While I was in London, I met up with someone I knew there for an afternoon beer. We got to talking about books, of course, and about buying used books and lucking into wonderful books you'd never heard of before. My friend asked if I had ever heard of 84 Charing Cross Road. I hadn't. He said he would mail me a copy. He was true to his word: the book showed up in my mailbox last Friday. It's a book of (real!) correspondence between an American writer living in New York and an antiquarian bookseller in London (and some of his associates and relations), spanning a 20 year period beginning in 1949. Given the subject matter, it seems especially appropriate to have received this book in the mail from London.
The book is delightful. Helene Hanff is a hilarious writer -- one could only wish for a correspondent like her today. But she is also clearly so caring: in the first few years of her correspondence with the bookshop, London is still straitened with post-war rations. She sends care packages for the staff for every holiday and has a friend hand deliver stockings for the women. Her status as a distant friend and benefactor earns her real affection, not just of the bookstore staff, but of their families and others as well.
Published along with 84 Charing Cross Road in the edition I received is its sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, which is a journal of Helene Hanff's 1971 visit to London to do publicity after the former book is published, and this was a delight as well. Her observations on London and New York are keen and fantastically entertaining. Her awe at finally seeing the places she knows about only from books is so charming. (And I found it particularly fun to read about her visiting places I went to myself just a few weeks ago. I really identified with Hanff's interest in places, with her desire to visit places where people she admired had spent time. I do this a lot when I travel. This is why I particularly like house museums.) Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is witnessing Hanff finally getting the celebrity you, as her reader, feel she deserves. 84 Charing Cross Road was a hit in the U.K. and her time in London is filled with invitations to dinner from fans (including some celebrities) and interviews with local media, and even a request to sit for a portrait. You get the sense that Hanff was chugging along as a writer, just making a living, but that she was meant for so much more, and her time in London finally offered the reward and recognition she was due.
I half wish I had read 84 Charing Cross Road and its sequel before my visit to London. It would have added so many must-see places to my list! (In fact, I hardly had time to see all my must-see places as it was, so perhaps it's best I didn't read it ahead.)
Thursday, October 31, 2019
Saturday, October 26, 2019
Normal People, by Sally Rooney
I saw Normal People mentioned with some reverence here and there online when it was released here about 6 months ago, often with the words "millennial" or maybe "modern," which tempered my interest somewhat (in ways that are a little hard to pinpoint and I won't get into here). But in London I found a copy for £1 in a charity shop, so I bought it. My skepticism was misplaced. This book was wonderful, and actually quite timeless. It follows the relationship between its two protagonists as it veers between friendship, sex, and love and as they navigate early adulthood. It does this with such tenderness toward both of them, despite their fumbles and their occasionally stupid or hurtful behavior toward one another. It captures their feelings so precisely. This book is just achingly human.
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Reef, by Romesh Gunsekera
I was proud of my austerity in bringing just one book - and a slim one at that - with me to London. Of course, I knew I would likely visit some bookshops and in an English-speaking country, I could be sure of picking up something in the unlikely event that I did finish my book while there. I did not finish The Good Soldier on my trip, but I did bring 5 additional books home with me. Among them was Reef, which I picked up at Skoob Books, a large subterranean used bookstore in Bloomsbury. It had been some time since I'd read a book from a new country, so I thought I had better correct that. I was keeping an eye out in London bookstores for books by unfamiliar authors that might be in circulation there and not here. I don't believe that this is strictly the case with Romesh Gunsekera, but he was unfamiliar to me and they had 3 of his books on the shelves at Skoob. I chose Reef because the cover indicated it had been shortlisted for the Booker.
