On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

A good choice to read on holiday, this was lent to me while away in Turkey. A short novel, skillfully written by Ian McEwan which could have had completely the wrong tempo had it been handled perhaps by someone else.

Briefly, the story evolves around a couples first night of marriage, in 1962 where attitudes to sex and relationships were more restrained, innocent and even ignorant. The story examines their courtship and their internal anxieties regarding their first night of conjugal matrimony.

The novel builds up the tension slowly and brilliantly throughout, so that by the time we have all the background and we face that first night with them, you firmly believe anything could happen.

The greatest part of this novel for me, and why it works so well, is that the narrator tells us this story retrospectively, from the present day, letting us know early on that things would have been much different for the couple had they taken place now. It would probably have been somewhat different just a few years on, at the other end of the '60s (post Pill and Liberation) where taboo issues like sex may have been more talked about. The characters have their worries, but reading about them, their needs, fears, their naivete, with a modern perspective, brings the reader to a fever pitch of helpless frustration, where at times, I wanted to yell at them, slap them out of their politeness, their Englishness.

Although for different reasons, our frustration almost matches theirs as the book builds to a conclusion, along with our deflation and feelings of regret and needless loss for them. I left this book with such a heavy feeling, which deposited me alongside the couple from 1962 in a hugely profound way, and this was because of the skill of the writing. The narrator clearly sympathises with their situation with great empathy as he unfolds the events. As a couple who love each other, if only they had belonged to today, it might have been so much different.

Here are some links you may find useful:-

http://www.bookbrowse.com/reading_guides/detail/index.cfm?book_number=2012

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,,2042084,00.html

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

I saw the film of this when I was 16 and fell in love with James Dean, so when this book was suggested for a readers group I used to belong to, I was very enthusiastic. I had never read anything by John Steinbeck either.

I read a lot of women writers and love the more feminine style of writing - lyrical, cyclical, repetitive and pattern-like qualities of Jeanette Winterson or Toni Morrison etc. However it was refreshing to have a change and read a more linear plotline written in a more straight forward language that contains its own beauties and treasures.

As always the book was more complicated than the film which had taken plot lines from the various generations in the book and condensed them into one. Also the relationships within the family were much more complex, adding more for the reader to chew on.

The book however, presents with no ambiguity, one of the most hideously compelling female characters I think I have ever encountered - Cathy. Steinbeck describes her often as animal-like, making curious noises and with 'sharp little teeth'. The other characters perceptions of her add an almost diabolic quality to her motivations. This is most evident during the labour scene with Samuel Hamilton when she bites into his hand, tearing it deliberately with her teeth. She scared me, in the same way that Linda Blair scared me in The Exhorcist. Small suggestions of emotion (eg glimmers of feeling toward Abel, however slight), betray you into hoping for some light in such a dark spirit. Her cold, emotionless and ruthless encounters with her family and those who are kind to her belie explaination as she calculates each ones usefulness and demise. We are told early in the book that 'she was not like other people' and born bad, like a 'monster'.

Cathy is finely counterbalanced by many other good and warm characters, wise like Liza Hamilton or Lee, or kind like Samuel. There are other females too who are smart and feisty, my favourite being Olive and her hilairious encounter with an aeroplane. There are others like the brothers (of both generations) who fall in between good and bad, as most of us do, all threading their way through this epic story of family complications and the extended family who share our lives. I am sure some may find the characters one dimensional or stereotypical but I enjoyed this book very much for its warmth and as a good, solid story.

Bookrags have a guide for readers groups:-

http://www.bookrags.com/East_of_Eden

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Several people had told me about this book, including one colleague who loves it and practically knows whole sections by heart, so when a friend offered to lend it to me, I took them up on the offer.

It is a highly poetic and rhythmical book, where the language takes centre stage. The patterns of the text and attention to detailed description appealed to my snapshot imagination, which is probably why I love photography and Haiku poetry. I liked the slow unfolding of the story which alludes to something catastrophic happening later on.

However, I did not connect to anyone in it enough. I didn't not care, but I wanted it to wring me dry when it finally unfolded (because I did like the characters) and it didn't. I found it sad, but there was only one small detail that caused a bit of a gulp, and that was in a strange place amongst a whole lot of angst that should have floored me as a reader. I've been floored for a lot less in other books. Perhaps I knew too much about it before I read it.

My overall impression though, which is what I will take away with me is the language, the repetitions, the playful details that construct a tangible, accessable world that so many other books fail to do. In this it is warm, rich and satisfying. The imagery that it constructs is what lingers, the heady, damp and pungent part of India, the small details, seen mainly through the eyes of two children, their anxieties and observations, and their memories as adults.

Bookbrowse have written a guide for readers groups:-

http://www.bookbrowse.com/reading_guides/detail/index.cfm?book_number=414

Beloved by Toni Morrison

To the first book...

I had read another by Toni Morrison so I was already familiar with her writing style, dream-like and lyrical, with strong female characters, complicated women in a mixed up world. I had recommended Song of Solomon to a friend, (Pilate being one of those vivid characters who has remained in my imagination ever since) and she had found Beloved and lent it to me with a plea,

"Tell me what its about!".

The cover is not the original, but from the film, black with an ethereal woman in dark clothing, whose face is turned away from us. This cover emulates the contents, a dark, disturbing tale set in a dark disturbing time. I was shocked within its first few pages by the story's beginnings and the early introduction of a dead baby, who was killed by her mother, and now appears to wreak violent revenge with its furious disturbances, in a house containing 3 female characters, all intriguing, mesmerising even, in their own right.

Toni Morrison weaves a blanket of dark threads that form a coherent overall shape (more so than Song of Solomon I thought) even if the meaning of the story remains ambiguous. The language is rich and beautiful, and the backdrop of slavery in nineteenth century U.S.A. is not over-milked, therefore throwing the reader further off kilter when its cruelties are spoken of. The effect is unsettling, moving and continually intriguing.

The core of this story, however, is Who is Beloved? A ghost, a girl lost, or both?

I found the following links interesting and helpful...

http://www.geocities.com/tarbaby2007/beloved1.html

http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/tonimorrison/beloved.htm

Hay on Wye, April 26-27th 2008

I went to Hay on Wye for the first time recently with my lovely friend and her sister (not for the festival, just for the books). It was a great weekend and I was like a kid in a toy shop, having to restrain myself from the armfuls of books that I was gathering in each shop. I came home with lots anyway. It was fun getting lost amongst the cavernous shelves of the various shops (The Hay Bookshop, Hay Cinema, Booths and Hay Castle), and also to share ideas with the people I was with. You could spend days in every shop. I now have to be very good because my 'to read' list is out of control. I do love it though.

I must also recommend The Old Black Lion Inn on Lion Street where we stayed. It was excellent value and Hay on Wye is a great place to converge for book lovers.

It was during this visit that the idea for this blog was born, an apt birthplace. We hope to visit again, maybe next year.