Book 12 – I Capture The Castle

By Dodie Smith

I had only recently heard about this underrated coming-of-age classic by the same writer who wrote The 101 Dalmatians. So captured was I by the irresistible premise that I requested it last Christmas (thanks M&A). In pre-WWII England, a family moves into a castle nestled in the countryside, the patriarch hoping that the isolated setting will inspire him to write a successor to his brilliant debut novel, Jacob Wrestling. Twelve years later, the castle is crumbling and the family has no means of income because the only breadwinner has had writer’s block the entire time. The family has become so desperately poor that they only have stale bread and tea for dinner.

Seventeen year old Cassandra starts a journal as an attempt to “capture” her thoughts and chronicle the daily lives of her rather eccentric family, which consists of her father James Mortmain, stepmother Topaz, older sister Rose, younger brother Thomas and pseudo stepbrother Stephen, the son of a deceased servant who has become a member of the household. Cassandra also serves as the narrator, as we see everything from her perspective as she writes her journal entries. There are many lovely passages, such as Cassandra’s memories of her family discovering the castle for the first time and descriptions of favourite nooks where she likes to write, such as sitting at the sink by the kitchen window or climbing up one of the castle towers to seek more privacy. But there are also detailed accounts about their near destitute lifestyle.

Our room is spacious and remarkably empty. With the exception of the four-poster, which is in very bad condition, all the good furniture has gradually been sold and replaced by minimum requirements bought in junk-shops. Thus we have a wardrobe without a door and a bamboo dressing-table which I take to be a rare piece. I keep my bedside candlestick on a battered tin trunk that cost one shilling; Rose has hers on a chest of drawers painted to imitate marble, but looking more like bacon.

One rainy night, something unexpected happens which will forever change the lives of the Mortmain family. Two American brothers show up at their doorstep, their car stuck in mud. It turns out they are the sons of the landlord who had recently passed away. The older brother Simon is to inherit the land, which includes Scoatney Hall and the castle grounds, and he soon becomes smitten with Rose. Their initial meeting is awkward and plays very much like a Jane Austen novel, with the Mortmains modeled after the Bennet family and the Brothers Cotton that of Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy as the potential suitors. The analogy is not lost on Rose and our narrator:

“Did you think anything when Miss Marcy said Scoatney Hall was being re-opened? I thought of the beginning of Pride and Prejudice – where Mrs. Bennet says ‘Netherfield Park is let at last.’ And then Mr. Bennet goes over to call on the rich new owner.”
“Mr. Bennet didn’t owe him any rent,” I said.
“Father wouldn’t go anyway. How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!”
I said I’d rather be in a Charlotte Brontë.
“Which would be nicest – Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane?”
This is the kind of discussion I like very much but I wanted to get on with my journal so I just said: “Fifty per cent each way would be perfect,” and started to write determinedly.

Indeed, the novel makes a number of literary references to Austen as well as other classics of that ilk. And it doesn’t take long for all the Mortmain women to use various stratagems to put Rose and Simon together, with Rose convincing herself that she is in love with him, even though she is not.

Rose’s ethics are questionable at first glance, but after seeing the extent of their poverty vis-à-vis Cassandra, you also understand Rose’s motive for wanting to marry a rich American. She feels a certain level responsibility as the eldest to look after the family since the father appears to have relinquished his role as head of the household. Topaz, a former artists’ muse and moonlit nudist, is torn between being a free spirit and a devoted wife but the Mortmain children find her to be a kind and generous stepmother. Interestingly, the main female characters are well drawn out, but the male characters are rather two dimensional. Mr Mortmain is the distant, self-absorbed genius/father/husband, Stephen is the simple but wise country boy with a heart of gold and the brothers Cotton are primarily there to serve as love interests for Cassandra and Rose.

I Capture the Castle was originally published in 1949, but the story is set in 1930’s England. Although it plays like a contemporary update of a Jane Austen novel, it’s more like a very early precursor to a Judy Blume coming of age story. The narrator Cassandra is seventeen years old, but I don’t know if this novel was aimed at young adults when it came out in the 1940’s because some of the themes are quite mature and adult, with a very non-romantic (hence realistic) take on relationships and love. There are suspicions of adultery, a Graduate-like scenario where a shrewd, older woman from London seduces the younger, but not completely naïve Stephen, and then there is Rose eventually bailing on her fiancé to run away with his brother.

Only one out of at least three potential romantic matches work out, and the running theme seems to be that the few who do find love are the lucky ones, while most everyone else ends up loveless, with unrequited love or stuck with ones whom they don’t love.

Despite the sadness and disappointment of our narrator not finding love, this is still a lovely, lovely book. There is a blurb on the cover from JK Rowling stating that this novel has the most charismatic narrator, and she is right about that. Even though Cassandra does not find love, she does learn to love herself and find contentment in solitude.

Once I got used to the idea of being by myself for so long I positively liked it. I always enjoy the different feeling there is in a house when one is alone in it, and the thought of that feeling stretching ahead for two whole days somehow intensified it wonderfully. The castle seemed to be mine in a way it never had been before; the day seemed specially to belong to me; I even had a feeling that I owned myself more than I usually do. I became very conscious of all my movements – if I raised my arm I looked at it wonderingly, thinking, “That is mine!” And I took pleasure in moving, both in the physical effort and in the touch of the air – it was most queer how the air did seem to touch me, even when it was absolutely still. All day long I had a sense of great ease and spaciousness. And my happiness had a strange, remembered quality as though I had lived before. Oh, how can I recapture – that utterly right, homecoming sense of recognition? It seems to me now that the whole day was like an avenue leading to a home I had loved once but forgotten, the memory of which was coming back so dimly, so gradually, as I wandered along, that only when my home at last lay before me did I cry: “Now I know why I have been happy!”

There was a film adaptation from 2003, which was a bit meh. You could say that the movie captured the setting quite well, but the cast didn’t quite capture the spirit of Dodie Smith’s book.

