Juxtabook

Agatha Christie

I have not been very well over the last few weeks, the usual autumn bugs proving hard to shake off, but I have been keeping myself entertained with a lovely heap of books left with me by a friend. All four boxes of them! Inside, amongst other things, are almost the complete works of Agatha Christie, many in the distinctive Pan paperbacks:

A cheery and autumnal sight it seems to me for some reason (Why do whodunnits feel cosy? Because the wrong-doer gets caught?) and much more interesting to look at than the current crop of sterile images on the recent editions viewed if you click through on the Amazon links following. Anyway, I have been working my way through them in the order in which they are written. Many I am coming to fairly fresh as I haven't read them since my teenage years, others I have never read at all. Either way the exercise is proving interesting as one can sense the Queen of Crime feeling her way with the subject.

Christie is most famous for Miss Marple and Poirot and indeed Poirot features in the very first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The other early volumes though have a variety of detectives: Tommy and Tuppence in The Secret Adversary(whom she does use again but not very often), Anne Beddingfield in The Man in the Brown Suit, Anthony Cade, Superintendent Battle, Chief Inspector Japp. Japp and Battle do appear again but Cade and Beddingfield do not, and there is no sign of Miss Marple yet. She is still settling on her formula, still trying different detectives, and there is something quite fresh about the collective effect, and I wonder if that will remain true when we get into her high period of Marple and Poirot?Hastings/Japp. Such chronological reading is a pleasurable exercise at any rate, and one I highly recommend.

Having had a bit of a Christie fest and needing relief from my light relief, if you see what I mean, I have finally started Sister Morphine by Catherine Eisner which has been on my TBR pile for ages. I am so glad I did. Being very busy this year I have tended towards lighter reading and the subject matter here, the effect of drugs on mental health patients, seemed a bit heavy. Not so. It is really surprisingly light and funny in its handling of difficult subjects so far, thought I am only part way through. One to read if you enjoyed Angela Young's Speaking of Love, but I am wondering if it will pull off the trick of being greater than the sum of its parts when the end finally comes. I'll keep you posted!

And one last aside before I retreat to the sofa for the next hot lemony drink and dizzy spell: there is an excellent discussion on voice and vocabulary on Alis Hawkins' blog on the lively thread following some questions from Alis. With the interest in historical fiction peaked because of the success of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel this seems a very pertinent subject. 

The Ibooknet Blog

As some of you know I also post on the Ibooknet blog. Over recent weeks the blog has had a bit of a revamp. Jane of Jane Badger Books (and Books Mud and Compost), our trusty chairman, did a bit of decorating and improved the look of the blog a few months ago. In the last month we've been able to step up the rate of posting with a new post nearly everyday. The posts cover mainly book news but there are some news, memes and other things on there too. The posts are mainly attributed to me as I physically put them up but contain information or articles passed to me by other booksellers and so cover a wide range of topics. There will be at least one longer article every month each by a different bookseller. The last was an interesting piece of research by Mike Sims of A Book For All Reasonson a play by Dornford Yates, Eastward Ho!

If you haven't had a look at the Ibooknet Blog in a while then you might like to try it again. The latest post is a useful book blogers meme!

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The little word image that starts this post is a "wordle" made of keywords from recent Ibooknet Blog posts. You can make your own wordle here.

The Blue Handbag by Fiona Robyn

The Blue Handbag by Fiona Robyn is utterly delightful. Leonard, a widower, finds a railway ticket in an old handbag belonging to his late wife Rose. The ticket to Didcot, together with a letter from an old school friend of Rose, set Leonard off on a trail of discovery. A closely observed portrait of an extended family, as well as a study in grief and identity, The Blue Handbagis vibrant and real. Leonard is lightly flawed and very likable as he deals with crisis after crisis without Rose's help and advice. Robyn highlights the double whammy that is every widow and widower's main tragedy: the dealing with grief and trauma without the help of the lost spouse. It is as you would expect touching but it is far from soppy and makes you smile time after time.

Robyn's true strength is in her portrayal of relationships, particularly parent and child relationships. Here there are very different relationships between Leonard and Rose and their daughter, and their own parents, and their grandchildren:

In the morning they go to a park with a lake in the middle and an impressive playground. The boys swing on their swings for as long as the adults can bear to push them. After half an hour of continuous swinging, Leonard wonders if they would ever get tired of it. He sees them in his mind's eye with a huge back-up team of adult pushers to launch and re-launch them into the air twenty-four hours a day. They'll eat and drink on them, learn their times tables, sleep on them, grow out of their tiny trousers and into bigger and bigger ones, holding mini-TVs in their laps, chatting with friends who jump onto the swings beside them. 'The Amazing Swinging Twins!' the papers will announce, and psychologists and film-makers will come from far and wide to analyse them and film them as they swing. The'll only stop when Rory, aged 17, falls in love with one of his young pushers and leaps off into the air and into her arms.

As well as being a parent and grandparent Leonard is a gardener. His day job is with the National Trust and he thinks of flowers and plants throughout the day at work and at home. This living background to the narrative gives the book a real painterly quality: character portraits with leaf work.

Leonard has a gardener's sharp observation: he sees the detail and has the patience to wait for the whole picture which time will reveal, and he is prepared to spend time nurturing for he knows the rewards to come. A truly lovely book, gently incisive, witty and engaging, and nothing whatsoever like its cover!

