‘The Crystal Prison’ by Robin Jarvis
I remember reading Robin Jarvis’ Deptford Histories Trilogy when I was younger and being utterly, deliciously terrified by them. They were books that I would only read with my back placed firmly against a wall so that I could be absolutely sure that nothing was sneaking up behind me waiting to grab me. I’ve never been particularly good at estimating reading ages and the fact that neither myself nor any of my friends has spawned (and if they had, the spawn wouldn’t be of an age to actually be reading these books yet without some miracle of biology) doesn’t exactly help. The murky distinctions between children’s literature and young adult literature also complicates things, so I’m just going to say that Robin Jarvis is one of my favourite fantasy authors for people who are younger than me and leave it at that. That said, I still really enjoyed reading The Crystal Prison even though I’m now far beyond the age of the target audience.
In this second installment in the Deptford Mice Trilogy, Audrey makes a deal with the mysterious Starwife that she will journey to the countryside, taking the mad rat Madam Akkikuyu with her, in exchange for the Starwife saving her friend Oswald’s life. The two of them set off with her brother Arthur and friend Twit to visit Twit’s family and stay with the fieldmice of Fennywolde. Once there, however, the countryside proves to be far less idyllic than Audrey had anticipated. Many of the country mice do not take kindly to the newcomers, and soon their peaceful lives are threatened by an even greater evil which has come with the mice from Deptford.
Having read all of the Deptford Mice books now (one of the unforeseen benefits of being behind with reviews), I think that this one is my favourite. Robin Jarvis does a wonderful job of creating the society of the fieldmice and of making it different from that of the town mice in Deptford that we saw in the first book. The pace of life is slower but there are also far more dangers to be thought of: the fieldmice post guards constantly around there homes, whereas danger for the city mice is an external thing which thus far has remained outside their domain and is only encountered by those who go looking for it. I particularly liked the traditions and folk ways which played such an important role in the fieldmouse culture and in the plot of this novel, including the much greater emphasis on the Green Mouse and the mouse religion. This managed to be both charming and rustic as well as having a latent threatening quality, and I enjoyed watching Jarvis show how this tension slowly and believably built up as the fieldmice transformed from welcoming but wary characters into a raging mob.
Madam Akkikuyu is a wonderful character. She has a distinct way of speaking that is instantly recognisable, and I’m pleased that this book spends more time with her than the first installment, The Dark Portal, did. The Crystal Prison also sees the other characters develop well: Audrey becomes more sensible as she is forced to make difficult decisions; Arthur plays a much bigger role, allowing the reader to get to know him a bit better; and Twit shows that he is not as empty-headed as all the mice suspect (although I’m sure the reader won’t have been lured into the same trap) simply because he is cheerful and has a rural accent. In this, and in its cliffhanger ending, it paves the way well for book three.
The Crystal Prison by Robin Jarvis. Published by Simon & Schuster, 1994, pp. 261. Originally published in 1989.
‘Dark Star Safari’ by Paul Theroux
When I started out at university, the people I met instantly divided themselves into two groups: those who started conversations with the immortal phrase, “On my gap year…” and those who didn’t. The gap year people had inevitably spent at a goodly proportion of this year out of education travelling in Africa/South America/Asia, had quite probably taken part in some sort of community project which gave them an unparalleled insight into that country and would waste no opportunity to mention this. Now, I’m sure this was a very fulfilling experience for the people involved, but unless they are incredibly skilled raconteurs (which, lets face it, most people are not, particularly when there is alcohol involved at the time of the telling) it’s really not that interesting to hear about and it usually comes across as a bit self-indulgent and pompous. Unfortunately, reading Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town by Paul Theroux was exactly like hearing about his gap year.
Dark Star Safari is an account of Paul Theroux’s travels through Africa, shunning easy and convenient travel methods in favour of treacherous trains, dodgy taxis and tiny vans stuffed full of people and their belongings. Along the way he meets a whole variety of people from different walks of life, some old friends from his previous stay in Africa working for the Peace Corps and some new acquaintances. There are waiters, prostitutes, diplomats, Indian shopkeepers, white farmers, Rastafarians, ex-convicts and many more, all with a story to tell which become part of Theroux’s own overarching story of his travels.