Book 11 – H.M.S. Surprise

By Patrick O’Brian It’s been almost two years since I returned to the most popular 50-Booker series since, if you recall, I was somewhat disappointed in Post Captain. I was spurred back on the horse (or more appropriately, ship) when Olman asked if I had a copy of the third Aubrey-Maturin book since a few Ramblekrafters were at the developmental stage for their upcoming Beat To Quarters game. And there was no way I was going to let Olman read the next installment before me! Good thing I distracted him with a sweet Hornblower hardback ;-) HMS Surprise proved to be a significant improvement over Post Captain in terms of structure, plot and engagability, though it shared similarities in lots of dramatic exposition and character development for the bulk of the novel, leaving the exciting battle between the East India Company’s China Fleet and a French squadron (with the HMS Surprise caught in between!) towards the end. At the beginning of the story, Stephen’s cover in Spain gets blown due to an inept person in a high political position. As a result, Stephen is caught and tortured by the French and then subsequently rescued by Jack. What's more, the Polychrest crew lose out on their prize money ( the capture of the Spanish gold ships at the end of Post Captain) due to some legal loophole so Jack can’t pay off his debts and marry Sophia. But thanks to Stephen’s fortuitous connection to Sir Joseph, some reward money is acquired for Jack so he is rescued from the sponging house and given a new post on the HMS Surprise, the very ship in which Jack spent his youth as a midshipman . The newly crewed HMS Surprise makes sail for the East Indies with the task of delivering a rather delicate and seasick-prone British envoy to the Sultan of Kampong. Along the way, the HMS Surprise languishes in the doldroms, suffers from mild scurvy, consumes a fair amount of rats, picks up some citrus fruit in Brazil (as well as a three-toed sloth – “the most affectionate, discriminating sloth you can imagine!” according to Stephen), encounters a devastating storm around the Cape of Good Hope, and stops in India to refit. Of course, while in Calcutta, Stephen schemes to meet his old flame Diana Villiers, now mistress to the uber-wealthy merchant Canning. It doesn’t end there. Lots of juicy things happen which I’d rather not summarize, so you’ll just have to read this installment for yourself and see. It’s interesting to note that the film adaptation Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World incorporates a few minor events from this book, such as J.A.'s initials carved in the top masthead of the HMS Surprise and Stephen’s DIY operation as he removes a bullet lodged in his own rib. And the final battle at the end was worth it too. Perhaps I’m getting better at comprehending O’Brian’s writing, or O’Brian’s writing has improved in clarity, but this was the first time I could clearly follow the bl0w-by-blow account of the HMS Surprise’s run-in with the formidable French squadron, not to mention Captain Aubrey’s risky collaboration with the merchant ships of the East India Company’s China Fleet to deceive the aged yet cunning Admiral Linois. And it was pretty damn exciting and well worth waiting for! It took an effort not to describe any of it -- so much better to just read it for yourself, but I will say that it was another capital game of naval subterfuge. As usual, there are many humourous and lighthearted gems scattered throughout the book. He came forward, showing his open hands, and said again, ‘Captain Melbury?’ ‘Who are you, sir?’ asked Jack. ‘Joan Maragall, sir,’ he whispered in the clipped English of the Minorcans, very like that of Gibraltar. ‘I come from Esteban Domanova. He says, Sophia, Mapes, Guarnerius.’ Melbury Lodge was the house they had shared; Stephen’s full name was Maturin y Domanova; no one else on earth knew that Jack had once nearly bought a Guarnerius. He un-cocked his pistol and thrust it back. ‘Bonden,’ cried Stephen, ‘take pen and ink, and write – ‘ ‘Write, sir?’ cried Bonden. ‘Yes. Sit square to your paper, and write: Landsdowne Crescent – Barret Bonden, are you brought by the lee?’ ‘Why, yes, sir; that I am – fair broached-to. Though I can read pretty quick, if in broad print; I can make out a watch-bill.’ ‘Never mind. I shall show you the way of it when we are at sea, however: it is no great matter – look at the fools who write all day long – but it is useful, by land…’ Jack stepped on to the western rail and looked down into the water… ‘Come on, then,’ he said, diving in. The sea was warmer than the air, but there was refreshment in the rush of bubbles along his skin, the water tearing through his hair, the clean salt taste in his mouth. Looking up he saw the silvery undersurface, the Surprise’s hull hanging down through it and the clean copper near her water-line reflecting an extraordinary violet into the sea: then a white explosion as Stephen shattered the mirror, plunging bottom foremost from the gangway, twenty feet above. His impetus bore him down and down, and Jack noticed that he was holding his nose: he was holding it still when he came to the surface, but then relinquished it to strike out in his usual way – short, cataleptic jerks, with his eyes tightly shut and his mouth clenched in savage determination. Babbington looked wretchedly from one to the other, licked his lips and said, ‘I ate your rat, sir. I am very sorry, and I ask your pardon.’ ‘Did you so?’ said Stephen mildly. ‘Well, I hope you enjoyed it. Listen, Jack, will you look at my list, now?’ ‘He only ate it when it was dead,’ said Jack. ‘It would have been a strangely hasty, agitated meal, had he ate it before,’ said Stephen… Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth, and cried, ‘Jack, you have debauched my sloth.’ [Stephen] ‘… You must write that letter, Jack; for you are to consider, Sophie is the beauty of the world; whereas although you are tolerably well-looking in your honest tarpaulin way, you are rather old and likely to grow older; too fat, and likely to grow even fatter – nay, obese.’ Jack looked at his belly and shook his head. ‘Horribly knocked about, earless, scarred: brother, you are no Adonis. Do not be wounded,’ he said, laying his hand on Aubrey’s knee, ‘when I say you are no Adonis.’ [Diana] ‘But it was kind of him to send his compliments, his best compliments, to a fallen woman.’ [Stephen] ‘What stuff you talk, Villiers,’ he said. [Diana] ‘I have fallen pretty low for an odious little reptile like that Perkins to take such liberties. Christ, Maturin, this is a vile life. I never go out without the danger of an affront: and I am alone, cooped up in this foul place all the time. There are only half a dozen women who receive me willingly; and four of them are demireps and the others charitable fools – such company I keep! And the other women I meet, particularly those I knew in India before – oh, how they know how to place their darts!... [Jack] ‘… A most capital dinner, upon my word. The duck was the best I ever tasted.’ [Stephen] ‘I was sorry to see you help yourself to him a forth time: duck is a melancholy meat. In any case the rich sauce in which it bathed was not at all the thing for a subject of your corpulence.'

Book 10 – The City, Not Long After

By Pat Murphy

This pristine 1989 hardcover has been with me since I first bought it as a teenager. I went through a fantasy/sci-fi period back then, and Pat Murphy was one of my favourite writers. Although labeled a fantasy writer, her stories tend to be grounded in contemporary reality (kind of like Charles de Lint without the faeries and goblins).

Murphy also did double-duty as staff writer at the San Francisco Exploratorium, so her urban fantasies usually involved science and art. At the time, I had already read her Nebula award-winning novella “Rachel In Love”, about a human girl trapped in a lab chimpanzee’s body and The Falling Woman, about an archaeologist’s encounter with an ancient Mayan goddess.

When The City, Not Long After came out, I remember the premise really intrigued me, as it would be my very first introduction to PA fiction. The idea of a desolate post-apocalyptic San Francisco inhabited by a motley group of artists and weirdos appealed to my youthful romantic sensibilities. Now more than 20 years later, I thought it'd be a good time for a revisit.

At first, my older cynical self was suspicious: how could a disparate group of survivors just take over an abandoned city and live peacefully among themselves? But soon enough, I was able to immerse myself in the author’s world, which was starting to make some sense, at least in the realm of magic realism. I had forgotten also that the novel was aimed at young adults. There was some sex, violence and swearing, but it was all quite PG. The themes and social commentary were also fairly simplistic (make art, not war!), but not too annoyingly so, as Murphy is a pretty good writer.

The plot is straightforward: fifteen years before, a plague devastated human civilisation, and small pockets of survivors live in scattered groups. In San Francisco, artists and misfits have taken over, since they're the kind of people who don't mind ghosts of the past haunting the empty streets. However, the peaceful existence of this rag-tag community does not last. A rural army led by a fascistic dictator nicknamed Fourstar threatens to invade the city and impose a new world order. Here the symbolism of a rural dystopia invading an urban utopia is pretty cut and dry. The protagonist is a young nameless woman whose mother was taken by Fourstar’s soldiers, who then escapes to SF to warn the inhabitants about Fourstar’s militaristic plans. While there, she explores the streets and abandoned buildings (described in vivid detail by the author who obviously knows the city well), learns how to become friends with eccentric oddballs, names herself Jax and finds love in the form of paint-can wielding Danny-boy.

[Note some SPOILERS coming up]

The climax is pretty cool. The artists may be wacky, but they aren’t stupid, so they band together and wage a war of resistance against the invading army, made up of uneducated farmers who have been trained in traditional warfare, yet are ill-prepared for non-violent guerilla tactics. Guess it’s rather fitting that this takes place in San Francisco. Radical warfare, man!

Every artist has a speciality which comes to play. Sculptors and gardeners set up creative barricades of religious statues, wrought iron and poison oak. An audio engineer rigs gigantic speakers to blast mind-numbing noise while the soldiers try to sleep. A mechanically gifted autistic called The Machine flies around in his gyrocopter dropping smoke bombs to confuse the army.

----- Spoilers end here -----

As PA fiction goes, the novel has some interesting ideas, though these ideas don’t get explored to their full potential. The ending was fairly ambiguous, never really answering whether non-violent resistance can be achieved in a post-apocalyptic milieu, and the finale also resolved itself too easily and idealistically for my cynical taste. But as PA fiction with a magic realist spin for young adults, it had some good drama and action, making for a fairly enjoyable read. I can see why I got into this in my youth.

It's interesting to note the recent crop of young adult post-apocalyptic (YA PA) fiction, such as The Hunger Games and Enclave (Razorland) series, which seem pumped full of action and violence. Pat Murphy's novel may probably seem quite tame and subtlely nuanced in comparison, so I'd have to check out these trendy new PA YA books to find out!

Book 9 – Barney’s Version

By Mordecai Richler

Boy, am I glad I read this book before watching the movie, which was released last year, as the book was such a rich read. Also glad that I’d already read The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz because the titular character makes a few appearances in Barney’s Version, as well as Jerry Dingleman a.k.a. The Boy Wonder, night club owner and loan shark. Barney and Duddy inhabit the same fictional universe, yet are grounded in a very real Montreal of yesteryear that Richler knows intimately.

But it wouldn’t be a Richler book without its share of bitterness as well. Barney is a difficult, irascible individual who drinks a lot of 18 year old Macallan, and you betcha that there ain't more than a little Richler in the aging Barney Panofsky, who looks back at his life with much regret, speaks his mind and then some as he writes his memoirs.

