In Sarah Waters’ latest novel ‘The Little Stranger’, the first person narrator Dr Faraday relates the story of what happened at a crumbling county house called Hundreds Hall in Warwickshire, just after the war.  The family living there have lost their wealth, the world around them is changing and they are no longer shown the kind of respect once taken for granted, simply for being wealthy and being upper class.  The book starts with a brief introduction to Hundreds Hall (from then on referred to as ‘Hundreds’) and how the narrator relates to the house and its family: his mother used to be a maid there and he had visited with her, and even as a child had been impressed by its grandeur, acutely aware of his own, lower class background.  Meanwhile, of course he has become one of the local doctors, although he is very worried about the introduction of the National Health Service and what it might do to his patient base. 

The doctor is called out to the sickbed of a new, very young maid called Betty, who was taken on to help with the day-to-day running of the house, serving food, bringing cups of tea to the two mistresses, mother and daughter and the son, Roderick.   Betty in reality fakes her illness, and confides that she is scared of the house, because she senses that something strange is going on.

The daughter Caroline, although not the world’s most glamorous woman, rather the opposite, proves irresistible to the doctor, she becomes inextricably linked to his attraction to Hundreds Hall, its history and his own relationship with it, his desire to make good.  Caroline is introduced as follows:

‘I’d only ever seen her at a distance before, at county events, or on the streets of Warwick and Leamington.  She was older than Roderick [her brother], twenty-six or twenty-seven, and I’d regularly heard her referred to locally as ‘rather hearty’, a ‘natural spinster’, a ‘clever girl’ – in other words she was noticeably plain, over-tall for a woman with thickish legs and ankles.’

The story of the haunted house Hundreds unfolds through the eyes of Dr Faraday, although he remains rather an aloof person, very fifty-ish: we don’t even get to know his first name, throughout the book he is addressed and referred to by others as ‘Dr. Faraday’, whereas the occupants of Hundreds are Mrs Ayres, Caroline and Roderick.  The fifties formalities are kept to.

What I find interesting about this book is how we watch the story unravel as if through someone else’s glasses, always a step removed, we have to take his word for it, even though he himself never actually witnesses any of the crucial ‘happenings’, and professes to be a down-to-earth, rational person who does not believe in ghosts.  Yet, everything he relates seems to indicate that the occupants of the home definitely do believe in some kind of appearance of ‘the little stranger’ [the book makes clear who this is] and events seem to justify them in their suspicions.  Nevertheless, the doctor will never know what really happened because he is never there when nasty things happen, they are always related to him afterwards and he relates them to us, the readers.

When watching Tony Blair at the Chilcot inquiry yesterday, and listening to reports on his performance on the news,  I could not help but draw a parallel with Waters’ story.  TB’s performance, his narrative of what happened (heard so many times before as well!) is very convincing; he is sure that how he saw the chain of events evolving with respect to Iraq is how it really was.  There is no doubt in his mind, he professes, that what he did was right, it was his ‘decision’ based on the facts as he knew them to be (again, retrieved from other ‘witnesses’).

Truth is a very evasive concept in all of this – and of course I am aware of that – after all, during my undergraduate studies in philosophy a great amount of time was spent on reading and debating philosophers who questioned the concept of ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowledge and belief’.  What is truth?  What did really happen?  What do we base our decisions on?

We see the world from our own perspective, and don’t I know it.  It is very hard to escape core beliefs, those concepts that were instilled when you were a child, values that were embedded into your own perception of who you are.  They came in with your baby food, repeated and lived endlessly, part of the routine.  I spent years trying to shake off the dogmatism of Calvinism, the fear of a god that would strike me dead if I did not live exactly as prescribed.  Truth and reality are very different for those who have a dogmatic belief and are convinced of the existence of what I tend to refer to in my mind as ‘parallel worlds’, a world in which you are judged and led by other powers.

So, yes, I was fascinated by The Little Stranger, even if some refer to it as a ghost story, implying that that is all it is.  I think it is much more than that and there are nuances that only really good writers are able to weave throughout a well-written story.  After finishing it, I even wondered about the narrator: was he honest in what he related to us?  Did he really sleep in drunken stupor when the last and final calamity strikes in Hundreds Hall?  We will never know, but it surely is the sign of a good and well written story that it keeps you engaged, well after you have finished reading it.