This book is interesting because of what it is: Theroux’s journey is undeniably ambitious in scope and Dark Star Safari stands as a testament to that. It was a huge undertaking, accessing such a wide cross section of people from so many places, and the fact that he was able to write the book at all is impressive. It’s also an area that is entirely new to me and I learnt a great deal from the book. I had no idea, for example, that there were so many Indians who migrated to various African countries to set up businesses and new lives, and Dark Star Safari is a gold mine of information such as this for the ignorant reader such as myself. He also presents a perspective on foreign aid (that it is often doing more harm than good) which I hadn’t really considered before, probably because Africa isn’t something that I read about terrible often, and certainly gave me pause for thought. My experiences of people travelling through Africa tend to come courtesy of Comic Relief and feature television personalities presenting pitiful sights while asking for my financial aid, so regardless of whether you agree with Theroux’s controversial point of view, it’s definitely interesting to read from the perspective of someone seeing the same sights and instead saying that perhaps aid isn’t helping anyone.
My issues with this book don’t stem from it’s subject matter but from Theroux himself, who I found to be an utterly insufferable narrator. He is so scathing and dismissive of so many of the people he meets that he frequently comes across as boorish and unpleasant. He scorns the tourists on the Nile cruise on which he embarks partly because they are on a Nile cruise (the hypocrisy of this seems lost on him) and partly because they have the temerity to ask questions! How dare people travelling in a foreign country to see historical sights want to learn about things? What a ridiculous notion! He is equally derogatory about many of the diplomats he meets (although he does love name dropping), the Christian missionaries towards whom he is deliberately antagonistic, and the foreign aid workers who won’t give him a lift, which seems rather unnecessary. By all means criticise the aid system, but being provocative towards the individuals who are trying to help and work within a flawed system primarily because they won’t give you a lift (which is hardly part of their job) comes across as whining. He also seems to have an over-inflated sense of his own importance, being shocked upon his arrival in Malawi to discover that no one at the American embassy has responded to his generous offer to hold a few lectures during his stay there out of the goodness of his own heart (and so he can celebrate his birthday, of course).
I found his sexual references to be totally unnecessary and added nothing to the book. I appreciate that a lot of the women he meets are prostitutes and that they have some interesting stories to tell, but his self-congratulatory attitude at not taking advantage of them himself I found rather distasteful. In a similar vein, his sexualising of many of the women he comes across is unpleasant and makes Theroux seem like a bit of a dirty old man (which, at sixty, he kind of is). His completely irrelevant references to the erotic novel that he is inspired to write as he travels are equally unnecessary and I would have preferred it if this whole aspect of the book had been left out.
His writing is very journalistic in style, which some might enjoy as it feels very factual and efficient. However, when I read a travelogue, I want it to make me feel as though I’m actually there, not that I’m listening to someone a bit dull but very accurate tell me what it’s like being there. Every time there is a market it is described as ‘medieval’, and it quickly gets rather old and tired. There are other times though, when the descriptions are absolutely perfect and evoke wonderful images of these strange countries, such as when he describes Cairo:
The smoke from the fires lit in braziers, the stink of the pissed-on walls, the graffiti, the dust piles, the brick shards, the baked mud, the neighbourhood so decrepit and worn, so pulverized, it looked as though it had been made out of wholewheat flour and baked five thousand years ago and was now turning back into little crumbs. (pp. 9-10)
Sadly, these flashes of lovely writing come all too infrequently for my liking, and are overshadowed by the way that Theroux himself comes across. Not a writer I’ll be reading again, I think.
Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town by Paul Theroux. Published by Penguin, 2003, pp. 495. Originally published in 2002.
‘Try Anything Twice’ by Jan Struther
Jan Struther is best known as the author of the short novel, Mrs Miniver. However, during Virago Reading Week I posted about a fascinating notethat I had found taped inside a copy of Jan Struther’s Try Anything Twice which I acquired from a second hand book stall, and consequently I had to read this one first. I actually finished this book during the reading week, but it’s taken me until now to write my review. I’m getting very behind all of a sudden.
Try Anything Twice is a collection of essays about the trials and tribulations of life as an ‘upper-middle-class, lower-middle-aged Englishwoman‘, as Struther herself puts it. They cover such diverse topics as the pleasures of making lists, the perils of foreign travel and the horrors of arranging for family photographs to be taken. They read very much like the articles in the Style section of the Sunday Times: they focus on aspects of life which may be a bit frivolous but they do so in a way that is intelligent and witty. Unsurprising then, they they were first published in journals such as The Spectator, The New Statesman and Punch in the 1920s and 1930s.
