Small Steps

This is the sequel to Louis Sachar's award-winning Holes. It follows up two of the characters after leaving juvenile detention and like Holes has a mixture of gritty reality and complete fantasy. I like that about his books.

Basically, Armpit - big, tough, black, shy - is catching up on his schooling and earning some money when a friend - X-Ray - gets him involved in ticket-scalping for a famous singer, assuring him it isn't illegal. The scam leads him into trouble, but going to the concert - with his neighbour, a girl with cerebral palsy - leads him to the singer, first love, and nearly a murder charge.

It's told in a straight-forward manner without too much sentimentality, it has Sachar's sly humour, and it makes some serious points well. It's not Holes, no way, but it's still pretty good.

The Stones of Green Knowe

How I love the Green Knowe stories of Lucy M Boston! This one is a new one to me, though chronologically it's before the rest of the series. Basically the series is about an old English house and the children who live there. The word "ghost" is never mentioned, but actually that's what the children are - not terrible, frightening or sad, but cheerful and fun.

This particular story is about the very first boy to live at Green Knowe, a Norman-Saxon boy, seeing Green Knowe being built. He is able to travel forwards and backwards in time to see the house and its children. Boston is able to evoke the difference in the time periods perfectly, especially the deadness of the 20thC with the lack of animals, birds and trees. She is a wonderful storyteller, and much of the books are taken up with stories being retold, such as the St Christopher myth.

Boston herself restored an old English house which is what inspired her to write the series. It's a beautiful series which respects children and celebrates the family bond, history, and the power of stories.

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

This retelling, by John Steinbeck, of the King Arthur story is based on Malory, along with some other sources. I read it as I was coming back from the film version of Tristan and Isolde, which was utterly appropriate; for although the King Arthur story has elements of humour and elements of romance, it’s essentially tragic. Its message, as in Tristan and Isolde, is that fate rules; that no matter how hard you try to evade it, your death will come; that you will do terrible things because of fate, and hurt the people you love most, and that even if you foresee it, you cannot, cannot, prevent it.

John Steinbeck writes in his introduction that Malory awoke in him the power of language. Steinbeck’s own spare prose is in evidence here, although not so barely as in his novels (which I came across at the perfect age of about twenty, I think, along with Hemingway). He occasionally chooses to revert to the middle English of Malory – for example when Lancelot is tempted by a witch and she whispers a curse. At the same time, his dialogue occasionally becomes overly colloquial, which, as he wrote it in the 50’s, sits uncomfortably with the rest of it. But that is rare; it is for the most part beautifully told.

Steinbeck covers the beginnings of the legend, several of the knights’ tales, and of course Lancelot’s story. He tells the stories very simply and clearly, structuring them on the Winchester manuscripts of Malory which he studied closely – although he adds to them. He doesn’t turn Arthur into a mere man, but keeps him a terrible heroic figure who reminds me of King David, actually, in this version, with his unforgivable sins and all-consuming loves. Steinbeck never finished this book, for unknown reasons, so it ends at an accidentally perfect point; Lancelot’s betrayal with Guinevere. Even a reader unfamiliar with the Arthur story will know, from various prophecies throughout the text, what the outcome of that will be.

I think that for anyone interested in either Steinbeck or the King Arthur stories this is a wonderful book. And really, I’m not sure who could not be interested in one of those two.

Suite Française

This story by Irène Nèmirovsky is about the beginning of the occupation of France by the Nazis. It’s about the beginning, because the author and her husband were arrested midway and murdered in Auschwitz. She’d planned it to have five parts, the last one entitled Peace. Those parts weren’t written, but in this edition her notes for the rest of the book are included, plus letters about the book, including her last scribbled note to her children, handed to a passer-by at a railway station.

This is an interesting read because it’s by someone who was there, and it’s a very well-written, often touching, often amusing story. The first section – Storm in June – covers the invasion of Paris, and different kinds of people fleeing north. It’s all from the perspective of ordinary people caught up in the petty aspects of life. There’s even a chapter from the perspective of a cat. People die foolishly, others get left behind; patriotism is vague but food and shelter for a single night – an empty chair – are the real things.

