The House of the Scorpion

I’ve read one book by Nancy Farmer before – that’s The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm - and I’ve always remembered it, even though I just read it once, because it was so unusual. This is another memorable book, just as good. It’s set in the future, in a land which is a strip between Mexico and the US, and which was created to grow and control the opium trade. It’s run by a dictator, who uses mindless slaves to bolster his power. And he’s all-powerful, because he’s ruthless. And he’s 140 years old, because he clones himself and uses pieces of the clones to fix up his body.

The story is told from the perspective of one of his clones (and it’s quite a companion piece to that other great clone book by Kazuo Ishiguro!) Matt is seen as an animal by most people, apart from the maid who takes care of him, and his bodyguard, Tam Lin, who has come from Scotland, who has seen a different world. He grows up and learns (with some pains, which is good writing) to be different from the man whose genes he shares. He learns to idolise that man, and has to suffer in order to find the truth which is all around him – that he’s living in a very evil place.

This is a really fast-paced read, with fantastic characterisation, very realistic settings and totally believable ideas. Farmer balances quite a few big themes, and manages them pretty well. And it’s got one of the best and most unexpected “I love you” scenes I’ve read. A really good, really well-written story.

An Enemy at Green Knowe

Someone said to me, when I was complaining about how bad a book was, “But it was a children’s book!” Well, this is also a children’s book, from an entire series of children’s books by Lucy M Boston, and I have no cause for complaint. There are exactly five characters in this book – Mrs Oldknow, Tolly, Ping, evil Melanie and the scholar – and there is one setting, the house, Green Knowe. And the plot is derivative, you might say, because Melanie is a witch who curses the house in one plague after another. None of those things sums up why this book is good and other books are crap. Certainly not either because of, or in spite of, those characteristics. There’s something else special about it, and that’s, I think, the fact that the writer believed in the place, the story, and the people – that they were utterly real, not just their existence but what they meant.

Actually, the house is real, and I’d love one day to visit it – it’s an open house now, somewhere in England, where you can look at the rooms and even some of the objects mentioned in the book. And the writer is sort of Mrs Oldknow, maybe. She told these stories – she said, to entertain herself – about the house and the time she lived (they’re written in the sixties – I think the way it is mentioned that Ping is Chinese alerts you to this) and about an attitude to the past, that the past is part of the present. She writes in a precise and solid and sensible way, and in fact you can imagine her firm storyteller’s voice as you read it.

I’ve always loved this series of books. I especially love it when the ghosts appear. I think it is solid English folklore, the mix of mythological Christianity, with its local saints, and the original Celtic/Briton background. This is the sort of book you could read to a mixed-aged group and everyone would enjoy it, and would probably enjoy the same things.

Tamsin

Wow, this book by Peter S. Beagle was a find. How odd that his other book, “The Last Unicorn” is so lauded when this is a far better piece of work. The characterisation is just exactly right, the shift in mood works perfectly, and the story races along.

Jenny’s an American. Jenny’s mum marries an Englishman, so they move to an old house in Dorset. An old haunted house; a place which has awoken all the old things, like boggarts, the Wild Hunt, redcaps, Oakmen, all sorts of ancient British folklorish creatures. Most of all a ghost called Tamsin, who is waiting – for what? Well, this is a coming of age story, of course; Jenny has to learn to give things up in order for things to work out. She loves Tamsin – it’s a brilliantly written relationship – but like all ghost stories, it’s about learning to give up the one you love for their own good.

Beagle’s done a great job with a range of characters; the Americans sound American (it’s in first person, Jenny’s voice), the Brits sound British and the old ghosts from long ago sound old-fashioned but comprehensible. He’s a great storyteller; there’s enough detail without being tedious, and there’s a fabulous twist which you feel you should’ve seen coming but you never did. A few red herrings, too.

Parts of it do feel as though he’s devoured Briggs’ “Dictionary of Fairies” and he’s trying to regurgitate it for your benefit; although, oddly enough, his retelling of history – the Monmouth rebellion - doesn’t feel the least bit educational at all. He cleverly mixes modernity with the past without skipping a beat. A great read.