Perhaps I should not have poked around on the internet before buckling down to post my thoughts about Richler's last novel (Barney’s Version was published in 1997 and Richler died in 2001), but this Yale review and this blog do a fairly damn good job and they also pretty much summed up how I felt.

What was also awesome was that I acquired this nice trade paperback copy of Barney’s Version from the giveaway bookshelf at work, as I would probably have read this much later, and probably after I had already watched the film, which is supposed to be ok. But I can imagine that the movie would gloss over many fine details. Film adaptations are fine when a novel has a good story yet sub-par writing. Part of the pleasure of reading is enjoying good writing, and Richler’s voice really comes through as Barney Panofsky. There are lots of criticism and poking fun of Quebec and Canadian culture, as well as self-indulgent artists and bourgeois Jews. Some samples:

We are dealing with a two-headed beast: our provincial premier, a.k.a. The Weasel, and his minions in Quebec City, and Dollard Redux, the fulminating leader of the Bloc Quebécous in Ottawa. Dollard Redux has lit a fire here. Soon the only English-speaking people left in Montreal will be the old, the infirm, and the poor. All that’s flourishing now are FOR SALE / À VENDRE signs, sprouting up every day like out-of-season daffodils on front lawns, and there are stores with TO LET / À LOUER signs everywhere on once fashionable streets. In the watering-hole I favour, on Crescent Street, there is a wake at least once a month for the latest regular who has had his fill of tribalism and is moving to Toronto or Vancouver. Or, God help them, Saskatoon, “a good place to bring up children.”

---

Self-satisfied Toronto is not a city I’ve ever warmed up to. It’s this country’s counting house. But plunging into the rush-hour din on Avenue Road that warm evening in early May, a spring in my step, I was in a forgiving happy-to-be-alive mood…. Such was my rapture that I guess I smiled too broadly at the young mother coming toward us, wheeling a toddler in a stroller, because in response she frowned and quickened her pace…

---

As for me, following my retreat from Paris and the artistic wankers I had wasted my time with there, I resolved to make a fresh start in life. What was it Clara had once said? “When you go home, it will be to make money, which is inevitable, given your character, and you’ll marry a nice Jewish girl, somebody who shops…” Well, I’ll satisfy her ghost, I thought. From now on, it was going to be the bourgeois life for Barney Panofsky. Country club. Cartoon scissored out of The New Yorker pasted up on my bathroom walls. Time magazine subscription. American Express card. Synagogue membership. Attaché case with combination lock. Et cetera et cetera.

Another pleasure derived as a Montrealer living in the same hood where Richler grew up is reading about Richler waxing remembrances of his old stomping grounds.

In those days Saul was no longer living at home, in the house I had acquired in Westmount after Michael was born, but was rooted in a commune, largely composed of middle-class Jewish kids, in a cold-water flat on St. Urbain Street, right in my old neighbourhood. I wander down there occasionally in unavailing quest of familiar faces and old landmarks. But, like me, the boys I grew up with moved on long ago: those who prospered to Westmount, or Hampstead, and the ones who are still struggling to the nondescript suburbs of Côte St-Luc, Snowdon, or Ville St-Laurent. These streets now teem with Italian, Greek, or Portuguese kids, their parents as out of breath as ours once were, juggling overdue household bills. Signs of the times. The shoeshine parlour where I used to take my father’s fedoras to be blocked has been displaced by a unisex hair stylist. The Regent Theatre, where I could once catch a double feature for thirty-five cents, and enjoy three hours of uninterrupted necking with the notorious Goldie Hirschorn, is boarded up. The lending library where I took out books (Forever Amber; Farewell, My Lovely; King’s Row; The Razor Edge) for three cents a day no longer exists. Mr. Katz’s Supreme Kosher Meat Mart has yielded to a video-rental outlet: ADULT MOVIES OUR SPECIALTY. My old neighbourhood now also boasts a New Age bookstore, a vegetarian restaurant, a shop that deals in holistic medicines, and Buddhist temple of sorts, all of which cater to the needs of Saul and his bunch and others like them.

What can I tell ya, except if you’re planning to watch the movie, do try to read the book first!

Book 8 - Murder, Incest & Cat Food Sandwiches: Collected Confessions from Notproud.com

By Scott Huot and GW Brazier

A book giveaway shelf was setup at our workplace, and I actually found a couple of books that were worth taking: a like-new copy of Catch-22, as well as a trade paperback of Barney’s Version, which I’m currently reading. Another good find was Murder, Incest and Cat Food Sandwiches, a selection of the “best” confessions from Notproud.com.

Launched in 2000, the website was organized according to the seven deadly sins. You could either make an anonymous confession according to sin category or simply “eavesdrop” on the thousands upon thousands of confessions, which range from harmless and hilarious to downright pathetic and debased. As the title promises, there is a murder (accidental), more than a couple of incestuous admissions, and an act of sweet revenge where a victim got tired of finding his lunch stolen from the shared fridge at work. So guess what kind of sandwich he made one day in order to get even?

Sadly, notproud.com is no longer operational, and the book is out of print. It was such a great idea. I remember being addicted to the website for the longest time, trying to keep it down to a few confessions a day (reading, not making, mind you). Yes, my addiction was based on a bit of that good ol’ schadenfraude and the reassurance in knowing there were many people out there who were way more pathetic than yours truly.

For instance, I remember a girl who confessed to being so lazy, she’d throw her dishes in the trash instead of cleaning them. Damn, and I thought I was lazy! The site comprised such an incredible range of human emotion, yet the book represented only a fraction of these confessions. The slim, minimally-designed book features only one confession per page with a total of over 200 pithy confessions makes for an all too quick read. The pamphlet-like feel of the book also makes it seem like a disposable item of amusement. It is truly a sin that the website is not maintained as an active archive of human frailty and fallibility.

Book 7 – Open & Clothed: For the Passionate Clothes Lover

By Andrea Siegel

In high school, I admired and envied my best friend’s eclectic wardrobe and the ease with which she wore her clothes. Her mom was an interior designer who always had Vogue and other fashion rags around the house. My friend and her mom would visit sample sales and church rummage sales and find the most amazing clothes and jewelry. Sometimes they’d invite me along and that was how I first learned to develop a sartorial eye, though it took many years for me to find my own style.

It didn't come easy for me. There were much in the way of trial and error and embarrassing mistakes. But it was due to the fact that I had made an attempt to explore. It wasn't to emulate what I saw in magazines, or to find a social niche in going goth or punk, but to simply explore what appealed to me. And if it were not for my friend and her cool mom, my wardrobe would probably be pretty safe and boring. Eventually, I figured out what my own tastes were and what was right for me rather than what was dictated by fashion trends. And though I actually don’t like to shop very much, I enjoy clothes without being burdened with too much clothing anxiety (though as a woman it’s not always possible to be completely free of it).

Andrea Siegel always loved clothes. But she always felt that something wasn’t clicking. When she wrote about her history with clothes, I totally understood where she was coming from:

When I leafed through a fashion magazine, viewed mannequins in a shop window, or glanced at a beautifully dressed woman on the street, I could see how each outfit was assembled. However, I didn’t understand that I brought complicating factors to the equation, that my unique face, body, proportions, preferences, and history mattered. Because of my confusion about clothing, I spent attention, time, and money inefficiently.

I investigated the relationship between wardrobe and the big picture—how cultural constructs about sexuality, frivolity, family, death, fashion, and appropriateness influence clothing choice. By then using all my senses, not just sight, to discover what is beautiful to me, by broadening my appreciation to include all that has been considered beautiful, I discovered my place in the dance, the distinctive qualities that make me feel beautiful.

Many of the things that Open and Clothed teaches is already common sense for the savvy shopper, ie. how fashion is cyclical, how the industry is exploitative, where to find bargains as it’s not all about buying retail. But it still has a lot of relevant things to say with plenty of pointed remarks and well-known adages such as:

When a woman who loves shoes finds a shoe that is beautiful to her as well as comfortable, something akin to rapture occurs.

[sigh] How true!

Even though this book was published in 1999, some things ring true more than ever:

The “individuality” and “statement” clothing, advertised by the industry, has a mass-produced extreme look. Not only does it lack uniqueness—thousands of pieces are made in each size—it also often looks remarkably unflattering. The clothes are meant to attract negative attention rather than enhancing the attractiveness of the wearer.

