E-Books versus Real Books*

Photos courtesy Flickr

Not a new debate by any stretch of the imagination but one that has been waging a war in my head and my heart for, digitally, ages. I’m going over old ground here to a certain extent but it helps to clarify things in my head.

Let’s examine the benefits of e-books and e-readers. Space; If all my physical books were stored on an e-reader I could take in lodgers with the space that action would free up!! Travel: no more need to fill up a suitcase with enough books to keep you going for a fortnight away. Carry them all in one place. Convenience; just whip it out of your bag wherever you are and carry on reading where you left off. Immediacy; fancy a book? Get it right away and start reading, no trips to the bookshop or library, no waiting in for the postman. Physically challenged; e-readers weigh very little, no strain on wrists, arms and shoulders. Environmentally friendly; no paper harmed in the downloading of the book. 

So why do I loathe them so much? I love physical books. I love the smell, particularly of a brand new paperback. I like the feel in my hands, the weight feels substantial, worthwhile, satisfying.  I love my books arranged around my study. I feel safe and comfortable being surrounded by books. I feel rich, privileged, when I scan all the titles. I feel less alone, surrounded by ‘friends’. I love carrying a book around with me, from room to room, place to place so if there’s an opportunity to read I can. I often refer back in a book to check something, particularly if I’m reviewing, I like to find and re read an especially evocative passage, investigate maps and family trees. I like to mark the place with a book mark. When review copies arrive I still get a thrill. I never take it for granted. I feel warm and I feel affluent. I never get that frisson when I receive an ebook. 

So do I love reading? Or do I love books?  Emotionally, I want to say that it’s reading I love. But if I really, truly love reading should it matter how I read? It has become a cliche for people to say they are so passionate about reading they will read a cereal packet rather than not read. And I have done that myself. So why not an e-reader? It bothers me. Maybe I’m not a reader at all. Maybe I am only a collector of books. But I’m not happy with that. It doesn’t feel right to say it. And I don’t believe it!!

This sounds perverse but I DO read differently when I read an ebook compared to a real book. I had a book to review and I was sent the ebook. I was reading it and not especially enjoying it, it was okay but I wasn’t blown away. Then I got a print copy and the whole novel was elevated and I ended up loving the book. Rationally that does not make sense, I know. It has to be in my head? I get a sinking feeling in my stomach if I’ve agreed to review a book and I’m told there are no physical copies just electronic ones. 

The only consolation I can think of is that, conversely, there are people within my circle who will only read on an e-reader. And those same people will describe themselves as readers, loving reading. I can throw my conundrum back at them, if they were really readers and really loved reading they would read real books too.

There is no answer, I guess. And maybe there doesn’t need to be. Suffice to say that if Fahrenheit 451 became a reality I would turn to an e-reader if that was the only way I could read. That’s the bottom line. If there were no physical books I would embrace the e reader. For without reading there is nothing. And maybe that is an answer in itself?

*edited article which originally appeared on Nudge/NB's old website

Smallbone Deceased - Michael Gilbert

This novel couldn’t be more different to the last Michael Gilbert book I read - Death Has Deep Roots. And that delighted me because there’s nothing I enjoy more than some good old-fashioned diversity! There’s something so English and so dryly witty about this book that you wonder whether the writer is actually poking fun at the people he is writing about or perhaps the world of legal firms in general. 

Without giving too much away a deed box in a legal firm of some repute is found to contain a corpse!! Highly original and highly unexpected! What follows is naturally the unravelling of the crime and the pursuit of the perpetrator, with some red herrings thrust in front of us to confound and confuse. In fact it is forty odd pages in before Smallbone is even referred to! As a reader you start muttering to yourself and wondering if there's a mistake in the title or the printing then you are hit with it!

The endearing Inspector Hazelrigg hones his analytical intuition to perfection as he narrows down the potential suspects, ably abetted by Inspector Plumptree, how perfect a name is that? And Sergeant Cockerill who gets all the good jobs! The investigations are also helped by one of the law firm’s newer recruits Henry Bohun. There were moments when I thought he was a bit of a shady character but I think I suspected everyone during the course of the novel.

I found some of the accounting figures bewildering but I think I got enough of the gist to understand what had transpired but I would say it is quite complex. Ingenious! But complicated. Plus I never guessed ‘whodunit’ ! Not even when the clues were right there under my nose. In the minutest of details even. It was cleverly done. And I love it when that happens!! 

