Hungry for more

I kept reading about this book, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, on blogs I have been visiting over the last few months, and in an attempt to lift Tish out of an 'I can't concentrate long enough to read anything' slump I requested it from the library. It has been a great success!

Tish picked it up, must have been Monday, because she took it with us when we went to the cinema and tried to read in the car. She was all finished probably by Wednesday and M took over and finished it by Thursday (5 am she tells me), and was already jumping up and down and telling me I had to read it. Now I resisted this insistence when they were in their 'Twilight' phase, I don't like vampires much, am very squeamish, but this time I gave in. I started with a little taster at bedtime on Friday, and then took it in to work Saturday morning (when I have half an hour to kill) and sat till after 1am this morning to finish it. This included a trip out yesterday afternoon. I had requested the second book, 'Catching Fire', but people were getting impatient. Tish had tried our local bookshop with no success, so we eventually drove over to Jaffé and Neale's in Chipping Norton. Unfortunately they did not have a copy so we had to go to WHS over the road, but then went back and I browsed their poetry section for a while and came away with 'Answering Back' edited by Carol Ann Duffy, which consists of poets selecting a poem and then writing their own response to it, which seems like a wonderful idea, so watch this space. And we had World Book Day tokens so I bought M a copy of 'The Harsh Cry of the Heron' by Lian Hearn, the last book in the 'Across the Nightingale Floor' series that she has loved.

(Spoiler warning)

So, to the book. A really nasty post apocalyptic dystopia, basically a slave society, set in the far future, but in what is left of America. The country is divided up into a series of 'districts' controlled by a 'Capitol', and most of them kept in grinding poverty to maintain a lavish lifestyle for those in charge. The authoritarianism is not the worst of it. In order to reinforce the 'divide and rule' situation each year they hold 'The Hunger Games', where 'tributes' of one girl and one boy are sent from each district to fight it out to the death in a specially prepared and controlled arena. And it is all compulsory viewing for the rest of them.

It is told in a first person narrative, so you kind of know Katniss is not going to get killed, but that does not lessen the tension of the story. It is written very fast paced, but with enough pauses for breath that you can relax for a moment. The first few chapters set the scene, describing her family background, how she lives and survives, and keeps her family alive, and her friendship with Gale. Then she takes her sister Prim's place when she is selected for the games, and she gets on the rollercoaster ride that must be ridden to the very end. The games have something of Big Brother about them as the contestants are first brushed and polished and dressed up for the entertainment of the audience, who can choose to 'sponsor' the contestants, providing them with gifts to help them survive. Then they are thrown in to the arena and must pits their skills and their wits against people much more brutal and just as determined.

Katniss is an excellent heroine, tough and resourceful, but believably so because of her history. Peeta is the boy from her district and it turns out she already has a bond with him, and he with her. The other participants are more vague, many die within moments, and what happens to them is peripheral to Katniss' struggle for survival. Then the rules are changed, apparently allowing the two district tributes to work together, and so Katniss goes in search of Peeta, saving his life as he once saved hers.

There were moments when I was irritated by 'inventions' that seemed out of place in the environment that the author had created, but on the whole this was a very satisfying read, and I am in the queue for the next one.

The Gathering

The Gathering by Anne Enright was the Booker Prize winner in 2007. I picked it up slightly at random in the library and then persuaded my little book group that it would make an interesting read. The reviews on the back include the words 'eloquent and powerful', 'tender and subtle', 'dark and lyrical', and I think I would have to agree with all of them. This has been probably the most beautifully written book I have read in some time. It almost leaves me not knowing where to start because there is so much to say.

Veronica (an ugly name, and she agrees) appears to be the only one of her many, many siblings who still lives near her family home. This is probably why she ends up taking responsibility for arranging her brother's funeral. I think that her physical proximity is quite telling. She is the one who can't seem to escape from the past, is haunted by half remembered memories and struggles to make sense of her family's tangled history, most especially that of her grandmother Ada. So, her brother Liam is dead, suicide by drowning, at Brighton, and it is Veronica who bears the brunt of this event, dealing with the practicalities but failing to cope with the loss. As her brothers and sisters gather from their disparate lives and converge on the house their elderly mother still occupies, Veronica tells us the background of her relationship with Liam, and the deeper history of Ada and Charlie and the strangely ever-present Lamb Nugent.

