Piece by piece, we put the shells back together, reencasing ourselves

Siracusa book coverSiracusa
by Delia Ephron

I never used to care about liking the characters in the books I read, but I must admit that I spent the first quarter or so of this novel wondering if it was worth persevering with four irritatingly self-involved narrators. I’m glad I did, because I enjoyed it overall.

I’m pretty sure the self-absorption of the four main characters is the point, and the extremity of their smug egotism is by turns funny and tragic. They all narrate the same events from their different viewpoints – which if they were less self-absorbed would mean they actually noticed the same things at least some of time, rather than these wildly different accounts.

The story is simple: a small group of Americans travelling abroad don’t get on very well. Two married couples, Michael and Lizzie, and Finn and Taylor – plus Finn and Taylor’s 10-year-old daughter Snow – travel to Rome and then Siracusa in Sicily for a week’s holiday together. Lizzie and Finn are old friends – former lovers, in fact – but otherwise the group aren’t close at all. The holiday was suggested on a whim while having dinner together, the kind of suggestion that usually wouldn’t be followed up on by mere acquaintances.

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July 2021 reading round-up

I am currently in the middle of three different books and I’m on holiday next week so hopefully next month’s “books read” list will be much longer. We’ll see.

This month we went from heatwave to weeks of rain storms, so outings have been sporadic. We ended the month with a trip to Brean Down in Somerset, which was a fantastic afternoon out. And Beckett graduated from doggy obedience classes, so she is now officially a Good Dog.

My top films this month were Black Widow and The Dead Don’t Die, which are both very entertaining. I also watched the first season of Rita, a Danish comedy about a school teacher who initially appears to not care about anything or what anyone else thinks, but it gradually becomes clear that this is a facade. It’s wryly funny and has been left in a very interesting place for season 2.

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Becky’s heart punches itself out of her chest and runs screaming through the room

The Bricks That Built the HousesThe Bricks That Built the Houses
by Kae Tempest

I am a big fan of Kae Tempest. Everything they create is brilliant: music, poetry, rap, books and plays. I’ve seen Kae perform live three times and they were fantastic every time.

This novel takes characters Tempest created in their solo album Everybody Down and their epic poem Brand New Ancients, and gives them a full story. Storytelling and character creation have always been Tempest’s strengths so I knew this would be great and I was right.

In the opening chapter young Londoners Becky, Harry and Leon are escaping the city with a suitcase full of stolen money. The narrative takes us back to when they all met each other and how that situation came about.

At a glitzy promo party for the launch of a Cool New Band’s music video, Becky is trying to look like she’s happy to be there, but in truth this isn’t her scene and she isn’t especially proud to be a dancer in the video. It’s dance work, which she’s glad to get, but she worries the longer she keeps taking these jobs, the worse her chances of joining a “real” dance company. Then across the room she spots Harry, and her night picks up.

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It was the climax of the accumulated impressions

The Proof book coverThe Proof
by César Aira
translated by Nick Caistor

I didn’t exactly love this book, but the second I finished it, I felt an urge to write about it. And that doesn’t happen so often lately (as you might have guessed from the declining frequency of reviews on this website). So it clearly had an effect on me.

This slim novella manages to be both thoughtfully philosophical and explosive with action – it just does one then the other. There is a sense of menace from the start, when 16-year-old schoolgirl Marcia is out for a walk in Buenos Aires and realises that as it is starting to get dark, big groups of young people are beginning to gather outside cafes and record shops. Out of the blue she is propositioned “Wannafuck?” – which is actually the first word of the story.

The shout has come from two girls around Marcia’s age who are dressed as punks (the novel was written in 1989) and follow her as she tries to hurry away and ignore them. When that tack doesn’t work, she strikes up a conversation and finds herself both appalled and fascinated by their crude antagonism. The girls – who call themselves Mao and Lenin – agree to go with Marcia to a cafe to talk and this is where the bulk of the story takes place.

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June 2021 reading round-up

We had a mini heatwave this month, but it’s mostly been just right for a sun-avoider like me. We’re starting to take Beckett on some longer walks and train journeys, preparing for our holiday later this summer. She’s also started obedience classes, mostly to learn to follow instructions when there are other dogs around. Other dogs are so very exciting.

This month’s reading, not hugely unusually for me, has been distinctly feminist and/or queer. Every single book has been great, as is the one I’m still in the middle of: Fire, the third volume of Anais Nin’s diaries. It’s a big oversized hardback, so I’ll be dipping in and out of it for a while to come.

