My Weekly Book

Close Range - Annie Proulx

This is an intimidating review to write, because I’m very conscious of being in the presence of Proper Literature. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Contrary to some who have, apparently, declared Proulx’ work to be impenetrable and difficult to understand, I found this engaging and absorbing and I didn’t have any trouble on that score at all. The book contains 11 short stories of varying lengths, all dealing with the lives of ranchers in the state of Wyoming. Some of the tales are less than two pages; others are practically novellas. Although, at first glance, the principal characters are mostly male, you soon realise there is an underlying but nevertheless powerful female presence too. It time it ranges from 1886 to the turn of the 20th century and features a cast of characters ranging from babes in arms to centenarians.

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So much for the facts. The things that makes this collection such compelling reading are as follows; the feeling of breaking into a closed community of people that most of us could never normally gain access to and getting an insight into it; a magical touch with language and idiom; macabre use of humour and the juxtaposition of shocking and tragic events with banal and funny ones; and, possibly most important, the ability to create complex and interesting characters with a few brief but strong strokes of the pen and to make them likeable, capricious, weak, rigid, brutal or appalling, often all at once.

This is, of course, the anthology that contains the 30-odd page short story Brokeback Mountain. This has now become the focus of this volume to such an extent that the copy I just bought has more or less been renamed. Now it says ‘Close Range:’ in very small letters, ‘BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN’ in huge ones then ‘and other stories’ right back in the tiny type underneath – and a still from the film is the cover image. I think this is both a good and a bad thing – it hardly seems wrong to publicise the collection based on its overwhelmingly most popular story, and it will be a way into Proulx’ work for many people. It is also a story that’s haunting, almost compulsive, reading and which stays with you for a long time. (I haven’t seen the film yet because a) I wanted to read the story first and b) frankly speaking, [SPOILER] sad stuff in movies makes me sob like a baby [/SPOILER].)

But there is no doubt that this approach does a grave injustice to the other ten stories in the anthology. For a start, Brokeback Mountain is a long way from being typical with its smaller cast of characters and more focused narrative. And, if you read in chronological order and resist the urge to skip, it’s the last one in the collection. To describe it an afterthought would probably be inaccurate, a coda would seem a better term. It has a different texture to the other stories, it feels like an oddity, a polished stone among rough pebbles, maybe. It would be nice to think that if you do have the urge to pick this book up, you might read it thoroughly from the front and not just skip straight to the last 30 pages.

Now, I know I bought a copy of The Shipping News a while back. I can even tell you where and when I bought it, but sadly not where it is at the moment. I wonder what I did with it?

Some links:

• Author’s official homepage
• Wikipedia article
• Blood on the Red Carpet: Proulx on the Oscars
• A reader’s manifesto: criticism of Proulx (Wikipedia article)
• The Advocate: Brokeback Mountain interview
• Bookslut interview
• The Guardian: a Proulx short story
• Story guides: Annie Proulx interview
• Librarything: Annie Proulx

Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin (re-read)

I first read this book many years ago, when I was at university. And I am amazed to find on re-reading it how little impression it managed to make on me then. So much so that I am now wondering whether I ever did actually get around to it, or whether I just put it on my bookshelf where it would look good and give me a nice, warm, cosmopolitan feeling. Recently I’ve had a hunch that I needed to read it again and then to continue on with the series. And so, when it came up on offer on a Bookcrossing book ring, this seemed like the ideal opportunity.

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On first acquaintance, the tale seems as light and sugary as frosted angel cake – possibly the reason why I took such a sprint through it in early-1990-something. Part of this is due to the format. The stories were originally written as a series of newspaper columns which means each episode is remarkably homogenous in its construction: of a similar length; starting with a line to hook the reader and ending on a punchline the rhythm of which soon starts to sound as familiar as the drumroll punctuating an old-time comedian’s jokes. This format, incidentally, also makes the book extremely hard to put down and meant that I read 100 pages straight on the evening I picked it up and the whole thing within 24 hours.

But, to carry on with the angel cake analogy, there’s a lot more going on than just the sugary, fondant-pink top layer. As you read through the volume you realise that each tale, and by extension the lives of the characters that Maupin is writing about, are inextricably linked – by circumstance, coincidence (sometimes shocking and outrageous) and the happenstance of being members of the same almost small-town San Francisco community. Our way into this as readers is through the character of Mary Ann Singleton, newly off the plane from Cleveland, Ohio, where her shocked parents are trying to absorb the news that their little girl has no intention of returning home. As the newcomer and the observer, she’s our passport into the world of the story and as it progresses her role becomes less central, although never less important. Through Mary Ann’s adventures and those of the people she meets, and the people they meet, we learn more and more about the San Franciscan community and also about some fairly fundamental tenets of human nature that would probably apply anywhere in the western world.