Towards the end, after some 200 pages I wanted the story to move faster, and the added descriptions and evocations of the house as murky, mysterious, falling apart, however well written, became a bit too drawn out for my liking. 

Nevertheless, if you are looking for a well written story (and I don’t want to call it a ghost story, it is not a genre book in that sense) that keeps you on your toes, makes you think, this is a very good read.  Yes, it makes you think about truth and such things, very appropriate when there are so many witnesses called up to the Chilcot inquiry (in England).  I don’t actually think we will ever know the truth and will carry on speculating and doubting, just as we doubt ‘the little stranger’.

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian today refers to Tony Blair, as the ghost that came walking in…  how appropriate.

I have now joined the club of  e-readers, well and truly.  I found my e-reader under the christmas tree, it’s a Sony PRS-600 and having maintained a sceptical and reluctant attitude to the whole concept of ‘reading books on a screen’ I had to be convinced.  I guess the best way to find out is to actually be given one, take it with you and see how it feels.  Well, I’m converted – even if I don’t intend to give up the physical papery versions of books as yet.  How could I with such a pile of books that are there to touch, pick up and leaf through at random?

My bookcases are overflowing. 

What is most convincing though is that I wonder how would I have been able to read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall last week whilst on the road for four days on end, a big bulky book that would have been difficult to haul along with me in my computerbag or overnight bag, the weight and size would probably have convinced  me that it would be better left at home?   I bought it as an e-book, downloaded it and smugly slipped it into my computer bag, next to my laptop, hardly noticeable, it did not take up much space.   Once on platforms or on trains, it’s so easy to hold and open it and read.

Richard, after my previous post, asked me to review this e-reader and here I am giving an ode to the thing, rather than being practical and giving you the pros and cons.  Trouble is I don’t have much experience as far as other makes are concerned, however, here are my observations. 

I like the fact that I can increase or decrease the font size on this Sony e-reader: it has five options and I like the medium size, it’s easy on the eyes, even in dim hotel rooms or rail carriages.  The first time I bought e-books (one of them the Wolf Hall) I could not see the books being downloaded to my laptop and kept hitting the download button until of course it stopped me from doing it again and I thought I had paid for nothing.   Subsequently I discovered how it worked and then realised that I had FOUR copies of one and the same book (Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger’) and not the Wolf Hall book.  Waterstone helpline was indeed very helpful and resent the link. The second time I got the hang of it.

What I also like about this Sony reader is that I can make notes, underline text and keep the references in separate note pages, or indeed write a memo to myself if I want to.  I can even do some (crude) drawing and keep it as a note page.  I can carry out a search, but haven’t used this option yet.  And then of course, I could download audio and pictures if I want to, but I doubt I will use that option as I’m quite happy with my Ipod and have all the music and podcasts I want.

I haven’t tried downloading PDF files yet, but that option is there of course and may come handy for work documents: easier than trying to read them from a computer screen when you’re on the move.  However it comes with a yellow warning leaflet that says that ‘due to the complex nature of PDF documents, in certain situatins when viewing these in increased sizes, only text will appear as some tables and graphics may be reformatted and altered during the reflow process’.  

And that reminds me: I could not really make much sense of the Family Trees at the beginning of  the Mantel book: they are best viewed in their original size, which however is so small that it is impossible to read the names.  When trying to zoom in, you only view a few names on the screen and the sense of the tree gets lost.  I ended up doing a quick search on my internet browser to find the relevant Tudor tree and printed a copy. 

All in all I do like having this e-reader.  However, straying into a bookshop today on a Saturday stroll through Norwich before seeing ‘The Prophet’, I of course walked out with more ‘real’ books…  There’s nothing so consoling as a bit of book retail therapy after a hard week’s work, don’t you agree?

Am racing through Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall on my new e-reader: I’m taking it with me on trains, to hotels and am picking it up wherever I am (station platforms, waiting rooms, etc).  It’s a fascinating book, it’s drawing me into an interest in the Tudor dynasty.  I seem to remember, only very vaguely, having seen ‘A man for all season’, years and years and years ago.  At the time this history was somehow fascinating but quite alien (not being English), more like a story about a far-away land with strange habits and mores.  Mantel’s book does away with all that: it’s about a real person, Cromwell, and she makes him a very human person indeed, someone who is actually quite likeable, who looks at the world through a wide-angled lense, who is shrewd but caring (for his own family and the people living with him), who has had a ‘battered’ childhood, ran away but came back to England.  What’s not to like?