Maybe it’s because I’m older now and less tolerant of the latest fashion trends, but for the past several years or so, either clothes have gotten cheaper and uglier or I’m just having trouble finding clothes that are flattering or of decent quality. Anyway. It was still a lovely treat reading this book. And Siegel covers a lot of ground. It isn’t just frivolity that she's concerned about:

We who care passionately about clothes owe it ourselves to be educated about the numbers involved, to know who gets exploited and why. The fashion industry’s primary purpose is making money. We often forget this.

I also liked reading about what initially inspired the author to write this book. When she was in college in the early 80s, she always noticed how her Italian professor, “a kindly elegant gentleman of perhaps fifty”, was always beautifully dressed. His style was never ostentatious, just simple and pleasant to the eye, the material of good quality and cut, so his clothes always fit him perfectly. One day she boldly asked him what was up with that, and he gave a very serious and thoughtful response. In a nutshell, having lived through WW2, he saw terrible and unmentionable things. Though he likes to dress well for himself, he also feels a responsibility to look nice for other people.

I want to do a small kindness. It is important to bring harmony and beauty back to this troubled world. I do not feel I am the most beautiful person on earth, but rather that it was important to me to give in this way, to know that I am making a contribution.

She felt her old professor was on to something. Much like the famous Emerson quote: “The sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.” But how does one achieve this sartorial karma? The book does explore at length the mantra: “Clothes must fit you, they must fit the occasion, and they must fit together.” Indeed, Siegel has little tolerance for those who dress sloppily or inappropriately because they either don’t care about appearances or think they are making a statement. She argues these stances have "everything to do with reacting against good taste and seeking to offend rather than finding what’s true for oneself." She goes on to say:

It’s important to dress in a way that respects our fundamental needs and desires, but denying our participation in a social context is dishonest. When we don’t own up to this social influence, it will operate on us rather than our having control of it.

This sounds very similar to the philosophy of Stacy and Clinton of the hit TLC show What Not To Wear (which I love to watch, btw). But unlike WNTW, which encourages you to spend thousands of dollars on a new wardrobe, Open & Clothed teaches the anxious shopper to exercise caution and restraint:

Often people who love to shop are, paradoxically, the ones who don’t feel satisfied with the results. Do you take unmet emotional needs shopping? Next time they cry out to go shopping, meet a need instead. Or if you feel an overpowering urge to shop, stop for a moment, take a breath, and figure out where you can be alone and not shop — the woods? An art museum? … Walk around or meditate.

She goes on to say: “You’re going to make mistakes. The idea of unerring judgment is a prison. As you practice, your mistakes will diminish… The only danger of making mistakes is spending way beyond what you can afford on something you cannot or will not return. A little soul-searching is in order to prevent reoccurrence.”

One thing I didn’t like about this book was the format. The 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.6 inch dimensions made it too big and cumbersome to carry it around or read it during a relaxing bath. That size is fine if there are nice illustrations but there were only black & white stock photos for each chapter. This was also partly a self-help book so there were some creative exercises (to make you a better dresser or to improve your wardrobe), but it doesn’t necessarily mean it had to look like an exercise book. For a book about cultivating clothing taste, it was definitely lacking in the well-designed book department!

Another quibble was the lack of structure. Though the chapters were organized in a logical way, Siegel makes use of so many references, sometimes they're grouped together in a hodgepodge manner, instead of being integrated into a coherent thesis. The book is filled with quotes, interviews, lists, questionnaires, advice, exercises, footnotes… Granted, there are many excellent quotes as Siegel researches archives and interviews many friends, colleagues and well-known pros in the fashion industry. If only she integrated all these in a more book-like structure, this would’ve made a high level tome. In the end though, it makes for a great browsing book for anyone who has a passing or passionate interest in clothes. And that's not necessarily a terrible thing either.

Book 6 – Ripley Under Ground

Patricia Highsmith

I didn’t mean to read another Highsmith book so soon (see Strangers On a Train) , but I didn’t want to bring the thickish Barney’s Version with me on the train ride to Toronto. I wanted something more economically written and anyway, I was just dying to read the next Ripley installment.

The sequel takes place six years after The Talented Mr Ripley left off. Tom is living comfortably in the French countryside with his modest art collection and recently married to a free-spirited and somewhat amoral French heiress. In the past few years, Tom has somehow gotten himself involved in an art forgery conspiracy, as well as a fencing operation as a side gig. Oh Tom, ever resourceful, ever so shady! Naturally, Tom’s comfortable existence becomes threatened when an American businessman suspects that one of his Derwatt paintings is a fake.

Ripley Under Ground was definitely inferior to The Talented Mr. Ripley. One of the reasons I like the first book so much is because Tom Ripley is a sympathetic character. You could understand why he killed his friend Dickie Greenleaf. There are also certain moments throughout the novel where Ripley contemplates what he has done. With Ripley Under Ground, those moments are fewer and far between, and they don’t ring as true. Perhaps it has to do with the 15 year lag between the first two Ripley books.

The theme of authenticity versus fakery or forgery is explored early on but seems to sputter out after the halfway point. Bernard Tufts is a talented artist in his own right but is psychologically suffering from the years of forging the paintings of his dead friend Derwatt and living a lie. Tom, of course, sees things differently and regards Bernard as a kind of Van Meegeren, and loved the fake Derwatts as much as the real ones. He can’t understand why people like Murchison get so worked up about a fake painting.

He brought up Van Meegeren, with whose career Murchison was acquainted. Van Meegeren’s forgeries of Vermeer had finally achieved some value of their own. Van Meegeren may have stated it first in self-defence, in bravado, but aesthetically there was no doubt that Van Meegeren’s inventions of ‘new’ Vermeers had given pleasure to the people who had bought them.

‘I cannot understand your total disconnection with the truth of things,’ Murchison said. ‘An artist’s style is his truth, his honesty. Has another man the right to copy it, in the same way that a man copies another man’s signature? And for the same purpose, to draw on his reputation, his bank account?...’

The irony is naturally lost on Tom. Though he admires Murchison's intelligence and ends up even liking him (in the wine cellar while his housekeeper is washing dishes upstairs!), he murders Murchison anyway because he couldn’t be convinced to see things Tom’s way, which is skewed but nevertheless has an internal logic of its own.

Several times I had to suspend my disbelief at how Tom could get away with murder, though it is quite funny to read how his neighbours do not notice “his pink and almost bleeding palms, sore from the ropes around Murchison” as they make pleasant chitchat. When he confesses to his co-conspirators about murdering Murchison (Highsmith did have a knack for finding great names), they were dumbfounded but never questioned Tom’s sanity or what they were getting themselves into. There is never really a moment of danger that involves those who are close to Tom (close as in proximity if not in intimacy), his wife or housekeeper, who may suspect him of being a murderer. Tom dispatched Murchison before he could become a real threat. Subsequently his influence on Bernard to commit suicide in Vienna seemed almost effortless (Highsmith did not quite pull off the contrast between the two mentally unstable individuals – one who is emotional-less, the other emotionally volatile). And the London inspector seemed intelligent but conveniently ineffective.

I do enjoy how Highsmith writes about contemporary life in European cities, like how Tom appreciates London graffiti as he spots a defaced poster of the hit 1968 movie Romeo and Juliet and then goes shopping for his wife, buying her a pair of “flared hipsters of black wool, waist twenty-six.” These minute details add a nice flair of sophistication to the setting.

Sadly, due to my disappointment in the sequel, I may postpone reading the third book, Ripley’s Game, which is in Olman’s collection. There are plenty of other on-deck books to read!

Book 5 – Sense and Sensibility

By Jane Austen

Other than Pride & Prejudice, this is the only other Austen novel I’ve ever read. At the time she wrote P & P, Jane Austen wondered whether it was perhaps a little 'too light and bright and sparkling'. Though it also had its share of wit and satire, I found Sense & Sensibility to be sharper and more critical than P&P.

Of S & S, Wikipedia mentions that “the novel displays Austen's subtle irony at its best, with many outstanding comic passages about the Middletons, the Palmers, Mrs Jennings, and Lucy Steele.” But I found the best comical passages involved Marianne, the most passionate of the Dashwood sisters (the eldest sister Elinor is the rational one). Even though Austen supposedly modeled the character of Marianne after herself while basing the tactful and self-disciplined Elinor on her older sister Cassandra, she had no bones about making fun of Marianne’s self-indulgent and overblown romanticism:

When breakfast was over she walked out by herself, and wandered about the village of Allenham, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment and crying over the present reverse for the chief of the morning.

The evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. She played over every favourite song that she had been used to play to Willoughby, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied. She spend whole hours at the piano-forté alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears. In books too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and present was certain of giving. She read nothing but what they had been used to read together.

Such violence of affliction indeed could not be supported for ever; it sunk within a few days into a calmer melancholy; but these employments, to which she daily recurred, her solitary walks and silent meditations, still produced occasional effusions of sorrow as lively as ever.

The novel is full of such wonderfully written passages, and neglectful family members who are too busy being obsessed with status cannot escape Austen’s satirical gaze either. John and Fanny Dashwood -- who break a promise to financially look after John’s stepmother Mrs Dashwood and her daughters -- are prime targets:

The dinner was a grand one, the servants were numerous, and everything bespoke the Mistress's inclination for shew, and the Master's ability to support it. In spite of the improvements and additions which were making to the Norland estate, and in spite of its owner having once been within some thousand pounds of being obliged to sell out at a loss, nothing gave any symptom of that indigence which he had tried to infer from it; no poverty of any kind, except a conversation, appeared-- but there, the deficiency was considerable. John Dashwood had not much to say for himself that was worth hearing and his wife had still less. But there was no peculiar disgrace in this, for it was very much the case with the chief of their visitors, who almost all laboured under one or other of these disqualifications for being agreeable--want of essence, either natural or improved want of elegance--want of spirit or want of temper.

Even though the most unlikable characters, such as John and Fanny Dashwood, Mrs Ferras and Lucy Steele never get their comeuppance, Marianne learns a valuable lesson and Elinor gains a valuable friend in Mrs Jennings, who at first comes across as intrusive and embarrassing, but turns out to be as generous and principled as the well-respected Colonel Brandon. Though S&S does not have the fairy-tale ending of P&P, Marianne and Elinor find some measure of happiness in the end. Not as satisfying perhaps, but in other ways, makes it more emotionally resonant. And I mean this in the most rational way ;-)

Book 4 – Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day

By Winifred Watson

I discovered this smart looking book at my local thrift shop. It’s one of those Euro-style trade paperbacks with a thick cover flap and nicely printed paper. Upon closer examination, the inner jacket explains that Persephone Books is a UK company that reprints neglected classics by 20th century (mostly women) writers.

“They appeal to the discerning reader who prefers books that are neither too literary nor too commercial, and are guaranteed to be readable, thought-provoking and impossible to forget.”

Well, that had me sold! And $3 for a book that used to go for Can $18, it was a steal.

Miss Pettigrew proved to be a very readable as well as a charmingly delightful story about a down-on-her-luck middle-aged spinster nanny in pre-WWII London who strikes an unlikely friendship with a glamourous nightclub singer. Adventure and capers ensue. Over the course of 24 hours, Miss Pettigrew discovers things about herself that she never thought possible. I would not say that the story is especially thought-provoking as it’s basically a contemporary update of Cinderella, but it does have a lot of heart and comedic appeal.

Here is a lovely review that does MPLFaD more justice than I.

Moreover, I enjoyed the book so much, I even rented the 2008 film adaptation a couple of days later, which stars Frances McDormand as the titular character and Amy Adams as Delysia LaFosse. But I thought Shirley Henderson as Edythe Dubarry really stole the show. A very enjoyable movie too.

Book 3 – Strangers On a Train

By Patricia Highsmith

Another Highsmith book down the hatch. Another enjoyable read by a writer who's quickly becoming a favourite of mine (thanks to Olman).

If you’ve seen or heard of the Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation (which I haven’t seen yet), then you’ll get an idea of the plot. Anyway, Partricia Highsmith is well-known for her psychological thrillers and her favourite thingof all is to write through the eyes of a murderer. This novel is titled Strangers On a Train - it doesn’t take a Sherlock to figure out what kind of story this is going to be!

What’s more, SOaT is funny, in a very black, wicked kind of way. The humour almost always involve Charles Bruno, the disturbed twenty-five year old mama’s boy who convinces budding architect Guy Haines to murder his father. When Guy first meets Charles (or rather Bruno, as he’s mostly referred as) on a train, there’s a huge protruding pimple on Bruno’s forehead. It’s a great image, since as their journey progresses, Guy grows more and more uncomfortable as Bruno gets a little too excited over the idea of murdering his father, and he can’t help but fixate on the glistening pimple as Bruno’s face gets shiny with sweat. Delightful!

And later on when Bruno stalks Guy’s estranged wife, his cutting thoughts made me LOL:

She was cute in a plump college-girl sort of way, but definitely second-rate, Bruno judged. The red socks with the red sandals infuriated him. How could Guy have married such a thing!

No wonder Olman enjoys Highsmith so!

How poor Guy Haines becomes gradually tortured by remorse was also done well to a fault - his guilt was always boiling under the surface, not spoiled by cheap gestures, like hand-wringing, though there were some nightmares and overwrought touches. But there were also little details, like Guy afflicted with “a slight case of diarrhoea”. Ah, only Highsmith can write about pimples and diarrhoea with such elegance and humour. Guy’s repressed guilt and Bruno’s mental deterioration reminded me a lot of what Raskolnikov underwent in Crime and Punishment. A peak in Wikipedia revealed that Dostoevsky as a major influences in her work.

The protagonists in many of Highsmith's novels are either morally compromised by circumstance or actively flouting the law. Many of her antiheroes, often emotionally unstable young men, commit murder in fits of passion, or simply to extricate themselves from a bad situation. They are just as likely to escape justice as to receive it. The works of Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevsky played a significant part in her own novels.

Though this is only my third Highsmith novel, I’ll admit that SOaT is not my favourite novel of hers so far, mainly because some of the portrayals of mental deterioration and torture by guilt were overwrought at times. And she was wearing Dostoevsky on her sleeve a little too obviously. But my main concern was that I wasn’t entirely convinced of the quick-bonding relationship between Guy and Charles (the obsessive man-crush/homosexual undercurrent seems trite now, but it was the 1950’s after all á la Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven), though each made for fascinating character study. In her later novels I found the characters’ motivations more believable when they lose it and commit heinous crimes. But SOaT was her first novel, published in 1950 when she was 29. The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I greatly admire, was her fourth novel, published five years later, and there she was already refining her own voice and style.

Book 2 – Fragile Things

By Neil Gaiman

Since this is a collection of short horror, sci-fi and dark fantasy stories and poems that have been previously published from various sources (magazines, anthologies, even a Tori Amos song lyric), the result was a very mixed bag o’ treats. I must say I was set up for major disappointment after a stunning start with the Nebula award-winning "A Study in Emerald" - a Sherlock Holmes/Cthulhu Mythos pastiche which left me excited to dip into the next story (I didn’t bother much with the poems). However, nothing really came close to that first story.

The next interesting tale wasn’t until several stories later, almost halfway thru the book. “Other People” was only a few pages but it was effective and memorable. The next promising story “Keepsakes and Treasures”, had me flipping thru a few pages to remember what it was about. An interesting enough premise at first: a young man exacts revenge for his mother who was raped by several men while committed in an asylum, then comes under the radar of a mysterious but powerful Mr. Alice. But sadly, what promised to be an exciting adventure for this anti-hero fizzled out at the end with a lame pseudo-myth about the most beautiful male youth in the world.

Other tales I enjoyed were "Harlequin Valentine" (but like “Keepsakes and Treasures” had a 'hard' start but 'soft' ending), "Feeders and Eaters" (traditional yet effective horror story), "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" (playful twist on the hot alien females preying on teenaged boys idea), "Sunbird" about a group of gourmands called The Epicurean Club who get a real treat when they feast on a rare Egyptian bird (quite a good fantasy story but is it because Gaiman was emulating another writer? R. A. Lafferty supposedly) and the novella The Monarch of the Glen, which is supposedly a sequel to American Gods (which I remember one of the 50-bookers was meh about – was it Print is Dead?).

At the start of the story, I was surprised to see that Gaiman name-checks Angela Carter with a quote from her short “The Lady of the House of Love”. Yes, it makes sense, as I can see Carter’s influence on Gaiman. But again, none of the stories matched "A Study in Emerald" in story crafting. It seems the stories that have won recognition were ones which involved Gaiman emulating other writers. Hmm, I’m just saying….