The book does feel increasingly like a period piece (I think I was just about born at the time it describes but certainly hadn’t made it further than infant school). For me this contributed hugely to its charm and gave it a real poignancy, given what the world had in store for many of these characters within just a few years. But it is also an unashamed portrait and a celebration of humanity at its best and worst. And the author has an obvious love of wordplay and textual jokes that I found a delight – having characters, for example, called Michael Mouse and Mrs Halcyon Day. I know, I know, I should keep my mouth shut and let you discover these jokes for yourself. But I just can’t resist. And apparently there’s a certain anagram. But maybe the less said about that the better…

Some links:

• Wikipedia: Armistead Maupin
• The author’s official website
• Salon article: Two Men and a Poodle
• Guardian authors: Armistead Maupin
• Literary San Francisco: Armistead Maupin

Not my readers, sadly. No, this is an article from The Guardian in which the reading public is invited to nominate its choice of the year’s best discoveries. Which is a nice spin on the seasonal book list. Here’s the link: Readers’ Digests.

And, just to add value, my list of the best books I read this year (learn more about them via this link):

• Dead Run - PJ Tracy
• The Sixth Lamentation – William Brodrick
• Dead Lagoon – Michael Dibdin
• Death Knock – Frederic Lindsay
• Have Mercy On Us All – Fred Vargas
• Missing – Karin Alvtegen
• Interface – Joe Gores
• Total Recall - Sara Paretsky
• Touching the Void – Joe Simpson
• Holding the Key: my year as a guard in Sing-Sing – Ted Conover
• The Call of the Weird – Louis Theroux
• Untold Stories – Alan Bennett
• V for Vendetta – Alan Moore
• Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• Rule Britannia – Daphne du Maurier
• Interview with the Vampire – Anne Rice
• The King of Elfland’s Daughter – Lord Dunsany
• The Chrysalids – John Wyndham
• The Eagle of the Ninth – Rosemary Sutcliff

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Total Recall and Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky

Sara Paretsky is my new favourite author. I cannot believe I have left it this long to start on her books. Of course, like Robert Rankin, she was one of those authors that I always knew I should be reading. But somehow, maybe for this very reason, I found her daunting. It didn’t help that I tried, a few years ago, to start my Paretsky reading career with Total Recall which I would imagine is anything but a typical book. I was stymied by the wealth of detail in the opening chapters on people I didn’t know anything about and so I put it back on the shelf. Several times it nearly went to the second-hand bookshop, or into the Bookcrossing pile. But something stayed my hand and now I’m thanking my lucky stars it did.

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I started out this time around with Fire Sale, Paretsky’s latest, after it caught my eye in Borders. (Alongside Louis Theroux’ Call of the Weird and Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories - this must have been a record for getting through three for two acquisitions.) I usually hate taking series books out of sequence but this time it has worked. And, indeed, many of the things I really liked about it were born of its position as the latest instalment in a very lengthy narrative. Fire Sale is an extraordinarily rich story, built on the framework of the classic hardboiled detective tale but containing elements of the psychological thriller, of social commentary, of coming-of-age narratives and even of family sagas. It’s got a very densely-drawn and consistent internal world which draws strongly on the series history. This includes previous character development, VI’s network of friends, old acquaintances and colleagues that keep her rooted in the world and allow her to function, and a strong sense of social injustice which is utterly explicable if you scroll down to the links at the bottom of this article and read a couple of the non-fiction pieces the author has published. But it’s also tightly-plotted, psychologically convincing, highly exciting and capable of getting you emotionally involved with its large cast of characters. It’s a long book, which some readers have complained about, but I was completely absorbed in it, and therefore quite happy with that.

It’s also got an incredibly strong authorial voice, which it’s important not to confuse with the voice of Vic Warshawski herself – author and character are, after all, not in any way obliged to be the same person. Paretsky is old enough and experienced enough a writer to know very well what she cares about and it’s all there for the reader to appreciate. It just happens that I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the world view that she (and, by extension, Vic) are expressing however I can see how it might not be to the taste of everyone. And it’s pretty upfront, so if you don’t share her concern for social justice and freedom of speech then you might find this book a little hard to take.

