Still funny after all these years

The Diary of a Nobody
by George and Weedon Grossmith

I first heard of this book a few years back when the BBC dramatised it as a mini-series. The way it was scripted was essentially reading the whole book aloud, so you might say I had read the book before, but it was still funny second time around.

The book was originally a series in Punch magazine, complete with comic illustrations. It is what it says on the tin: the diary of a middle class man living in a London suburb, which he hopes, after his death, will provide some small comfort to his wife and son and perhaps even be published. Even after more than 100 years it remains fresh and funny and accessible.

I have no idea if this was the first comic “diary” to be published but I can certainly see its influence on, for example, Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole series. The everyday life of Charles Pooter is pretty mundane and he is not even the most likeable character, but his observations and preoccupations are funny and cleverly observed. Pooter is a city clerk and a complete snob, though he has no aspiration to be fashionable or even original. Aside from a few minor bumps on the way he takes the sensible, non-adventurous route and frets that his grown son Lupin is more daring.

A lot of the comedy comes from the writers cleverly using Pooter’s own po-faced words to poke fun at him. He is a largely old-fashioned man, fretting over colourful language in the presence of ladies when clearly he is the only one offended on most occasions. He has a fondness for writing letters of complaint, whether to the laundry or a friend, and this has a tendency to go wrong for him.

Unlike Adrian Mole, though Pooter’s antics occasionally land him in hot water, for the most part he gets by very well. He has a loving wife, forgiving friends and an appreciative boss. In return Pooter speaks highly of all those people, particularly his wife Carrie. He does, however, jump to pre-emptively judge anyone else he meets and is often obliged to change his mind.

This was a book club read and it went down well. It was interesting that all us Brits felt a certain affection for Pooter while the non-Brit in the group didn’t (though she did enjoy the book). Apparently we have a national fondness for the underdog. What we did all agree was that Pooter seems to attract people who take advantage of him, and while he may be a bit of a fool, the rest of the characters are little better.

First published in Punch in 1888–1889. First published in book form in 1892.

The winners: UK & EU Summer Hop

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Random.org has done its thing and the winners of my UK & EU Summer Hop giveaway are…

Rupture by Simon Lelic goes to The Girl.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters goes to LizC.

Congrats to you both. I’ll drop you an e-mail to sort posting. Shout if you don’t get the e-mail by the end of the week.

Thanks again to Donna and Jessica of Book Passion for Life and Jodie of Books for Company for organising this blog hop. And thank you to everyone who entered. Sorry you couldn’t all win!

The cruelty of children

A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil
by Christopher Brookmyre

This book took a while to grow on me. I was a little disappointed from the start to realise that it wasn’t part of the Jack Parlabane series, and its structure was at first an irritation, before I realised how vital it was to the storyline, and how clever.

Martin is a successful lawyer to the rich and famous. He gets a phonecall one night from an old schoolfriend asking him to go back to Braeside where another old schoolfriend has been arrested for the murder of…you got it, yet another former classmate. And another classmate’s dad. And another classmate is in a coma, while yet another is the policewoman leading the investigation. The scene is set for a lot of memory dredging, facing up to childhood prejudices and crime-solving.

The narrative skips between current day – beginning with two crooks trying to dispose of the bodies – and school days, tackled year by year. Hidden behind the Glasgow dialogue and ever-changing nicknames is all the complexity of childhood – the complicated tangle of loyalties that are constantly switching, the importance placed on certain games and certain moments, the favours given and the mistreatments that were never forgotten.

There’s a lot of very believable childishness here: the changing slangwords; the fear of recrimination from saying, doing or reacting in a non-uniform way; the moments of innocent naivety followed by awful realisation. It’s not exactly how I remember primary school. We weren’t all swearing in every sentence from the start as Brookmyre’s class seems to be. And the rough talk and violent threats started later to my knowledge, but then I wasn’t a boy and all that was the boys’ domain, after all. With girls it’s all about the bitching and the name-calling and the cliques and I most certainly remember that.

In fact, though I struggled with it a little at first, mostly due to the dialogue, the school stuff was far more clever and subtle and well-written than the adult part of the book. As adults, the same characters seem to be either remarkably well adjusted or in a complete mess and in need of a life lesson. Which they duly receive. Okay, it’s not quite that simplistic but there is a certain tendency for old friends to declare “I told you so”. But the adult part does have the murder mystery, which slowly unravels into a much more complicated picture than it initially appears.

