Holidays and Beyond

Thoroughly enjoyed my two holiday books (The Unbearable Lightness of Scones and PopCo), managing to polish off the former in just under two days, the latter lasting until half-way through the four-hour flight delay on the return journey. Alexander McCall Smith's latest volume in the 44 Scotland Street series was the familiar comfort-reading that I'd both hoped for and expected. Nothing nasty, with enough amusing insights to raise the odd internal chuckle. Having fairly recently read Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr Y I had an idea what was in store for me and was not disappointed. PopCo's heroine Alice Butler is far more sympathetic than her angst-ridden self-hating Ariel Manto. The plot is not what you'd call tight, but combined with the various digressions on specialist subjects (maths, cryptography. marketing techniques), it is absorbing enough to keep the pages turning. Characterisation is slight, with many of the supporting roles appearing as mere ciphers (haha! in a book on cryptanalysis! Geddit?) - but that's fine: I wasn't expecting Flaubert. It was fine holiday fare, in the same league as The Gargoyle. Better than The Raw Shark Texts, not as good as Fight Club.

Having finished PopCo before our flight took off I was desperate for something else to read and picked up Robin Wasserman's Skinned, which daughter #3 (12 years old) had completed a few days ago. It was immediately gripping, a tale set in a dystopian future featuring a girl hideously injured in a car accident (shades of The Gargoyle again!). The medical expertise is available (largely courtesy of her parents' vast wealth) to have her essential self 'downloaded' from her broken body into a replica mechanoid, perfect in every way except that it is not 100% lifelike. It will keep her 'alive' indefinitely as long as she follows the care protocols. And this is the interesting bit: is she 'alive'? What does 'alive' mean? What does a person consist of? Are they the sum of their bodies and their minds, or is it the mind alone that counts? We are asked to consider various ethical and moral dilemmas through Lia's angry confrontation with her old life, her friends, her boyfriend and society's reactions. It is very thought provoking stuff, deeply philosophical and gripping. I'm rather impressed.

Actually, I'm procrastinating.......various scholarly tomes are jostling for attention but, hey, I'm still in holiday mood!

Classics and Frauds

Actually - the further I read through The Moses Legacy, the worse it got, so I just skipped through the last few chapters, reading only the chapter-end summaries. Meh!.

Ordered my own copy of 'The Gargoyle' from one of Amazon's subs: it arrived pretty quickly, but turned out to be a hard-back. Never mind - it's going out on loan soon. I do want to read it again, but maybe not yet.

Called in at the Barbican Bookshop on a rainy afternoon last week and found TWO books that made the whole day worthwhile: Ernst Kasemann's 'Perspectives on Paul'and Robert Martin-Achard's 'From Death to Life: A Study of the Development of the Doctrine of the Resurrection in the Old Testament'. this latter could not have come at a more opportune moment as I am currently writing about the Judaic conception of the afterlife, from the earliest times through to the Mishnaic period. The former is, of course, a classic. Both came to a mere £7.

Amused myself today by knocking up a couple of facsimile 'papyrus fragments' (inspired by Evangelical Textual Criticism's blogpost

http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2009/05/p52-for-sale-on-ebay.html)

I thought I'd also do P52 - so I did - and then a fragment of the late 2nd/early 3rd century CE Coptic 'Dialogue of the Saviour' (Nag Hammadi). I have to say that both mine actually look far more authentic than the one advertised on eBay does. Maybe a new career beckons?

**ha! if you look carefully at the picture of 'P52' above, you can see the reflection of me taking the photo!**

'The Gargoyle' by Andrew Davidson

In the event, I didn't take 'The Dante Trap' on holiday with me: for one thing it turned out to be a hardback (being a library book, THAT should have come as no surprise!) and thus rather cumbersome, for another it seems to be one of those books that feel the need to point out to its reader just how urbane and sophisticated it is, but ultimately I just can't take a hero seriously who 'leaves a black orchid as his calling card'! Tsk!

I ended up taking a paperback copy of 'The Gargoyle' by Andrew Davidson, which I picked up by chance whilst checking out the other book. Even though it is a 'Richard and Judy Book Club Book', which - sad snob that I am - I usually try to assiduously avoid. As I have mentioned before, holiday books have to tick certain boxes, and this one fitted the bill perfectly - with the added bonus of dealing with some pretty big philosophical issues. The unnamed protagonist, hideously burned in a car accident, relates the tale of his former life as a physically perfect hedonist and that of Marianne, a sculptress who he meets in hospital. She in turn relates episodes from their 'former lives' together as she tries to expiate her 'sins' by carving - and thus 'releasing' - gargoyles from stone. The theme is of course, redemption. But whose? Does Marianne really recall their lives as medieval Germans, or is she (as her status as a psychiatric patient would suggest) completely delusional? Does the hero really love her, as she tells him he does, or is she a meal-ticket who fills the void in his scarred life?

I read this book voraciously. Some of the prose is a bit rambling and overblown, but as a first novel (and I'm staggered to find that it is), it is extraordinary in both its philosophical depth and its bredth of knowledge. I also have to also that I am fascinated by the subjects that the author seems so knowledgable about - namely medecine and the preservation of knowledge. I am currently re-reading it as it is one of those books whose earlier parts become clearer with hindsight. And that is something I am inclined to do for very, very few books.