Having more or less inhaled Fire Sale I was immediately rummaging about for more Paretsky to read, which is how Total Recall came back into play. This time, with a bit of context to help me, I had no trouble with it whatsoever. This reminded me strongly of William Brodrick’s The Sixth Lamentation - a book with similar themes – which is so much more than just a mystery story that it probably makes it to the exalted category of actual literature. The story sees the heroine pushed to the limit as she tries to keep her bread-and-butter clients warm while looking into the case of an insurance policy that was cashed in years before the deceased actually died, sort out a problem that is making the life of one of her dearest friends a misery and prepare for her journalist lover to go off on an extended mission to Afghanistan. All these plot elements are handled superbly, coalescing as you would expect into one convincing whole.

VI’s biggest problem in this novel that she seems to rub every one she talks to up the wrong way. Driven and determined, she’s got no time for the soft touch and none for nice words either. It’s a brave move by the author to portray her leading lady in such unsympathetic terms, especially when the lady herself has no idea what she’s doing to put up the backs of everybody she speaks to. And once again the book’s an absorbing, tightly-plotted tale that keeps you turning the pages long after you should have put it aside and gone off to do something else – the kind of book that makes you impatient about reaching your stop on the train. It uses the device of an interspersed narrative from one of the other chapters to help expand the story and the sum of all its disparate parts add up to much more than just your run-of-the-mill genre novel and one that it might take you a little while to get out of your head. Definitely a recommended read. Next on my list is Blacklist - as soon as Christmas is out of the way and I can get to a bookshop to find a copy.

Bibliography (abridged from the author’s website)

Novels:

• Fire Sale, 2006
• Blacklist, 2003
• Total Recall, 2001
• Hard Time, 1998/9
• Tunnel Vision, 1994
• Guardian Angel, 1992
• Burn Marks, 1990
• Blood Shot, 1988
• Bitter Medicine, 1987
• Killing Orders, 1985
• Deadlock, 1984
• Indemnity Only, 1982

Short stories:

• Photo Finish, published exclusively in VI x 2, which includes as well the VI short story Publicity Stunts
• Windy City Blues, A collection of nine V I Warshawski short stories, 1995
• Editor: Women on the Case, Original crime stories by women, Virago, 1996
• Editor: A Woman’s Eye, Original crime stories by women, Virago, 1991
• Dealer’s Choice, The Man Who Loved Life and A Taste of Life, reprinted as a Penguin Sixty, 1995
• Freud at Thirty Paces in 1st Culprit, 1993
• The Great Tetsuji, in 2nd Culprit, 1994

Some links:

• A critical introduction from enotes.com
• Thrilling Detective entry (plus bibliography)
• Sara Paretsky: an interview by Bob Cornwell
• Truth, Lies and Duct Tape: Writing in an Age of Silence – an inspiring talk on freedom of speech given by Sara Paretsky and reproduced on her website
• Guardian article by the author
• Sisters in Crime

Untold Stories – Alan Bennett

This is one of those occasions when I’m not actually sure what I can add to what’s been said already. As an illustration of what I mean here are some of the reviews. The Daily Telegraph said: “This thick book is so full of good things they could sell it for twice the price.”

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And The Times: “I have never read a book of this length where I have turned the last page with such regret.” The Guardian: “My normal reaction, when faced with 600-odd pages of prose to review, is a groan of despair; when it’s Bennett’s prose, it’s ‘goody.’” I particularly liked the statement made by the lady in The Glasgow Herald (and I suspect Mr Bennett might well feel the same): “He can find more drama in a cup of Darjeeling than others could in a household of nymphomaniacs.” It’s a hefty read at nearly 700 pages, and yet you never think it is too long or do anything other than wish you had another 700 pages to go. (I have, after a fashion, as soon as a certain massive online book retailer pulls its corporate finger out of its corporate arsehole and delivers my copy of Writing Home.)

The book is a miscellany of essays, diaries and lecture notes and never failed to keep me interested, amused and entertained. By its very nature some bits were better than others - I thoroughly enjoyed the art section which some readers have claimed to find boring, but it is a subject that interests me anyway. On the other hand, having previously read ‘The Lady In The Van’ in a delightful edition that I’d like to call a ‘Penguin 60′ except for the fact that it wasn’t published by Penguin, I didn’t come away from this book much better-informed on the subject of Miss Shepherd than I was already.Then again, Seeing Stars is an essay about the experience of growing up with 30s and 40s cinema that could not be more tailored to my interests if it had been specially commissioned.