So she rambles through her life story, intermittently inventing the story about her grandparents, part of her attempt to get to grips with all the unspoken parts. The only person left to ask is her mother, and she doesn't want to talk. She and her brother were only eleven months apart in age and as such shared their childhood experiences very closely, but she knows once they get away to university together that Liam is headed down a road that she does not want to follow. So she marries and has two daughters, and supports her husband as he struggles to establish his own business, but is left feeling somewhat peripheral to her own existence. The book is as much about Veronica's life as about Liam's death, and the breakdown of her marriage. Liam's death exacerbates her sense that she let him down, and in telling her story she is trying to understand what went wrong, and in the telling to make amends.

I am going to just string some quotes together, which I jotted down as I read, that captured for me something about the family, their relationships, and the absolute beauty of the writing:

Veronica's reaction to her mother's initial grief:

"She would cry the same for Ivor, less for Mossie, more for Ernest, and inconsolably, as we all would, for the lovely Jem. She would cry no matter what son he was. It occurs to me that we have got something wrong here, because I am the one who has lost something that can not be replaced. She has plenty more."

Reflecting on the nature of love, part of the imagined first meeting between Ada and Nugent:

"There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick."

Leaving to go to Brighton to collect Liam's body:

"There is something wonderful about death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important."

Describing her husband Tom:

"He is very clear sighted about the world, and yet he questions himself, constantly. He pushes himself hard, and is rarely satisfied. He is completely selfish, in other words, but in the poshest possible way. I look at him, a big, sexy streak of misery, with his face stuck in a glass of obscure Scotch, as he traces the watermark of failure that runs through his life, that is there on every page."

After Ada's funeral, the instruction to 'take what you like' the girls fight over her trinkets:

"Kitty always needed things more than you did, Bea always deserved them more, while poor Midge - well, Midge always refused everything until she was persuaded to grab the lot. So I left the house with a howl of regret for all that I had been denied, though there was nothing there I actually wanted .... I did not know how to want what she left behind, I wanted out of there, that was all. I wanted a larger life."

Thinking of Ada, doing the dishes:

"I think of her when I do the dishes. Of course I have a dishwasher, so if I ever have to cry, it is not into the sink, quietly like Ada. The sink was her place for this. Facing out of the back of the house, something about the endless potatoes that needed peeling, or the paltriness of the yard, but, like all women maybe, Ada occasionally had a little sniffle and then plink, plink, a few tears would hit the water in the sink. Like all women Ada would have to wipe her nose on her forearm because her hands were wet."

She and Kitty revisit the site the cemetery of the mental hospital, an unexplained trip taken with Ada during their time with her:

"There are no markers, no separate graves. I wonder how many people were slung into the dirt in this field and realise, too late, that the place is boiling with corpses, the ground is knit out of their tangled bones.

I look back, helpless at Kitty in the front seat of the car.

They have me by the thighs. I am gripped at the thighs by whatever feeling this is. A vague wind. It clutches at me, skitters between my clothes and my skin. It lifts every hair. It grazes my lip and is gone."

The feeling that she can now look back and understand something about Liam that was beyond her when they were children:

"Now I know that the look in Liam's eye was the look of someone who knows they are alone. Because the world will never know what has happened to you, and what you carry around as a result of it. Even you sister - your saviour in a way, the girl who stands in the light of the hall - even she does not hold or remember the ting she saw. Because, by that stage, I think I had forgotten it entirely."

At the wake, with all the siblings gathered to keep company with Liam's body:

"Here it comes. Ita has been drinking so long she has been made sober by it, and slow, and violent. She has some terrible revelation to make and I wonder what it will be. You never told me I was beautiful. Or something worse: You stole my best hairband in 1973 (I did actually). Family sins and family wounds, the endless pricking of something we find hard to name. None of it important, just the usual, You ruined my life, or What about me? because with the Hegartys a declaration of unhappiness is always a declaration of blame."

I have not read much 'Irish' writing, possibly because I find catholicism a bit tedious, and basically I think Irish writers cannot escape having a catholic thread running through whatever they write, it is so pervasive in the culture. (Am happy to be corrected here with good suggestions for Irish authors.) I think I didn't mind the catholic aspect because it was not 'religious' in this book. There was not really any talk of God or anything, it was more to do with the whole guilt thing, and the way it affects attitudes to sex in particular. The story is mostly about family bonds, how we try and escape them, but how they make us what we are. Anne Enright creates such wonderful atmosphere for all the different eras she evokes, from the 20's through to the present day, reflecting on both the changes of history and the immutable aspects of life and relationships. But it is a book mostly about grief, and it is good because you grieve along with Veronica, for her blue eyed brother, and the promise of a life wasted.

ipods and Johnny Depp

I spent yesterday afternoon putting CDs on to the laptop to load them on to my *new* ipod. I think I may be a convert. I have, up to now, not really seen the appeal; all these people walking along, oblivious to what is around them, plugged in to their MP3 machines. But today I really enjoyed having this little purple pod in my pocket, being able to have music as I delivered. This is my entire music collection, about 15 CDs, so plenty of room for all the other fun stuff that the ipod can do, like taking videos and recording voice notes.

