Posted by Bel. The time is 1.07pm here in Wellington, NZ.

My husband comes from Irish stock, as he likes to remind us all, any time any particular (drunken) behaviour needs explaining away.

So it was no surprise to find a copy of Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize winner on my mother-in-law's shelf, along with two copies of the follow-up Tis, and then the book he wrote about his career in the classroom, Teacher Man, and even the memoir written by his younger brother.

The tone of the book is immediate - deadpan, detailed, colloquial and charming. The dialect is obvious from the onset, ringing out from the page, poetic in the way that the Irish voice has, even when describing the least salubrious of situations.

Now, what with the book being a international bestseller and the film adaptation starring world class actors, I probably don't need to go over the plot with you. But if you haven't actually read the book, and you do come across a copy, I would suggest you give it a go.

The writing is superb and worth immersing yourself in solely for the experience is seeing a world with a child's eyes - as the narrative of Angela's Ashes is deftly told from this perspective. Not in a cloying way, but with traits that remind you of that age when so much of the adult world went over your head and you were happier for it.

Another comment on the tone. I found this book really, really funny. I took it to be a black comedy, with the tragic elements presented in such a way that there was a comedic spin on it all. Like, of course it was awful that he got a thump on the head each time he asked an awkward question, but it was still pretty funny that he kept asking awkward questions in the way that annoying wee boys do and that his parents would just thump him on the head each time he did.

The devasting alcoholism of his father, Malachy Snr, is even given a comedic spin. His relentless booze-fuelled desire to drag his sons out of bed in the middle of the night, dragging them upright to swear to defend Ireland to the death whilst panting whisky-laden breath all over them, becomes an almost affectionate tribute to the patriotic spirit of the Irish - though of course mutilated by Malachy's inability to be a father in any sense of the word.

To me, the passages which diverted most from truly evoking the time and place of McCourt's childhood, were those which retold the time which seemed to have the biggest impact. When he discovers the writing of Shakespeare, Noyes and Swift, a significant turning point in both the book and his young life, a more contemporary voice rings through - a writer still enthralled with these heroes and with literature, whose love of words help transcend the horrors of his origins.

--
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. Recommended.
Published in 1996. Set mostly in the poorest, grossest slums of Ireland, 1930s/40s.
#48 from 'The List'

The time is 5.10pm here in Wellington, NZ.
Sometimes the quotes on the front of a book can be immediately heartening. Excellent Women (an encouraging enough title!) was referred to as 'endearing' and 'amusing', which, when judging by the cover, does put you in a positive frame of mind.

I then noted that the quote was from the person who'd written the introduction to the book, rather than from any kind of critique, but decided to forge cheerily ahead anyway.


This kind of ambitiously positive attitude is just the sort sported by the heroine of Barbara Pym's novel it turns out. Mildred Lathbury (what a wonderfully British name) is an excellent woman, self-sufficient and independent, relishing spinsterhood in all its joys.

Her quiet life is thrown into somewhat of a disarray by the arrival of a tempestuous, squabbling couple into the downstairs flat of her previously peaceful home. The husband appears to be attempting to charm her. The wife seems to want to confess all sins to her. Mildred would just like to make sure that the church bazaar is going to run smoothly.

Apparently Pym's style is frequently compared to Jane Austen - and now that I am finally reading my first (!) Austen I can see how this fits. It also reminded me a little of Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm.

This book is filled with delicate humour and superb characterisation. I did find the pace rather slow, not so much a rollicking night out with salacious details, but rather more unwinding like a polite garden party peppered with snatches of shadowy gossip. And sometimes that can be just what you're in the mood for!

--
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. Recommended as a very light read.
Published in 1952. Set in post-WWII London.
#47 from 'The List'

Posted by Bel. The time is 7.53pm here in Wellington, NZ.

A short story collection makes great summer reading. If you drop off to sleep in a nice patch of sunshine on your bed during an afternoon's reading, it doesn't matter too much, because you were probably only two or three pages into a six or eight page long story anyway.

But I'll tell ya what, Flannery O'Connor's writing will hold your attention and keep you from even thinking of falling asleep. And quite possibly, the darkly drawn characters of her 'Southern Gothic' tales will give you nightmares.

I was so enraptured by the title story of A Good Man Is Hard To Find, that I did that real annoying thing of re-telling it to the next person I came across, trying to quote her chilling sentences word for word, bungling it horribly and no doubt putting the innocent soul off books in general for life.

Not that her stories in the conventional spooky way. The various characters of A Good Man Is Hard To Find are gut-wrenchingly human and their hopes and flaws are what loads each story with an ominous sense of foreboding. Double-crossing is rife, an almost inevitable conclusion. Although the stories seem to be set in the immediately post-WWII era, there is a quality to them which is so reminiscent of the Coen Brothers' films that it is boldly contemporary.

A note on the title: I had the complete wrong idea about what this book was going to be like. I have an immediate connotation of some kind 80s era poster of a topless Fabio with the twisted slogan 'A Hard Man Is Good To Find' emblazoned across. And so I assumed that this book was some kind of romance trollop too. Read the first story of the book to see how the line is actually used and you'll see just how wrong my interpretation was.

--
A Good Man Is Hard To Find (and Other Stories) by Flannery O'Connor. Highly recommended.
Published in 1955. Set in the South (USA) in the mid 20th C.
#46 from 'The List'

Posted by Bel. The time is 4.30pm here in Wellington, NZ.

The search results on Wellington Central Library's computer told me that I had to go to the enquiries desk to locate the copy of Anais Nin's Delta of Venus.

'That's a bit weird', I thought, but then told myself perhaps it meant the book was in the process of being put into stack (like so many of the great books I've read off 'The List'), or maybe they were putting on a new layer of that clear coverall that librarians seem to like so much.

