Juxtabook

Save our libraries

 

Saving libraries is hard to dispute. I live in a bookshop and still use mine at least once a week. They're used by students and children, the employed and the unemployed, the elderly and even the housebound where delivery services exist. They hold important research collections - even little local libraries like ours - which would otherwise be broken up and dispatched far from the community the papers are about. They're a place to do homework, read the paper, use the internet. A place for grown-up book groups and children's story time. I've borrowed books to read, books for my child, books for my MA and books for my business. I've read old newspapers, consulted old maps and used back copies of Which? magazine to research safe car seats.

It is hard to think of an area of life that libraries can't touch. They are basis of the arts, the sciences, local history, education, social care, you name it. What's more is that unlike many things that are free, they are rarely abused or misused, and they are genuinely egalitarian.

Libraries are totally constructive. They work.

My own library is, I think, safe for the moment. Libraries in some of the villages in the Dales are not however. And in response to the idea of self-funding volunteer run libraries consider this: Gargrave library was threatened before in the 1980s. The villagers raised a staggering £30,000 to relocate it to a room in the village hall and save it. Now they are told they must save it again. 26 people have put themselves forward as volunteers - bless them - after all the work saving it last time it must be heart-breaking to be in that position again.

And if you like the posters illustrating this blog post and wonder where they are from: Phil Bradley has done a lovely job of reworking war posters for the libraries campaign. You can read about what he has done here and buy Phil Bradley's library posters here.

 

Blackmoor by Edward Hogan

I mentioned last week that my book-free progress through the library was arrested by the Hilary Mantel quote on the front of this, the superb Blackmoor by Edward Hogan. It is a good job the quote was there as the otherwise faux Bronte cover is very misleading. A green cloak is mentioned but floor-length blue Victoriana - I don't think think so.

I devoured this book in two sittings largely because of the arresting atmosphere but plot and characterisation are both largely spot on as well.

Early in the book we're give a newspaper quotation from 1992:

     A Blackmoor woman jumped to her death

from the second floor window of her house

last Thursday.

     Witnesses believe that Elizabeth Cart-

wright, 36, of Slack Lane, had watched her

young son fall from the same window

moments before. The boy, a toddler, had

landed safely in a flower basin below the

house.

The tale is told in two strands: in the modern day, in a most unobtrusive and well-handled present tense, we follow the boy, now a sensitive teenager Vincent as he finds out more about his past and his mother; and in flash backs, in the conventional past tense, we follow the decline of a pit village in the Derbyshire moors in the 1980s and early 1990s, the intertwined lives of its inhabitants and the lives of George Cartwright and his near blind albino wife Beth.

Locals are suspicious of Beth with her translucent looks and strange ways of looking out of partially-seeing eyes.

In his teens George was drawn to the scarcity of Beth Fisher, whose distinctions had made a recluse of her. She was an exotic sight - that scythe-slash of long white hair flashing past the window as she walked the right of way between the houses. At school she tilted her head down and to the left and looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, nervous, yet appraising. He liked that. He liked the way you could see the network of veins through her skin.

Even in the late twentieth century there is almost an anti-witch reaction against her "distinction" and George is not equipped to handle it nor can he cope with Beth's depressions where her personality becomes as bleak as her colouring.

Critic and poet Tom Paulin calls the opening of Mrs Gaskell's Wives and Daughters "white gothic" and I thought immediately that that was a brilliant description. It applies here in Blackmoor too. In Wives and Daughters the book starts with a brief moment from Molly Gibson's childhood where on a white hot summer's day Molly is struck with a sort of sunstroke. The swirling heat and dizziness in the ultra bright light is terrifying. It is like a white light version of Jane Eyre's red room. In Blackmoor the paleness of Beth is both reflective and translucent, visually visceral, and in the bright light of the open moortop village is a stunning counterbalance to the usual dark and lowering portrayals of moorland. This is the White Peak and the wind squeals like finger nails down glass. Beth scares the villagers with her looks and the coincidence of incidents and accidents that follow her innocent wake. The incidents involving gas and fire are terrifying but also light: light as air, light as smoke, as blazing as fire. This is white gothic done superbly well.