Anyway, we went to see Alice in Wonderland on Tuesday and I was not that impressed. Some idiot (the screenwriter) took Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky and turned it into the plot for a film. It was a very flimsy plot, and Johnny was the saving grace of the film (not that we're prejudiced in our house). The girls both hated Anne Hathaway but loved Helena Bonham Carter. The writer had plainly either not read the poem or not even tried to understand it. In a way it is the perfect poem, because you create the meaning for it inside your own head. It has an obvious story line, wonderful rhythm and rhyme, and even though so much of the vocabulary is invented it flows off the tongue beautifully when you read aloud. It is interesting to find that some of the words Carroll created for this poem are now in the dictionary and in common usage. I always thought 'galumphing' was a real word, use it all the time. But in the film the references to 'vorpal sword' and 'frabjous day' becomes 'Vorpal Sword' and 'Frabjous Day' (with capital letters), a thing and a day both with a purpose, not the mere adjectives that they are in the poem. It just all irritated me, sorry. Was all very pretty so go anyway if you like that kind of thing. Here's the poem, which is much better than the film.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree.
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came wiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Granny Smith (a work related rant)

I had an unusual birthday at the weekend, including a surprise party, with cake and balloons and everything. I got to spread the occasion over two days as we went to Julie's for Saturday (Tish had a 'visit day' at MMU to meet her tutors and all that jazz) where we had the cake, and then came home first thing on Sunday and had more presents then, plus a nice chat with Lewis, even though it was a pure coincidence that he called:-) So I had a fabulous collection of pressies, which, when you get to my age, you no longer anticipate.

Julie bought me a copy of 'Dear Granny Smith: A letter from your postman', a neat little book that sums up very readably what has been going on in Royal Mail for the last 30 years. It is very frustrating that the media often presents such an over simplified version of what is going on, like the recent agreement reported by the bbc, which focusses on the money, and Christopher Hope at the Telegraph doing the usual hatchet job (and not to even mention the Dispatches fiasco) So it's nice to see a book, which seems to have been quite well received, telling the other side of the story. To be fair it is not a real story, the supposed writer is a bit of a caricature of everything about being a postie, but he is trying to show the reader what the job is about, how the system works and how it has changed over the years. What the book does well is highlight for customers of Royal Mail (and means everyone) how the managerial style has changed, away from an emphasis on the 'public service' aspect of the company, towards a business model that talks in terms of profits and losses, and sees the sending customer as the important part of the equation rather than those on the receiving end. In a way the most important point he makes is that management never come into contact with the public, and so don't see how important that part of our job is. What marks out Royal Mail from other businesses is the the Universal Service Obligation (USO), we have binding legal responsibilities towards our customers that ordinary companies don't. Although the next few years are going to see a lot of changes, we have had rumours about an 8am-4pm day, and machines that will strip full time jobs from the company, I think there is a long term future for a universal postal service. The thing I didn't like about the book is the nostalgia, I get that a lot at work, from people who have been in the job for 15 years+. They go on about getting out on delivery a 7am, 'real' letters with stamps on them, the postmaster who kept all the young ones in line and an ongoing joke about someone making the bacon butties. It's like some idealised version of life as a postie in the 1950's, when life was in sepia and the summers were always sunny. I don't agree that it is all doom and gloom now. I see a good sense of camaraderie in our office, people do work well together. Posties still know their customers, still care about the community they are part of, everyone in our office lives local, most have lived here their entire lives. We do work hard for our money, we do work harder even than when I started 7 years ago. We did a revision and took 40 hours out of our office (on a promise of a share in the savings made, that has never materialised, the non-existent bonus is another running joke), but this is still a good job. Many people would kill for the terms and conditions that we take for granted. I don't object to the idea that I have to work the whole 40 hours that I get paid for, it seems fair. All those nostalgic posties who hanker for the 'good old days' when they went home at 11 o'clock leave me a bit irritated. I try very hard not to worry about the junk that goes through people's letter boxes, it is the presence of the junk that means that the birthday cards and personal letters get the decent service that people expect. I don't believe an e-card or an itunes voucher is ever going to completely replace the "Now you are 10" little boy with a football card and a nice crisp tenner folded inside.