I had a big sort-out of my books last week and weeded out a bunch from my TBR that had been there for too long and just didn’t excite me. The charity box is getting heavy. And besides gaining a little shelf space, it had the added benefit of reminding me about lots of titles on my TBR that I am excited about, hence picking up Fire several years after buying it.

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India, fount of my imagination, source of my savagery, breaker of my heart

The Ground Beneath Her Feet book coverThe Ground Beneath Her Feet
by Salman Rushdie

I think I was at university the first time I started reading this. I stopped around 100 pages in, overwhelmed by the relentless references to mythology (Greek, Roman, Norse and Indian), religions, history and language. I think I needed to spend another 15 (plus) years absorbing information about all those things to not only appreciate but truly enjoy this novel. And this time I loved it.

This is an epic tale, centred on a love triangle but encompassing so much more of life and the world than that suggests. The “her” of the title is Vina Apsara, half-American, half-Indian, raised in poverty, handed off from relative to relative until she lands on the doorstep of the Merchant family in Mumbai.

The grand love of her life is their near neighbour Ormus Cama, youngest son of a rich Parsi family. His twin brother was stillborn but Ormus dreams of him, swears that his dead brother feeds him the music and lyrics that he writes.

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May 2021 reading round-up

Oh look, another month in which I read loads but failed to write any reviews. And I really do want to write about some of this month’s reads, especially The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie, which is packed with ideas and references.

Top films watch this month include One Night in Miami, Rocks and Liar’s Dice. We also watched Army of the Dead, which is silly action fun with lots of zombies and explosions.

A week ago I got my second COVID jab. It was a less emotional moment than the first one for me, but it’s still a big step toward moving on from all this.

Happy June!

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K-drama review: I’m Not a Robot

I'm not a robot poster
Yoo Seung-ho as Kim Min-kyu, and Chae Soo-bin as Jo Ji-ah

This TV show had been on my to-watch list for so long that I’m not sure where the recommendation originally came from, but I’m grateful for it. I’m Not a Robot (MBC 2017-2018) is silly fun, confronting some of the cliché problems with K-dramas without taking itself too seriously. Which is for the best, considering its plot.

Jo Ji-ah (Chae Soo-bin from Love in the Moonlight) is an entrepreneur whose brother is threatening to throw her out of their shared home if she doesn’t give up on her inventions and get a “real” job. To make ends meet she has various part-time jobs and in the course of one of these she meets Kim Min-kyu (Yoo Seung-ho), a reclusive company director who refuses to pay her in full.

Shortly after this, Ji-ah is approached by her ex-boyfriend, professor Hong Baek-gyun (Um Ki-joon), with a lucrative job offer. His research team, Santa Maria, has secretly developed a humanoid AI robot called Aji-3 and they’re about to test it with a major investor but they’ve hit a snag: following a lab accident, the robot’s legs don’t work. Happily, the robot looks exactly like Ji-ah, so could she pretend to be the robot for the investor for a day or two while they get the robot’s legs working?

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The muddy afternoon sky disgorged a white moon for teatime

Save Me the WaltzSave Me the Waltz
by Zelda Fitzgerald

A few years ago I read Z: a Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler and became duly fascinated by this woman who was so much more than the wife of a famous writer. I was particularly interested to learn that Zelda too had written a novel but it was out of print at the time. Thank goodness for small publisher Handheld Press, which republished it in 2019.

This novel is based on Zelda’s own life from her teens through to her early 30s. It was written fast, over six weeks, which perhaps adds to the jazz-like atmosphere. Not that there is that much of it about partying hard in 1920s New York, nor much internal monologue. But there is a lot of exuberance in the language, riffs of evocative description breaking into the narrative. Which is a style that is initially a little tough-going and honestly I wasn’t sure I liked it at all, but it grew on me as the story progressed (though if I had been her editor I would have reined it in, at least in the earlier chapters).

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April 2021 reading round-up

Beckett at the beach
We took Beckett to the beach!

The world opened up a little bit this month and the weather wasn’t terrible. Which meant I spent more time outdoors and less time reading. I’m definitely happy to start seeing friends and family again, though I do feel we still need to be cautious, as most people our age are only just starting to be vaccinated and our younger friends are still waiting.

My top film watches this month were Call Me By Your Name, Palm Springs and Easy Rider. I also started a project of watching all four versions of A Star is Born – two down, two to go. And I watched another terrible-in-a-good-way K-drama called I Am Not a Robot.

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