Saturday - Ian McEwan

I have continued my Ian McEwan fest this week by reading Saturday, his novel that focuses on one Saturday in the life of London based neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne.

The personal and the political collide in this novel as it is set after the tense period of 9/11 and on the day that millions took to the streets to protest the predicted invasion of Iraq by the allied forces. In amongst this political activity is the "normal" Saturday routine of Henry as he looks forward to playing squash with a colleague, check in on the condition of his patients, attend to his roles as parent and husband and prepare a meal for a family reunion that will take place at his house later that night.

Except it is evident from the beginning that this Saturday is possibly not going to follow the regular path when Henry is, for some unknown reason, woken very early to witness a burning plane from his bedroom window.

The narrative of the novel weaves between the action taking place on the Saturday in question to Henry's memories and recollections of his recent and not so recent past. It is in this way that we learn about Henry's wife, Rosalind and his two adult children, Daisy and Theo and the significant parts they play in Henry's life. We also learn about Henry's job as a neurosurgeon and the passion and commitment he has for this role. Apparently McEwan spent two years following an actual neurosurgeon around watching him at his job and this clearly shows in the detail and precision McEwan conveys about neurosurgery in the book.

I quite enjoyed this particular detail (I have worked in a neurosurgery ward of a major hospital and it was a joy to see the area detailed so accurately) however some of the other intense details portrayed in the book (such as learning step by step how to make a fish stew!) I could have done without.

McEwan built the tension in this story wonderfully - the balance between what was happening in Henry's day corresponded nicely with what was happening in greater London at the time and it was clear that something was building to crisis point which kept me hooked into the story. I was left wondering if it was all just a little too dramatic though??

I'm still a huge McEwan fan - he builds and tells fantastic stories and characters - I might just take a break for a little while and read something a little less threatening to the heart!

Hearts and Minds - Amanda Craig

I had not read any of Amanda Craig's books before picking up Hearts and Minds which had been long listed for this year's Orange Prize. I had heard things about the book being quite confronting - and it certainly was in parts - but what it was mostly for me was a fantastic story with brilliant characters.

The book is told from the perspective of several characters all living in different ways and different situations in modern day London and it reminded me a lot of a Robert Altman film in it's structure in that all of the characters started to intersect with each other (either knowingly or unknowingly) as their stories progressed. This is one of my favourite forms of story telling when it is done well and I think Craig has done an amazing job of it in this book.

One of my favourite characters in the novel was Job, a young man from Zimbabwe who has entered the UK illegally to escape violence and persecution in his home country. His wife remains in Africa and Job is unsure where exactly she is or what her fate might have become. Job is working several jobs in order to pay for his living expenses and to send money back to his wife. He is an educated man and throughout the book he offers up his thoughts on the way of life in Britain as compared with his own country;

Poor people do live differently in Britain. They have so many things that seem to drive out thought. Job would never have dreamt he could one day drive a car like the ones he leases from Mo, for instance. Nor would he have believed that he might have a TV set, thrown out because it was an old, bulky design instead of the flat-screen ones everyone expects. Also, there is so much culture available for free. Job has walked, amazed, round every museum he can find on Sundays, where people from all over the globe wander in to enjoy the most beautiful paintings, inventions, buildings. He can't join a public library, but the cheapness of second-hand paperbacks on stalls and in charity shops makes him weak. There is an abundance of everything - food dropped half eaten on the pavement that goes to feed birds or rats - and yet a consciousness of nothing. He thinks of the city conjured for him by Dickens; that foggy, dark place riddled with crime and yet suffused with kindness and courage. He had been a little disappointed when he arrived to find the soot had been scoured away during the last century, and no horse-drawn carriages. Yet there were still men like Bill Sikes, with their dogs and violence. He sees them right outside his home.

Each of the characters were fully drawn - their backgrounds and motivations clearly outlined and portrayed for the reader - but not in such an obvious way that it became patronising or fake.

I loved reading this book and am now on the look out for more of Amanda Craig's work - any suggestions?

An Education - Lynn Barber

I have wanted to see the movie version of An Education ever since I read about it and saw a preview - the glamorous life of a teenage London girl in the 1960's seeking to escape her working/middle class upbringing through an affair with a much older and more experienced man - sounds just like the dreams I had as a teenager growing up in rural Australia in the 1990's!

But before seeing the movie (which is now out on DVD in Australia) I did want to read the autobiography/memoir it is based on by English journalist, Lynn Barber.