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The leaf silhouette is from here.

The in-text links are for Amazon UK but The Blue Handbag is also available from The Book Depository with free worldwide delivery.

Book Business Notes

Postage arrangements during UK Royal Mail postal strikes

In order to allow as many customers as possible to get their books without delay we are making the following offers:

UK customers:

1. spend more than £40 on a single item and opt for second class postage. We will upgrade to special delivery at no further cost to you. This will avoid your item being snarled up in any back log.

or

2. spend more than £40 on multiple items and opt for second class postage and we will charge you postage for just one item and send by either a Royal Mail trackable service or suitable alternative which will again avoid your item being snarled up in any backlog.

or

3. you can opt to pay for special delivery for any item that doesn't fit in the above catagories. This option is available through the checkout.

International customers:

1. Spend more than £40 on a single item and opt for airmail postage and we will send by airsure (a faster trackable airmail service)

or

2. Spend more than £40 on mulitple items and opt for airmail postage and we will send by a trackable non-Royal Mail service.

Being a small family business we're not big enough to justify accounts with carriers other than Royal Mail but we will do our best to minimise delays for customers.

You can view our stock here.

Lesley Castle by Jane Austen

Lesley Castle contains three minor works by Jane Austen with 'A History of England by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian', and 'Catharine' alongside the title work. 'Lesley Castle' is a satirical epistolary novel mocking the selfish society nonsense of two young friends Miss Margaret Lesley and Miss Charlotte Lutterell. Though lacking the polish of Austen's more mature works the typical Austen ironic style is evident:

I return you many thanks for the account [your letter] contains of Lesley's acquaintance, love and marriage with Louisa, which has not the less entertained me for having often been repeated to me before.

As her work evolved, of course, Austen worked out that her brand of irony worked better with an omniscient narrator but these letters are nonetheless readable and fun with a clear and likable authorial hand behind them, making this is a very nice addition to the Austen bookshelf. Austen's 'History' is also very funny and a must read if you have not come across it before, much funnier than the over-rated 1066 and All That.

The three works are accompanied by an excellent introduction by novelist Zoe Heller which puts them in context. At just over one hundred pages this is neat little volume and very postable for long-distance presents over the coming season.

Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry

The newly launched Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry published by Gylphi bridges several gaps. Firstly it covers the weird and wonderful in British and Irish poetry, what ever you want to call it (Neo-modernist? parallel tradition? British Poetry Revival? postmodernist?), those that fall beneath and behind the mainstream Dylan Thomas and Seamus Heaney. As the introduction rightly points out, without an academic journal of their own, scholars in this area have to resort to blogging or the underground press, or give up. Whilst I am a strong supporter of the blog versus the newspaper critic, when it comes to the academic critic the lack of a peer review process means that as well as the poetry being underground, or parallel, the criticism is too. So blogging not withstanding, a properly edited journal is a must for any area of study. So, our first hurrah for Gylphi.

Secondly the editors have taken a bright, sharp line with their inclusions. The editorial is readable and not overloaded with theory, and whilst properly detailing the case for a new journal, is also accessible to the lay reader of poetry as well as the academic. The essays provide much needed attention for writers such as Veronica Forrest-Thomson, and J. H. Prynne who were/are both critics as well as poets. The essays in this first edition, whilst dealing in both theory and criticism or 'considering poetics as well as poetry', are also very readable. The essay by Ian Davidson on Prynne deals with 'Refuse Collection', Prynne's poem on Abu Ghraib, for example, and deals with concepts such as democracy, a concept of universal interest. Hurrah then Gylphi for bridging the lay and academic markets.

The last bridge then is that between poet and critic.  The editorial notes:

Outside the growing circle of critics and scholars within this field, we expect to build up a readership for the journal within the very literary community that is being described, an opportunity which suggests that criticsm will possibly feed back into the poetry world and affect it, as well as sustaining the academic study of it.

Both Prynne and Forrest-Thomson wrote formal criticism, and Prynne and Denise Riley, the subject of another essay, held or hold academic posts. This two way poetics/poetic conversation seems then a necessary thing. A formal platform for consideration of innovative poetry codifies and clarifies and enables new poets to move forward from their innovative forbears as the more conventional new poets move on from their mainstream influences.

The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry is not a light-weight read but it is well worth looking at to see more than the top strata of poetric society. The first issue is published now and annual subscriptions are £18. You can see Gylphi's page on the journal here and if you are in London next week there is a launch event at Birkbeck which you can read about here.

Another giveaway

I have an awful lot of copies of Mandela's Books and the Strong-Room of Dreams: Reflecting on the Value of Literatureby Dennis Walder. It is the text of a lecture - a 27 page pamphlet - and is of interest to anyone studying Nelson Mandela, South Africa, the nature of reading (especially childhood reading), postcolonialism, political prisoners and Charles Dickens. It is an interesting side read to Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones for example.

If you would like a copy then leave me a message below and I'll contact you for our address. I have about 8-10 to giveaway and I am happy to post anywhere in the world.

You can read the full catalogue description on my website here (but don't order there unless you want to pay for it!).

And the winner is...

The winner of The Harrowing by Robert Dinsdale is Carole. If you let me have your address Carole I'll get the book in the post for you.

