evil nemesis', the police chief Javier Fumero, was a cartoon villain, who apparently 'giggled'. Indeed, quite often the translation let the book down, with the translator seeming to prefer formal rather than dynamic equivalence, which led to stilted, unbelievable or tortuous phrases. The plotting was confusing, and the lack of colour and differentiation between characters meant that I if my concentration lapsed (as it does if one is tired), I became unsure as to which time-thread I was reading (Daniel/Julian, Penelope/Bea/Nuria).

However, having said all this and despite its faults I actually thoroughly enjoyed the book in the same way that I enjoyed The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson, and found myself looking forward to picking it up and reading it at the beginning and end of each day. What better recommendation is there? It had sufficient atmosphere to immerse the reader in the city, and I felt that this was where this book triumphed, rather than in its characters. It is a good, holiday season book, and I am actively looking forward to reading another of Zafon's books, The Angel's Game, which is similarly set in Barca.

After the Shadow of the Wind, I read The Elegance of the Hedgehog by the French author Muriel Barbery, whom I'd never heard of until I spotted this. Opinions are sharply divided on this book too, people either loving it or hating it in equal numbers, calling it either profound or pretentious. The conceit, that of an socially and emotionally stunted concierge who hides a sensitive, intellectual side behind a drab exterior is quite intriguing if somewhat unbelievable - who'd really have a TV set playing game shows to fool the residents into thinking that one is really dumb? Would it really be worth the effort to buy bland foods to kid the neighbourhood that one had plebian tastes? The characterisation (mostly of unpleasant or deficient people) is satisfyingly well done. For my liking, Renee surrenders her mask somewhat too easily during the course of the book, but the surprising denouement literally had me in tears reflecting that, at the moment of death, our thoughts must inevitably turn to those who we are leaving behind, and to the second death of those loved ones who are kept alive only in the memory of the dying person. I'm not sure what message the author intends to impart. There seems to be a divide: that a person can only blossom in the company of a like-minded soul (and we get glimpses of Renee's ultimate potential in the company of her friend Manuela), and that beauty can only really be appreciated at the moment of its passing. A bit like life, I suppose.

In Holiday Mode (or Mood)

Well, my addiction to book buying gets no better and in fact is probably getting somewhat worse. You see, I have discovered that it is possible to source second-hand paperbacks from Amazon's subsidiary sellers at ridiculously cheap prices. Starting at 1p (yes, that's £0.01!) plus the statutory £2.75 p&p, that makes a grand total of £2.76 for a paperback. The quality is usually higher than the second-hand ones you get from charity shops (in fact, some are pristine) and c/s prices (depending on where you shop) are quite often higher. Plus serendipity plays a great part in charity shop finds - you get what's there: buying online you can source what you want. I still mine charity shops looking for books, so in fact they don't miss out, because I still buy as many books as ever from them. But the biggest buzz is when the anticipated package comes through the letter-box: I LOVE it!
The Husband was finding the Paul Torday book he was reading a bit of a downer.....poor old Wilberforce obviously has his downhill path mapped out for him, and although he found it a gripping and well-written book, it didn't help the Husband to de-stress at the end of the day, so I picked him up acopy of Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (which he hasn't actually started yet...) blurbed as 'the happiest book I have ever read' on the back cover. Should do the trick!
Having finished Dan Simmons Drood (excellent if weird), I am re-reading his Ilium and have purchased Children of the Night online (for the grand total of £2.76). That's a potential holiday book, but when I went out to lunch with my eldest daughter, we swung by Waterstones and I got a bit carried away at the 'three-for-two' counter (Zafon's Shadow of the Wind, Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Alexander McCall Smith's Corduroy Mansions). I actually went in for a book of Carol Ann Duffy's poetry - which I found, and is a thing of beauty in itself - so I spent rather more than I intended too. Hey ho! But the McCall Smith will be definitely accompanying me to Greece in the near future, The Bloody Chamber is just a masterpiece and I've been intending to read The Shadow of the Wind for some time (but had failed to find it in a charity shop).

When I had my last supervisory meeting, we got to talking about how much we enjoyed the writings of Evelyn Waugh, particularly his shorter works, and it occurred to me that a collection of his stuff would be an excellent holiday book. As I read in the Guardian recently, a collection of short stories is a sure-fire winner on holiday when the right book is crucial to one's enjoyment (see earlier posts): if one story fails to amuse, another most likely will. Certain that I'd find a copy - if not in a charity shop - then in a second-hand book shop (of which we have an abundance in York) I set off with Daughter #2 and the Bouncing Babba to dig one out. Sadly, it was an unsuccessful hunt, and not even Waterstones had a copy. I did, however, find another volume of short stories the Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories, (in the Arthritis and Rheumatism Council shop) which contains a wide spread of 20th century authors from Graham Green to Julian Barnes to Beryl Bainbridge. I'm not sure they're all that modern, but the publication date is 1988 (22 years old!). Looks like ideal holiday fodder, but even that did not stop me buying a second-hand copy of The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh online when i got home. And The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold to boot. Ooopsy!

Drood for the Road

Had a couple of days in Milan during the half-term (well, two half-days and one full day, half of which we spent up at Lake Maggiore) which was lovely. I needn't have worried that there wasn't enough to keep us occupied - we definitely intend to return and spend some more time exploring both the city and the nearby Lakes.

In the end I didn't take Wolf Hall with me, the reason being that I came across a book by Dan Simmons called Drood that really took my fancy. I was in Waterstones with the Bright-Eyed Boy who was trying to remember what book it was that he wanted to take away with him (Monster Republic by Ben Horton - he could remember the cover picture only!) when I went for a browse in the 'grown-ups' section. Simmons is better known as a sci-fi writer, not a genre that I am particularly keen on with the exception of his book Ilium which I absolutely loved. I tried to read the sequel Olympos, but..well..meh!...didn't find it that enthralling. But the blurb caught my eye, and a quick riffle through the pages to check out the writing-quality convinced me that THIS was the holiday book to take. It's a good thick book too, so no chance that it'd be devoured before the plane touched down again in England. And it IS very good, dealing with the fraught relationship between the narrator (Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White, The Moonstone int.al.) and a rather manic Charles Dickens. I'm not sure how much is based on real events (was he really involved in a rail disaster? I should Google it I suppose..), but the descriptions of the slums and the opium dens of Victorian London are shudderingly real. The story deals essentially with the disparity between Dickens public persona as jovial paterfamilias and well-loved author, and his self-centred private obsessions including one quest to trace a mysterious figure that he believes has a supernatural hold over him since the train accident. It's quite gripping thus far.

The Husband, suspecting that the Irresistable Inheritance of Wilberforce describes a depressingly downward trajectory looked well-pleased when I presented him with Lawrence Dallaglio's autobiography It's All in the Blood. The Husband likes to read about excellence in any field - I guess he finds it inspiring - but it really makes him wish he had been able to take part in sport at a top level. So far he has read and thoroughly enjoyed Lance Armstrong and Steve Redgrave's autobiogs. I though they came across as knobs, but as the Husband says, they have to be to get as far as they have.....!