Reef is a lovely little book. The narrator's descriptions of the meals he prepared in his position as servant to a wealthy bachelor were evocative and hunger-inducing. (I might have to hop on the Staten Island ferry to get some Sri Lankan food some day soon.) And, despite what many a Goodreads reviewer has written, I really did feel that I got a sense of the changes and unrest going on in Sri Lanka during the course of the book. It was never centered, but then again, it likely wouldn't be for a boy in the narrator's position. If I have one critique of this book, it's content, not form. It reads as largely unquestioning and uncritical of the servant/master dynamic and the labor and wealth disparities in the book. This is somewhat or partly resolved at the end, but throughout my reading I had these questions: was the narrator paid a wage? does he have any say as to the conditions of his labor? when, at the end of the book, servant and master up and leave for England, it's as if he had no choice in the matter, and he's really still a child. Not to say this isn't a possible condition, just that the book treats it rather uncritically. (I really did wonder about the logistics of, like, him getting a passport.) Anyway, those concerns aside (for me, they were lingering in the background almost throughout, and occasionally came to the foreground when they were almost addressed by narrator), this really was a pleasure to read.
Reef is a lovely little book. The narrator's descriptions of the meals he prepared in his position as servant to a wealthy bachelor were evocative and hunger-inducing. (I might have to hop on the Staten Island ferry to get some Sri Lankan food some day soon.) And, despite what many a Goodreads reviewer has written, I really did feel that I got a sense of the changes and unrest going on in Sri Lanka during the course of the book. It was never centered, but then again, it likely wouldn't be for a boy in the narrator's position. If I have one critique of this book, it's content, not form. It reads as largely unquestioning and uncritical of the servant/master dynamic and the labor and wealth disparities in the book. This is somewhat or partly resolved at the end, but throughout my reading I had these questions: was the narrator paid a wage? does he have any say as to the conditions of his labor? when, at the end of the book, servant and master up and leave for England, it's as if he had no choice in the matter, and he's really still a child. Not to say this isn't a possible condition, just that the book treats it rather uncritically. (I really did wonder about the logistics of, like, him getting a passport.) Anyway, those concerns aside (for me, they were lingering in the background almost throughout, and occasionally came to the foreground when they were almost addressed by narrator), this really was a pleasure to read.
Friday, October 18, 2019
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
I was reading The Good Soldier while I was on vacation in London with my father. Though, in typical form, I only picked up the book twice while I was away: once on a crowded tube train and again at the start of my flight home. And then one day while we were there we visited the Imperial War Museum, the World War I rooms of which brought back memories of Parade's End. (There is a strange little case of gas canisters there, where the text helpfully informs you that Britain decided to fight gas with gas, but ended up deciding to stop using gas because, in effect, it didn't do enough damage. "Tell that to Ford Madox Ford," I thought when I read that. Granted, he and Christopher Tietjens did survive the war, so maybe they're onto something over at the Imperial War Museum.) I read Parade's End in 2012, before I wrote at any length about books I was reading, but I did declare it a close second for my favorite book I read that year, after 2666.
In any case, Ford Madox Ford was on my mind on this trip. Over some meal, probably after I had been reading on the tube, I asked my father, who knows books, if he had written anything of note besides The Good Soldier and Parade's End because it seemed like there must be more than two books. (To be fair, Parade's End is in fact 4 books, which I guess gives him 5 well-known books.) My father didn't know of anything said he imagined maybe those were the only "good" books, but that seemed impossible to me: his writing is so aching and lovely. Google informed us that he has written "dozens" of books, and Wikipedia cites The Fifth Queen trilogy as a third (or sixth, seventh, and eighth) famous work. I also learned that he co-authored a few books with Joseph Conrad, whom I've always found impenetrable on his own, so maybe those are worth a look? I did check every bookstore we stopped into for other of Ford's books, but found only The Good Soldier and Parade's End (and, in one case, a single volume of Some Do Not... the first book of Parade's End).
Anyway, The Good Soldier. I loved this book pretty much from page one. Ford writes so poignantly and accurately about the misery of love, about the cruelty that can only be inflicted in close relationships. (Is it just me?) He captures so perfectly the reserve and self-controlled repression of a certain upper class type. The narrator, who in the book recounts the story of his wife's years-long deception of him with a friend, from time to time marvels over the perfect calm he witnessed, now that he finally understands all that was going on beneath the surface. And then on page 111, Ford describes in one little sentence what I have long believed to have been behind the collapse of my own marriage many years ago. He says, "In all matrimonial associations there is, I believe, one constant factor - a desire to deceive the person with whom one lives as to some weak spot in one's character or in one's career." Good times.