Buy A Friend a Book Week Giveaway

It is BAFAB Week again. This time I am offering a book with condition attached - to enter you must have a blog and be willing to review the book. The book was passed to me as a review copy and it seems only fair to pass it on that way. I am willing to post anywhere, so if you have ablog, would like to read and review The Harrowing by Robert Dinsdale then all you have to do is leave a comment below.

If you have BAFAB Week giveway on your own blog leave a message and I will add a list of links to giveaways later in the week.

The Harrowing by Robert Dinsdale

On the eve of William's enlistment in the British army during WWI his brother Samuel smashes William's head in with a stone. This unlikely start begins The Harrowing by Robert Dinsdale. We meet two brothers: William, the elder, excels at everything whilst Samuel, the younger, is by general consensus a bit of a bad apple. They walk across Woodhouse Moor, Leeds, on the eve of William's enlistment. Their last conversation hits a raw nerve for Samuel and he snaps, finally doing the bad thing family and neighbours had been predicting for years, his violence hospitalising William for weeks.

On William's return to consciousness he finds underage Samuel not being protected by his family but rather shipped off to France with false papers declaring him of age, dispatched with a sense of good riddance. William is horrified. He realises his brother has lived in his shadow and understands (quite remarkably actually considering his injuries) his brother's actions in context. Now in a position to be medically excused combat he nonetheless goes off to France to fight and to find and save Samuel.

The majority of the novel is in France and Dinsdale's strengths are his historical and geographical rendering of trench, town and countryside. Whilst not totally convinced by the initial premise of the brothers' relationship their behaviour in the trenches is beyond simple cliches of saving and redemption, and a subtler portrait of very young men, the brothers and their comrades, under pressure emerges. The soldiers' differing concept of what they are fighting for, their different images of friends, family, hometown or country, and the interplay of all those differing loyalties, are fascinating to watch as they emerge through the characters.

The sense of violence and hatred beginning at home pervades the book. Friends and enemies are all on the British side, the encounters with Germans show them as human and sympathetic (though killed and killing) whilst the allied trenches simmer with blood lust amongst themselves. A friend from Leeds, Matthias, is an unusual character and his actions and reactions in respect of both brothers are an elegant transposition of the everyday boys' power struggles and rivalries relocated in the seething atmosphere of the trenches.

The narrative drive comes from a series of chases, brother after brother, friend after friend, and soldier after soldier. Over time Samuel becomes a more sympathetic character, an uphill slog for the narrative after the brutal start, though he is never particularly likable. Though why should he be? His likeability doesn't make his abandonment by family and country to the horrors of the war any more or less than what it is, a truly tragic waste of life.

The Harrowing is a dark and intriguing novel, driven by character, and drawing its power from that rather than from an easy display of war horror. It has many strengths but lacks consistency. It is nonetheless extremely readable and remarkable in combining an excellent portrayal of trench life with having something new to say about an experience so many novelists have gone over so many times before. Its chilling freshness is why you should read it.

Reading Round-Up

Some quick reviews:

Speaking of Love by Angela Young

I had seen some good reviews of this about the blogosphere so I was prepared to admire this book but not necessarily to enjoy it. The subject matter, schizophrenia, did not seem something that would be great entertainment. It wasn't long however before I fell totally for main character Iris. Though her journey is terribly painful Angela Young pulls off the trick of convincing you it was traumatic without actually making the process of reading about her mental illness at all distressing. Iris's story is utterly engaging. It is also an important story that needs to be told. You will have read this on other blogs I am sure, but Speaking of Love is wonderful stuff. Don't let any preconceptions about novels on mental illness put you off, just read it.

Winter in Madrid by C J Sansom

Whilst lacking the page-turning pace of the Shardlake books Winter in Madrid is still an intriguing piece of historical fiction. Set during the Winter of 1940, Spain is in the aftermath of the Civil War and the rest of Europe is engaged with Hitler. We follow Dunkirk veteran turned reluctant spy Harry Brett as he returns to Madrid to work for the secret service, the delightfully nick-named 'sneaky beakies'. Also in Madrid is Barbara, a British Red Cross worker whose boyfriend Bernie Piper fought with the International Brigade on the losing side and is missing presumed dead. Harry's previous trips to Madrid were with Bernie, his old school friend, or looking for Bernie after he went missing. Back in 1940 for very different reasons he runs into Barbara again. Characterised by detailed historical research and with the same convincing creation of time and place as the Shardlake books, this is a fascinating read. I recently read The Return by Victoria Hislop which covers much of the same historical ground. Where Hislop's work relies entirely on its (undoubtedly very good) historical research to pull it through, in Winter in Madrid we have the enjoyable benefit of believable plot and characters set against the well worked historical back drop. Bernie, Barbara and other characters are nothing out of the psychological ordinary but remain convincing throughout and it is worth spending time getting to know their story. If you find the Spanish Civil war interesting and enjoyed The Shadow of the Wind or even The Return then this is a must read.

The Winter Ground by Catriona McPherson

This a Dandy Gilver mystery and I wish I had discovered this series early. One of a trend of historical crime fiction, The Winter Ground is set in the 1920s. Dandy Gilver, bored housewife and somewhat disengaged mother, is a wonderful creation combining that combination of luck and perception that characterized all good fictional detectives. She is great fun and it makes a refreshing change to have a lead detective who is female with a male side-kick who is her junior in the narrative. The series starts with After the Armistice Ball and the next installment, the fifth of the series, Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains is released in hardback in December.