However the best bits were undoubtedly the most personal - marvellous sections of reminiscence and family history which, in the hands of such a skilled writer, take on a whole new tenor and significance as well as their bald value as social history and as an insight into what shaped the outlook of one of our most important contemporary writers. It appears that much of this made it onto paper courtesy of a very nasty health scare - the ‘average rock bun’ of the title was a doctor’s pithy description of a cancerous growth in the author’s bowel - and the feeling that if he didn’t get all this down on paper pretty quickly he may never get the chance. And, as he points out in the introduction, after a “somewhat speculative” unauthorised biography was published in 2001 he was not prepared to let someone else have the last word.

The result should dispense with any notion that Bennett is somehow a ‘dull’ or ‘cosy’ writer - much of what he treats on here is raw, direct, emotional and brutally honest, not least in his description of the painful toll that mental ill-health and dementia has taken on his loved ones - and, by extension, him. From many writers this would make for very difficult reading but here of course it is leavened with such wit, skill and humanity that quite the opposite is true. In the introduction he observes: “There is other stuff in the book which, while I was writing it anyway, I did not expect or want to see published in my lifetime. I had no objection to it being read, I just didn’t want to be in the room at the time… a death sentence, like moving house, meant the tidying had to be done and done quickly: there was a deadline. My earlier misgivings about what I was prepared to see published in my lifetime now seemed almost laughably irrelevant: none of it was likely to be published in my lifetime, so where was the problem?”

And I think that the imposition of this deadline, fortunately for all of us not Mr Bennett’s ultimate one, has produced a brilliant book. If life is too short to read rubbish, rest assured that you won’t be wasting a second here.

The book reviewed by Simon Callow:

The Call of the Weird - Louis Theroux

If, like me, all things weird and wonderful call to you with a siren song then best not to pick up this book while you are busy. I nearly read it through in a sitting, having initially resisted buying it as part of this vain stand against the key decisions in my reading life being governed by what publishers decide to flog on special offers. That, as I now acknowledge, was a mistake. I could have had all this fun at least a month earlier.

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I enjoyed every page-turning minute, but not without a considerable side-order of guilt of a sort that has been dogging me rather a lot recently. The main effect of this past year’s reading challenge has been to make me agonise about the quality of what I read while simultaneously being reassured that the quantity is sufficient. And you have to ask the question. Is this merely another voyeuristic trip through an illusory landscape populated by porn stars, prostitutes, con-men, survivalists, ghastly neo-Nazis and people who believe they have been personally responsible for the deaths of up to ten aliens?

And the answer, surprisingly, is still no. How do you behave when an avowed fascist turns out to be a nice, helpful guy on a personal level and you end up owing him a favour? When you’re the only white man in a club full of armed gangsta rappers and their fans? When you get overly concerned for the welfare of a Vegas working girl who you know full well is manipulating you? How do you have a serious conversation with someone who describes himself as Thor Templar, the Lord Commander of the Earth Protectorate? Especially after you have realised that you, personally, may have been responsible for his near-complete change of identity and disappearance from the Internet thanks to some ill-chosen remarks you made in an interview?

Not dilemmas most of us will have to face very often, which is why it’s a jolly good thing we have Louis to do it for us. It is quite easy to see him as mocking his subjects but I’m not actually convinced that he does (all that much). At least, I’m not convinced its his main purpose. He’s certainly not their best buddy – no journalist ever can be and he has some self-awareness on the subject. But I think the real value of this book is the way he goes in and reveals all the stereotypes listed above as real, complex, contradictory people who are really not all that different from the rest of us. That and how much part of human nature it is to try to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

On picking this up I was intrigued by the parallels between Mr Theroux and the journalist Jon Ronson who is an absolute favourite of mine (and, I still think, the better writer of the two). The blurb for an event plugging his latest book states: “[Jon Ronson] has been writing for years about real eccentrics, not least himself.” And this is the crux of the thing.