Young Vincent in the modern day is a beautifully drawn character with a believable balance of teenage angst and a sensitive individuality. His dead mother Beth, though fascinating, is less sharply drawn. Perhaps because Beth is so pale on the inside in her depression that she feels she hardly knows herself. As a reader I was drawn to both characters, and was equally involved in both narrative threads.

This was a debut, and though wonderful, it had a few creaky moments. The character of George is very hard to pin down. Unlike Beth there was no real narrative reason for the vagaries of characterisation here, and though people change George did not seem the same man in both threads, and I was never really sure why his relationship with Beth took the path it did. Beth and Vincent are so engaging though, that George's failings become a small quibble. This will be yet another book I want to buy as it returns to the library, as I know it will bear several re-reads. I was so glad I ignored the cover and took Hilary Mantel at her word. It is, as she says, "powerful and confident" and "utterly distinctive".

******************************************************

Blackmoor is also reviewed by Dovegreyreader and The Fiction Desk . The Hunger Trace by Edward Hogan, his second novel, is due out in March and I can't wait.

If you want to hear Tom Paulin speak about Wives and Daughters (one of my all time favourite books) you need the wonderful and inexpensive DVD of the BBC serialisation. One of the extras is a thirty minute piece called, "Who the Dickens was Mrs Gaskell?"

Updating the To-Be-Read Pile

As well as lots of new books in stock I have lots of new books in of my own. With a birthday in the Christmas break and friends and family knowing I can't get enough of those old fashioned book things - well, I tend to get given books like other people get bubble bath.

First up is Blackmoor by Edward Hogan. This wasn't a present; it was a library book. I acquired it on a day when I went into the library to return something for my daughter. I was not going to get any books out for myself. No, not me. I had over twenty new books as presents and so I was not going to look. I didn't look. I glanced. I was using the new automated machine for returning books and there on the shelf were you deposit the returned items was Blackmore. With a glowing review by Hilary Mantel on the front. I was lost. And I am so glad I was because when I got it home I read it in two sittings and it was fabulous. A review soon ...

 

Next is one I dropped a few hints for (there are several of these, Mr J is very receptive to book hints) Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. I was put off Steinbeck at school doing Of Mice and Men. I can't blame the teacher - I was the teacher. Seriously when you've taught a book over and over, and, worse, marked literally hundreds of C/D borderline GCSE papers on it in eight years as an assistant examiner, then you get a bit fed-up. Rob-Around-Books persuaded me to try Steinbeck again and in a twitter discussion with Rob, Kieron from the Book Depository and stujallen, Cannery Row came up as the best bet for my reintroduction. One I am looking forward to reading.

Another day on twitter, another book. This time I follow the author (it pays to tweet!) and since I have been following QuackWriter aka Caroline Rance, I have wanted to read Kill-Grief her eighteenth century historical novel. "Chester 1756: Mary Helsall starts a job as a nurse entering a world of stench and sickness where her caring duties are at odds with her impatient nature. She seeks solace in gin and a volatile relationship with hospital porter Anthony. But when a diseased beggar arrives for treatment, it becomes clear that he knows Mary has a lot to hide."

The reviews on Amazon for Kill Grief are as soaked in 5 stars as Rance's characters are in gin.

Another day, another Vampire. Not that I am getting completist about vampire fiction you understand. At least I hope not, there's just so much of it. This time it is a Victorian vampire The Blood of the Vampire by Florence Marryat. This a new edition by the wonderful Victorian Secrets. It is edited with an introduction and notes by Greta Depledge and looks the business as academic editions go. "The Blood of the Vampire (1897) was rather overshadowed by a certain Transylvanian Count who made his debut in the same year.  Although there are similarities with Dracula, Marryat’s vampire is female and drains her victims’ life force, rather than their blood."

And lastly, for today's round-up at least, is a present bought without the aid of either twitter or vampires. Miss Miles: A Tale of Yorkshire Life 60 Years Ago Ago is by Mary Taylor, feisty friend of Charlotte Bronte. I have yet to make a start on the actual novel but the introduction by Janet H. Murray is fascinating.