Well, the nobles around him don’t really like his ascendancy – he is a start up, someone who has made good, is making good, but who will ultimately come to his downfall.  Only the book is not there yet – I’m still at the stage where Henry VIII has married his second wife, Anne Boleyn, against the wishes of the Pope and the catholic church, but with Cromwell’s support.  The rest of the country appears to see Anne as the concubine, the one who usurped the status of queen from Katherine, Henry’s first wife.  And there is the desperate desire for a boy, an heir to the throne, after Henry.  Cromwell is at the height of his power, just made the second in command, more or less.  We know of course that it is not going to last, but somehow, whilst reading, you wish there was a different ending.  Because you’ve started to quite like the man.

Mantel has made Cromwell a real person, not a character in a play or in far-away history.  No, he is flesh and blood, who mourns his dead wife and daughters (who succumbed to ‘the fever’) and with one son and newphews and nieces as well as other family members he cares for, deeply.  He is a man that does not forget his own childhood, with Walter, his father, beating him senseless until his escape from Putney to Europe where somehow or other he makes good and then, back in England, first in the service of Wolsey, the cardinal who loses Henry’s trust, and then the slow ascendancy to high office, Henry’s trusted servant.

It is a wonderful read and near perfect in style.  We observe the world and feel it as it must have been in the 16th century, in the 1520s and 30s.  Highly recommended.  The paperback will be out in March.

Yes, I am reading.  I updated my ‘Read in 2010′ page above and realise I may just have too many on the go.  I had not realised.  I am flitting from one thing to another, but the two main ones are Eva Hoffman’s Time and Hilary Mantel’s Wolford Hall.

Eva Hoffman – Time: this is a book that needs to be savoured, thought about, turned and pondered, revisited, and then read a bit more, another chapter perhaps.  Eva Hoffman confesses a preoccupation with time, from when she was a child.  Time seemed to move slowly, time had no value, people talked, endlessly, there was no hurry because there was nowhere to go.

Once in America, time moved a lot faster, and Hoffman becomes aware of the “differences in construction of time prevailing between the two worlds”.  Not only does time move faster in America, there is also a nervousness about time – everyone is under stress of not doing enough, a sense of guilt about not using time appropriately.

This introduction has me hooked: I so much recognise this awareness, in Hoffman’s words “It was as if anxiety were the tithe paid to the gods of the work ethic in lieu of more concrete sacrifices”.

I recognise it as the Calvinist work ethic, that haunts me still, has haunted me ever since I was a child and even now, when I worry I am not using my time ‘appropriately’ , whatever that means.  Always on the road, always making sure I use my time ‘well’.

In the first essay of this book, Hoffman consider time as biological time ‘Time and the Body’.  She notes the forward moving of time, and that ‘problems of biological time have given rise to a new scientific discipline called ‘chronobiology’ and the fundamental findings that emerge from these studies which are that ‘all biological species living on planet earth are adapted to earthly time, and its day/night cycle’.  It seems so obvious, we take it for granted: all animals, whether diurnal or nocturnal, follow the 24-hour cycle.  It’s what makes us biological beings, it’s what drives us.  But it also delivers our death sentence – time of death is determined by the time of reproduction.  ‘Biological lifespan is intimately related to the most fundamental enigma of all – that of death’.   But now, of course, there is the desire for perpetual youth, and the belief that we deserve it. 

Cynically ‘ The only way to arrest the passag eof time on the biological level is through what has been called the ‘complete but reversible cessation of metabolism’ – that is through the temporary suspension of all those physiological processes which add up to the experience of being alive’. 

Being alive and noting the passage of time (biologically) are inextricably linked.

The snow plays havoc with all kinds of communication – yesterday the server appeared to be knocked out so that I gave up on all my good intentions to write a longish blog.   Now I’m sitting at the far end of Wales  (Pembrokeshire, at the edge of the Ocean) in a hotelroom and trying to get on my own website takes a long time.