Gaiman explains the title Fragile Things: "Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks." I have to say I agree, as his stories tend to be very vague and fleeting, like gossamer threads. I tend toward short stories that are tightly structured with a concrete idea. But this fragile take on writing made many of the stories feel rather half-baked.

Gaiman is a good writer who can spin a good yarn when he wants to, but there seems to be something missing. Carter was known for writing about dark fantastic things seething beneath ordinary reality and had a dreamy, feverish prose style, but she also had a way of concretizing her worlds which Gaiman seems to have more difficulty doing. Perhaps this is the problem. Amusing like a flight of fancy, if you're in the right mood, but nothing to really sink your teeth into. In any case, the overall result was meh, and I’m in no hurry to read any more Gaiman for now.

Book 1 – Maus: A Survivor's Tale

By Art Spiegelman A Christmas gift from my brother in which Volume 1 and 11 came in a nice box set. It was the perfect gift as I hadn’t yet read the Pulitzer winning graphic novel and had been meaning to for some time, but was in no hurry. 

I guess for many people who have never experienced war or its ramifications, it seemed like the past few decades we've been an over-saturation by media pertaining to WWII, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Maus seemed like one of many. I think there was an interview where even Spiegelman was wondering at the same thing while creating Maus, whether we needed another Holocaust survivor story. 

 After reading Maus, the answer was a resounding yes. And yes for the obvious reasons, one being an important personal document about surviving the horror of war. Another to learn from history so we don't repeat the same mistakes. 

I only started reading Maus right away because its comic format was more appealing than having to read another vague Neil Gaiman short story (see Fragile Things). At first, I was dubious about using different animal species to represent the various races: mice for the Jews, cats for the Germans, pigs for the Polish, etc. I was thinking, wouldn’t using people’s faces be more realistic and impactful? But after a while, I got used to it and realized later that this device did work in a surreal (and yes, symbolic) way that got under your skin. And then the very human life story of Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, was incredibly absorbing and moving. 

 One evening, after taking my parents out for New Year’s dinner at an upscale Chinese restaurant in Richmond, I had trouble sleeping, which always happens when I over-indulge on rich food the evening before. I didn’t want to wake Olman so I went to the living room to finish reading the last volume of Maus. It quickly dawned on me that reading Maus with a belly full of lobster in foie gras sauce felt like a weirdly uncomfortable contradiction. But as a consummate consumer, I had to finish it. 

 Afterwards, my sleep was still fitful and images of Nazi felines and terrified mice haunted me for the rest of the night! I guess that served me right. Still, Spiegelman's expressive artwork lingers and his father's story is something that won't be easily forgotten.

Year End Wrap Up!

34 books - a new record where I'm closer to 50 than ever before!

It helps having settled down into marriage, and not having kids (yet?). I have also discovered that our local and mostly francophone thrift shop has a pretty good English book section, and I have found a few more while perusing new and used book shops in Berkeley, San Francisco, Toronto, Amsterdam, Seattle and Vancouver. I now have a shitload of books on my on deck shelf to get through for 2011, like at least 20-25!

I don't know if I'll surpass 34 this year, but I already have three down for 2011.

Looking forward to reading more and more and seeing a few long dormant 50-bookers coming out of hibernation!

Book 34 – To Kill A Mockingbird

By Harper Lee

I came across this article about how To Kill A Mockingbird is America’s most overrated book, which reminded me that I still haven’t read it. Luckily, last month while in Seattle, I picked up a cheap copy at a cute used bookshop at Pike Place Market.

Naturally, it is quite easy to hate on a widely popular Pulitzer Prize-winning classic that has been such an endearing influence and favourite amongst white Liberal elites and idealistic law students. Especially when you have Hollywood celebrity types like Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, who named their second child after the girl character Scout (which was actually a nickname), or Jake Gyllenhaal who named his two dogs Atticus Finch and Boo Radley.

The Allen Barra article makes some pretty valid points:

• Its sentiments and moral grandeur are as unimpeachable as the character of its hero, Atticus. He is an idealized version of Ms. Lee's father … Atticus bears an uncanny resemblance to another pillar of moral authority—the Thomas More depicted in Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons"… Atticus does not become a martyr for his cause like Sir Thomas, but he is the only saint in a courtroom full of the weak, the foolish and the wicked. And like Sir Thomas, Atticus gets all the best lines.

• In all great novels there is some quality of moral ambiguity, some potentially controversial element that keeps the book from being easily grasped or explained... There is no ambiguity in "To Kill a Mockingbird"; at the end of the book, we know exactly what we knew at the beginning: that Atticus Finch is a good man, that Tom Robinson was an innocent victim of racism, and that lynching is bad. As Thomas Mallon wrote in a 2006 story in The New Yorker, the book acts as "an ungainsayable endorser of the obvious."

• Harper Lee's contemporary and fellow Southerner Flannery O'Connor (and a far worthier subject for high-school reading lists) once made a killing observation about "To Kill a Mockingbird": "It's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they are reading a children's book."

I agree with all these points, but I still very much enjoyed TKAMB. Sure the novel had some of that “bloodless liberal humanism” which seems a bit dated now, but it was also extremely engaging human drama that hit all the right notes of childhood wish-fulfillment and romantic sentimentality. It's the equivalent of watching a really good Oscar-contending Hollywood film. If I were in my early teens I probably would have loved this book. So I don’t understand the full intent of this article. Yes, it may be overrated as a great work of classic American literature, but it is definitely a very American book. And wasn’t TKAMB always considered a children’s (or young adult) book? Isn’t this why it’s still required reading for junior high school English in America? And can you fault a book for inspiring generations of lawyers and civil rights activists, no matter how idealistic it is? Maybe we should just hate the unimaginative celebs who like to name their babies and pets after their fave TKAMB characters!

Book 33 – Pride & Prejudice

By Jane Austen

I remember how one of my Arts One professors professed, in her introduction of Austen’s most famous novel, that she was an Austen fan who made a point of re-reading Pride & Prejudice every year or two. At the time, I was like, whatever, but now I can kind of see what she meant. Though I wouldn’t read P&P every two years, it was definitely a delight and a treat to revisit this after 17 years, especially having read the silly mashup Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and having finally watched the 2005 film adaptation, which wasn’t bad considering my skepticism of the casting. Also helped that I found this Dover Thrift paperback for a buck in the P section at old reliable Chainon.

This year will be Napoleonic era year as I have several Austen classics and Patrick O’Brian Aubrey-Mathurin installments to get through on my every growing on-deck shelf. Very excited about 2011!

Book 32 – Momofuku

By David Chang and Peter Meehan

As the lifestyle editor of a well-known fashion magazine, Olman’s sister gets a fair share of freebies, especially cookbooks, and Momofuku was thoughtfully passed onto us. It has been on our dining table for a few months as I slowly leaf through it over tea or breakfast.

Thanks to the Globe and Mail’s fascination over all things New York, I’ve heard of Chang’s success, but not soon enough to have actually gone to Momofuku when we were last in NYC (we probably wouldn’t have been able to get in anyway!). I’m not exactly a foodie, but I do love Asian food, be it Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. My favourite appliance is our Zojirushi rice cooker; I can make sushi, a decent Thai curry, any type of fried rice and I have almost perfected the art of making a killer okonomyaki. So it’s not surprising that someone like Chang would do something amazing and inventive with Asian comfort food. And I love my noodles. I have instant ramen every week because it’s like a treat. But instead of having it plain, I like to dress it up with vegetables, chicken broth and a fried egg. And now Chang has provided a recipe for his famous pork ramen dish. Not all of the recipes are exactly easy and straightforward to make, but there are a few that are doable in a layman’s kitchen. I’d definitely have to enlist the help of Olman to roast that pork belly!

But Momofuku isn’t just a recipe book, it’s also part autobiography and part homage to his favourite foods, and lots of neat stuff about noodle-making. There's probably lots of media gossip about Chang being a difficult person, but in the book he comes across as genuinely humble and appreciative of his success, and he makes a point of paying credit where it’s due. My new year’s resolution is to either visit NYC in the spring and check out a David Chang establishment, or make one of his goddam recipes or die trying!

Book 31 - Cloud Atlas

By David Mitchell

I knew nothing about author or book until earlier this year when a friend (actually a couple, so do I say “a couple friend” in terms of them as a single unit?) voluntarily lent me Cloud Atlas with a high recommendation.