The Winter Ground is set around Christmas. Dandy has a peculiar friendship with a woman cocooned by her husband. Ina survived the flu epidemic and her husband now keeps her isolated, with few visitors who must always keep their distance. Everyone is surprised therefore when Albert Wilson invites a circus to over-winter in his grounds in return for a private performance for his wife. All is not well amongst the circus folk however. Dandy is already engaged to discover who is playing tricks amongst them when in front of an audience one of the performers is murdered.

Very much reminiscent of Margery Allingham but without the potentially annoying Albert Campion, The Winter Ground is a lovely, lovely read. There are some very intelligent psychological portrayals most notably the local police inspector who far from being a plod seems bright enough to want someone else better placed to do the work for him. Gilver's poor marriage is neatly portrayed without fuss or cliche and the inevitable slight frisson with her male side-kick is handled very gently and believably. Great stuff.

Catriona McPherson has her own site here and it smacks of lots of author input not the gibberings of the marketing departments, especially as she spends a good part of the FAQ explaining how to pronounce Kirkcudbrightshire and McPherson.

Off to read English Literature at University?

As the beginning of the first university term of the academic year is fast approaching, it seemed a good moment to blog about these nifty little tomes. Publishers Icon* have a series of 'Introducing ...' guides which make an excellent starting point for getting your head around literary theory as an undergraduate. They are graphic guides not unlike the '...for beginners' series and as such provide a visual representation of the complexities of theory. I have been sent three to review, Critical Theory, Foucault and Freud, but there is an enormous range of use to anyone wrestling with literary or cultural theory including Postmodernism, Derrida, Marxism etc.

 

Literary theory can be such a shock to the system: after A levels enjoying Shakespeare or Jane Austen, the convoluted dryness of this kind of non-fiction can seem contrary to what drew you to study literature in the first place. Literary or cultural theory is complex and nothing is going to make it simple, but these guides provide another way into the subject, another means of contriving hooks on which to hang all the new information with which you are bombarding your brain.

Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide by Stuart Sim and Borin van Loon roughly takes one concept per page or double spread and attempts to summarise it. There are cartoons and other graphics but the sentences used are no shorter than standard theorizing I'm afraid! One of the wonderful things I first discovered inside is a family tree of cultural and critical theories from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century. This is the first time I have seen anything or anyone render so neat the relationships between, for example, J F Lyotard, 2nd wave feminism, the French Revolution, neuro-psychiatry, postcolonialism, Umberto Eco, Utopian socialism, Russian formalism and so on. As to the rest it is truly a dip-in style of book with intense compact segments of information.

I don't think that these pocket sized guides are enough on their own, but alongside the inevitable Reader (often Dennis Walder's Literature in the Modern World or David Lodge's Twentieth Century Literary Criticism: A Reader or Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh's Modern Literary Theory: A Reader ) that is no doubt on your reading list, and a good traditional prose introduction such as Literary Theory: An Introduction by Terry Eagleton, then these guides will be invaluable to clarify and reinforce the new-to-you concepts and ideas.

I also found Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide excellent as a refresher having not read much theory over the last few years. It is a neat reference book having a good glossary and a rather shorter index which gets you to the heart of each concept very quickly. As such I would have been glad of it as I embarked on my MA too.

If funds stretched then I would consider acquiring the more specialised guides to one theory or theorist. Beyond a basic run-through of psychoanalytic theory as an undergrad I have not looked at that area of theory much as I specialised elsewhere but Introducing Freud: A Graphic Guide by Richard Appiganesi and Oscar Zarate was a quick and entertaining way back into this area for me. There is more detail here than in Introducing Critical Theory, several pages being dedicated to the development of each aspect of Freud's work or to his patient studies, such as Anna O, and the conclusions drawn. Again there is an index and a very brief little glossary.

To summarise, my ideal basis of a theoretical library would be:

Literature in the Modern World: Critical Essays and Documents by Dennis Walder (but check your reading list; if another is recommended get that only, you don't want two)

Literary Theory: An Introduction by Terry Eagleton now in its 25th anniversary edition

Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler. Approaches everything very differently to Eagleton so an excellent back-up to that. Read them both together and things start to make sense!

Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide by Stuart Sim and Borin van Loon

And lastly if you've room in the budget The Icon Critical Dictionary of Postmodern Thought also by Stuart Sim which is sadly out of print but is excellent and, relative to the nature of the subject, quite an easy read.

You can browse a selection of my own bookshop stock on the subject here.

 

Skipton Puppet Festival 2009

If you live anywhere in the north of England from where the town of Skipton is a feasible day out then you need to have a good look at the Skipton Puppet Festival website. If puppets makes you think of just Punch and Judy or a wonky object you once made at school then think again. The Third International Skipton Puppet Festival will take you on a journey far removed from any pre-conceived ideas of puppetry.

The festival is brainchild of Daniel and Liz Lempen who run the touring company Lempen Puppets from their Skipton base. It is a biennial festival and began six years ago. It is wonderful thing that takes over the whole town. There is a huge amount of free street theatre and many little shows for just a couple of pounds. Standard tickets for the main shows, and there are lots of these, are just £5 each for the family shows with family tickets available at a small discount. The adult shows are £8. There are over 60 events over 3 days 25th-27th September so there is plenty from which to choose.

We've been to events at both the previous festivals including the evening cabaret aimed at adults (which was the most unexpected and entertaining collection of acting, puppetry and artistry I have ever seen) and the most charming rendition of the Pied Piper which held our then three year old daughter spell bound. There are shows for every age in between.