Despite the snow and ice and the various cancellations I’ve been back and forth to Wales twice in this new year already and there is more on the horizon.  I’m not sure whether to count myself lucky having the various projects to deal with or whether to feel sorry for myself as all this travelling is quite exhausting and makes me feel unsettled.  I’m becoming too old, definitely, for all this and so when I lug (did you know that this word has got it’s own website, dedicated to luggage??)  overnight bags and computer bags along from Norfolk to  underground stations in London and from one platform to another on railwaystations, or alternatively, drive long distances with a tired brain whilst staring at red backlights, yes, then I feel definitely a kind or irritation.  Why am I doing this?  What am I doing here?

At other times I sit behind my desk, do some research, talk to people on the phone, or am in meetings with people and give them advice on how to take matters forward and then I quite enjoy myself, I congratulate myself on doing work that is actually quite challenging and interesting.   A conundrum really.

Time is at the heart of all of this: the pressure, the onward pressure to achieve and to finish and to take forward, and…  So I am reflecting on time and what it is and if you are interested in time and what it does to us, what it means, then Eva Hoffman’s book ‘Time’ is for you, as it is for me.   It was one of my birthday presents, yes, now you understand my reflections on time and becoming older and what I am doing: I had another birthday, I am one year older (again) and nothing is going to stop this movement, to do with time, unalterable, unforgiving.

I started writing my review of Eva Hoffman’s book – it’s in a notebook, somewhere at home, away from me.  This gypsy life makes me feel dislodged from my own thinking, the things I want to be able to reflect on.  But this book is important, and I will come back to it.

And then, all those other books I am taking forward in time, all at the same time, congruously, and they all occupy spaces within my brain: I will come back to all of them, some time soon.

Downstairs, here in this Mariners hotel at the edge of the world, almost tipping over into the Ocean, when I have my dinner in the bar (open between 7 and 9) I am reading an e-book: yes, my birthday presents included an e-reader so I am now carrying the thing along with me on trains and to hotels.  I am reading Hilary Mantel’s most wondrous book Wolf Hall about Cromwell on my Sony e-reader.  And it’s actually quite a good experience!  I pick it up, it never forgets what page I left off.

I will get round to all those other (physical) books that are lying, half opened, somewhere in my house, some 600 miles from here.

Having decided yesterday that I was not going to join any lists, challenges or whatever this year I succumbed at the first invitation placed on Kate’s blog to rejoin the short story challenge and help to reactivate the Curious Singularity blog.  Of course I could not resist: short stories are different after all, aren’t they?  You can pick them up any time, you love them really, don’t you? 

And so I started this New Year’s Day reading the story Jumbo’s Wife in Frank O’Connor’s collection My Oedipus Complex and other stories.    I will work on a review and place it appropriately, or another one.  I’ve got a shelf now dedicated to short stories collections and altough I have cheekily added a number to my page above in the 2009 collection of books read, of course I have not read every single story in every single collection.  Now I have a good reason to go for it.  

Kate lists 5 suggestions for how you can go about this challenge and I like her Option 5:

 ’ This is the custom option under the rubric of which you can tailor your reading list to best meet your personal reading aspirations. You might wish to craft a list that focuses on a particular place, or era, or genre. Or you might wish to include reading about short stories as well as of short stories, for example, such works as Frank O’Connor’s The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story. It’s entirely up to you.  ‘

And reading about short stories might just give me / you the  impetus of trialling writing some yourself.  That’s an added bonus then.

I hope to meet you on the Curious Singularity site as well as here.

Christmas is over, everyone’s left and the house is empty, tidied and back in its usual state, ready for 2010 and all that’s coming.  Even the snow has completely disappeared in this part of the world.  Granddaughter has gathered all her Christmas presents and packed them in her new suitcase, a wheelly affair, blue with an orange handle to pull it along.  She crammed  it full with books, plenty of them, a puzzle, a lego set, a tinkerbell doll with fairy wings, ‘klapperschuhe’ (these are very special shoes, flat, with soles that will make a tap-tap noise on the parquet and tiles throughout the house) in gold, purple and black.  At last she has her own and no longer needs to raid my cupboards for flatties that will create the kind of racket she delights in.  She also stowed away her dvd’s of Snow White, and ‘Dive Ollie Dive’ (very ‘educational’, my son grumbles), and a Tinkerbell.  Once in the airport she never looked back, just pulled the case along purposefully: she is on her own journey.  I wish I was five!