Yet I couldn't get past the first 30 pages or so, wondering if the entire novel was going to be about some 19th century American notary stuck in the South Pacific. I took a peak on the internets and became suspicious this was going to be another one of those epic stories about the interconnectedness of humanity that transcends geography and time. It sat unread on my bedside table for months. At some point I admitted having difficulty to one-half of said couple friend, who then assured me to stick with it - it’ll get better. So I gave it another go. Thankfully, she was right.

But as soon as I was starting to get quite absorbed by “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing”, it abruptly ends in mid-sentence! WTF?! And then it launches into a series of letters from a dropout music student who shacks up with a reclusive composer he admires in pre-WW2 Belgium. This section had some moments of pure comic genius. When Frobisher attempts to impress the miserly composer by playing Chopin on the piano, I couldn’t help but LOL when Ayrs interrupts with a whiny, “Trying to slip my petticoats off my ankles, Frobisher?”

It didn’t take me long to realize that this David Mitchell guy can really write or figure out what he’s trying to accomplish by jumping around in time and dabbling in different voices, style and genre. The entire novel is a tour de force of virtuoso writing, which is part of Cloud Atlas’ appeal but ironically, also its shortcoming. As one NY Times critic notes: “It is not unheard of for a novelist of exceptional talent to write a deliberately difficult book.”

Like some of those recent overrated movies (the horrid Crash, Babel, etc.) that portray seemingly disconnected people from disparate places and races who are somehow linked by some meaningfully profound commonality, when it boils down to it, is a conceit whose ultimate purpose is to showcase complexity in the service of talent. Cloud Atlas is pretty much the literary version of this. I mean, all the characters, though they live centuries apart, share similar circumstances and, get this, a comet-shaped birthmark! And yet Mitchell almost gets away with it (yes, he is that talented!).

I must confess that I only quickly skimmed the middle sections “An Orison of Sonmi~451” (an interview with an upstart cloned human or 'fabricant' in dystopian Korea before her execution) and “Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After” (a post-apocalyptic yarn about a Hawaiian goat herder whose tribe comes across the inspirational recording of Sonmi’s testimony). Though it may be a feat of genre-bending creative writing, 'twas a bit difficult losin' myself in the narrative and I wasn't in the mood to make a mental effort. I kept recalling one of Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writing Fiction:

“Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apos­trophes, you won't be able to stop.”

Others may beg to differ and argue that the spec-fi/sci-fi sections are sheer poetry, so it’s likely I’m just a conservative (and lazy) reader at heart. Writers like AS Byatt absolutely adored every word in Cloud Atlas - perhaps Mitchell is more of a writer’s writer than a reader’s writer?

On the other hand, I very much enjoyed “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery” and “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish”. With Luisa Rey, Mitchell skillfully uses clichéd noir prose to tell a familiar tale of a plucky young journalist who uncovers corporate greed and conspiracy in Nixon-era California. With Timothy Cavendish, we have a hapless vanity publisher who’s like an evolved version of Ignatius Reilly, trapped in an old folk’s home presided over by a Nurse Ratchett-like figure.

Cloud Atlas proved to be quite a wonderful treat, but it wasn't exactly a cohesive work. Although the disparate stories are linked by a unifying theme, it felt like the author constructed the framework to also showoff what he can do. But when it works, the story and characters can really fly off the page. Without a doubt Mitchell is a brilliant and clever writer (like a friendlier Christopher Priest who doesn't try to mess with the reader's head and annihilate structure) and I look forward to reading his other books. But I would only recommend Cloud Atlas to those who like unusual novels or writerly writers ;-)

Book 30 – The Elegance of the Hedgehog

By Muriel Barbery (translated from the French by Alison Anderson)

My 30th book! I don’t think I’ve ever read 30 books in a year before. My last record was 27 books in 2008.

One of the best films I saw this year was Le Hérisson. A little suspicious at first of the cutesy premise - unlikely friendship develops between precocious adolescent girl, middle-aged female concierge and retired Japanese businessman! – but the positive reviews convinced me to give it a try. With the sole exception of the generic music score, I loved the film. It's not often you see female curmudgeons onscreen, and a well-drawn one at that. When I discovered that Le Hérisson was based on a novel by Muriel Barbery, I did something rather unusual – I immediately ordered it online!

Unfortunately, I had a preconceived bias that I’d enjoy the book as much as the film adaptation, if not more. Although the novel allowed a deeper understanding of the two anti-heroines and a better platform for philosophical ruminations than what cinematic voiceovers could afford, there were some pretty serious flaws which prevented me from truly enjoying the book as a whole.

The titular character, Renée Michel, is the prickly 54-year-old concierge of a luxury apartment building in Paris. The uppity occupants of 7 rue de Grenelle hardly suspect their custodial drudge is leading a clandestine life (no, Madame Michel does not supplement her meager income by being a Lady of the Night). Off-duty, she is an autodidact who hides in her tiny library reading Tolstoy or watching videos of obscure art house films. Little does she know, Madame Michel has more in common with 12-year-old Paloma Josse, the youngest daughter of an upper class family living on the fifth floor, than she realizes. Gifted with high IQs and keen observation (with a soft spot for Japanese culture), both are painfully aware these qualities make them distinct (if not isolated) from society. Burdened by their brilliance and conceit, they have each made their own decision to opt out of life, albeit in different ways. Paloma silently vows to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday, while Renee is content to hide her intellectual pursuits behind the façade of a lowly concierge:

Let us just say that the idea of struggling to make my way in a world of privileged, affluent people exhausted me before I even tried: I was the child of nothing, I had not the slightest savoir-faire or sparkle. There was only one thing I wanted: to be left alone, without too many demands upon my person, so that for a few moments each day I might be allowed to assuage my hunger [for books].

Sounds annoyingly French, n’est-ce pas? Indeed, Renée says things like: “Phenomenology is beyond my reach and that I cannot bear” and “how distressing to stumble on a dominant social habitus, just when one was convinced of one’s own uniqueness in the matter!” As for Paloma, when she’s tired of listening to her older sister and her boyfriend riffing like banlieu homies, she puts in foam earplugs and immerses herself in classical Japanese haikus so that she won’t be able hear their “degenerate conversation”. Cue the eye-roll, s’il vous plait!

As one reviewer puts it, Barbery’s characters are a little too good to be true: “either utterly beguiling or completely infuriating, according to taste.” Indeed, though I found Renée and Paloma to be both, leaning more perhaps toward the latter! Another critic
hits it right on the nail by explaining how the author:

underpins her writing with an infectious, if occasionally unsubtle, didactic ardour. All three protagonists offer specific antidotes to the ills of modern life: Renée contradicts class prejudice and intellectual pretension… Paloma presents the alternative to a generation of rioting banlieue-dwellers and cosseted little rich kids. And Kakuro embodies a sort of rose-tinted eastern answer to western wretchedness. He, more than anything else, demonstrates how Barbery's charm and cleverness allow for certain cultural and narrative simplifications that might otherwise prove to be insufferable.

From a North American perspective, it’s quite an eye-opener to see how European society operates in such a class-conscious paradigm still, especially in France, and especially so in Paris. Barbery’s rather bold criticisms against the French upper class has mixed success. Although the original book was a huge hit in its native country when it first came out in 2006 (more than 1.2 million copies sold), it’s evident that French readers did not find Barbery’s barbs too offensive. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that, as one reviewer put it, the “Amélie-esque, Parisian setting and cast of eccentrics” probably appealed to many; and “the enormous numbers who bought into the pseudo-philosophical twittering of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist” probably bought into this as well.

Perhaps this is so, but I think a big part of Hedgehog’s appeal is that the book flatters the reader. You feel so superior when Barbery makes jabs at the stupidity of the intellectual elite via Paloma and Renée. You feel so smug and satisfied when Paloma’s self-absorbed family falls for her normal girl act, or when Paloma’s sister Colombe talks to Renée as if she’s a half-wit. Then when Renée comes across Colombe’s graduate thesis, she totally tears into its contents (albeit silently to herself):

… For the quest for meaning and beauty is hardly a sign that man has an elevated nature… no, it is a primed weapon in the service of a trivial and material goal. And when the weapon becomes its own subject, this is the simple consequence of the specific neuronal wiring that distinguishes us from other animals; by allowing us to survive, the efficiency of intelligence also offers us the possibility of complexity without foundation, thought without usefulness, and beauty without purpose…

Fair enough. But then Renée asks herself what she would do if she were in Columbe Josse’s shoes, leading a privileged existence as a young student at the École Normale. She answers:

I would dedicate myself to the progress of Humanity… The only thing that matters is your intention: are you elevating thought and contributing to the common good, or rather joining the ranks in a field of study whose only purpose is its own perpetuation, and only function the self-reproduction of a sterile elite…

Right. [MAJOR SPOILER coming up...]

