RECENT READS

EARLY ONE MORNING [By Virginia Baily]. It’s been a long time, a very long time . . . in fact this could be the first time ever . . . that I have read a novel without a single significant male character. Quite an achievement Virginia Baily. Hope you are pleased with yourself.

Took me over a month to read; I never wanted to pick it up; I don’t have the bandwidth for something like this. To be honest, I should have stopped long before the end. It is 400 pages long; dense, dense, tell, tell. A tsunami of words, hollow, meaningless. Someone put a review on Amazon that I cannot really improve upon:

This novel has interesting premises and very promising situations and settings, but it's very slow at the same time that there's too much going on-- the relationship between the central character and her father's mistress (potentially fascinating but incompletely explored); the relationship between the protagonist and her epileptic sister (also incompletely addressed); the relationship between the protagonist and a priest is vague and her relationship with her adopted son is odd in ways that are neither examined nor explained. It's not especially well-written either-- it's wordy and even occasionally repetitive, redundant. The plot isn't linear, which is OK, but incidents that could have foreshadowed the climax are misplaced too close to the end. I had high expectations after listening to an interview promoting the book on Radio 4's 'Women's Hour', but I was ultimately disappointed.

Having said which, the central character, Chiara is a very good creation and the famous Chapter 9 is worth staggering on to; if you are still not caught up by Chapter 9, stop.

It cost me 0.01p on Amazon Marketplace; a brand-new unread hardback copy. I do wonder if it is selling many copies Little Brown [?].

MAKE ME [By Lee Child]. This is the latest Jack Reacher thriller, someone left it behind at our holiday apartment on the French Riviera. £20 on the cover; someone is doing very well indeed.

Never read a Jack Reacher novel. Two very good things about it: no cops [big plus point]; up to date technologically . . . they text [!] they e mail [!] they remember to switch their phones on [!]. Brilliant.

It’s in very short chapters; haven’t really come across that before, so that on page 116 you are on Chapter 22. Yes, short sentences as well but I don’t mind that I write in a similar fashion, it brings impact when you need it. It is dark, which I hadn’t expected and wasn’t prepared for. Looking at the Amazon reviews, people seem to think it is too dark and in the same way as I was, weren’t really prepared for it. No swearing; not one four-letter fuck in the entire 420-pages even from the evil bad guys in Chicago.

Did I like it? It was OK. I raced through it. I had to suspend credibility far, far too much. Buying all those guns in the middle of nowhere? Jeez. And way too many coincidences: at least five doors that hadn’t been locked and a gated community that should have been a major problem to enter that they just sailed through. A little of that goes a long way.  

The description of Reacher walking the town was spell-binding: ’He saw plenty of stuff’. Houses still lived in and some empty. Some converted to offices. He saw a gas station and seed merchants. I’m all for setting the scene but there were pages of this and it was mind numbing and it kept on coming. The exciting part was when we were told that the town even though it had been semi-circular was laid out in a grid. I could hardly put it down.

Actually what I really thought was, if he submitted the first three thousand words of this to an agent under the name Kikarin Chadwick, rather than Lee Child he would receive a pretty severe rejection letter. Don’t think I will read another one.

ALIAS GRACE [By Margaret Attwood]. My first Margaret Attwood. I tried to read Handmaidens Tale [twice] and found it . . . I don’t know . . . preachy? And gave up. This is pretty preachy too, it was shortlisted for the Booker in 1996 the year Graham Swift won it for Last Orders, which I have read and liked. It’s okay. My main-man Hilary Mantel has added her own thoughts on the back cover to the effect that she has a wonderful prose style and indeed she has; beautifully constructed sentences which flow into apparently convoluted paragraphs which then resolve themselves into . . . well . . . literary fiction at its best. Try this from page 422:

Yet he doesn’t feel she dislikes their conversations. On the contrary, she appears to welcome them, and even to enjoy them; much as one enjoys a game of any sort, when one is winning he tells himself grimly. The emotion she expresses most openly towards him is a subdued gratitude.

He’s coming to hate the gratitude of women. It is like being fawned on by rabbits, or like being covered with syrup: you can’t get it off. It slows you down, and puts you at a disadvantage. Every time some woman is grateful to him, he feels like taking a cold bath. Their gratitude isn’t real; what they really mean by it is that he should be grateful to them. Secretly they despise him.

Fawned on. Genius. She flips tenses constantly from past to present and from first-person to third, quite effortlessly. A writer completely on top of her craft, so why spend five-hundred and fifty words on a mid-nineteenth Century sixteen-year old servant girl in Canada? She isn’t interesting enough. Canada in 1843 isn’t interesting enough. If one wrote 550 words say on David Attenborough’s life and times that might be interesting but then again, it might not. She uses the historical text to draw our attention to the hypocrisy of the times. Man employs kitchen maid; gets kitchen maid pregnant; throws out kitchen maid onto street; gets new kitchen maid; gets new kitchen maid pregnant . . . except Grace bites back.

I can’t read anything for the pleasure of the prose so to speak; there has to be something else.

WYLAM RAILWAY BRIDGE

This is Wylam Railway Bridge, about two miles downriver from where we live now.