The shelves in my room are creaking even more it seems, doubled up with books, and still there are some that I have not yet reviewed.  Quickly then, here we go with a last fling for this year:

Attica Locke’s Black Water Rising is a first novel with a recommendation by James Ellroy on the cover.  Yes, it is a good read, that is until I got to the end and became confused about the plot, who were the villains and why?  It all seemed too complicated, I did not understand the era, there’s some America based oil scandal with government buying up and stacking away a glut for times when there won’t be any.  I was not quite clear why some people were corrupt, what they’d actually done, how the money was made and why Jay needed to be helped out of the way when he refuses to shut up and go away having stumbled across a murder.  This is America in the 60s and 70s when the black movement is still being suppressed, and Jay has come out of it all scarred and in fear of being hounded down.  Well worth reading, have a go, perhaps I was too distracted, did not pay enough attention and so lost it…

This brings me to a podcast I listened to recently (while pumping away on an exercise bike at the gym), one of the World Book Club ones, an interview with James Ellroy.   He’s being asked questions by listeners, who are either in a room in Broadcasting House in London from which this is being broadcast, or who have sent e-mails in prior to the broadcast.  The questions related mainly to Ellroy’s book American Tabloid.  I haven’t read this, but having listened to the podcast, it definitely is on my urgent tbr list.  It is a novel set in the Kennedy era, and is about the brothers’ involvement with the mafia.  It sounded absolutely fascinating.  Has any of you read this?  If so, did you like it?

And so on to what I’m going to read in 2010.  No, this is not going to be a list full of intentions with 10 books here and 5 there all relating to a theme.  I’m not going to join one of the lists that tend to be sent around this time of the year.  I have a much vaguer intention which is that I want to read more non-fiction, essays, or those current affairs books that I never get round to somehow.  Mind you, I cannot imagine that I give up reading novels: they’re just too good to have with you when on the road or for just before nodding off to sleep…

Whatever your intentions, I wish you all a happy 2010 with lots of reading time.  Cheers.

The garden gnome carries its load cheerfully – guarding  the frozen pond

While on the table the snow cake is waiting….

And then, it snowed some more

Have a happy christmas

I’ve decided to leave well on time.  It’s only just after lunch and I reckon I’ll arrive at the hotel early in the evening.  That means that I will drive most of the way while it’s still daylight.  I get tired driving in the dark for too long, over unfamiliar roads, not sure about exits and what lies beyond, and then deep inside I’m nervous about whether or not the satnav will drop me at the right spot or whether I’ll find myself once more in the middle of nowhere with the female voice calmly telling me ‘You have reached your destination…’, and all around is dark and not a house or hotel in sight.

 An hour and a half later I cruise along the M14, well on my way to the M6, then the M5, then Wales.  It’s quite busy on the road, and the average speed in the outside lane is between 65 and 70 miles per hour, well within the speed limit.  I leave plenty of space between my car and the car in front of me and notice in the mirror that a police car is stuck behind me and at times comes quite close up.  I wonder whether it wants to get along faster, overtake me on its way to somewhere urgent, and I pull into the left hand lane, letting it pass.  Two policemen in the front of the vehicle look at me, sideway,  and then say something to each other.  Something is up and I wonder what it is, they move ahead of me in the left hand lane and then their blue flashing lights come on, briefly.  The sign on top of their car shows in red lettering ‘….me…’, then a pause, then ‘….follow….’ and again ‘….me…’  Arms are out of windows on each side, signaling urgently for me to follow them.  Bemused I follow them, off the motorway, they seem to know where they are, and we drive into the parking area of a road side restaurant or hotel, I cannot remember.   It feels as if I am suddenly inside an airless car, a strange kind of expectation and bewilderment envelopes me; what is it they want of me and I wonder briefly if perhaps one of my rear lights is falling off, or one of my doors is not properly closed, or…  well, all sorts of nonsense. 

When we come to a stop at the very end of the car park, where it’s quiet and there is not another car parked anywhere within the next four rows, the driver gets out and walks up to my car, swaggering in his uniform trousers and blue shirt sleeves.  I’ve come to a stop next to their car and I wind down my window, wondering what on earth they want of me.  My car is in good shape, it’s just been MOT-ed for the first time, had a complete service recently. 

‘Would you mind just answering a few questions’, he says.  ‘You don’t appear to have a valid insurance.’

I must have gaped, my mouth falling open. 

‘Must be a mistake,’ I say.  ‘I’ve only very recently renewed my insurance.’