The theatre companies come from far and wide. Many are British but there are French, German, Russian, Hungarian, Austrian, and Belgian companies performing too. There are also history of puppetry and jig doll exhibitions at a number of venues and a range of street theatre and fringe performances plus a continental food market, a puppet and mask themed bookstall and the border morris troup the Flagcrackers. Compared with some of the prices for family day out this is a relatively inexpensive and wonderfully different option. If you can come please do!

The box office is now open and you can read the booking information here.

 

 

 

The pictures are all from The Skipton Puppet Festival website and feature the following companies and productions from the top:

Indigo Moon Theatre - Alice and the White Rabbit

Lempen Puppets - Journey of Turtle

Tabula Rasa - Peggy, The Laundry Child

Theater DaWa - The Brave Little Tailor

Clive Chandler and Martin Reeves - The Rickshaw

Thingumajig Theatre - Veronica

Rough Magic Theatre - Jaberwocky

If you live in Yorkshire and can get it there is an article about the Skipton Puppet Festival 2009 in the September issue of Yorkshire Ridings magazine by Mr Juxtabook under one of his pen-names, Jonas Holdsworth.

More on Greene's The End of the Affair

Vintage Books are running a bookclub on Twitter and the first title up for discussion on 1st September is going to be The End of the Affair. You can see the Vintage Book Club profile here. To join in you need a Twitter account (take sseconds to set up) and to "follow" the Vintage Bok Club via the above link.

Allan Ahlberg

If you didn't catch it last time it was broadcast, the BBC have aired again the wonderful Ahlberg at 70. Presented by Janet Ellis with a mixture of interview, archive, and comments from writers, critics and publishers this is a superb look at the work of the author of The Jolly Postman, Peepo and Each Peach Pear Plum.

You can listen again for the next seven days here.

 

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

I loved this book but it is not the place to start if you have never read any Greene before. The subject matter is dark, the outcomes bleak, and the characters largely unlikeable. It is the writing and the psychological and philosophical layers that lift the book into something far more enjoyable than the sum of its parts.

The End of the Affair is as the title suggests a postmortem of a love affair. Set during and just after the second world war we enter the world of Maurice Bendrix. Bendrix, a novelist, has had an affair with a married woman, Sarah, over the course of several years. Abruptly she ends the affair during an air raid. The novel begins after the war when the still heart broken Maurice bumps into Sarah's husband starting a chain of events that involve all three of them. Being Greene, these events are mostly psychological rather than external or dramatic. The post war events are interspersed with Bendrix's memories of the affair and what he discovers through the use of a private detective engaged to discover if this post-war, post-Bendrix Sarah is having another affair with someone else.

Bendrix is a duplicitous social spy, controlling, selfish and often unpleasant and it is hard to have any sympathy with him yet Greene manages to handle his characters so that despite everything one does feel for Bendrix. Sarah is a subtler, more delicately painted figure whose feelings and motives we experience always at one remove. Her dilatoriness in ending her stale marriage is odd to modern eyes, and her reasons for ending the affair, when they are revealed, may seem even odder but they are pure Greene, and somehow it works.

The unpleasant characters, war time austerity and incessant English rain are offset by the rather Shakespearian use of the private detective Parkis and his son. Like the porter in Macbeth Parkis is the rude mechanical there to provide humour and emotional relief. You can feel the joins in the construction sometimes here, but in such a bleak book, Parkis and son are necessary, however unsubtle.

Greene is often bleak but not often this bleak. It is a tribute to his prose style that this is something I still feel I can recommend highly. The Ralph Fiennes/Julianne Moore film which lacks Greene's prose but has all the bleakness, is another matter entirely and scalped of its literariness The End of the Affair as a film narrative is not good at all.

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I read The End of the Affair in the lovely matt red and grey Vintage Classics series. It came with an incisive introduction by Monica Ali and is well worth looking out for in this edition. The first link above is Amazon but it is also available at The Book Depository.

Brat Farrar by Josphine Tey

Reading Angel with Two Faces by Nicola Upson recently, which of course features crime writer Jospehine Tey, I was reminded of Tey's Brat Farrar. I have read and enjoyed this book several times but I decided it was time for another re-read.

Orphan Brat Farrar returns to England after a number of years absence. He is seen on the streets of London by Alec Loding and mistaken for Simon Ashby, a young man from Loding's home village. When Loding realises Brat is not Simon he immediately forms plans for a scam. Simon Ashby is about to celebrate his 21st and inherit his dead father's estate. This event would not be happening except for the mysterious disappearance of Simon's elder twin brother Patrick some years earlier when they were still boys. Loding persuades Brat to impersonate the missing Patrick, take his place and inherit instead of Simon. Brat should then send Loding a regular income for his help in coaching Brat on Patrick's life. Loding had been well placed to observe the Ashbys over the years as the families were very close.

Despite the scamming premise of the book the reader's sympathies are immediately with orphan Brat. He is not a man without morals (unlike Loding who is defrauding people he knows well) and takes some persuading to join in the scam. His descent into joining Loding's plan is slow and believable. We see Brat's inner self wrestle with his lack of belonging, his need for a family and for a place in the world. His only emotional anchor is his love for horses, with whom he worked in the USA after he left the orphnage, and it is this that is his undoing. Loding reveals the Ashbys are horse breeders and Brat is won over. He can't resist any more.