It was constructed in the mid-nineteenth century by the Scotswood, Newburn and Wylam Railway in an attractive location at a bend on the River Tyne and opened to traffic on 6 October 1876. The ironwork is by the firm of Hawks, Crayshay & Co. of Gateshead with masonry and foundations by W E Jackson & Co. of Newcastle and the engineer was W G Laws. It was designed with a single span to avoid building piers in the river bed under which were shallow mine workings. Just beyond the bridge the railway made a connection with the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway at West Wylam Junction, controlled by a tall signal box, which no longer exists and nearby was the junction giving access to West Wylam colliery. Freight trains were the main users of the bridge although some passenger trains on the branch were extended to Hexham and it was used by excursion trains.

The railway closed on 11 March 1968 and the rails lifted in 1972. It is now used by pedestrians and cyclists as part of a route between Newburn and Ovingham.

We walked across it yesterday.

ERICH VON DANIKEN

He’s still alive. 82 now. Unrepentant apparently.

I went to one of his talks once way back in the seventies, somewhere near Paddington cant remember the venue. Can’t even picture it, just too long ago. I remember it was about three-quarters full which wasn’t bad given that there was virtually no publicity. It was like a secret - society thing; go left at the third traffic lights then double-back to the library, cross the road and someone will show you the way from there. It was full of geeks and they all knew more, much more than he did. What did he think was meant by Exodus 4:22? Did he realise that the Aztec lines on the Tiahuanaco Ziggurat exactly matched the dimensions of the lower tomb in the great pyramid of Gizza? And of course the lines in the Peruvian desert pointed not to Venus as he says in Chariots of the Gods but to solar system MH87R55 in the constellation of Zog. Which is where the Gods really came from.

I seemed to be sitting next to the Chief Geek. He argued every point with Von Daniken who was definitely not expecting an audience that was so well informed. He was probably on his guard for cat-calls and cries of rubbish at his theories, hence all the cloak and dagger stuff beforehand but not this. I mean who are/were these people? I was just casually interested having read his book but they were totally immersed in it; never doubting anything.

I had forgotten all about this until yesterday when I watched Prometheus [Ridley Scott 2012] on TV on Monday. Never seen it before. It’s supposedly a prequel to Alien, one of my all-time favourite films and explains how the alien monster came to be alive on the planet. I think Ridley must have been the Chief Geek I mentioned earlier because it is full of this pseudo-archaeological imagery. Tomb drawings of time-travellers; unknown solar systems painted on cave walls forty-thousand years ago; Egyptian high priests guiding the dead through the twelve hours. It is in fact as comprehensive a summary of all of Von Daniken’s stuff as I have ever seen and being Ridley Scott, it is very convincing and beautifully realised. But being Ridley, it isn’t enough, he needs his blood and gore and eventually it tips into a slick horror film.

Up to that point however it is an absorbing watch with allusion piled upon allusion; Christian imagery; Norse mythology juxtaposed with current culture [Doctor Who] for example, the main protagonist is called Elizabeth Shaw, the name of the Doctor’s assistant in Series 3 [which was about aliens creating life on earth].

There is an amazing piece on Reddit deconstructing the film and the ideas behind it called Everything Explained, if anyone is interested.  

JASPER

This is a lovely poem that I came across recently: a wedding gift in verse.

Jasper

For John Jones the potter

Waxwork of a crag, a model of sea rock

In gleaming maroon –

Hear the waves break on it, see the fish fly

Under the moon!

A piece of witch-stone, jasper,

Red chalcedony

With a tidewash of grey quartz still ebbing

Back like the sea.

I was given it, it has lain in my hearth

Nearly a year

To give peace by arbitrary charm

To fingerers here.

Each hand that stroked it, gave to and took

Power out of it:

Love warmed it with whitsun, it knew

Fire-tonguing wit.

It felt stillness in half-light, it learned

Like a wild foal

To stand calm in a crowdful of noise

In its deep quartz soul.

It is Welsh rock, John. A vein of it runs

In the nape

Of the hanging coast where the oaktrees

Knot the Straits into shape.

Earth, water and fire! and a girl’s hand that gave it

Dearer to me

Than gold! – I send you this shard from the wheel

Of the Welsh sea.

Your potter’s eyes found glazes in red grit –

You made them yours,

The piebald debris of metallic earths,

Ragbag of ores.

We finger a pebble for luck, or chance

Magic try –

But your fingers have lived with luck so long

They must have it, or die.

And your hands chance no amateur magic:

The wheel must turn,

The wet grey clay must rise like a genie

To teapot or urn.

Yet now, because you have left Wales, and sold

Kiln and wheel

And because your cottage sinks down to its knees

In an overgrown field,

And the racks in your front room shop

No longer fill

Quietly, quietly with the cups and jugs

Of your fingers’ skill

And because now, though the potter’s gone

And the clay dries dead,

We are glad that the love of a bride

Has graced your bed –

That ancient, amateur magic of hands,

A love and a luck

Richer than even from clay

Ever was struck –

Because of all this, on your wedding day

I send

All the power in a stone I can

To make and mend:

A piece of witch-stone, jasper,

Red chalcedony

With a tidewash of grey quartz still ebbing

 Back to the sea.

Line after line of crafted poetry; sinks down to its knees; ragbag of ores; a wild foal, standing calm; its fingerers . . . the whole thing is almost tactile. Like its subject. Fabulous. It’s by a guy called Tony Conran of whom I know nowt.