Theroux writes like an impartial scientist putting these odd creatures he encounters dispassionately under the microscope. While he might find them engaging on a personal level there’s the constant feeling that he has no real empathy for their strange ways or, worse by a factor of ten, that he might actually be laughing at them. Ronson, on the other hand, appears to be fighting a constant rearguard action to prevent himself from being drawn in. Which makes his work that much more honest and engaging, I think. Not that this is a reason to walk away from this Theroux book, which is just great. I just don’t think he’s claimed the crown for this genre with his debut volume.

Some links:

• Louis’ Wikipedia entry
• Pan MacMillan publicity page
• Times review

Rule Britannia - Daphne du Maurier

“This is the 51st state of the USA,” sang Matt Johnson in 1986 and, in this book, it is. With themes perhaps similar to the author’s famous short story The Birds, the members of a most unusual Cornish household wake up one morning to find that the Yanks have invaded, in the guise of a “friendly takeover” designed to help a Britain reeling from an unexpected withdrawal from the European project. Facing bankruptcy and economic collapse, the ‘coalition government’ feels it has little choice but to accept the American ‘proposal’. And, chillingly, the troops roll in. Many citizens welcome the union between the two countries: the main objectors are in the Celtic fringes of Wales, Scotland – and Cornwall.

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This book, written in 1972, was Daphne du Maurier’s last full-length novel. And I get the feeling that it hasn’t always been all that well-received. Certainly in the new Virago edition of this work Ella Westland, an academic at the University of Exeter specialising in Cornish writing who provides the introduction, appears to almost be apologising for it and I have no idea why. Apparently fans of the author were “bemused” on publication and uncomfortable with the larger-than-life central characters and slightly burlesque tone. Perhaps those people were still labouring under the impression, four decades into her writing career, that du Maurier was an author of romance novels or melodrama. In fact, she is so much more. Those of us that know her as an astoundingly versatile writer who can operate in any genre from historical romance and Gothic horror to science fiction and psychological thrillers, adopting a male or female persona with equal ease, will be prepared for anything. It’s crucial to remember that her plots never look good when written out on the back of a book jacket – but usually work brilliantly between the pages. And one quality of her work that I particularly admire is the way she never shies away from the difficult ending, the thing that is just right for the story but rather refuses to let her characters or readers off the hook easily by going for a kinder but ultimately less satisfying option. Prime examples (and strongly recommended reads) would be The Scapegoat and Frenchman’s Creek.

Rule Britannia, as Westland’s introduction demonstrates with some success, is also interesting for the parallels it has with the author’s life. She was, of course, a lifelong devotee and advocate of Cornwall and the Cornish. This book features a retired grande dame of the stage and the du Mauriers were perhaps the ultimate theatrical family of their era. There’s a slight lack of sensibility regarding racial stereotyping – a Welsh and a black character both fall foul of this. But, that duly noted, it’s a book every bit as much worth reading as her earlier work. I found it a compelling page-turner and a very welcome addition to my collection. It comes strongly recommended – but then I’ve yet to read a novel by this author that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed.

Some links:

• The Daphne du Maurier society
• Somewhat brief Wikipedia entry
• Bibliography
• Virago Press

The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff

Phew. Straight from Marcus Didius Falco’s pre-Olympic adventures, set in AD78 or so, to the tale of a lost legion commander’s son, stationed in gloomy British Isca Dumnoniorum (that’s Exeter to you, mate) round about AD130. And, like the Falco series, this is seriously good writing packaged as something else. That is, if you happen to be narrow-minded enough to think that reading things like genre fiction and children’s fiction are somehow beneath you. There’s another connection apart from the fact that both heroes are called Marcus – Falco’s unlucky regiment, the Second Augusta, appears to have once been stationed at the very fort that the 18-year-old Marcus Flavius Aquila is busy defending at the start of this story. It’s a small world, that of Romano-British fiction, innit? Anyway, I digress. On to the book.

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It’s a remarkable book, actually; another one that leaves you struggling to understand how it got classified as exclusively children’s literature in the first place. Most distinctive is the visual, descriptive style of the writing with a powerful emphasis on colour. Rosemary Sutcliff was an artist, a painter of miniatures, as well as a novelist and this quality in her writing is usually ascribed to her being an artist. As well as the visual nature of her writing there is a powerful sense of place and a very well-crafted, absorbing story with an incredible depth of character and a marvellous exploration of the relationship between the protagonists – an injured soldier who will never march with the legions again and a captive British slave who’s got himself sent to the arena. The plot is very nicely judged – a long, slow build-up through the first half and then a race to the finish that’s fraught with suspense. Sutcliffe has the ability to bring history to life in a way that not many authors can boast. This is excellent stuff and it’s helped along nicely by the fact that much of the story takes place in Calleva Atrebatum, the Roman city of not-quite-Reading (well, Silchester, if you want to be strictly accurate). I’ve attended several digs, sat through many lectures and peered at mosaics and other artefacts in Reading Museum in the service of learning more about this fascinating settlement and have walked round the walls many times – so it was pleasingly easy to visualise these sections of the book.