The characters are acutely observed, for example,  Mr.Birley - ‘Pedlar of words and a reduplicator of phrases.’ So apt. Even the names convey much of the character, Smallbone? He just couldn’t be called anything else! There are some pithy observations that remain pertinent even today, “With a Government like this one,” said Sergeant Cockerill,’you could expect a frost in August.”

If you’re a lover of modern crime I think it invaluable to read a Golden Age crime story such as this for it enables a reader to see how the genre has developed over the decades. 

Oh, don’t forget to read Martin Edwards’ introduction. It's a wonderful prologue to the main story. 

Heartfelt thanks to the British Library for  continuing to satiate my appetite for these wonderful examples of Golden Age crime writing. 

RETRO REVIEWING: Mend the Living - Maylis De Kerangal

I thought I had located all my past reviews and posted them firmly on my blog for posterity ( or until the internet implodes) but I came across this brief review that has somehow slipped through the net. I think I put it in the wrong folder where it has been sitting quietly, until now. I never seemed to write as expansively then. If I we reviewing this book today I know I would have written a whole lot more. The copy I received was not a physical book, it was that abomination - an ebook. So I think my thoughts of giving up on it were more to do with the format than the book. The paperback was published on 23rd June 2016 and  won the Wellcome Prize in 2017. Rightly so. 

If you told me that a novel about a heart transplant would be a compelling and beautiful experience I might have laughed at you. But this unique book, Mend The Living a.k.a. The Heart, is both of those and more besides.

Initially as I read the opening pages I was dubious. it didn’t seem as if it was my thing. I confess I had thoughts of giving up on it, not something I do frequently nor lightly. But I persevered, and thank goodness I did.

This book details the twenty four hours in the lives of all the people who play a part in a heart transplant operation. The detail is meticulous and the resulting prose within which that detail is enveloped is quite extraordinary and poetic, a credit to the writer and the translator. There are many paradoxes here between the subjective and the objective, the empathic and the clinical , a treatise on Yin and Yang. It is beautifully balanced.

There are no chapters as such in the book, it is almost one long prose poem to compassion and humanity. An acknowledgement  of grief and loss and the greater good. So forgive me if I am unable to comment on the plot and the characters etc, this book is beyond that, beyond comment. 

I feel in some ways changed by this novel and I commend it to you from the bottom of MY heart.

What is 'literature'?

I occasionally deviate from the main thrust of this blog which is to review the books I read. If I’m honest my departures from that norm haven’t met with a great deal of interest! Maybe I should learn from that. But it is my blog, and as I’ve said before I’ll do what I like!! So today I’m musing on some book related issues that have been occupying my thoughts recently.

The older you get the longer your Have Read list grows. By the time you get to my age you’ve probably read a large number of classics, best sellers and works that might be called literature amidst the majority of lesser works. (But by no means less enjoyable I do hasten to add). I should clarify that I am confining my thoughts to fiction only. 

Best sellers are best sellers because they’ve sold in significant numbers. Classics are classics because they’ve endured throughout time and people continue to read them. Best sellers are not necessarily classics nor are best sellers necessarily literature. Are classics always literature? And what makes literature? What makes books last? 

I confess that often when I read I’m ‘looking for literature’. I don’t always find it. I don’t mean that to sound deprecatory. Maybe I desire too much from a book? What makes a book literary? It is something I think about quite a lot. This is what does it for me. The literary book attempts more than mere storytelling. There is an intention behind the story going beyond just trying to entertain the reader. The characters have an inner depth that can sometimes allow them to step outside of the book and be considered by the reader almost as a real person. The prose is rich and intense, using language intelligently and expansively, poetic sometimes. The book is full of quotes! You find yourself going back and re-reading them because they offer some kind of maxim or aphorism that resonates beyond the cover of the book. The writer's intent is to inform the reader, convey something to the reader, make some kind of comment that would have little impact if just stated alone but when expanded within a fiction can demand of the reader that they think and consider outside of the fiction framework. You get a sense that this is a book that will last, that will endure, might be studied academically, will hopefully go on to become a classic in decades to come. It was suggested to me,  by an author who has written a work of literature, that to the list be added individual voice or vision, linked, though not a function of it, to style, which is appropriate for it also allows identification of the writing outside of the book and in some cases a writer ‘earns’ an adjective all of their own - ‘Kafkaesque’.