What I enjoyed most about this collection of essays was how well they have aged: clearly the life of the upper-middle-class, lower-middle-aged woman from whose perspective Struther writes with such humour hasn’t changed very much in the intervening eighty years. A lot of the situations are instantly familiar for a modern reader, and Struther is easy to identify with even if the specifics are completely alien because she writes in such a way as to make the concerns that she expresses seem universal. Her essay ‘Cut Out the Stars’ about economising in the face of hard times as only the privileged can, is one that I found particularly apt given the current financial situation in this country.
Although Struther is usually entertaining, in these essays she never shies away from using her humour to impart tough truths and convey harsh opinions. I found ‘The Toys of War’ to be a particularly skillful critique of modern violence and inhumanity through imagining a child playing with toys that accurately emulate warfare. As with all essay collections, I found some better than others, but all the essays (including those which were left out of the Virago edition but can be read here) are definitely worth reading.
Try Anything Twice by Jan Struther. Published by Virago, 1990, pp. 212. Originally published in 1938.
TBR Lucky Dip: February
As I explained in my post about reading plans for the new year, each month I’m going to be using a random number generator to select a book from my TBR pile for me to read, to help me read more widely from my shelves.
This month, the deities of www.random.org have ordained that I should read book number 35. According to my TBR list this means that I am reading…
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not…
In three brilliant variations on the classic detective story, Paul Auster makes the well-traversed terrain of New York City his own, as it becomes a strange, compelling landscape in which identities merge or fade and questions serve only to further obscure the truth. What emerges is an investigation into the art of storytelling, notions of identity and the very essence of language.
This was yet another book that I picked up at university as possible extra reading for one of the courses I was taking, then never got round to reading because I loathed that course (Critical Theories, a course of which they changed the content and structure every year because every year, in general, people disliked it and didn’t do as well as in other areas) with a fiery passion and the thought of inflicting more than the required reading on myself each week did not hold any appeal. If I find this one too heavy going I may just read the first book, City of Glass, for now and then put it back on the TBR pile until I feel up to reading book two. We’ll see how it goes.
(Apologies for the lack of reivews this week; it’s been very busy. Hopefully I’ll catch up a bit this weekend and can get back to normal next week).
‘We Had It So Good’ by Linda Grant
Needless to say, I was absolutely thrilled when I found out that Virago, my favourite publishers, had decided to launch a book club this year. For one reason or another I’m not particularly good at reading contemporary fiction, tending to stick to older books, and this seemed like a good way of broadening my horizons a bit. I eagerly signed up and was lucky enough to be selected as one of the First Look reviewers for the club, meaning I have a selection of books coming my way from the very kind publishers. We Had It So Good by Linda Grant is the Virago Book Club’s first selection.
We Had It So Good is the story of Stephen and his family. Born in America to a Cuban mother and Polish father, Stephen gains a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford in the 1960′s. There he meets Grace, Andrea and Ivan and together they take a lot of drugs and talk about how they could change the world until Stephen is drafted by the American army to fight in Vietnam. In order to avoid what he sees as certain death, he marries Andrea and they move to a squat in London while Grace disappears to travel the world. As they grow up, settle down and have children, their concerns change and they become more and more detached from their idealistic younger selves.
Had this not been a book club pick I would almost certainly never have read it. Aging hippies becoming increasingly middle aged and middle class isn’t really my thing, and I still think that after reading Grant’s book. Perhaps I’m just too far removed from that time period and way of thinking (I’m even younger than Stephen and Andrea’s children in the novel) for it to have any resonance with me; I’m sure this would be a far more interesting book for someone who had lived through the same experiences and developed in a similar way to the central characters. As it was, I found them to be intensely irritating, although I had flashes of sympathy for them from time to time, particularly in the way that Andrea’s story was concluded. This might have been intentional, I don’t know, but it didn’t make the book a particularly enjoyable read for me.
Far more interesting, in my opinion, are the peripheral characters. I thought that Grant manages to inject really intriguing character traits into Max, Marianne and the various parents who appear throughout the book. All of them are distinct and different and I wish that more time had been given to them and to their concerns rather than to the ineffectual, dissatisfied Stephen and Andrea, although obviously these two represent the framework which holds all of the others together. I thought that Grace’s sections, while initially confusing (who is this disembodied first person narrator suddenly having a chapter? Why?) were effective and, once it was revealed why they were there, a clever way of weaving her own story into the main body of the novel and showing how everything was intertwined.