The second section, which I found more interesting, is called Dolce. It’s about a village having to accept the occupying forces living amongst them for months at a time. Again it’s from a number of points of view, always the minor people, the ordinary people who have to get on with life. But at the same time it isn’t innocuous; beside the propaganda posters of the soldiers handing out jam sandwiches to the kids is another poster warning people to stay inside at night, on pain of death. There’s the constant sense of “after the war” with no idea of what that would mean, and the growing idea of collaboration.

This isn’t a finished piece of work – I found the style slightly mannered, although perhaps that’s just the translation. There’s no conclusion, and especially in the first section little sense of the story moving strongly forward. But the characters are drawn clearly and the background detailed exquisitely. There’s the constant reminder of the men having disappeared off somewhere out of the grasp of all those wives and mothers; the constant sense of uncertainty, of having to lead a life which has no purpose or meaning any longer. And the underlying sadness of knowing the author herself never saw the end of the story.

I’ve been reading or watching lots of points of view of the same war recently – watching Changi, about the Australians in the Japanese prison camp, watching The Battle of Britain, about the Blitz and the RAF air battles. It seems a long time ago rather than just fifty years; it seems strange that there are still a lot of people living who remember that time. Not just because it’s so incredible, in the sense of incomprehensible, but also because you’d think we’d all be scarred by it, because it was just so terrible. A time when the whole world was filled with people trying to kill one another, faster and more efficiently than the other side. I suppose the world is still filled with people like that, but despite all this reading and watching, I still can’t really believe it.

Strong Poison

This is one of Dorothy L Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsy mystery novels. Generally I’m not a fan of mystery stories; I find them unsatisfying. But in Sayers’ stories the mystery is usually the least important aspect of the book. It’s just a skeleton upon which to hang all sorts of other bits and pieces, like character development and philosophical discussions.

I’ve read a few other mystery writers of that era, such as Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh, and while it’s interesting how the same issues come up (Freudian psychology, Bolshevism, and the rise of drugs), it’s also interesting how different Sayers is. If you’ve read one Christie novel, you’ve really read them all. She has the same style and the same love of putting some unbelievable twist at the end. Sayers’ stories are very different from one another both in style and in structure. There isn’t even always a dead body involved.

In this one the murder has happened months before and it’s right at the end of the murder trial. The lawyers are summing up their cases. A mistrial is declared because the jury can’t agree. That’s lucky, because Sir Peter has decided that the girl charged hasn’t done it, even though he has no idea how to prove it. And he also wants to marry her.

Personally I think the solution to this crime is as improbable as any Christie novel, but unlike those stories you can generally see in advance who the baddie is. That doesn’t matter – it’s all the other discussions that are interesting. Relationships between people who weren’t married in the twenties – that’s what makes this story interesting. Marriage in general is a theme, with Wimsy’s sister marrying a mere policeman and his best friend marrying a Jewish woman. Different possibilities for women then, different kinds of relationships. Sayers’ plots hinge on character; that’s what makes them fascinating.

Sayers was obviously a highly intelligent woman. She expects you to know her esoteric references, or at least look them up. She expects you to follow Latin, French and Greek as they come up. She expects you to be interested in ideas and be amused by people’s follies. She does have attitudes of her time which seem archaic, but they are as much historical books as not. What makes her books stand out are her sudden observations which present ideas as clearly as someone would present a chair. You wonder why you’ve never come across it before. An interesting writer, and this is an interesting read.

Wives and Daughters

This is supposed to be Elizabeth Gaskell's best novel, but it isn't. I think I said earlier that I felt Mary Barton was worthy but boring; but while this novel isn't boring, it's also not worthy.

This story is about a few families of different classes (aristocracy, wealthy, middle class, lower middle class) living in a small village and dealing with day to day life of marriage, and . . . marriage, and offers of marriage. There's some family disgraces but that's to do with . . . marriage. There's also a few deaths which in Gaskell's books generally seem convenient. (I must say though she did tackle the grief of losing a wife quite well.)

I far preferred North & South because of its interesting analysis of master/worker conditions of the time. The most annoying thing about this novel is that it's unfinished because she died before she managed to get to the end - not her fault, but the hero and heroine never get together, so it's rather frustrating! Not too much so, because the heroine is irritatingly good and wimpy, and the hero is really rather an idiot. I read a comment saying 19th century novels are all written for youth; I think that's so in this case.