My assumption is that the movie version focuses only on chapter two of the book where Barber re-tells the story of her affair/relationship/dalliance with a much older man when she is a 16 year old school girl in London. The book describes Barber's parents reactions to the relationship - surprisingly accepting - and her own doubts about the man who turns out to have one or two significant secrets. While I was initially disappointed to find that the book didn't focus on this period in Barber's life for longer - my reflective teenage self would have liked to hear more descriptions and tales from the weekend jaunts to Paris and Bruges - my disappointment was only short lived as I realised that this section of her life was only one interesting instance - many more followed in her life as an Oxford student and journalist.

I especially like the sections where Barber reflects on her work as a newspaper journalist where she discovered her passion for interviewing - a skill she clearly mastered if her several British Press Awards are anything to go by. My father is a journalist and I have always loved being a part of that world of newspaper production so this part of the book did bring back many fond memories for me.

This was an interesting and moving read for me - Barber is extremely open and honest in her writing and her reflections of her life - I really felt as though I was being let into her personal diaries - I only wished she had kept on writing.

Sherlock Holmes - Movie

Tonight my partner and I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It certainly was an action packed adventure!

I thought Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law played wonderful parts but my favourite actor had to be Rachel McAdams - she was just great as Holmes' "muse". It would have been great to see more of her - but I guess this would not have supported the Holmes/Watson storyline.

Having never read any of the Sherlock Holmes book I had no literary reference to compare the movie too - so while I enjoyed the movie as a stand alone action adventure through the streets of London I'm not sure that I have been shown the "true" Sherlock Holmes?? The action itself was fast paced but I felt the plot was a little lacking in substance - I did find myself feeling a little bored when the upteenth action scene came on screen. Is this how it is in the books?

I would really love to move onto the literary Holmes from here - can anyone offer any suggestions on good places to start?

The Young Victoria

The Young Victoria was a DVD that I bought while we were in the UK and I was very excited to find it as it only just come out at the cinemas at the time we left Australia and I hadn't been able to get to see it before we left. I find with DVD's (unlike books!) I seem to wait ages after I have purchased them to actually sit down and watch them - so it was only last night that I finally broke open the packaging on this one.
The story of Queen Victoria is not one I am overly familiar with beyond the most well known facts but I have always been interested in the relationship she had with Prince Albert and the way she grieved his loss after his early death at the age of 42. I became more interested when we visited Muckross House in Killarney in Ireland on our recent trip - a beautiful house that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had spent a few nights in not long before his death.

The Young Victoria is a stunning visual movie - gorgeous locations, costumes and people! I felt that Emily Blunt played a vibrant, feisty Victoria and while some of her mannerisms may have come across as quite modern (similar to the response I had to Miss Austen Regrets) who is to say that that is not how she would have responded in certain situations - particularly in regards to her relationship with Albert.
The movie focuses on the period in Victoria's life just before she turns 18 and then afterwards when she becomes Queen. We see her relationship with Albert develop from one of suspicion (this is the man that her manipulative mother wants her to marry after all) to one of respect and love. The movie also covers aspects of the political and social setting at the time which I found gave a good context for the relationship between Victoria and Albert.

With my lack of historical knowledge of this particular person and time in history I am not sure if the movie is accurate in all that it portrays but I know that I enjoyed watching it very much.

I have now brought out a copy of a book I have had on my shelves for a while and am now inspired to read - Becoming Queen by Kate Williams.

Has anyone else read any other books about Queen Victoria (fiction or non-fiction) that they would recommend?

Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger was possibly my most anticipated book release of 2009. I fell in love with The Time Traveler's Wife and the characters of Clare and Henry and I was so excited to see what the author of this book had come up with next.

I was in London on our trip in September when the book was released and I quickly picked up a copy (I must admit I was excited to be actually purchasing the book in London when so much of the story is set there). I finished the book quite soon after we had arrived home in early October but it has taken until now for me to write my review. A couple of reasons for this - firstly, I lent the book to my best friend as soon as I had finished it because I was eager to hear her views on it and I don't like to write a review unless my copy of the book is right beside me (is anyone else like this??) but secondly, I needed some time to digest my thoughts and feelings about this one before writing about it.

The book tells the story of two sets of twins, London based Elspeth and her sister Edie who lives in the USA with her 20 year old twin daughters, Julia and Valentina. As the book opens Elspeth is dying in a hospital bed with her long term partner, Robert close by:

Elspeth turned her face towards the door. She wanted to call out, Robert, but her throat was suddenly full. She felt as though her soul were attempting to climb out by way of her oesophagus. She tried to cough, to let it out, but she only gurgled. I'm drowning. Drowning in a bed...She felt intense pressure, and then she was floating; the pain was gone and she was looking down from the ceiling at her small wrecked body.