The White Stag

This little story by Kate Seredy is a children’s version of how Hungary was founded – the myth, the legends, I suppose. I’d never associated “Hun” with “Hungary” at all; now I’ll never forget it, because this story is about Attila the Hun, told from the perspective of him and his people. It’s a fascinating idea, to present a sympathetic Attila to children! To most people he’s scarcely real, he’s like a demon, but in this story the Huns and the Romans and the Visigoths and the rest are all very real peoples, and the leaders, including Attila are altogether human.

It’s not just history; there’s Moonmaidens and a strange god and visions and Biblical language. I don’t know whether I would have enjoyed reading it as a child, but it’s the sort of book that would definitely work being read out loud, with Seredy’s wonderful illustrations – and the need to do some follow-up reading to ascertain how much is legend, how much truth. A very well told story.

Treasure of Green Knowe

I’ve read these books by Lucy M Boston all out of order, but it doesn’t matter. This is the second one; Tolly returns to Green Knowe, afraid that the magic will have disappeared; it hasn’t, of course. There’s a threat that a picture of his 3 ghost friends might have to be sold, because they’re poor – but Tolly gets to work and finds some alternate treasure, and an alternate ghost, too, while he’s at it. The most exciting part in the book is where Granny’s telling him an ancient story and you realise that he’s in the story, because he stepped into the past just that morning . ..

This would be a fabulous book to read or hear out loud. The atmosphere is everything. Boston is so clever, cleverer than most children’s authors, because she doesn’t try to make her child characters too wise – they remain child-like, innocent and quite ordinary, not strangely gifted or unduly burdened like many child heroes. The magic is not in the children, but in the place itself, simply for being old and hosting the past. No one can help be part of it, through stories, through the objects that have been passed down. This is a true thing; the magic is another way of saying it. A wonderful book.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

This Scottish classic by Muriel Spark is definitely as good as everyone says. It's funny, sad, clever and very well written. Miss Jean Brodie is a school teacher in the thirties who assures her students that she is in her "prime", and therefore she has to do what she wants. This includes supporting fascism, embarking on affairs, and manipulating the lives of her students in more and more sinister ways.

There's a couple of clever things that Spark does. One is that she doesn't build up her story in an ordinary chronological way, leading to a climax. She lets you know casually who the "betrayer" is, early on in the piece, and how people will end up dying, and that none of it is going to turn out the way anyone thinks or wants. And yet at the same time she's creating a more and more solid picture of the characters, especially the characters who matter. Even though in the beginning you're introduced to the "Brodie girls" at an older age, it's half-way through before you realise you've been reading all about Sandy.

It's very interesting historically, especially as a piece of Edinburgh history, even apart from the psychology of the characters and the quick, clever plot. The only thing that sucked was the introduction. Usually I enjoy these in the Penguin Classics series; this was terrible, and the woman is obviously an idiot.

The Piano Tuner

This is Daniel Mason's first novel, and it's very good. It's about a fictional incident in the 19th century, where the War Office requests a man called Edgar Drake to travel into the jungles of Burma in order to tune the piano of an important British Officer. A thousand myths have grown up around this officer; Drake, an unassuming man who is happy in his small life, agrees to go.

There's good bits and bad bits. Sometimes he gets a bit overlyrical, where being plain would've done better; sometimes the story slows down. And sometimes you feel as though there's too much 21st century opinion accidently leaking in. Were people really so accepting of difference, a hundred and fifty years ago? I doubt it. However, it's a really well-written story in its subtleties. The important British Officer is nothing like his myths, and even Edgar Drake isn't the man he thought he was. Burma isn't a simple answer.

The writing style is unique, with a mix of embedded and traditional dialogue, and a good balance between description and action. There are enough incidents to show us the change in Edgar, and there's very little explanation of what people must be feeling. I thought the whole "Englishman falls for native woman" thing a really overused and unnecessary device, but at least it was only a small part of the novel. A good work.