 I am asked to sit in the back of their car.  It’s all beginning to feel a bit unreal and I wonder about being ‘stopped and searched’, the sort of thing that appears to happen to other people, you read about.   I keep quiet as they show me their little computer screen, fixed to their dashboard, which has my name on it, my address, and the notice ‘no valid insurance’.  What on earth is going on?  What has made them look up my vehicle registration number in the first place and why does it come up with ‘no insurance’? 

 I get my mobile out of my handbag and tell them I’ll ring my broker who will let them know that I have paid and confirm the insurance number.  They do their own calling, to a central office, to a motor bureau of some kind and various others.  I hear one of them say:

‘We have a lady here who has no valid insurance, can you check this up for me please’, and wonder about presumed innocence before being branded guilty.  It becomes clear to me that the central big brother is assumed to be right, it has found me out, and I am the guilty citizen.  It begins to feel slightly Kafkaesque.  Inside I’m fuming but decide to keep my cool, I move slowly and speak slowly.  I’ve got to get to Wales, for that meeting at 9, the next morning.  The policeman in the front passenger seat sits back, taps the computer screen again and says ‘Well, you can see.  There is no record of your insurance.  You don’t know what your broker is up to, do you?  Some of them just take your money and then don’t pass it on.’

Is he kidding?   My broker confirms that everything is fine, and quotes the insurance number, which I pass on.  They obviously don’t believe me and I give them the broker’s telephone number, my insurer’s name, the insurance number and laboriously they follow it all up via their call centre, each making a number of calls.  Meanwhile, the policeman sits back and starts elaborating all the horrendous things that can happen to me if they don’t get confirmation.  My car can be impounded; I will be liable for driving without insurance.  The continuous assumption that I am guilty of some heinous crime is infuriating, but I keep my mouth shut.  I want to get out of here as quickly as I can, and be on my way.

Twenty-five minutes later a call from the centre confirms that I have insurance, that all’s fine.  The two men don’t offer an apology, and instead try to instill on me that this is all the fault of my not having a proper broker (‘blast your broker!’, the driver says), or that I have an insurer who does not play by the book, somehow.  The policeman in the passenger seat, his thick and hairy right arm, bare from the elbow, with a large faint blue-green tattoo, smirks when I try to open the door to get out and be away:

‘You’ll find you cannot get out,’ he says.  ‘It’s locked, because we do have real criminals in here sometimes.’

The driver gets out and opens the door for me.  They do not acknowledge that they  have inconvenienced me in any way.  I wonder about that half an hour of their time and mine: what on earth made them look up my number in the first place?  Nothing better to do when cruising along a busy motorway, but to look up the first registration number you get stuck behind, a nice car, a female driver? 

‘Traffic police; they play car bingo,’ a colleague tells me later.  ‘They probably decided that they needed to make up their quota by having another car model starting with a V.’

 When I arrive at my hotel, which is just outside a small Welsh village, it is completely dark.  Welsh country lanes and valleys are the darkest on earth, I think.  The receptionist says he’s giving me an upgrade and I spend the night in one of the largest and most comfortable rooms I have stayed in for a long time.  I open one of the windows and the stillness, the fresh and frosty country air together with a light and warm cover, send me off into a long and deep sleep.  There’s not a sound, until the alarm wakes me up for the working day.

The year’s drawing to an end and so are the noughties.  Papers are being filled with ‘definitive lists’ of great events, the most read books, the best books, etc.  I realise that I haven’t kept pace at all these last few months, I’ve stopped recording my reading lists, have been slack on reviews.  All this made me think, again, about the advantages and disadvantages of retiring, of chucking it all in and start a different life.  Not yet, though.  I’ll come to that some time; meanwhile I’ll brood on the list of advantages and disadvantages of retiring…

For now, I’m going to draw up that list of books that I’ve recently read but not reviewed.   This, mind you, is purely for my own satisfaction: I want a complete record of the books I’ve read this year, finish the 2009 list to the bitter end.  Why?  Well, I don’t know, just because I want to, I’m a finisher in the jargon of business staff surveys.

Here it goes, without a sense of the sequence in which they were carried along with me, on trains, travels, bedtime reading or whatever:  this is the pile of books and short stories that I’ve recently read or half read.  