Though it has its moments, this book isn’t as funny as previous Brookmyre novels that I’ve read. It’s not bleak and heavy either, and at a push I might call it black comedy, but the genuine comic moments are few and far between. There also isn’t a single main character with the charm and presence of Brookmyre regular Jack Parlabane, but by the end of the book he has fleshed out almost a whole classful of rounded, believable individuals, which is no small achievement.

I would say this isn’t quite as fun and light a read as other Brookmyre books, but it still served me well on my beach holiday.

First published 2006 by Little, Brown.

Dipping my toes in

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Two Tales and Eight Tomorrows
by Harry Harrison

Having noticed that my last two book club reads were a tad heavy on the religion front, Tim recommended that I read the Harry Harrison short story “The streets of Ashkelon” and dug it out for me. It happened to be the first story in this collection and I enjoyed it so much I carried on reading the rest of the book.

This was my first experience of Harry Harrison (I think) and I was impressed. Each story has a unique, often complex sci-fi setting but the tales told are very human, accessible and warm. The details of space transport or alien beings are given but not lingered over, except where they are a plot point.

I liked every story but I can see why the blurb on the back cover picks out two in particular. “The streets of Ashkelon” looks at a peaceful, literal-minded alien race who have no concept of gods or religion, until man intervenes. It is an awful and thought-provoking parable. “I always do what teddy says” is just as chilling as that title suggests. Every child has a teddy bear that is programmed by the government to teach children everything from manners to morals. Which is clever but terrifying and, of course, though the idea behind it is to create a better world, there is the potential for a frightening level of manipulation.

My other favourites were “Captain Bedlam” – in which the precise details of space travel are kept a closely guarded secret from the public and space pilot Captain Jonathon Bork feels a complete fraud but can never tell anyone why – and “Rescue operation”, in which an alien falls into the ocean near the coast of a very rural Yugoslav village and visiting astrophysicist Dr Kukovic must cope with narrow-minded fear and lack of provisions in his attempt to keep the alien alive.

There was a certain tendency toward military characters, but that is really my only qualm about these stories and I look forward to reading more from Tim’s vast Harry Harrison collection.

This anthology first published 1965 by Victor Gollancz.
A publication history of each story can be found on Harrison’s website.

The UK & EU Summer Hop starts now!

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** This competition is now closed. Winners are announced here. **

It’s giveaway time again! As part of the UK & EU Summer Hop, organised by Donna and Jessica of Book Passion for Life and Jodie of Books for Company, I am giving away these two books:

Giveaway goodies

So, if you fancy winning a copy of Rupture by Simon Lelic (which I reviewed here) or The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (which I reviewed here) then all you have to do is leave a comment saying which book you’d prefer, if you have a preference.

This competition is open to UK and EU residents only and it’s open until midnight on 8 August, so that’s a whole week to check out all the other great giveaways taking place in this blog hop (listed below)! I will randomly select two winners next week.

In her head

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Wish Her Safe at Home
by Stephen Benatar

This book surprised me. It had been on my wishlist for a long time but when I saw it at the library and recognised it from this discussion, the only detail I remembered was that it’s set in Bristol. Which seemed as good a reason as any to pick it up. But sadly, Bristol is not the focus of the book; really it could be set anywhere. Thankfully, the book has other things going for it.

It’s the story of Rachel, a middle-aged spinster living a dreary life in London until, out of the blue, she inherits a house in Bristol. On a whim she decides to move into it, giving up her job and abandoning her flatmate for a suddenly impassioned restoration project. As the book goes on it becomes clear that Rachel’s newfound giddy happiness and occasional sudden lows signal increasing mental instability.

It’s very cleverly done. The story is narrated by Rachel and at first you accept the complete change of attitude, her newfound confidence and ability to make friends. But the hints get stronger; the version of events changes from one telling to the next, and you start to question everything – not just whether it happened the way she first described, but whether it happened at all.

Conversely, I liked Rachel more as the book went on. Initially I found her a bit of a cold fish, possibly on the autism spectrum if her awkward encounters with strangers were anything to go by, but then she would reveal an awareness of being distant, possibly deliberately, that didn’t fit with that assessment. But later on, Rachel tries so hard to be happy and good and charming that when you see the cracks you feel bad for her, or at least I did.