Books, Books, Books

The trouble with  being self-employed is that sometimes you need 48 hours in a day. It has been like that here recently as we took in lots of new books after Christmas. Some I have now bought, others are "under offer", but I still can't see the carpet in the sitting room for boxes. So shortly our catalogues of Elizabethan Drama, Jacobean Drama, Restoration Drama, seventeenth century poetry and seventeenth century history will be bursting at the seams, which is good!

We recently bought lots of early twentieth century items (mainly war poetry critiques, Modernism, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot) and after this latest, 17th century, influx our 18th and 19th century sections are looking thin by comparison. I would therefore really like to buy literary biography or literary criticism of:

Mrs Radcliffe and gothic fiction

Jane Austen

George Eliot

Elizabeth Gaskell

The Brontes

The Brownings

Charles Dickens

George Meredith

Tennyson

Other Victorian poets such as Clough and Arnold

General critiques of Victorian or Edwardian literature or writers

    Books about women writers in either century or feminist critiques.

If you have any to sell please get in touch.

Maths for Mums and Dads by Rob Eastaway and Mike Askew

Not the usual fare for Juxtabook but Maths for Mums and Dads is so darn good I have to mention it. Now there is nothing wrong with my maths, I have a good GCSE in it, an A level in Economics and I run my own business. I am not scared of numbers as some people are. However, when I started to help out at my daughter's primary school they asked me to do extra maths practice with some KS2 children. I was lost. At sea. Bewildered.

How odd...

But they did the most peculiar things in their maths lessons. It was not that I could not have done the maths had I had it explained and had a few minutes to practise a couple of examples on my own, but rather as someone flung into the middle of the weirdest ways of doing things I was foxed. And I was supposed to be doing the explaining.

The fact is that maths teaching has changed radically over the last few years. If you have primary school age children or grandchildren and have to help with homework you will know what I mean. At the time I started as a parent helper my own daughter was still in Reception class so her home work was not yet an issue but I had seen what was coming and I knew it soon would be.

The answer I discovered was Maths for Mums and Dads by Rob Eastaway and Mike Askew. Take adding up of large numbers. I learnt the borrowing method (which was new fangled in its turn once) as many of you did no doubt, but they don't do that any more. They do some weird exploded version. Eastaway and Askew explain not only the new methods, but why the changes were introduced.

Times tables, already a bug bear in KS1, are also dealt with thoroughly. Lots of general advice and specific short cuts as well as explaining why children don't learn their tables in the order we did. I did 2s, 3s, 4s, and so on. They now start with 2 , 5 and 10 and learn 3 and 7 last. The whys and wherefores of this are explained.

One of the wonderful things about the book is the examples of children's wrong answers to maths questions. By explaining what goes on in children's heads when faced with a maths problem you can see where the potential is for confusion when you are explaining it to a child of your own. It also explains what the schools and examiners expect from your child so you can help them do things the 'right' way.

If it sounds like a dry read, it is not. It is full of tips and tricks and short cuts and little test yourself quizzes. There are games you can play with children, and 'magic' tricks and other ways to bring maths into everyday life. Astonishingly it is a page turner! My mother-in-law picked it up after tea one evening and couldn't put it down. She kept saying, "I must go to bed" and then staying up to read another chapter.

Seriously, if you spend time with kids aged up to about 12 (infants, juniors or even early secondary school age) then this book is so very, very useful despite its (bewildering) lack of an index. Even if you think you are good at maths every parent should have a copy, and every school should stock a few to loan out. I can't remember when I last saw a 'how too' book do its work as thoroughly or as entertainingly as this.

Happy New Year

I would like to wish everyone a very happy new year for 2011!

Thank you to all of you for reading and commenting over the year and a thank you too for those of you that blog for all your book recommendations over the last year.

You might be interested in the book recommendations of four of my bookselling colleagues over on the Ibooknet blog. There's a interesting mixture of old and new, fiction and non-fiction in their best reads of 2010.