Hmmm .... chocolate?

'The Elegance of the Hedgehog' by Muriel Barbery

I have waited some months for this and the library lady told me there are another seven people in the queue, so please give it priority. I can see why this book has developed such an enthusiastic following, there is nothing to dislike about this book; the setting and atmosphere are beautifully portrayed and the characters genuine and engaging. I am left feeling as if enough has already been written about this book in so many places. The Guardian loved it, The Telegraph was less keen, almost dismissive in parts, accusing it of being over simplistic, and The New York Times has more of a tendency to pick apart the philosophy.

So we have this story, about two people, living parallel lives, each aware of the other's existence, but not really knowing them. They are identified unusually by the use of different typefaces for their respective chapters. It feels a little as if the book, and the characters of Renée and Paloma are merely vehicles for the philosophical discussions and reflections. Renée is a middle aged concierge, trapped by her own perceptions of her social role and position, an autodidact who pursues in secret her own passions for art, music and literature, particularly Tolstoy. So fearful of the scorn of others she keeps up an elaborate charade of being the subservient, ignorant person she feels society expects her to be. Paloma is at the other extreme. The daughter of a politician she feels equally trapped by the confines of a predetermined role that she will be obliged to play out, and has plans to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday, seeing it as the only escape and unable to imagine life offering enough inducements to remain alive. Their quiet existence is disrupted by the death of one of the residents, who's apartment is then bought by a curious elderly Japanese gentleman. Mr Ozu's arrival opens new doors for them all in unexpected ways.

They are linked by a shared passion for language, it's use and peculiarities, an interest that borders on the obsessive neurotic at times. (Sorry, going to slip now into the first of a few lengthy quotes) Here Renée has received a note from one of the residents:

"I was not prepared for such an underhand attack. I collapse in shock on the nearest chair. I even begin to wonder if I am not going mad. does this have the same effect on you, when this sort of thing happens?

Let me explain:

The cat is sleeping.

You've just read a harmless little sentence, and it has not caused you any pain or sudden fits of suffering, has it? Fair enough.

Now read agin:

The cat, is sleeping.

Let me repeat it, so that there is no cause for ambiguity:

The cat comma is sleeping.

The cat, is sleeping.

Would you be so kind as, to sign for.

On the one hand we have an example of a prodigious use of the comma that takes great liberties with language, as said commas have been inserted quite unnecessarily, but to great effect:

'I have been much blamed, both for war, and for peace ...'

And on the other hand, we have this dribbling scribbling on vellum, courtesy of Sabine Pallieres, this comma slicing the sentence in half with all the trenchancy of a knife blade." (p.105)

This is precisely what is so appealing about her character, you are allowed, even encouraged, to indulge in frequent bouts of intellectual snobbery, as you share with her the horror she experiences at the ignorance and lack of refinement of her supposedly well educated upper class residents.

Reading that the author is a philosophy professor and lives in Japan you can see that on one level this novel is pure self indulgence. She writes about, in these character's lives, all the things that interest her. There are lots of literary and film references, and Paloma and Renée's preexisting shared interest in japanese culture (manga and films respectively) ensures that Mr Ozu's arrival is guaranteed to intrigue them both. Taking into account the fact that I am reading a translation from the french Ms Barbery has a wonderful vocabulary, and knows how to use it. But it's not just the fancy words, it's the way she expresses things so beautifully. Some random (carefully chosen) examples:

"twenty years wasted stalking dust" (talking of her friend Manuela, the cleaner)

"From time to time I rewind, thanks to this secular rosary known as the remote control." (p.95)

"Goodbye, says Paloma, with her first, faint smile, a poor little out-of-pactice smile that breaks your heart." (p.241)

"Come in, I say without thinking, in the heat of the conversation.

Solange Josse looks in round the door.

All three of us look at her questioningly, as if we were guests at a banquet being disturbed by an ill-mannered servant." (p.262)

and the best one (a bit longer):

"To the chapter of my turpitudes I must now add the abduction of a dress that does not belong to me, in place of one stolen from a dead woman, by me. The evil is rooted, moreover, in the infinitesimal nature of my hesitation. If my vacillation had been the fruit of a sense of compunction linked to the concept of ownership, I might yet be able to implore St Peter's forgiveness; but i fear it is due to nothing more that the time needed to ensure the feasibility of my misdeed." (p.265, on deliberately acquiring the 'wrong' dress from the dry cleaners.)