Ways of Seeing

This is a book about art by John Berger. Apparently it's very famous; I just heard about it in a reference in one of Alexander McCall Smith's books. One day I'll write a list of all the books I discovered through other books. Anyway, this is a really interesting set of essays on art. There's essays on oil painting, on women in art, on class and art. It was written in the seventies and you can feel the sort of anger that people felt comfortable with then.

There's also a few visual essays, where there's just the paintings and you're supposed to think about them yourself. One of the interesting things that he says about painting is that it's silent - with everything else you've got that voice reading and analysing in your head, but looking at a painting, it's you and the thing and it's quiet. So he has some silent essays there.

This is the kind of book you dip into, think about, think about over a long time, talk to other people about, think about while you're looking at paintings. It's filled with interesting thoughts. They might not be all true, but they've been thought about, hard, which is more than I've ever done about art anyway.

Songlines

I've read stuff by Bruce Chatwin before; he's an English writer who travels and researches and puts together books which are thoughtful and interesting. This particular one is about his visit to the Northern Territory, in order to find out about "songlines", or the way that the Aboriginal people of that area saw the land and their totems.

It's good to read a book that doesn't brand Australians as "friendly, casual people" and instead highlights the racism, drunkeness and stupidity which also characterises the average person. It was also good that the Aboriginal people that Chatwin met were also given a balanced overview. The actual information about the songlines was fascinating, and completely new to me - illustrating just how limited my knowledge is, and I'd say, most Australians knowledge is about Aboriginal culture.

It's a good book, although there's a large chunk in the middle where he just quotes random people about Darwinism and war and a whole lot of things which don't relate to anything. Kind of interesting but out of place, and it really ruins the flow of the book. It ends very randomly, too. The first half chugs along well, but the editor should have made him redo the rest of it. An important book to read, but maybe the author was resting on his laurels a bit.

A Circle of Quiet

Madeleine L'Engle's style is partly refreshingly naive, and partly irritatingly self-consciously naive. She says several times that people have told her she has a habit of saying obvious things in a very serious manner, as though it were new. That is a very true statement. And yet, as she writes for YA, those obvious things probably are new to them. This book, however, is for adults; it's a collection of her thoughts during one summer in the seventies when she was probably in the height of her writing. It's a fantastic insight into a very interesting person, and the limitations of her being an interesting person but not a genius and not perfect. She's persisted, she's done a lot, writing heaps of books as well as raising a family, and doing a good job of that; but in some places I feel like she's put a barrier around the edges of her mind, and that barrier is her Christianity. She butts against it - not doubting the concepts, but trying to reach beyond what she sees as fog to something clearer - but she refuses to actually break down the wall and really seek the truth. Because she likes the sturdiness of the fence, maybe, and all the people standing inside it. Well, there's an extended metaphor which is very L'Engle like, probably says nothing much at all. Good book if you like her works and you'd like an insight into her character; it wouldn't make much sense otherwise.

The Death of Napoleon

This little novella by Simon Lees won a trillion awards. I don't really see why. It's more like a short story, a long one I guess. Maybe it was such, originally. It's not bad, it's kind of interesting, and it'd be really interesting if you loved Napoleon; it's written fairly well, and it's quite entertaining. But it's not the best thing I've ever read in my life. I wouldn't be pouring awards on it. Basically Napoleon switches places with a loyal Captain, goes back to France, originally wants to get back his empire, but things have changed, he can't do that any more. His only victory is in helping to set up a melon-selling business. And then he dies. There you go! A bit clever and ironic and so forth. But not exactly utter brilliance. Maybe it was a dry year for awards back then.

The Thirteenth Tale

The fact that this first novel by Diane Setterfield was going to be an utter piece of crap should have been foretold by several things; the fact that it was lauded as being good, and it's a best-seller; the photo of the author in the front cover; the way the bookshops were trying to hock it. It is a bland gothic horror story, which is utterly ridiculous, has no sense of existing in any real world. The characters aren't real - the worst of them is the "writer" who writes such terrible purplish prose it's hysterical - and there's no real sense of place and overall it's just silly nonsense. Why, why, why are such books loved when better versions of them exist? Books like this depress me.