A little reading

 

Mostly I have been doing puzzles, but also a little reading. 'The Rest of Our Lives' by Ben Markovits: strangely another book about someone possibly dying of cancer, and like Panenka he is very much in denial. Tom is planning to drive away from his marriage, but when he does it doesn't feel quite as he anticipated. It's a very 'blokey' book (if that's a word?). Liked this little bit, not the only time he mentioned a 'power dynamic', which feels like something that men are often concerned with, and cars, and the notion that women are impressed by them:

"We took his car. It's a funny thing to be driven around by your son, you feel the power dynamic shifting. He had an old Acura Legend, which he'd bought secondhand and still smelled of cigarettes. But it was a nice-looking car and I thought, Betty wouldn't mind driving around in this. The air-conditioning stank though, at least at first, so he turned it on and kept the windows open until we got to the highway. After that the road was too loud." (p.195)

Then on the next page, this lovely sentence: "All of this makes it look like we were having a conversation, but it was more like, sometimes one of us spoke." So beautifully observed, made the book worth reading.

'Man With a Seagull on his Head' by Harriet Page was requested after the others from Bluemoose Books so impressed me. Quirkiness will always win me over and this one ticks all the boxes. Raymond is hit on the head by a dying seagull, an event witnessed by Jennifer. It has a huge impact on his life, and very little on hers. A copy of the local paper plays a significant role and in the end Mira transports an entire bungalow to the Tate Modern. How's that for a teaser trailer. 

"Jennifer looked up. Here she was, in her shop. The silence was heavy; the street seemed emptied out in a way that made her wonder if she'd missed something, some catastrophe. But then a lone car drove slowly past and, as the sound of the engine receded, she caught the distant judder-judder of machinery making holes in the road somewhere, and now a woman walking past, a child running on behind, and she breathed again, relieved, and a little disappointed too, that the world was carrying on. The day she'd seen the seagull fall on the head of the man called Ray Eccles seemed impossibly remote, the memory a mist around her mind in which she flailed about for a moment trying to grab at least some recollection of his face." (p.53)

Caring for my sister leaves a lot of time for reflection and introspection. So I wrote a poem. My life has become small, focused on the happenings in the living room, but hers, swiftly and unimaginably, has become tiny.

Such a little life A little eye open A little drink A little bite A little wash A little teeth clean A little hair brush A little foot rub A little roll over A little blanket But not a little sleep A long long sleep Everything else gets smaller but not the sleep

Stay safe. Be kind.

Panenka

It turns out that libraries are everywhere, and Torquay does not insist I prove I live here before it will let me borrow books (and puzzles).

I read Leonard and Hungry Paul back in January and so loved it that when I came across Panenka by Ronan Hession I ordered it right away. It is coincidentally about a man with a brain tumour, though it does not feature significantly in the story. Panenka is a man who's life has been blighted by a mistake in his youth during a football match, for which the whole town continues to blame him, for the loss of the match and the subsequent decline of the team's fortunes. But rather like Leonard and Hungry Paul it is a book all about the people and their relationships. While I did not feel it was such a strong book because there was too much people-talking-about-their-relationships rather than those relationships being revealed by events, it had some lovely moments which made it a lovely book.

Two little moments, description, then something else. Firstly Panenka is looking for somewhere to get his hair cut when his usual barber is closed:

"As he stood there in his indecision, an elderly woman approached him slowly on the narrow, uneven path. She was smoking a cigarillo and exhaled lazily from the side of her mouth, her expression conveying the general impression that she was too old to give a damn. Her look was moneyed and eccentric, and she was walking a ratter on an extendable lead. Though it was warm, she wore a nicotine-yellow fake fur coat and a red beret with a white bobble, like a pimple. She made no concession to him as he stood sideways to let her pass, but he didn't take offence, momentarily hypnotised by the weird charisma unique people have. Panenka watched her disappear around the elbow of the road, taking her colour with her like a departing parade and leaving him alone again with the morning melancholy. The street was less alive without her." (p.62-63)

Then his first meeting with Esther, watching her with another customer, and then after she has coped so graciously with his existential crisis (joined in to one quote because they are on subsequent pages):

"She showed him the back of his head in a hand mirror. He had a thin comb-over that she had managed to trim without exposing the lost cause.
'How's that for you?' she asked.
'Perfect. I don't like taking too much off. It's hard to know which will go first: me or the hair.'
She handed him his hat - one of those old-man jobs - and an anorak with a lavender scarf tucked into the sleeve. Panenka wondered whether it had been his wife's.
'That's perfect. I look beautiful again,' he said, leaving a tip in small coins that was more generous in intent and amount. 'I'll see you next time, please God.'
'Bye now,' she said, with a smile that seemed to transfer from her face to his. 

...

When she turned back to face him, he noticed that a stray hair had come out from behind her ear and was caught on the side of her mouth. He considered for a moment what it would be like to be the one who could reach out and return that hair to its place." (p. 78 and 81)

I couldn't return it without a record because it was such a wonderful book. I have also read in the last few weeks Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, which was quite hard going but so well written (of course, I would never have expected otherwise), it did quite inspire me to read David Copperfield, not a Dickens I have tackled before. 

Stay safe. Be kind.