One of the forms of Rachel’s mania is a tendency to quote or, more often, sing snatches from classic books, films or plays. She displays great knowledge on this score and often lost me (as indeed she would lose her audience, when she had one) as she jumped from one character to another. But through these quotes she sometimes expressed a truth that she couldn’t in her own words:

“‘I’ll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth. I tell what ought to be the truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!'”
[From Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire]

In the end , this is a very moving account of mania from a time (1981) when people weren’t so familiar with terms like bipolar disorder and manic depression as we are now. I wonder if Benatar was a little ahead of his time, because this book deserves to have become far better known. I think this would make a fantastic book club read – there’s so much to discuss that I can’t raise here without revealing too much of the plot.

The edition I read (a 2007 reprint) includes an excellent introduction by the eminent John Carey, an illuminating essay that is far more insightful about this book than I could be. But I would still recommend you save that for after reading the book itself – let yourself enjoy the guessing game before you unravel it.

First published 1982 by Bodley Head. Reissued by the New York Review of Books.

SEE ALSO: review by Stuck in a book

Fingers on the buzzers

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Starter for Ten
by David Nicholls

I am deliberately not looking at my review of One Day just yet, but I suspect I have similar things to say. This book is funny, nostalgic and cringeingly true to life. Not as moving or romantic as One Day but definitely close in style.

Now, I made the mistake of watching the film before reading the book. I try not to do that if I can and this is a classic example of why. Even though it’s a few years since I watched the film, through at least the first half of the book I unfailingly pictured and heard James McAvoy in the lead role rather than conjuring up my own version. And the other distraction for me was also partly the film’s fault. The book is set in an unnamed English university city but the film was definitely Bristol, so I kept searching the text for clues as to whether it was a specific, unnamed (even slightly disguised) city or a genuine made-up mishmash. I’m still not sure (though if it is Bristol then there are definitely some errant details).

But enough of that. The book follows Brian’s first year at university, in 1985. He’s working class mixing with the middle classes and very very aware of it. He’s also a bit of a tosser (and he knows that and he means well, so he’s likeable most of the time). He’s read a lot and absorbed a lot of facts, and hasn’t yet grasped that this doesn’t necessarily make him clever or wise or discerning. He’s grappling with typical 18/19-year-old issues such as acne and relationships and making new friends and how (or if) you keep old friends when your life has changed and theirs haven’t; all while figuring out that university is supposed to be about getting an education. So he goes and complicates it all from the start by applying to be on the University Challenge team.

These days I can’t imagine a fresher getting a look-in at “The Challenge” but perhaps it was less popular in the 1980s? Or maybe this university advertised really poorly? Either way, both Brian and super attractive (and aware of it) first-year Alice get accepted and so begins a series of – mostly excruciatingly embarrassing – attempts by Brian to seduce Alice. Which he does while simultaneously ignoring the very lovely and far more suited to him Rebecca.

Brian has sentimental reasons for applying to be on University Challenge – most of his remaining memories of his dead father are of the two of them watching it on telly together. His grief is dealt with very well, I thought. Brian doesn’t dwell on it and has reached the stage where he tells people before they say something they might later regret, but he does occasionally cry still. He is very conflicted about how other people react and I think this was one of things that made me feel warmest toward him.

I enjoyed this book, and laughed out loud at times, but I have reservations. The main one being that, never having been a teenage boy myself, I found it very hard to read about Brian’s more disgusting/selfish side (does the boy ever wash?) and not be completely put off. I also must admit that it doesn’t feel particularly original. It relies heavily on the nostalgia factor and to some extent that did work for me (who ever thought we’d be waxing nostalgic over Woolworths?) but…I’m not sure it’s enough.

First published 2003 by Hodder & Staughton

Comfort reading

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Crumpets and milk

One of my strongest sensory memories is the smell/taste of buttered crumpets, which takes me back to being very young (primary school) and sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen eating a snack while listening to an audiobook on cassette. My favourite audiobook was The Secret Garden and, even now, certain words (“wuthering” and “daffydowndilly” come to mind) can only be said in the voices I remember from that tape, with their Yorkshire lilt.

The Secret Garden

I don’t own a cassette player anymore, but I do still have that cassette because I couldn’t bear to throw it away. Thankfully I have the actual book too, for times when I really need comfort in my reading. (Like now – can you tell I’m feeling a bit lupusy? Yes, it’s a word.)

A book review of a book reviewer

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Silly Novels by Lady Novelists
by George Eliot

This is another collection of essays from the excellent Penguin Great Ideas series. It has one of the series’ prettier covers, but is also the volume I have liked the least, so far.