But I have a confession. I chose not to read the last chapter, so ten pages of this book remain uncompleted. The reason? I’m very glad I picked it up – but I felt I could see the way the story was going to be tied up – it was fairly well-telegraphed – and I hated it. I found it so contrived and unconvincing in comparison with the rest of the tale that I preferred not to spoil my enjoyment by reading it. I chose to let the story lie where I felt it finished, with the fate of the lost Eagle resolved. Since I am free to apply my own rules to the 50 Book Challenge I intend to think about the 206 pages I did read, and not the 10 I didn’t, and count it towards the total. This comes strongly recommended whether or not you feel you’d choose to do the same as me. Whether this means I don’t read the rest of the series is something I shall now have to think about.

Some links:

• Rosemary Sutcliff’s Wikipedia entry
• Eagle of the Ninth Wikipedia entry
• About Roman Exeter
• Sutcliff fanblog with onward links

The Chrysalids - John Wyndham

This is the second John Wyndham I’ve read this month – after a gap of some 20 years – and it has completely vindicated my decision to pick up his work again. And this particular book is startlingly relevant, dealing as it does with a post-Apocalyptic society desperate to preserve its norms and values and classing anything that doesn’t measure up to the ideal (the Image of God) as a Deviant, an Offence or (in the case of humans) a Blasphemy. It is what we now know as a dark future novel where environmental catastrophe is a reality and ‘deviants’ are sterilised to stop them polluting the gene pool before being left to take their chances in the Fringes, land that is still powerfully affected by radioactive fallout, where nothing breeds true. Religious mania abounds and women are forced to wear a cross sewn to the front of their dresses to spare them from the shame of breeding a ‘mutant’. It was impossible to read this and not see powerful parallels with sections of contemporary American society.

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This is a rare combination of things – a deeply intelligent and intellectually-satisfying read combined with a believable world and an exciting story. I can’t express myself better than by quoting the introduction to the Penguin Modern Classics edition that I read:

In 1953 a new social class was emerging in Great Britain. Increased funding for higher education had encouraged a stream of working- and lower-middle-class adolescents into the redbrick universities. In a country where education was still considered a privilege, they went to another town for three years, and were maintained there by public funds, and compelled into an exchange of ideas; and when they came back they were irrevocably changed. They had more in common with each other than with their parents. Their career expectations were raised. Their social expectations were raised. They had politics, they had sex: they were in possession of new languages. They ate different kinds of food. They knew more. Their parents were horrified: the umbilical cord had been cut again, this time by what seemed like sorcery. Would parental values now mean nothing in the face of book learning? Not if they had anything to do with it. Cultural confrontation was inevitable. The Generation Gap – which would widen within ten years into outright rebellion – was opening up. If the educated young were beginning to feel like strangers in their own homes, their elders were beginning to see them as dangerous, out of control: deviant.

Perhaps the fact that this is so uncannily like my own experience of being the first member of a large, and largely working-class, family to get to university more than 30 years after the book was written is part of the reason why it speaks to me so strongly. And we are undoubtedly now, more than 50 years after The Chrysalids was published, in an age where cultural confrontation is a defining characteristic. On the other hand, it might just be that it is a very good book. It’s well-written and full of acerbic wit; scary, affecting and unsettling by turns. If I have one criticism of the writing it is that the telepathic characters do speak rather too much like a group of undergraduates sitting round in a common room at Cambridge in the 1950s. But, in a book that manages to be very largely timeless, this is a tiny niggle. I would strongly recommend reading this – and at less than 200 pages you’ll get plenty of reward for the effort you are asked to expend.

Some links:

• SciFi.com review
• The book’s Wikipedia entry
• Amazon reader reviews

The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany

It’s taken me a long time to get around to reading this book and quite a while to get through its slim 240-odd pages. I found it in a second-hand bookshop that is a particular favourite of mine, The Book Bug in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. It was sitting on a shelf with another book by the same author, called At the Edge of the World, both in very attractive old paperback editions, and something told me that I ought to buy them. I have a lot of faith in my own first impressions, of things and people, so I did.