On another tack altogether I got the feeling sometimes that I was reading Virginia Woolf. Firstly there is the whole slightly stream of consciousness thing, and most of the story is being written from the perspective of the inside of the character's heads. In several places Renée describes her own thought processes when she decides how to respond in conversation, when she is trying to conceal her true reaction to whatever has been said or asked of her. With Paloma it is less so, her chapters are more self obsessed, concerned with her own little world and how it conspires to make life horrible, quite a clichéd teenage neurosis really. But Renée frequently muses on more esoteric abstract emotions (here reflecting about a painting that she sees at Mr Ozu's apartment) :

"The seal of eternity ... What absent world does our heart intuit when we see these dishes and cups, these carpets and glasses? Beyond the frame of the painting there is, no doubt, the tumult and boredom of everyday life - itself an unceasing and futile pursuit, consumed by plans; but within the frame lies the plenitude of a suspended moment, stolen from time, rescued from human longing. Human longing! We cannot cease desiring, and this is our glory, and our doom. Desire! It carries us and crucifies us, delivers us every new day to a battlefield where, on the eve, the battle was lost; but in sunlight does it not look like a territory ripe for conquest, a place where - even though tomorrow we will die - we can build empires doomed to fade to dust, as if the knowledge we have of their imminent fall had absolutely no effect on our eagerness to build them now." (and so on for another page) (p.199)

Anyway, circumstances conspire to throw them together and a friendship grows up between them, and Mr Ozu has a profound, positive and enduring effect on both their lives. Just when I was beginning to think that the story itself was a little lame and predictable the finale completely threw me. The story is about both main characters trying to make some meaning in their lives, and although verging on the sentimental at the end I think it offers an uplifting reflection on the importance of friendship and a seeking for beauty.

So why the chocolate of the post title? This bit made me laugh out loud, so i have to quote it to you, even though it is kind of a private family joke. Dunk will probably use the comments to deny all knowledge, but this is exactly what he does to make me think he is listening (Paloma describing her mother's visits to her analyst):

"Personally I don't think she is taking the anti-depressants to ease her anxiety but rather to endure the analysis. When she describes her sessions, it's enough to make you want to bang your head against the wall. The guy says 'hmmm' at regular intervals, and repeats the end of her sentences ('And I went to Lenotre's with my mother': 'Hmmm, your mother?' 'I do so like chocolate': 'Hmmm, chocolate?')" (p.162)

I do try and resist hype usually, but this one was worth the wait. Do read it.

Boris Pasternak

Over the last few months I have been reading 'Letters to Georgian Friends' by Boris Pasternak. It's not the kind of book that you can write a review of as such. It is quite simply a collection of letters, most of them to literary friends and poets in Georgia. Many of them are quite ordinary, sending greetings and good wishes, asking after their health and wellbeing, discussing domestic arrangements and holiday plans, but in quiet subtle ways I feel like I have had an intimate glimpse of the life of a great writer. I should own up to not having read Doctor Zhivago (his only full length novel), thought I do feel quite inspired to at some point. I guess this book dominated his reputation to such an extent that I was not even aware that poetry was the more significant part of his literary output.

His career covered the time from the revolution until his death in 1960, but this book includes letters from the early 30's, the time of his first visit to Georgia and his initial acquaintance with many of the Georgian poets who were to become significant friends. Surprisingly, in spite of his prominence, he was never subject to imprisonment or expulsion during the Stalinist years, a period when when literary figures, as well as political ones, were subject to both literary controls and arbitrary arrest and detention. He does seem to have adapted his writing somewhat in order to fit in with the 'Socialist Realism' that was approved by the Communist Party, though he became increasingly disenchanted with the regime. As time went on he supported himself mostly by translating rather than his own writing, which was subject to official hostility and frequent bans.

It was his friendships with Titsian Tabidze and Paolo Iashvili (both influential Georgian poets) that make this collection so interesting. In amongst the everyday there is the background of a horrific, repressive political regime. Tabidze was arrested and executed during the purges of 1936, though his wife and friends lived for many years with the hope of his imprisonment, not learning officially until 1955 that he had been executed within two months of arrest. Iashvili tried to save himself by renouncing his work and avowing loyalty to Stalin and the revolution but faced with being forced to denounce his friend he committed suicide. Many of the letters in the book are to Nina, Tabidze's wife, with whom Boris and his family remained in close contact for the rest of his life. The letters show how closely linked their literary world was, how people knew each other, worked together, Boris translating works for many of the Georgians to make them accessible to a wider russian audience. The endnotes give a brief biography of the people mentioned in the book, and could be an interesting starting point for an exploration of some pretty obscure poetry.