Later, Renée confesses to Kakuro: “You are the son of a diplomat, I am the daughter of impoverished peasants. It is inconceivable for me even to be having dinner here this evening.”

So although Renée is an intellectual force to be reckoned with, is it so inconceivable for her to consort with someone above her station? In a way, the book claims to possess the very things it criticizes others for lacking; it claims to have integrity and profundity, but its criticisms only run skin deep, and never transcends any real boundaries. Here we have an intellectually formidable character who is paralyzed by insecurities and social conditioning, making Renée Michel even more helpless than any Jane Austen heroine from two centuries before. To top it off, she dies at the end of the story just after she has found some measure of happiness, her death symbolic of the fact that you can’t fight the system if you don’t have the right background. One reviewer remarks how:

Barbery's entire tale is soaked in sentimentality. What is most irritating is that it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge itself as such - hiding under a mask of philosophical fuss.

Matters aren't helped much by the English translation “which too often mimics the structure of French sentences, and slips into translatorese”. Indeed, at times I found the translation to be quite clunky, inelegant, and painfully unfunny when it’s actually trying to be humourous. When Renée is invited to Kakuro’s swanky apartment for the first time, she has a rather surprising encounter with a Japanese toilet while alone in the bathroom:

Did I press the wrong button, misjudging the amount produced—such presumptuousness, such pride, Renée, two lotus flowers for such a ridiculous contribution—and consequently I am being punished by the earsplitting thunder of divine justice? Am I guilty of overindulging—of luxuriating—in the voluptuousness of the act in a place that inspires voluptuousness, when we should actually think of it as impure? … Have my lumpen manual laborer’s fingers, succumbing to the effect of some unconscious wrath, abused the subtle mechanism of the lotus button, thereby unleashing a cataclysm in the plumbing that threatens the entire fourth floor with seismic collapse?

Mon dieu. I have a feeling the original French sounds a little better (but it might not be entirely the fault of the translator either). In any case, the result has the opposite effect of being amusing – it comes across as overly contrived, wordy and unfortunately, very French. I’m sorry, but the French are not as capable of comedy and wit in the way that the British are, and this passage sadly illustrates this fact.

And yet despite all these glaring flaws, I still enjoyed the book - if you can believe it. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE reading about over-privileged rich folk making asses of themselves. When the author isn’t too busy admonishing the affluent and aggrandizing the marginalized, there are some moments of good satire and human observation. And some of the French ruminations on the nature of beauty and art, the meaning of life and death can be more thoughtful than pseudo. Though it yields to some sentimentality, the genuine appreciation of friendship and love quietly overcomes the awkwardness in its execution (and translation).

I must say, however, that Mona Achache’s Le Hérisson is the superior work, and would recommend the movie adaptation over the original novel, as the screenplay does away with all that pontificating and conceit and simply distills the best parts of Barbery’s book!

Book 29 – The Night Watch

By Sarah Waters

Been hearing nothin' but praise for Sarah Waters, so was delighted to find used copies of her two most recent while perusing English bookshops in Amsterdam earlier this fall. It was not my intention to read two novels in succession about WWII London featuring conscientious objectors and ambulance drivers (see previous post about Christopher Priest’s The Separation). How often does that happen?

Comparatively speaking, The Night Watch has a somewhat more conventional structure than The Separation. Don’t know if some reviewers are on drugs or what, but one had likened it to a topsy-turvy time scheme or jigsaw puzzle, the equivalent of walking into a movie and watching the second half first. This is so not the case. The narrative moves in a linear fashion, though backwards in time.

In 1947, we are introduced to four main characters who seem somewhat stuck in limbo as they adjust to postwar life, yet they are all linked by their past experiences in wartime London. There's mysterious, solitary Kay - a courageous ambulance driver during the war - now trying to search for some purpose; sweet naïve Helen, who suspects her girlfriend Julia of being unfaithful; pretty and charismatic Vivian, stuck in a doomed relationship with a married ex-soldier; and Vivian’s brother Duncan, formerly in prison for some mysterious reason and now wrestling with demons from the past. The bulk of the novel is comprised of 1944, and then finally the shortest section, 1941. Thus we first see what kind of jaded, disappointed people these characters have become after the war, what happened to them during the war, and the sense of hope or foreboding they had before the war.

I would agree with this Guardian review that not much happens in the first chunk of the book: coworkers take a tea break and have “desultory, guarded conversations"; a lesbian couple go for a picnic and run into a friend; two chaps meet for a beer. Generally "ordinary life beautifully described - the ‘chill, bitter, marvellous’ taste of beer in a porcelain cup.”

The middle section, 1944, gets a little more interesting. As the story goes back in time, Waters gradually reveals secrets or establishes the connection one character has with another. However, I did not like the deliberate withholding of Duncan’s back-story for being in prison. This was set up as this big dark secret that does not get revealed until the very end of the novel, and it was disappointingly anti-climactic. I felt that knowing Duncan’s secret earlier in the novel would have helped relate to his character better, since that traumatic event really shaped how he behaved in the present. The whole time, I was wondering why he was so meek and insecure and these character traits can be rather tiring when you don’t know what drives this behaviour. I was glad to hear that another reviewer felt the same way:

“By comparison, Duncan's story doesn't quite work. He is beautifully done, and both his imprisonment and its consequences are utterly convincing. But the cause of the imprisonment, when we get to it, is so bizarre that the reader needs what the form won't allow - a considerable amount of back story. Some plainer offence would have done quite well.”

The one thing that shines in The Night Watch is the portrayal of rather ordinary people living in extraordinary circumstances. Indeed, TNW was praised by critics for its attention to detail and meticulous research as for Waters’ earlier Victorian era novels, but TNW goes further in its thoughtful character study combined with a believable evocation of period and place. As the Guardian review observes:

Her ability to bring the times to life is stunning, whether through smell - the "talcum powder, permanent waves, typewriter ink, cigarette smoke, BO" of the typing pool, the "unwashed feet, sour mops, bad food, bad breath" of prison - or through her minute enumerations of her characters' physical lives. There is much face-washing, teeth-cleaning and kettle-boiling carefully described, alongside the illicit sex and bodily peril; Waters brings such a clear-eyed honesty and fresh interest to the everyday that she could probably make drying paint a lively read.

I mostly agree -- up to a point. I’m just not sure if I actually liked TNW as a whole. Like The Separation, both novels were compelling and well-written, but also disappointing for different reasons. The Separation was like a brilliant exercise whose purpose seemed to confound the average reader, while The Night Watch was basically a thoughtful yet ultimately ho-hum soap opera with WWII London as backdrop. The characters in TNW were very ordinary indeed, and all too real, but not exactly likable or identifiable. What is the point of evoking the past in such rich detail if you can't really relate to the characters?

Sometimes it takes an eloquent and like-minded reviewer to make you realize why you didn’t quite like an otherwise generally well-praised book:

I don’t recall another account of wartime London that so faithfully captures the atmosphere of not only the extraordinary, but also – and especially – the quotidian.

… Yet it is the sheer banality of the characters and their lives that to me is both the main strength and the main weakness of this book... how much do we really care about ordinary, self-absorbed people? On the other hand, don’t we, the majority of us who just pass our days on jobs and errands and our small universe of friends and relationships deserve to have our stories told? And yet, how much interest can there ultimately be in insular stories that have no more to say than “I was happy, then I was sad,” or the reverse?

Before The Night Watch, Waters was known for her brilliant novels about young Victorian women reinventing their identities (lovingly known as her Victorian lesbian romps), which were full of melodrama and satisfying plot twists. With TNW, Waters took a different turn with a more downbeat and dispassionate approach with a focus on somber character study. I have a feeling I may enjoy her pre-TNW novels much more! But I still have her next book, The Little Stranger, on my on-deck shelf … so we'll have to see!