So if I’m getting all of the above from a book I’ll be likely to call it literature. However I think there can be a tendency for some writers to defy conventions of language or structure/ form believing it might, mistakenly in my opinion, elevate it to something literary.  However I don't think a writer can necessarily set out to write a work of literature. I think works of real literature are very rare in the fiction world today. (Is that because the more books you read the less likely you are to be ‘wowed’?) But there's no way of predicting, with the books we are reading right now, which will still impactful in say 50,100 years time. It's exciting!

If classics are books that last are they also literature? For the most part I think they are. But I’m basing that on current classics. I’m thinking of the Brontes, Dickens, Austen, Hardy, Eliot. I’m thinking of Woolf, Lawrence, Forster, Huxley, Orwell. (The lists are not definitive and cite only British writers.) To consider as well; is it the writer’s entire oeuvre we should consider as literature or specific titles?  Will those books that I consider as classics, as literature, now continue to be read in 50,100 years time? 

The future may yield a different dynamic. Society evolves in a sometimes unpredictable way. That can impact upon the longevity of anything, not just books. I wish I could be around to see! In the mean time I don’t doubt I shall continue to ‘look for literature’.

Thank you for reading. Pop a comment or two in the box if you feel disposed? 

Transcription - Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson is one of those writers whose works I seek on blind faith alone. I don’t need to pick up the book and read the blurb and wrinkle my nose in perturbation as to whether I do actually want to read it. I know I do. And for those followers of this blog, I thank you humbly, for this is a library book, you know my intention with regard to the library. I snuck it in between the many proofs and arcs piling up. 

Atkinson has a distinct style which has developed across her oeuvre. Transcription occupies a similar historic setting to Life after Life and A God in Ruins but enjoys a more or less conventional structure with a prologue and conclusion in 1981 and the meat of the novel in 1940 and 1950. Summarily it’s a WWII spy yarn and a damned good one. Female protagonist, Juliette Armstrong, spy name Iris Carter Jenkins, spies her way though the war and ends up at the BBC where she comes to understand that the past never quite goes away. 

The research is impeccable and Atkinson conveys so perfectly the quintessential Britishness of a WWII drawing room of a privileged member of society. Poor Mrs. Scaife! Did she truly believe or was she just playing the role she thought she should play? You can hear the chink of the delicate Sevres china and taste the tea almost. You can hear the impassioned voices of a cliqued society caught up in their notions of the injustice of war and their ideas to solve and resolve a conflict so far from their own realities. The utilitarian coldness of MI5 is aptly realised  and the reader can almost smell the paper clipped offices and the stuffiness of civil servants required to fulfil daring roles that their outward demeanour defies.

Atkinson creates a palpable atmosphere of a covert MI5 operation where the assorted characters remain one side of cliche or caricature. It’s very cleverly done. You can picture them all so easily, hear their voices even and there is something so stalwartly English about them all apart from those who aren’t English of course And there’s a humour running through the narrative which is quite delightful. 

And if, as a reader, you start to sit back and just ride the crest of the fictional wave, sit up, for there are some pithy observations made that resonate quite pertinently.

‘Do not equate nationalism with patriotism…Nationalism is the first step on the road to Fascism.’

Is the entire novel a satire on our failure to understand prejudice and the qualities war evokes in the humblest of breasts? No matter. It’s a rollicking good yarn that demonstrates Atkinson as a competent purveyor of espionage. Should Le Carre be worried? No, I don’t think so. Ms. Atkinson has so many strings to her bow that she has progressed to the entire string section of the orchestra, I think. 

If you’re wondering about the flamingo on the cover, I’m not going to tell you. Go read the book. 

My thanks to my local library, manned entirely by volunteers because of local authority cuts , for keeping a copy of this book on their shelves. 

‘

The Dollmaker - Nina Allan SOCIAL BLAST

So pleased to be involved in the Social Blast for this amazing book. Please do check out the other amazing bloggers participating in the blast on Twitter and Instagram.

It seems a simple enough premise, two unique people with a common interest communicate and eventually meet. But that’s where the simplicity ends. The Dollmaker is as rich as the fabric the dolls within it are dressed in . Stylistically diverse; part epistolary, part short stories, as in stories within a story, and part straightforward first person narrative. The Dollmaker is an ingenious, genre defiant almost, love story for our times. The links between the various styles is a pleasure to read. Because of the short stories it feels like it has a cast of thousands but it hasn’t, it’s really two people, two damaged people - Andrew and Bramber and how they’ve spent the best part of their lives finding comfort in dolls but ultimately hope to find comfort in each other. For a reviewer, then, it could be seen as part nightmare, part challenge to do justice to this quirky, endearing tale without offering any spoilers but desperate to convey the subtle breadth of what is contained between its covers.