It is hard to pin down why I persevered with this book. Maybe it was the chat and personal anecdotes, although they were written long ago and far away, that showed life was pretty much the same for literary geniuses as it is for us mere mortals. The background details of his ordinary life make him so very real. I grew very fond of him, he was very self depreciating, unassuming, and a loyal devoted friend. He mostly signs himself "your Borya" and is always warm and affectionate. In spite of bouts of ill health and the worsening political situation he was very positive, sometimes almost naively so, and frequently expresses his gratitude for the life he had been privileged to lead:

"I am very satisfied with my life, with the chance of earning an honest living, and with the serenity of my state of mind. I have never considered myself in any way offended or passed over. If anyone thinks that to a detached observer I may appear to be a 'martyr', then let me say that, first, I am not responsible for anyone's crazy ideas or ridiculous fancies and secondly, it is sufficient that they who may be interested in such a theory should life the ban on my books and let me mount the rostrum and this 'semblance of martyrdom', which does not exist as far as I am concerned, will disappear by itself." (letter to Nina, 1950)

The Waves

I had to take my own photo of 'The Waves' by Virginia Woolf as I could not find an image that had the same cover. There is no nice 'wave' design on this one, it is rather ordinary.

For anyone really enjoying the 'Woolf in Winter' reading challenge, and who wants to read some very intellectual and erudite thoughts on The Waves, please visit over on Claire's site Kiss a Cloud and follow a few of the links.

This book is a real challenge, and I fully intend to read it all, just not this week (and To The Lighthouse is well down the TBR pile I confess). I should have known, after Mrs Dalloway, that I could not expect a novel in the conventional sense, but it did not prepare me for The Waves. So I launched in with naive enthusiasm expecting to find at least a 'story' of some kind. Then I tried the 'just read and let it flow into you' technique. I think it tells you so much about Virignia, how much she lived inside her own head, and how her life was centred on intellectual and emotional engagement and reflection.

You know the idea that some people are visual readers, who take in the words by looking, and some are aural readers, who take in the words by hearing them, actually saying the words aloud in their head. My daughter says she reads slowly because she says the words to herself. Now I think I probably am mostly visual, but with Virginia Woolf I think you have to be aural, to go slowly and appreciate the density of the language. Older daughter Tish (having helped me writing the Mrs Dalloway review) commented that surely such writing would never get past the editor, and I said that was probably one of the perks of self-publishing (that you can do something that has never been done before and not just end up with a pile of rejection letters.) If one of the rules of good writing is to not overdo the adjectives, then any editor worth his salt would have cut this book down by at least a third. But then I have to take it all back because when I look at the half dozen little notes I have made myself they are all about the language:

Rhoda speaking of a chorus of birds startled by the opening scullery door: "Off they fly like a fling of seeds."

The boys talking (am often unsure who) and within a few lines we get: "incorrigible moodiness", "innumerable perplexities", "profound distinctions" and "ferocious tenacity" (this last one being my favourite).

Susan, later, (p.70): "The day is stark and stiff as a linen shroud."

Rhoda (p.77): "I see the wild thorn tree shake its shadow in the desert."

I am yet to discover what life has in store for Susan and the rest (and I can't help but have an image of Susan from the Narnia books when I read her name) so I will leave you with her feelings about school, which are just so perfectly expressed I may post them to my home education e-mail list. Here she is watching from the train window going home for the holidays:

"But the day is still rolled up. I will not examine it until I step out on to the platform in the evening. I will not let myself even smell it until I smell the cold green air off the fields. But already these are not school fields; these are not school hedges; the men in these fields are doing real things; they fill carts with real hay; and those are real cows, not school cows. But the carbolic smell of corridors and the chalky smell of classrooms is still in my nostrils. The glazed shiny look of matchboard is still in my eyes. I must wait for fields and hedges, and woods and fields, and steep railway cuttings, sprinkled with gorse bushes, and trucks in sidings, and tunnels and suburban gardens with women hanging out washing, and then fields again and children swinging on gates, to cover it over, to bury it deep, this school that I have hated." (p.44)