One thing that was a new experience for me with this book was reading about events that I’ve lived through. A quick glance at my book list will tell you that I don’t read a lot of contemporary fiction, so it was a real change to read something that goes right up to the present day. I thought that Grant tackles this skilfully, allowing the reader to instantly recognise what is going on and which crucial world events have occurred without ever being obvious about it. September 11th, for example, is mentioned without the date or the words ‘World Trade Centre’ being used and yet it is abundantly clear what has just happened. Likewise with the July 7th bombings on the London Underground.
On the whole I found the writing in We Had It So Good to be effective and well thought out, even if the story wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. There was, however, one stylistic device that I found incredibly annoying and that is the use of occasional chapters or sometimes just individual paragraphs in the present tense for no discernible reason. I could understand it (although I would still find it irritating) if the change in tense reflected a shift to more immediate concerns or continuous actions, but the present tense paragraphs seem to be largely random and have no particular significance. I’m willing to concede that I missed something integral here, but nonetheless I found them jarring and wished that Grant had stuck to writing in one tense to show the present tense of the novel.
We Had It So Good by Linda Grant. Published by Virago, 2010, pp. 345. First edition.
’84, Charing Cross Road’ and ‘The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street’ by Helene Hanff
I’m not sure why I’m so biased against non-fiction books, as I always seem to enjoy them whenever I can finally bring myself to read one. Whatever the reason, I don’t tend to pick one up unless I actively decide to do so, and so one of my bookish resolutions this year is to read more non-fiction books. I am doing this but I am, however, easing myself in gently. I will not be sitting on the train reading lengthy and complicated science books, full of arcane formulae and incomprehensible diagrams, for quite some time, if ever. Instead, I’m focusing on memoirs, biographies, diaries, essays and letters, with the odd bit of literary criticism thrown in for variety; things that still read like fiction, in other words. I do feel as though I’m cheating a tiny bit, particularly when the book in question is quite as enjoyable as 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff.
84, Charing Cross Road comprises a series of letters representing twenty years’ worth of correspondence starting in 1949 between Helene Hanff, an America writer, and the staff of the antiquarian booksellers Marks & Co. Initially, these letters are purely book orders, but soon the become less and less formal as an unlikely friendship springs up between Helene and Frank Doel, the chief buyer. My copy of the book also includes The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, Helene Hanff’s diary of her trip to England following the publication of these letters in the form of the first book.
Helene Hanff’s writing style in the letters that make up 84, Charing Cross Road is wonderful to read. It is frank, forthright, highly opinionated and overflowing with humorous warmth and it doesn’t take long for book purchasing to seem merely incidental rather than the purpose of her writing. It is also extremely enjoyable to see the friendship emerge between Hanff and Frank Doel as his reserve and formality (partly from being professional, partly from being British) are inexorably worn down by the sheer force of her personality. Soon they are discussing rationing in post-war Britain (although never with any complaining, of course), gifts are exchanged, and other members of the bookshop staff and of Doel’s family are joining in with the correspondence. It didn’t take long for me to feel involved in all of their lives and I was surprised at how emotionally attached to the characters I became. I only wish that more of these letters had been saved, as it is evident from references in some of the letters in the collection that there were others which must have been sadly lost.
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, while still enjoyable, lacks some of the easy charm of 84, Charing Cross Roadand I think this is because the writing in the first book is entirely unselfconscious as it was private correspondence and never intended for publication, whereas the second installment is written without this ease, although with the same wit and vivacity from Hanff. It is lovely to witness her reactions as she discovers ‘the England of English literature’ and I couldn’t help but smile at her delight in what she found. In fact, Hanff spends most of this book exploring the streets that I walk every day on my way to and from work, so I found it particularly welcome to receive such an enthusiastic outsider’s perspective on things that I’ve stopped noticing; it make me start taking a look again. I did miss the variety of tone that Frank Doel’s slightly staid and stuffy but still loveable letters provided in the first book, but nonetheless I found this an excellent read.
84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. Published by Futura, 1983, pp.220. Originally published in 1970 and 1973.