The sustained metaphor of the dolls and the dollmaker offers the reader that indefinable exhilaration some writers seem able to achieve when they deal with an issue from an almost sideways stance. For is this a novel about disability, physical or mental ? Being different? Looking at how perception can be distorted by misinterpretation of the physical being? The exploration of a relationship where two people can fall in love without actually meeting is not essentially new but here it seems to highlight how physical appearance can distort the inner beauty of an individual in this shallow world of ours. And ever present  - the dolls.

Bubbling subconsciously almost, especially in the short stories and Andrew’s story was the relationship between dolls and dwarfs, the identification of something close in size? Especially for Andrew. I found Andrew’s ‘troll dolls’ immensely moving for it was as if he was restoring all he could but acknowledging the remaining flaws as intrinsic to the doll, intrinsic to the person. I often felt there were points where the line between human and doll blurs “flawless lips in deep magenta, navy eyeliner, and almost-nude luminescent powder that made her spotless complexion gleam like pearls.”

Doll or person?

Andrew’s heartfelt musings upon the nature of his relationship with Bramber is so beautifully expressed in the following passage “And yet I did still have faith, in spite of everything. If ‘Artist was a chastening reminder of my limitations so was she also a -  talisman a symbol of all Bramber and  I had in common and my desire not only to be with her but to set her free.” Freeing ‘Artist’* seemed to me to be a metaphor for freeing Bramber. It is not unusual for somebody facing a burden, in Andrew’s case the burden of his size or lack of it, to become obsessed with something and then to become almost a savant as Andrew does with his devotion to dolls. But here the dolls seems to represent something deep, a recognition of his own self within the dolls he lovingly creates and mends. Is he trying to make himself more perfect, more acceptable? His conversations with “Artist’ give us clues as to his self perception and his fears, “Imagination comes with a burden as well as privileges. Solitude is one of those burdens. But is that so bad?”

Notions of the surrogate nature of dolls are subtly explored alongside almost fairy tale scenarios of the dashing prince freeing the damsel in distress but defying the stereotypical conventions of such roles. At times I thought of Pinnochio, not the Disney one, but Collodi’s marionette ‘doll’ desperate to become a real boy. And for Andrew I was reminded fleetingly of Oskar in Gunter Grass’s ’Tin Drum and for Bramber I thought of Thomas Mann’s ‘Magic Mountain’. The spirit of the fairy tale is never far. Ewa Chaplin, the link that is the catalyst for Andrew and Bramber’s association, is the author of Nine Modern Fairy Tales and we are treated to five as Andrew reads them on his journey. They are a delight and would hold up as short stories in their own right outside of this novel, yet they are crucial to the story as a whole, part allegory, with links in them from the fairy tale, doll, world, to the Andrew and Bramber, human world. 

There were some metaphysical points to ponder, especially concerning time, Two lines from the book which prepare us for the curious timelessness and almost dreamlike passages of time passing that is indefinable and provoke the reader into wondering whether time matters? It IS intangible.

“I have always been in love with the idea of time”

“A clock is the only instrument specifically constructed for measuring a quantity that is intangible.”

And Bramber’s poignant and elegant musing on the passing of time.

“There is always a day when summer fades into autumn, sometimes in the space of a single hour. The light changes colour and the leaves soften, become fragile. Everything goes to seed. I was trying to ignore that moment, to pretend it isn’t happening, but I’m always aware of it. Every time it makes me wonder how many summers there are left.”

Also considerations of sanity and insanity? The concept of an institution ? Bramber is in a concrete institution but is Andrew in an abstract one from which his journey to Bramber is his escape? Bramber’s unfolding of the events that have brought her to be institutionalised  are told with such purity and honesty.

“The truth is, I’ve been over that night in my mind so many times I can no longer probably remember what really happened, if those details are details I can remember, or bits and pieces I picked up from what I found out afterwards.”

‘Ewa Chaplin wasn’t afraid to make dolls that weren’t comforting. She seemed to know that dolls are people just like us.” says the back cover, which pretty much sums it up.

And how many of us are broken dolls waiting for our Brambers and our Andrews?