The playing out of family loyalties and personalities when the bombshell of Patrick's reappearance in their lives explodes is masterly. Beatrice Ashby, the aunt who brought up the Ashby children after the death of her brother and his wife, and who has spent years being haunted by images of what may have happened to Patrick, is one of my favourite literary characters. Her world is torn apart by Brat's arrival but even on the day she meets him, still unsure that he is not an impostor she is compassion through and through:

She turned at the door to say goodbye. He was standing in th middle of the room watching her go, leaving Mr Sandal to shepherd her out. He looked remote and lonely. And she thought; "If this is patrick, Patrick come home again, and I am leaving him like this, as if he were a casual acquaintance -". It was more than she could bear, the thought of the boy's loneliness.

She went back to him, took his face lightly in her gloved hand, and kissed his cheek. "Welcome back my dear, " she said.

And this in the end, a family, is all Brat craves. But he is now committed to being an impostor but from the inside he is the first person to really be in a position to solve the mystery of what really happened to the missing Patrick Ashby. How Tey resolves the difficulties Brat has got himself into, and manages the new emotional ties he forms, is a delight to watch.

A lovely book combining the same warmth, insight and intrigue as The Franchise Affair.

The first image of Brat Farrar above is from the modern paperback. I re-read my own copy a Pan paperback which you can see here:

  

This copy was purchased a few years ago from the lovely Mike and Ann Sims from A Book for All Reasons whose site is an excellent resource for early twentieth century fiction, especially Georgette Heyer. I love the stylised cover art here: the young man shadowy at the back has taken a petulant stance that looks more like he is in trouble for not eating his greens than he looks angry at the return of a usurper to his inheritance!

On a related note: does anyone remember seeing the BBC adaptation of this, modernised I think, in the 1980s. It stared Mark Greenstreet who was brilliant as both Brat and Simon Ashby. Why oh why have the Beeb never put this out on video or DVD. With the mini Tey revival going on at the moment I can't think of a better time for them to let us watch it again.

Cross posted on the ibooknet blog.

Getting Published - The Holy Grail? An article by Fiona Robyn

Fiona Robyn is the author of two published novels and a book of poetry. Fiona has kindly agreed to write an article for Juxtabook about her experience of becoming a published novelist. I hope that aspiring novelists find this useful!

Six years ago, I completed my first novel. Like most unpublished writers, I desperately wanted a publisher. I wanted my work to be read. I bought The Writer's Handbook, sent off submissions, started a blog, and continued to write. Six years later, my first three novels were accepted for publication by Snowbooks. My debut, The Letters, was published earlier this year. Was it all I'd hoped for? Was being published my Holy Grail?

My journey towards publication, like most writers, has been full of trials and adventures. I did find an agent shortly after finishing my first novel, but she couldn't find a publisher willing to take the book on. I had countless near misses and set backs. In retrospect, I am very grateful that it took me six years to find a publisher. I have learnt so many useful lessons along the way, and I know that these lessons will be of benefit in the years ahead.

What have I learnt? I have discovered a lot about marketing - the things that I enjoy (blogging, sending out newsletters, social networking) and the things that seem to work (being authentic, doing the same marketing activities over and over for a very long time). I published a couple of non-fiction books myself, and this taught me about putting books together, and gave me a taste of having 'an audience'.

I learnt (or learnt again) that I'm a control freak, and that it is difficult for me to hand things over, but that it's really helpful when I'm able to let go. I learn that I get easily addicted to praise, and the more praise my books get, the more I want. I learnt that this praise is never enough, and instead I need to remember that I am already enough, before I ever wrote a word.

I also learnt that writing is centrally important to me. I will continue to write whether or not my books continue to be published. Writing helps me to make sense of myself and of everything else, and to engage with the world. I love rolling words around in my mouth. It makes me happy when other people enjoy my descriptions, or become fond of my characters, or learn something about themselves when they read my stories. I got better at recovering from rejection. I got better at persevering. I could go on.

Being published has been a wonderful experience. I've thoroughly enjoyed working with Snowbooks, and there is nothing like holding your book in your hands for the very first time. Seeing it on the shelves in a bookshop is pretty cool too!

But no, being published hasn't been my Holy Grail. I'm not quite ready to retire on my royalties. Nobody has recognised me on the street yet, and I'm still waiting for Richard and Judy to call. I still have days when I think I'm a pretty decent writer, and days when I fear that I'm truly awful.  

Having the goal of 'being published' was a helpful one, but rather than seeing it as the end, I now see it as just another stepping stone in my career as a writer. The joyful work of writing continues, and ordinary life goes on. I'll continue to learn, and carry on celebrating the milestones and the good stuff - being nominated for my first prize, or getting positive feedback from readers. I have always planned on being in this business for the long run. I am a writer. What else would I do with my days?

Fiona Robyn's latest novel, The Blue Handbag, will be published on the 1st of August, and her debut novel The Letters is available now. You can read more about her life as a writer at her blog, Planting Words.

 

If you enjoyed this article you might also find novelist Alis Hawkins' piece on being published with Macmillan New Writing very useful.

Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer

I haven't been this excited for ages. Mr J was doing a project on vampires at school (don't ask) and brought home some vampire films to check their suitability before using them. So I watched Twilight. I would not have otherwise done so, and I am so very glad that I did. Accept the limitations generated by its YA background and you find it is a smashing film and Kristen Stewart plays a wonderful lead. So taken with it was I that I watched it again two nights later and then watched the second dvd in the box about all the behind the scenes stuff. I followed this with ordering all four books. They arrived last Thursday morning, I opened the box at 11.45am, about to start an early lunch and looking forward to a read with my sandwhich, and started the first book. Well that was me lost to the world for two days. Apart from eating and sleeping I read constantly till Saturday teatime, racing through, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. I'm an obsessive home cook teased by my sister for making my own baked beans but I served convenience food two nights running. I was having problems with my damaged wrists from holding books for so long. My husband would like to point out that only I could get a sporting injury from reading.

So if you haven't got a teenage contact and you haven't come across these books, like me you've no idea what you're missing. They are not perfect, rather like J K Rowling's works, but they have the same magic readability as the Potter series. If you liked Harry then give these a try. Rowling does dark much better than Meyer but Meyer's writing style is much superior. Twilight is by far the best of Meyer's series being complete of itself really, though each book has some wonderful sections, but Rowling works the whole balanced series thing much better. However Meyer's initial characterisation and her dialogue is, for YA works, wonderful stuff.

The books are more romance than vampire so if Anne Rice has never appealled then don't let that put you off. Bella aged 17 moves to live with her father, voluntarily, after her mother remarries. She sees the fascinating Cullen family in the cafeteria of her new school: they are rich, beautiful and very aloof. The only unattached Cullen, Edward, is thought to be too above himself to date local girls (shades of Mr Darcy) but Bella's closer acquaintance shows that there is much more to Edward than a handsome face, in fact there is quite of a lot of Mr Rochester. The two main characters, teenage Bella and vampire Edward, are essentially very good people/vampires so once this is established in the first book, though beautifully done, there is not much room for them to grow. The interest in the later books comes from counterpoint Jacob who is more rounded, more flawed and more real. First we were Romeo and Paris but then we're getting all Heathcliffe and Edgar, but better behaved. The books are littered with allusions.

If you teach then these are a must read. For 12 years plus you could do some wonderful stuff as everything shouts out analyse me! The overt literary allusions of course would make a good study, and there is a wonderful companion piece Midnight Sun which is available on Meyer's website which tells the first book from Edward's perspective (Twilight is first person narrative from Bella's perspective). You could show the kids pages from the two narratives side by side and let them study what's left out of each narrative and how the story is propelled and characters developed even though we have only one point of view. You could also get some great media lessons out of the film and even its trailers too.

Oh for a submissive class of 14 year olds: I would have them answering a question comparing Carlise Cullen with Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mocking Bird.

Taken in tandem with Harry Potter the two series are a great way into textual analysis. An editor would tell any budding author to look at their work critically from word level, sentence level and book level (or series level!). You can show kids what this really means with this series alongside Harry Potter: Rowling is cracking at tiny detail, the right word for something extraordinary, but she has some truly terrible cliched sentences. Rowling is brilliant at book level though (as is Dan Brown actually). In contrast Meyer's prose strengths are largely in the middle ground of sentence/paragraph/chapter, where she is largely spot-on throughout; it is the bigger sweeps when things are a bit shakier for Meyer. In other words Rowling does micro and macro well but misses the middle ground a bit and it is this middle ground that Meyer occupies very elegantly. (Philip Pullman of course does all three well but that's rare in any writer regardless of the age group at which you're aiming.) In short these two series are a brilliant pre-A level introduction as to how to look at books.

Older students could be let loose on considering the religious, historical, ethical and gender themes. Free will for example is an important idea throughout. In another interesting aspect Meyer has been accused of sexism but I don't think she is particularly sexist. Briefly, I think her books are too complicated for such a simple dismissal and some feminist critics of a certain age bring too much of their own baggage to the party ie the negative conotations of marriage. Younger feminists("third wave" perhaps?) have fewer chips on that subject; certainly considering myself a feminist didn't stop me getting married at 22. If you don't think marriage is necessarily and of itself sexist then it is harder to argue the books are sexist. I won't go into more details as I don't want to introduce spoilers. Having said all that I did prefer Kristen Stewart's Bella to the unadorned Meyer Bella in the books. Stewart's version was a little stronger and a little more independent, though I take Meyer's point that where Bella is really weak it is because she is human not because she is female. Whatever your view there is plenty of meat for class discussion.

Well, I am itching to start a scheme of work with my imaginary class. Anything that could make me believe, even for a few seconds, that I would want to teach again has got to have something seriously good going for it.

So what am I doing now? Why, I am reading all four again...

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Edited to add that there's a nice piece by Elaine on Random Jottings about HP.

Top Book Blogs

I had a flurry of visits from a new link and checking it out I discover I am on somebody's list of top ten book blogswhich is very gratifying. Dovegrey is there at the top of course with ReadySteadyBook, FarmLaneBooks and Stuck-in-a-Book also on the list but Juxtabook has snook in at number 9. Apparently the list is based on traffic and chatter generated about a blog such as mentions on other sites, so thank you all for all the visiting and the linking.

Talking of good book blogs I have added two new ones to the blogroll Collecting Children's Books which I discovered via my ibooknet colleague Barbara of March House Books, and The Overdecorated Bookcase which I discovered when the author left me a very nice message on the Book Blogs networking site.

And the winner is...