‘Willow’ by Wayland Drew
Do you enjoy watching film adaptations of books you’ve read, or do you regard them with some suspicion and decide that you’d rather not, thank you very much? Every time a book that I enjoy is turned into a film, I have to debate with myself whether I want to go to see it or not. In some cases, such as any and all Jane Austen adaptations, I’m more than happy to watch each new version, secure in the knowledge that it probably won’t be true to the book but that I’ll enjoy it nonetheless. In others, such as the recent film of The Timetraveller’s Wife, I reach the conclusion that no film could possibly do the book justice and so going to see it will probably just make me angry (I still haven’t seen this film and have no desire too, much as I like Rachel McAdam). However, until today I had never read a book where this order of book and film was reversed: a book which is a novelisation of a film. And, if this one was anything to go by, it’s abundantly clear why not.
Willow tells the story of a Nelwyn, a halfling race similar to hobbits from what I can gather, who finds a baby washed up from the river bordering his lands. It turns out that this baby is the Elora Danan, the child foretold in prophecy whose birth would bring about the downfall of the evil sorceress Bavmorda who rules over the lands. Pursued by the Death Dogs and Bavmorda’s minions, Willow must find the good sorceress Fin Raziel and, together with swordsman Madmartigan and some dubious brownies, journey to the castle of Tir Asleen to save the child and defeat Bavmorda.
I feel I should start out by saying that I’ve never seen the film Willow on which this book is based. Doubtless it is very entertaining in the same amusing, 80′s fantasy way that Labyrinth and Legend are. The plot is riddled with cliches, but it trundles along at a fair old pace and probably makes quite good cinema (albeit with special effects that are no doubt incredibly dated). The book, however, is genuinely dreadful.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and this book is definitely a case in point. When adapting a film that is (according to Amazon) approximately two hours in length into a book, that book can either try to capture and convey properly everything that takes place in the film and thus be quite lengthy, or it can be quite short and skim along the top of the action and appear shallow. Sadly, Drew appears to have gone for the latter, depthless option (although how much choice he had in the matter I don’t know; he may have been making the best of a bad lot). The writing continually states the obvious and is entirely without subtlety: no character has a thought which they don’t vocalise, an emotion which doesn’t show in their face or contemplates an action without immediately following through. There is no sense that any of the people Drew writes about have inner lives or even minds. Because of this, their actions often seem arbitrary, perfunctory and unreasonable. A character will suddenly decide they are in love or that al their actions up until now have been evil and they must change to fight for good, then act on these thoughts without further ado. It might work in a film, but in a book it comes across as utterly ridiculous.
The dialogue is wooden at the best of times and laughable at the worst. At one point, one character refers to another as a ‘jackass’, which is incredibly inappropriate vocabulary choice for a fantasy with vaguely faux-medieval overtones, as this one attempts to be (most of the time). These may be faithfully reproduced lines from the film, I don’t know, but whatever the reason for them they don’t make for good reading.
I started this book because I needed something to read in the bath that I wouldn’t mind too much if I accidentally dropped it in the water. Sadly I think it might have been better for all concerned had I done so.
Willow by Wayland Drew. Published by Sphere, 1988, pp. 276. First published in 1988.
‘Primeval: Extinction Event’ by Dan Abnett
Recently, I’ve been enjoying an excess of Victorianism. I read The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, a very unexpected Victorian novel, and then, purely by chance, I ended up simultaneously reading Lady’s Maid by Margaret Forster and The Crimson Petal and the Whiteby Michael Faber (which is still ongoing), both neo-Victorian novels. While these are all fabulous books, I felt that I needed a change of pace afterwards, and what could be more different than a book about dinosaurs rampaging down Oxford Street and strange Russian scientists. I was very kindly sent Primeval: Extinction Event by Dan Abnett from the lovely people at Titan Books and I’m glad I waited until now to read it as it proved the perfect antidote to the overexertion of my Victorian sensibilities.
Primeval: Exinction Event is a book based on the popular ITV television series of the same name about anomalies in time that occur, allowing beasts from prehistoric (and apparently also futuristic) times to slip through into the present day and cause havoc. In this particular installment, following an encounter with an entelodon on Oxford Street, Professor Nick Cutter, paleozoologist for the Anomaly Research Centre, is kidnapped along with his teammates zookeeper Abby and computer whizz Connor. They are taken to Siberia where they discover that the Russians have a much bigger problem than they do in England, in the form of a forest full of dinosaurs and the terrifying Baba Yaga. Somehow they must convince the Russians of what is happening and keep themselves alive long enough to sort it out and get home safely, all while time is swiftly running out.