*to define 'Artist' would be a spoiler. For now another character in the book.

My thanks to Quercus books for both a proof copy of this unforgettable novel and the finished book. Also my thanks to Nina Allan, herself, for signing the proof for me. I’ll treasure it forever and our Dollmaker Breakfast where I got to talk with Nina about books and writing and Nina’s reading aloud from the book in the The Museum of Childhood. 

Finding Dorothy - Elizabeth Letts SOCIAL MEDIA BLAST

So delighted to be part of the Quercus Books Social Media Blast for this engaging tale.

I never realised that the photo I’d seen several times in books, magazines and online depicting Judy Garland reading The Wizard of Oz with an older lady was showing me the widow of the story’s creator. Somehow it always seemed to me that the Wizard of Oz had always been and always would be, the thought that someone had created it seldom entered my head!

Last month Quercus Books sent me a teaser of Finding Dorothy, a two chapter pamphlet that whetted my appetite for this real thing. https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2019/02/finding-dorothy-taster.html 

A novel, although it often read like a biography, so much so that I googled Maud Gage and L. Frank Baum and Maud’s mother!! (They’re all real and have their own Wikipedia pages!)

The book is a delight. In the Afterword the author states ‘Finding Dorothy streamlines Maud and Frank’s life stories, skipping over some events in their long life together.” But when you read it you get the impression of a seamless whole heading towards the cinematic masterpiece that is the Wizard of Oz.

The novel is structured with Maud’s life story unfolding chronologically interspersed with the widowed Maud’s determined intervention in the production of the film. It details her concern for the young Judy Garland. It shows the ways that she dealt with and interacted with various studio personnel in her untiring efforts to ensure that the finished film should match and stay true to her late husband’s story and vision.

To understand that determination and to wholeheartedly approve it clarifies indelibly as you read Maud’s story. From her girlhood in Syracuse through her mother’s desire for her to attain a diploma at Cornell University at a time when few women were achieving academic qualifications, to falling in love with Frank Baum in defiance of her mother’s dreams and raising a family Finding Dorothy paints a picture of a shrewd, yet determined woman, with a heart. 

But inasmuch as this book tell Maud’s story it also tells of the struggle of women in the twilight years of the nineteenth century.

‘Too much control can stunt a girl, sap her of courage, and render her weak.’ was Mathilda Gage’s opinion early in the book. ‘You’re old enough to learn that crying gets you nowhere. If you pinch yourself, it will remind you that it’s better to be strong. When you’re strong, then you can fight.’

And fight Maud does, for everything she has, including children after one difficult pregnancy seems likely to prevent her having any more. Supportive and despairing alternately for her mercurial husband and his various enthusiastic ventures you cannot help but admire this feisty lady. Even when the chips are down she doesn’t give in either for her own family or her sister’s. She seems one of those rare people who can summon optimism when they most need it, ‘Was it possible? Was there really somewhere else -  somewhere at the far end of the rainbow that was better than this place? She certainly hoped so.’

She’s wise too and offers her sagacity to the young Judy Garland, ‘Magic isn’t materializing out of nowhere. Magic is when a lot of people all believe in the same thing at the same time, and somehow we all escape ourselves little bit and we meet up somewhere, and just for a moment, we taste the sublime.’

Frank’s idealism  grated a little at times and I felt Maud’s frustration but I also loved his unwavering love for his wife and family and the enthusiasm for all of his schemes. 

The insights into Judy Garland and her motivations are fascinating and illuminating. Fans of the star will enjoy these sections immensely.

The book also allows us a glimpse into the cultural and sociological climate of nineteenth century USA. How challenging life could be and how things could turn on a sixpence - or maybe a dime. Interesting too are the chapters which deal with the film, surely of interest to those who love that film and the history of filming in general. 

I am prompted to wonder how people who might not be familiar with the film will respond to the book? I imagine that is a minority and it’s certainly not an age thing. My friend’s two year old granddaughter accompanied by a three year old cousin regularly clamour to watch the film. They love it. But is a love of the film crucial to an appreciation of this book? I don't believe so. Part historical, part biographical it may be of interest to students of the womens’ moment, very topical currently. Certainly it’s an engrossing read. Elizabeth Letts has a fluent style and what also shines through is her love of the film and her admiration for the lady she is writing about,

My thanks to Ella Patel and Quercus Books for the opportunity to read this crock of gold. 

Please check out what these other amazing bloggers have to say about the book.