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Then I spent a lot of time putting off reading them. I’m not sure why but that first rush of enthusiasm just couldn’t carry me through to actually starting either book. Partly is was a huge backlog of books bought and not read, partly my recent library-joining decision, which has hurled a huge wild card into this reading challenge business. The King of Elfland’s Daughter sat on the to-read list for months, alongside a particularly doorstoppy Grisham, until I decided to shame myself into tackling both of them by taking them on a walking holiday. My reasoning being, that if I was going to carry them in a rucksack for 60 miles along the south Devon coastline, then I would damn well have to read them.

It worked to a point. There was this Sue Grafton, A is for Alibi, which I couldn’t put down and which I ended up taking even though I was more than halfway through it (a very bad use of resources). It was posted back home from Salcombe, in the event. The Grisham wasn’t quite the draw I was expecting and took a good while to get through. Which means I’d more or less saved the Dunsany for the train journey home. But that was enough to get me started and convince me that I wanted to read it – and it is, as I said earlier, a nice slim little volume which weighed exactly 150 grams.

And so to the book itself. It’s a charming read, although not an easy one. I can see why it’s compared with Tolkien and I would say that, although quite different, it is possible to appreciate why people who like Tolkien would like this. The dreaming, immortal quality of the elves is very familiar, and some of the most endearing trolls in the history of fantasy fiction make an appearance. Not much in common with Hobbits but somehow I was reminded - perhaps the facility for coming up with charming and convincing otherwordly species? The prose is dense and poetic and highly visual – and needs a lot of concentration to take in. The story is quite spare – in one sense there is little unnecessary detail. There is an overarching plot, to do with a vain wish of the elders of Erl to have a magic lord:

The old lord sent word to his eldest son, bidding him to come before him.
And very soon the young man stood before him; in the same carven chair from which he had not moved; where light, growing late, from high windows, showed the aged eyes looking far into the future beyond that old lord’s time. And seated there he gave his son his commandment.
“Go forth,” he said, “before these days of mine are over, and therefore go in haste, and go from here eastwards and pass the fields we know, till you see the lands that clearly pertain to faery; and cross their boundary, which is made of twilight, and come to that palace that is only told of in song.”
“Is it far from here,” said the young man Alveric.
“Yes,” answered he, “It is far.”
“And further still,” the young man said, “to return. For distances in those fields are not as here.”
“Even so,” said his father.
“What do you bid me do,” said the son, “when I come to that palace?”
And his father said: “To wed the King of Elfland’s Daughter.”
The young man thought of her beauty and crown of ice, and sweetness, that fabulous runes had told were hers. Songs were sung of her on wild hills where tiny strawberries grew, at dusk and by early starlight, and if one sought the singer no man was there. Sometimes only her name was sung softly over and over. Her name was Lirazel.
She was a princess of the magic line. The gods had sent their shadows to her christening, and the fairies too would have gone, but that they were frightened to see on their dewy fields the long dark moving shadows of the gods, so they stayed hidden in crowds of pale pink anemones and thence blessed Lirazel.
“My people have demanded a magic lord to rule over them. They have chosen foolishly,” the old lord said, “and only the Dark Ones who show not their faces know all that this will bring: but we, who see not, follow the ancient custom and do what our people in their parliament say. It may be some spirit of wisdom they have not known will save them yet. Go then with your face turned forth to that light that beats from fairyland and that faintly illumes the dusk between sunset and early stars, and this shall guide you till you come to the frontier and have passed the fields we know.”

It would be fair to say, and not in any sense either a surprise or a spoiler, that the moral of this tale is “be careful what you wish for.” While the overarching plot is addressed in the occasional chapter along the way, the actual text of the novel is extremely episodic, almost picaresque in some senses (this is what comes of trying to read *anything* alongside Don Quixote). I’m not a great consumer of fantasy although it’s something I do enjoy reading occasionally. I found this one delightful, inspiring in its unique voice and challenging – in other words, well worth reading, and recommended. After a decent break I’ll definitely be moving on to the second of the two paperbacks I picked up in that bookshop.

Dunsany links:

• Infinity Plus review
• Powells.com: synopsis and review
• SF Site review
• Wikipedia entry