As a result of her death her twin nieces are sent a letter telling them that they have inherited her property and her apartment in London, right next to Highgate Cemetery, on the condition that they live in it for one year before they sell it. When the twins arrive in London they come to meet up with Elspeth's partner Robert and Martin, an agoraphobic, obsessive compulsive crossword puzzle designer who lives upstairs, both have an influence on and effect the lives of Julia and Valentina. As the young woman move into the apartment of their deceased aunt fractures start to appear in their normally closer than close relationship - one of the twins starts to imagine a life where she isn't tied to the other - and Elspeth herself plays a part in the lives of the twins.

I felt that the book started poetically and with great promise - the first chapter where Elspeth dies brought up so much emotion for me that I was almost in tears - but that is where the poetry virtually ended for me. I thought Robert was the most complex and in ways endearing character of the book but by the end I had lost all respect for him (as I think he would have for himself!). I did start out enjoying Elspeth as a character but I felt that the direction she was written into felt forced and unnatural - even for a ghost! Julia and Valentina were by far the most disappointing characters for me - they felt like cardboard cutouts for the entire story and while I felt I glimpsed moments where they had some character and depth this wasn't enough to sustain my interest - or my ability to care about what happened to them. The parts of the story where London and Highgate Cemetery were in focus were my absolute favourite scenes and I found myself reading faster just to get to these places in the book.

Two great reviews I have read about this book are from Jackie and Claire and some others that I have read have mentioned that you may need to suspend your beliefs in order to fully get on board with the content of this book but I didn't really have a problem with this at all. I am not sure if I believe in the actuality of ghosts but I do believe that an energy can remain after someone has died so for me this was not such a hard concept to grasp - I just don't feel that the connection between the characters was built up enough for me to believe in this particular "ghost" story.

The Charles Dickens Journey

Without really planning it 2009 has turned into a bit of a Charles Dickens year for me. I have to say that university English study had turned me off reading any more Dickens but as I grow older I find that I am wanting to revisit some of the novels that caused me so much grief when I had to read, interpret, deconstruct and then write endless essays on them!
Earlier this year I read Drood and even though it was a fictional interpretation of the last years of Dickens' life I still found that it intrigued me into wanting to find out more about this author and his numerous written works. Other fictional works relating to Dickens that I have read this year include Girl in a Blue Dress and Wanting -both of which I loved.
In our recent trip to London I continued my year of exploring Dickens. We saw a wonderful performance of Oliver at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane - I thought it was a great interpretation of the story - with fantastic humour thrown in courtesy of Omid Djalili who plays Fagin.

I rounded out our trip with a visit to the Charles Dickens House Museum - the only surviving London residence of Dickens and where he wrote some of his novels, including Oliver Twist.

So, when we got back home I was in the mood to actually pick up a Dickens novel and when I headed to Borders I found one of the beautiful new Penguin hardcover editions of Oliver Twist which has come home with me. I now just have to move past my mental block that says Dickens = study and I will be able to start reading it!

Do you have a favourite novel of Dickens? Do you have a favourite novel about him and his life?

The Room of Lost Things - Stella Duffy

I first read/heard about The Room of Lost Things over at Dove Grey Reader and it has taken me a little while to track down a copy of the book in Australia but I finally managed to find it in a trip to Sydney for work this past week - and I am so glad I did.

The Room of Lost Things is essentially a portrait of a specific area of London and the characters/people that live and work there. I have only been to London once (a sad fact I plan to rectify when I visit there again in September) and then it was really only a quick stop over, a browse through some tourist areas and then on to our next destination. But I know deep down that London is a city for me - I would love to live there one day. The London portrayed in Stella Duffy's book is the modern day south London an area described by one reviewer on the back cover of the book as "a part of London usually demonised as home to muggings, shootings and feral gangs".

The two main characters in the novel are Robert, a man in his 60's reflecting back on his life as her prepares to sell his dry cleaning business to Akeel, a young, married Muslim man just starting out in life after finishing his university degree.

Through the, at first, tentative interactions between Robert and Akeel we start to learn a little about their dreams and secret lives as we are also introduced to the various residents of the area who are customers of the dry cleaning business.

The main and outlying stories build beautifully, and in some cases painfully. I started to build up a concrete picture in my mind of this area and the people who lived there - I was enjoying the visit and really didn't want to story to end. But it does end - in a wonderful way I thought. I will definitely be looking out for more of Stella Duffy's work - and would love to hear other reading recommendations for great books set in modern day London.