Unlike a lot of people in the UK (including my parents, who were very intrigued when I showed them this book) I have never seen Primeval before; I think it aired while I was at university and without a television, so I never got around to watching it. Consequently, I came to this book without any prior knowledge of the characters or their situation which isn’t something that I expect will happen with many readers as television spin-off books aren’t something you tend to pick up unless you’ve already watched and enjoyed the series. However, had I taken that view, I would have missed out on what turned out to be a really good, fun piece of light entertainment.
Primeval: Extinction Event is a lively, fast-paced adventure which easily carries the reader along through a series of unlikely occurrences and their equally unlikely situations. The book reads exactly how you would expect a television episode to read if it were turned into a book, alternating between action scenes and lots of dialogue. Abnett writes these conversations in a way that is snappy, witty and that manages to convey large amounts of information without it seeming contrived or intrusive. I was impressed that the author managed to provide enough detail and backstory for me, a newbie, to be able to grasp what was going on and why without it being painfully obvious that he was doing so. There were a few small things which I found confusing at first (like the Russians in the book, I also thought that the term ‘anomaly’ referred to the dinosaurs themselves) but as the plot moves so quickly these misunderstandings were soon cleared up.
As this book assumes that readers will already be familiar with the characters from the television series, characterisation is understandably a bit sparse (I wouldn’t expect character studies if I were to read a Doctor Who novel, for example), but this isn’t the sort of novel in which you would expect it anyway, focusing as it does on action over contemplation. Nonetheless, there was enough differentiation between them for me to feel that I got to know the main cast a little bit and to make them interesting to read about. I found the inclusion of Cutter’s wife particularly intriguing as I know no back story for it, and I’d like to find out more about what happened with the two of them. I do think that there were a few too many secondary characters though, many of which were little more than names and so impossible to keep track of. I can see how this would work on television as you can actually see the characters and they are visibly different, but it didn’t translate well into book form.
My only other criticism is a rather minor one, but it was a constant niggle throughout the book: every time a weapon is mentioned, we must know what model it is. I fail to see why this is necessary or how it adds to the reading experience. I highly doubt that the average reader will be able to visualise a specific gun by being given its model number; on television, all we would have seen is an array of different guns and I could quite happily have been told that the team use an array of different guns without knowing what every single one of them was. I quickly grasped that mechanical things wouldn’t work properly because of the anomalies without knowing the difference between and M-64 and an A-30. Frankly they all sound like road names to me anyway.
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to someone who hasn’t seen the television show. What I would recommend is that you sit down and watch the show and then read this book. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Primeval: Extinction Event by Dan Abnett. Published by Titan Books, 2011, pp. 351. Review copy.
‘The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy’ by Tim Burton
I’ve always been quite a fan of Tim Burton’s films: I enjoy the way that he combines the bizarre, the grotesque and the macabre with the sweet, the innocent and the childlike. His twisted, gothic sense of humour appeals to me immensley and so I was really pleased when I discovered that he had written a book of poems and accompanying ilustrations in his familiar, black style. I was even more pleased when The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy turned up on my BookMooch wishlist, and soon it was sat on my shelves waiting to be read.
The poems in The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy are bizarre little snippets about people suffering from unlikely and grotesque disfigurements, amusingly illustrated by the author, such as ‘The Boy with Pins in His Eyes’, ‘Melonhead’ and ‘The Girl Who Turned into a Bed’. They are peculiar and strange, combining these horrifying subjects with the childlike rhythms of nursery rhymes. They reminded me a little of Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales in their tone.
This book should have been really good as the subject matter and style suit Burton down to the ground, but sadly it didn’t live up to expectations. In poems like these, a regular rhythm is a really important part of emulating the nursery rhyme style which contrasts so beautifully with the dark subject matter. The familiar, repetitive rhythms should lull the reader into a false sense of security, which is what makes the poems so uncanny and unsettling, yet it is something with which Burton frequently struggles. Often just changing a word or two or even simply rearranging a line would have made the poems scan perfectly but instead the rhythm is ragged and irregular, so I didn’t find the poems as effective as they could have been.