Helen Garner – The Spare Room.  This is the story of Helen who agrees to put up her old friend Nicola, knowing that she has cancer.  Nicola is determined to use ‘alternative’ ways of beating her cancer, even though it seems apparent to everyone around her that she is fooling herself and insists on everyone else agreeing that this treatment, that is only available in Melbourne, hence her self-invite to Helen, will indeed prove to be the miracle cure.  It’s a quick read, this book and well written, even though I found both Helen and Nicola quite irritating at times in their apparent inability to tell each other what they really think.

Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections.  How come I never read this before?  The writing is tremendous and once can only envy the seemingly effortless way in which the stories unfold – stories of members of Enid and Alfred’s family, Alfred slowly descending into Parkinson’s disease and his long suffering wife Enid for ever trying to have a full family gathering for a last Christmas, their three children, their idiosyncrasies, hopes, differences.   It is a marvellous book and if you haven’t read it yet, ask a copy for Christmas!

Patrick Gale – Notes from an Exhibition.  Another family saga, but quite a different one from the above.  Rachel Kelly moves into Antony’s student life and stays, despite the initial unlikeliness of their being a couple or even staying together.  Antony more or less rescues Rachel from an otherwise bleak future; she is pregnant by a lover who has jilted her.  They do however stay together and make a life in Cornwall, first in Antony’s father’s house which subsequently becomes theirs.  They have a family, three children and Rachel becomes a well-known painter whose demons only Antony and their friend, the local doctor is aware of.  Who is Rachel, where does she come from?  Her children and husband only find out after her death, and having left behind some new and quite extraordinary paintings.  The twists and turns of this family’s life slowly unfold, when we are taken along the journey, sometimes hearing Rachel’s voice, then Antony’s and then one of her children’s, now adults.

Philip Roth’s Indignation is quite a different story, about a studious and intense young man, who escapes from his hardworking overprotective butcher father from Newark New Jersey, only to end up at a university in Ohio where life turns out to be even more suppressive than the claustrophobia of the parents’ home.  It is as if he is on an almost relentless path towards his own destruction, growing up painfully and foolishly, resisting the imposed rigours, questioning settled convictions and beliefs, and ultimately being sent to his death.  It is extremely well written, the terribly suppressed atmosphere of the 50s, the Korean War, the inability to extract oneself from being classified according to one’s parents’ beliefs and class, these are all painted very vividly and this is a really satisfying read.

And then, then there are the short stories, the ones that you have on your bedside table, or can read whilst on a train journey.  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s collection ‘The Thing Around her Neck’ is just brilliant.  Every story, bleak and real, not a word too many and just so fluently written, is great.  I love the simplicity and the starkness of her stories, which are also amusing and funny – she understands human nature, the women who are trying so hard to fit into their own lives, to make the most of it, yet, somehow, never quite escaping their own harnesses.  In ‘A private Experience’, the third story in the book, two women find themselves in the same hideaway when caught up in a riot.  One is from a rich and comfortable background, the other poor; one has lost a Burberry handbag in the melee when trying to escape from the riot, the other her necklace, probably plastic.  It is as if you are there with them, see the unbridgeable gap between them, their pains and sorrows worlds apart, private, yet they spend the night together in that hideous room. The next day the rich girl finds out what has happened to her twin sister.

If you are a lover of short stories, this is for you.  Or give it to someone who loves short stories!

Actually, William Boyd’s Fascination is a similar ‘must read’, although the stories evoke quite different moods and experiences.  I enjoy Boyd’s novels, but his stories as just as good.  These stories move around the place, are very unusual in the sense of evoking characters and places which range wide across the globe and in time.  There are stories about the Second World War, the nineteenth century, about Los Angeles and Russia.  In A Haunting, the narrator carefully notes in his notebook his descent into a kind of madness.  It starts on a plane, on the way from London to Los Angeles and with a faint headache.  The story moves from London to Los Angeles and then to Edinburgh, where at long last he thinks he discovers what has been haunting him.  However, others seem more sceptical, in particular his wife, who refuses to have him back.  Nevertheless, once he has discovered the Kilmaron effect, he is able to fight it and finds that he is free from his feelings for every ….   Well, go and read the story.  I’m not going to give it away here.  It’s fascinating.    Every story has its own fascinating twists and turns, life in all its unexpected details.

Well, I’m quite pleased with this list now.  I’m up to date.  Next year I’m going to try and do something different – this is too much hard work!  Unless, of course, I decide to retire…  But I don’t think so.