I was disappointed to find no information in the edition about the origin of these essays, but a little internet research revealed that the titular essay (which you can read in full here) was published in October 1856 in the Westminster Review, which Eliot helped to edit before becoming a novelist. It seems likely that the other essays in this collection, mostly book reviews, are also from that journal. In fact, Wikipedia calls “Silly novels by lady novelists” Eliot’s manifesto that she set out for herself before she started to write her first novel.

But what are the essays like? Well…personally I found them a little harsh and not all that clearly written. There are a few instances where she appears to contradict herself but I think the actual problem might be a lack of editing. Which is a shame because she has some good, intelligent points to make.

Bearing in mind that these essays were most likely published under her real name, “Marian Evans”, while she was a little-known journalist and translator, there is a certain bravery to having written so apparently honestly and critically on the subject of women writers. And she makes some of the same, completely valid, points that I have read in Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf, but she doesn’t make them so clearly. She wittily attacks the various types of flimsy female-authored novel, but only slightly touches on why such novels should be considered problematic rather than just lesser art. Similarly in some of her book reviews she criticises at great length without really explaining why x or y has got her so riled. And she quotes at great length rather than pulling out specific phrases of interest or clearly explaining the significance of a passage.

Perhaps my favourite essay in this collection is a review of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred, Charles Reade’s It is Never Too Late to Mend and Frederika Bremer’s Hertha. Eliot shows enthusiasm, rather than just critical approval, for Stowe’s follow-up to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but questions the sagacity of “the absence of any proportionate exhibition of the Negro character in its less amiable phases”, which is a not-entirely-clear way of saying that, by having only thoroughly good black characters, Stowe damages her aim of presenting black people as equally human as white people. It’s a valid point because all Stowe’s black characters are slaves or former slaves, therefore, as Eliot (again unclearly) explains, this opens the door to the defence of slavery on the grounds that it makes people “better” human beings.

It feels a little presumptuous for an amateur book reviewer to attack the book-reviewing skills of one of the world’s greatest authors, but I do think that essay writing and novel writing require different skills and not every writer is good at both. Eliot was, I think, a case in point. Her essays contain the occasional good point or witticism but they are not well structured or particularly entertaining.

Published 2010 by Penguin Books.

One likes to read

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The Uncommon Reader
by Alan Bennett

This is a brilliantly funny, astute, thought-provoking book that is sadly small enough to read in one short sitting. I immediately added a whole bunch of Bennett books to my wishlist (any advice on which to read next appreciated).

The “uncommon reader” of the title is the Queen, who has never had much time for reading, but on bumping into a travelling library in the grounds of Buckingham Palace takes out a book, initially to be polite. Politeness turns to genuine interest, tempered by a keen awareness that she doesn’t know much about books besides having met most of their authors. So she promotes kitchen hand Norman, the library van’s only regular customer, to be her amanuensis and literary adviser. As her passion for reading grows, she becomes distracted from, and then bored by, her royal duties, and her staff conspire to cure her of this bad habit.

The first half of this book is acutely observed, laugh-out-loud funny, with the character of the Queen being charming, intelligent and completely believable. There is absolutely no doubt that this is Queen Elizabeth II and not some nameless dateless monarch. From the corgis to the extended family to the list of prime ministers she has worked with, this is undoubtedly our very own Queen. And Bennett has made her initially very likeable:

“‘Do you know,’ she said one evening as they were reading in her study, ‘do you know the area in which one would truly excel?’
‘No, ma’am?’
‘The pub quiz. One has been everywhere and though one might have difficulty with pop music and some sport, when it comes to the capital of Zimbabwe, say, or the principal exports of New South Wales, I have all that at my fingertips.’
‘And I could do the pop,’ said Norman.
‘Yes,’ said the Queen. ‘We would make a good team. Ah well. The road not travelled.'”

In the second half of the book, the tone shifts a little. The emphasis is a little less overtly comedic and more seriously looks at how reading can change a person, both in perhaps obvious ways such as informing and widening horizons, and in less obvious ways – increased observation of details, reduced tolerance for the status quo, an appearance of being constantly distracted – that in some people might not be a problem, in fact might be welcomed, but in the Queen are seen as troublesome and even dangerous.

I was a little sad about the reduced comedy but still greatly entertained and impressed by how smartly Bennett envisaged this scenario and how various people might react. The denouement is fantastic, though I’ll admit it did change my mind about making this book the topic of any conversation I may ever get to have with the actual real-life Queen.

First published in 2006 in the London Review of Books.
Published as a book by Faber in 2007.