Thank you to everyone for their entries. The winner is Elizabeth who hopefully will have received an email from me. She would use Roald Dahl as a character in a book which I think is great idea as he had such an eventful life. If you haven't read Roald Dahl: A Biography by Jeremy Treglown then I recommend it.

Thank you again everyone for entering.

Top Ten Books of the Last Ten Years

When I reviewed Alis Hawkins' novel Testament recently I mentioned I thought it was one of my top ten books of the last ten years. I thought it was time I committed to keyboard the names of the other nine. This list is not meant to be definitive (obviously!) not least because I tend to read older books and am as no means as well read in the last ten or even twenty years as I am in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, but I still thought you might like to see the list.

The books are not ranked; it is just a simple group of ten, well, actually it is a blogger's ten (bit like a baker's dozen), you'll see why at the bottom.

Testament by Alis Hawkins

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

How the Dead Live by Will Self

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

The Widow and her Hero by Thomas Keneally

Bettany's Book by Thomas Keneally (in my opinion this knocks spots of Kate Granville's The River)

Darkmans by Nicola Barker

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Saturday by Ian McEwan

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

and I am tempted to find room for...

Theft By Peter Carey

and I have a guilty secret...

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - I love all the footnotes, the detail, the sheer bizarreness of it. It seems as much magic realism as fantasy.

If you have a 'top ten (or 11 or 12!) from the last ten years' list I would love to hear about it, and if you're sharing on your own blog then let me know and I'll link.

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Book links in the post are to the Book Depository, but in the side panel on the left are to Amazon.

BAFAB Week book giveaway

A bit late in the week but here it is - BAFAB week again. To enter this draw for a book please leave a comment below answering the following:

If you were writing a novel (any genre) including a real author as a character who would it be and why?

If you are hosting a draw yourself please let me know and I will compile a list of links.

Juxtabook's draw will take place on Monday. Please get your entries in the comments section before the end of Sunday 12th July. Thank you!

I am happy to post any where in the world.

Edited to add:

Another late BAFAB giveaway is hosted by Lissa here and a blogoversary giveaway is being hosted by Teresa of Shelf Love here.

Aren't these gorgeous ...

Lovely hardback poetry classics from Faber. Selected poems of Auden, Eliot, Hughes, Plath, Betjeman and Yeats with selections made by well know poets like Simon Armitage or Seamus Heaney. I just love the covers.

 

 

 

You can see Faber's page on the series here.

Angel with Two Faces by Nicola Upson

Nicola Upson's latest work is a truly sublime piece of literary detective fiction with an ensemble cast directed with real flair. The literary and criminal constructions are sharp, controlled and often surprising and the ending brings about both consolidation for the criminal plot and anticipation for the lives of the main characters Jospehine and Archie, paving the way neatly for the next volume in the series.

Angel with Two Faces follows on almost immediately from the last novel An Expert in Murder. Recovering from the shock of the crimes associated with her hit West End play Josephine gratefully accepts an invitation to stay with Inspector Archie Penrose on his family estate in Cornwall. The book begins with a funeral, that of Harry Pinching a young man well known to Archie and his family. This is a particularly tragic death as Harry and his twin sister are the sole carers for their eccentric teenage sister, as the Pinching parents died in a fire some years ago. Harry is believed to have been accidentally drowned but the strong sense that his former neighbours are covering things up leads Archie to question Harry's death.

The family lives and the estate lives that are portrayed in Angel with Two Faces are very reminiscent of Brat Farrar. The close partnership between warmth and hostility, between friendship and jealousy is the emotional canvas in both books. Like the theatreland of London in An Expert in Murder, Cornish life in the interwar period is almost an additional character. What really lifts Upson's work to date above the ordinary is this successful intertwining of place and community that has been so consistent across both books. In no other genre is it a greater strength to play-out such a complex layering of multiple personalities; rarely does any one figure take the lead or become the prime candidate or red herring. The possibilities of all the personalities are kept up in the air until the end. Upson reminds me of Dorothy L. Sayers as much as Josephine Tey in that death and the deliberate cause of death are portrayed as universals, a trap of fate that is something that most of us, in the right circumstances, could fall in to, or justify.

A pacier work than its predecessor, Angel with Two Faces nonetheless takes the time to flesh out the character of Josephine Tey. We expect Byron perhaps rather than Tennyson in our crime fiction but Upson makes great use of the conceits of mirrors and distance in 'The Lady of Shallot'. The real Tey writes about the distance of character, of missed or confused or adopted or lost identities, from Betty in The Franchise Affair, through Brat Farrar in the novel of the same name, to the tortured Richard III of The Daughter of Time. Tey's world also pointedly deals with the cusp of things, the moment of change. Livery stables sit opposite new car garages for example. Tey the character is also on the cusp, of different kinds of literary success, of different lives in London or with her father in Inverness, of the possibility of love for Archie with the wrapping up of her love and grief for late fiance Jack. The inevitable sense of personal confusion, the understandable hesitation, are aptly held off with mirrors as the character Tey weaves words and fails to look properly through the window. I am intrigued as to how Upson will continue to build on Tey, but this installment comes highly recommended (as is Brat Farrar is you haven't read it).

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The links in the text are to Amazon, currently cheaper than The Book Depository for UK buyers for the hardback Angel with Two Faces. The Book Depository link is here. Only the hardback is out at the moment but the paperback can be preordered on Amazon here.