Some of the poems seemed more like captions for the pictures rather than poems in their own right. The entry ‘James’ for isntace simply reads: ‘Unwisely, Santa offered a teddy bear to James, unaware that/he had been mauled by a grizzly earlier that year.’ The pictures are undeniably good and well suited to the book’s style and subject matter (in fact, my chief enjoyment in the book came from the illustrations) but I wouldn’t consider them good enough to justify so little writing.
On the whole, I thought that the illustrations, the concept and the occasional flashes of humour were excellent, but I would have preferred greater attention to detail and technique on the writing side of things.
The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories by Tim Burton. Published by Faber and Faber, 1998, pp. 115. Originally published in 1997.
‘Lady’s Maid’ by Margaret Forster
When I came up with the idea of using a random number generator to select one book for me every month, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was letting myself in for. I needn’t have worried about January’s choice though, as it seems to have been remarkably kind to me in my first month. Lady’s Maid by Margaret Forster is a book which I added to my wishlist after it was recommended in a discussion about good neo-Victorian novels, along with several other titles which are also waiting patiently on the shelves now. A copy turned up on BookMooch not long afterwards, and so it came to have a home on my shelves. I probably wouldn’t have read it for quite some time though, had it not been January’s TBR Lucky Dip selection.
Lady’s Maid tells the story of Wilson, a girl from the northeast who becomes lady’s maid to Elizabeth Barrett. At first she feels alone and awkward in her situation, but slowly she comes to love her mistress and grows in confidence. Wilson becomes increasingly important in Miss Barrett’s life, facilitating her secret marriage to Robert Browning and flight to a new life in Italy. Throughout this, Wilson has her own life to contend with: her family, her suitors and her hopes for the future.
I really enjoyed this book. It struck an excellent balance between being the story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s maid, encompassing her daily life, concerns, struggles and interactions with other people in service, and the story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning as told by her maid, who is the initial draw of this book for most people, I should imagine, myself included. Margaret Forster has written a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and so, feeling reasonably safe that it was as historically accurate as I was likely to get, I thoroughly enjoyed this glimpse into the lives of two of the great Victorian poets. I fell in love with her husband’s poetry from the moment that I opened the Best Words anthology that was the bane of many a GCSE student’s existence at that time and read the lines:
That’s my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
In fact, this book has reminded me of how much I enjoy Robert Browning, and I may make one of his books my poetry offering for next month. His wife, however, is not someone I’ve read very much (the ubiquitous ‘How Do I Love Thee?’ excepted) and after reading Lady’s Maid I’m so cross with her that I don’t feel any inclination to do so any time soon. Elizabeth Barrett in this book is utterly selfish; she is kind and affectionate towards Wilson only when she needs her or has no better occupation, and as soon as Wilson asks her a favour or goes against her wishes then she is petulant, tetchy and sometimes downright cruel. I spent most of the book feeling righteous indignation of Wilson’s behalf for her treatment at the hands of her mistress, and this is indicative of Forster’s skillful storytelling.
The style of the novel is unusual but effective. It alternates between third person narration, although the perspective that this reports is always Wilson’s and the reader never sees the thoughts of any other character except through her own interpretations of what they might be, and letters from Wilson to various other characters. The writing segues seamlessly between the two forms, often running sentences across the break between the two so that the narrator will begin saying something and Wilson herself will finish it. I thought that this semi-epistolary style worked very well, as it gives the impression that more of the book comes direct to the reader from Wilson than really does, while simultaneously allowing Forster a freedom of writing which would have been necessarily restricted by a novel comprised purely of letters. It is a clever technique and results in an engaging, emotionally involving read.
The letters are also a means of reflecting Wilson’s growing confidence and learning, both personally and stylistically. Initially, her letters are timid and shy, desperate to please the recipient and so hiding a lot of the truth that is revealed to the reader in the narrative sections of the novel. As Wilson becomes increasingly sure of herself, she begins to be more open and honest. She express opinions and even makes demands. At the same time, her letters go from being full of unnecessary capitalisations and awkward phrasing to being written in a smooth, warm, elegant prose. I thought it was an interesting touch that the writing skills of both Wilson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning develop only as they begin to blossom personally.
Lady’s Maid was a very satisfying book to read. Margaret Forster’s writing kept me engrossed with her wonderful ability to describe locations and capture characters. I definitely recommend this one.
Lady’s Maid by Margaret Forster. Published by Fawcett Columbine, 1990, pp. 549. Originally published in 1990.