In any case, Ford Madox Ford was on my mind on this trip. Over some meal, probably after I had been reading on the tube, I asked my father, who knows books, if he had written anything of note besides The Good Soldier and Parade's End because it seemed like there must be more than two books. (To be fair, Parade's End is in fact 4 books, which I guess gives him 5 well-known books.) My father didn't know of anything said he imagined maybe those were the only "good" books, but that seemed impossible to me: his writing is so aching and lovely. Google informed us that he has written "dozens" of books, and Wikipedia cites The Fifth Queen trilogy as a third (or sixth, seventh, and eighth) famous work. I also learned that he co-authored a few books with Joseph Conrad, whom I've always found impenetrable on his own, so maybe those are worth a look? I did check every bookstore we stopped into for other of Ford's books, but found only The Good Soldier and Parade's End (and, in one case, a single volume of Some Do Not... the first book of Parade's End).
Anyway, The Good Soldier. I loved this book pretty much from page one. Ford writes so poignantly and accurately about the misery of love, about the cruelty that can only be inflicted in close relationships. (Is it just me?) He captures so perfectly the reserve and self-controlled repression of a certain upper class type. The narrator, who in the book recounts the story of his wife's years-long deception of him with a friend, from time to time marvels over the perfect calm he witnessed, now that he finally understands all that was going on beneath the surface. And then on page 111, Ford describes in one little sentence what I have long believed to have been behind the collapse of my own marriage many years ago. He says, "In all matrimonial associations there is, I believe, one constant factor - a desire to deceive the person with whom one lives as to some weak spot in one's character or in one's career." Good times.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz
I can't remember where I saw Magpie Murders recommended, but it arrived in the mail for me last week and a quick read of the author bio revealed that Anthony Horowitz created two BBC mystery shows that I've watched in their entirety more than once: Midsomer Murders, which is like comfort food to me, and Foyle's War, which I truly love. Magpie Murders is a real treat for anyone who loves murder mysteries. For one thing, it includes two murder mysteries: there's a book within the book and both are murder mysteries. For another thing, it's full of references to all those other murder mystery books and programs and call-outs to all the major detectives (and their assistants). Perhaps oddly, I found the book within the book somewhat more satisfying than the book that encased it. This may be partly because I solved the murder in the outer book pretty quickly (and was fairly certain I was right, so all the investigating that followed felt a bit like a waste of time and diversionary tactic to me), while the murder in the inner book remained a mystery to me until its resolution at the end. But even so, the whole thing was an enjoyable read that I tore through in four days.
I made note of one little section rather later in the book because it resonated with something I've mentioned twice earlier this year: "Character names are important. ... [T]he name is often the first thing you learn about a character...." I read this and immediately thought of A Heart So White and The King of a Rainy Country, the two books I read earlier this year where the first person narrator goes unnamed for more than 100 pages into the books (but both of which mention the narrator's name on the back-cover blurbs!). I've become quite an observer of this. The first person narrator of Magpie Murders tells you her name quite early on in a way, though in fact, not until you have read roughly 200 pages consisting of the book within the book. This morning, I started The Good Soldier, in which the narrator names himself on the second page, in the fifth paragraph of the book, after he has named the three other central characters.
I made note of one little section rather later in the book because it resonated with something I've mentioned twice earlier this year: "Character names are important. ... [T]he name is often the first thing you learn about a character...." I read this and immediately thought of A Heart So White and The King of a Rainy Country, the two books I read earlier this year where the first person narrator goes unnamed for more than 100 pages into the books (but both of which mention the narrator's name on the back-cover blurbs!). I've become quite an observer of this. The first person narrator of Magpie Murders tells you her name quite early on in a way, though in fact, not until you have read roughly 200 pages consisting of the book within the book. This morning, I started The Good Soldier, in which the narrator names himself on the second page, in the fifth paragraph of the book, after he has named the three other central characters.
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