But twas not so. The man behind the counter delicately handed over the large hard-cover edition of Delta of Venus and I was faced with a garish sticker on the front: "NOT TO BE ISSUED TO THOSE UNDER 16 YEARS: INDECENT PUBLICATIONS ACT".

He didn't I.D. me, and so I just scuttled off to the issues desk. (Yes, that is the same cover up there, but I foolishly forgot to get a real photo of the blush-inducing label.)

The book is a collection of short stories, conjured up in the 1940s by Nin and her circle of friends, reportedly for a patron who paid $1 per page and demanded she strip the stories of their poetry and just get to, you know, the good stuff.

At the time, Nin was one of the only women in the world writing erotica and despite the benefactor's instructions, there is a sensuality and atmosphere to the writing which lifts it above the sort of 'Penthouse Forum' stuff of our modern times. (Forum? That's right, right? Where readers have supposedly written in? With their randomly raunchy tales of explicit seduction?? I don't want to google it to check on my work computer. But blog I shall, dammit!)

The content of Delta of Venus leaves conventional romance far behind. The opening stories present paedophilia and incest, confronting and challenging what we can regard as sexually acceptable. I can't really recall any stories where two adults indulged in a consenting relationship of harmonious love - everything was twisted. For example, when a couple meet on a train and realise they are perfect for one another, it is because they are both depraved exhibitionists who have been using the train ride as a perfect opportunity to fondle their exposed genitals in front of innocent passersby. Aaawh, how cute! See you guys at the wedding! Remember to wear pants!

From bestiality to necrophilia (one of my favourite stories - except that, oh yeah, gross, the woman was dead and had just been fished up from out of the river, *shudder*), there is no stone unturned, or legs gone unspread. Some characters reappear, but it doesn't have a 'plotline' as such, although the theme of exploration and freeing the self from inhibitions, is unsurprisingly prominent.


PS You guys, do you know how difficult it was to write this without puns?? I just had to put in 'difficult' instead of 'hard' because it made me snort laugh.

PPS I only knew who Anais Nin was previous to reading this because of the Jewel song. You know (2m 28s).

--
The Delta of Venus by Anais Nin. Recommended, if you're up for it, ooh err. AND OVER 16 YEARS.
Published in 1978. Set in Paris, 1940s.
#44 from 'The List'

Posted by Bel. The time is 3.30pm here in Wellington, NZ.

I was looking forward to this book, as I recalled hearing of Doris Lessing's comments when she was presented with a Nobel Prize for Literature a year or so ago, at the age of nearly 90. (Basically, she was like, "So what? Took your effing time.")

But The Golden Notebook is not anywhere near as succinct or funny. It made my head swim and my mood increasingly sour as I plodded towards its conclusion. I berated myself for my compulsion to complete books - although it must said, there was something in this that kept me hanging on.

It tells the story (sort of) of Anna Wulf, through her various segmented diaries, and another interweaving section, telling her current life. One diary appears to be a re-telling of her life, fictionalised, reusing character names - which I found most confusing!! Much of the early part of the book focuses on idealistic political views and personal lifestyle choices; seemingly emerging from the dark cloud of World War II determined to improve the world (through Communist values, in this case) and with the early ripples of feminism.

But by the end of the book, it seems to have spiralled down into a nasty self-fulfilling prophesy. All of Anna's previous scathing indictment on the futility of co-dependant male/female relationships comes to fruition in her inability to either relate to or release herself from men. Sigh.

Also: she kind of goes potty about her political beliefs (which earlier they'd been scathing about); the young bright-eyed son turns industrialist (which earlier they'd been scathing about); and her best friend and fellow singleton gets married and moves to the burbs (which earlier, OF COURSE, they'd been scathing about).

I threw the book down in a huff, wondering why it was a tome of such import and went scurrying to ask questions of your friend and mine, the interwebs. I came across a website called The Golden Notebook Project, where a group of feminists have done an interactive 'close reading' of the book, with each page reproduced online with their notes and discussions presented alongside.

The site is worth checking out if you have any interest in website design, because its features and functionality are pretty unique. It is very snazzy-looking as well as easy to use, and made me geek out a bit, I must admit. Also, it made me feel better about the book in general, because many of their reactions were similar - one reader made a wrap-up blog post about how she had to recover from spending so much time reading the brain-churning book by indulging in the kind of shallow romantic comedies she usually hated. Whew! Not just me then.

--

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. Not recommended.
Published in 1962. Set in England/Africa, 1930s-50s.
#46 from 'The List'

Posted by Bel. The time is 6:52pm here in Wellington, NZ.

I spent my Christmas break doing a whole lot of nothing. We watched DVD after DVD, pausing only to eat whatever was in reach, and reading in 100 pages chunks. It was very relaxing, so much so that I promptly got sick, developing a nasty case of pink eye. (PINK EYE!!)

The only copy of Property, by Valerie Martin, available at my beloved Wellington Central Library was a large print edition. This was a boon for me and my gammy eye.

However, I do find it hard to shake off the impression that large print books are for 'remedial readers'. You know... Even when the writing is lucid and evocative, I still get the impression the message is being dumbed down and that the over-size print is because I'm just not capable I'm playing with the big kids.

It was particularly tricky with this book, which told the tale of American slavery times from a (relatively) privileged white woman's perspective. Its portrayal of a household where the plantation owner blatantly fathered children with a black slave was startlingly honest, but the characters were all so unlikeable and with so little growth it was hard to understand what the message was.

Manon is freed from the marriage she hates when their plantation is destroyed in an attack by rebel slaves. Her despicable husband is killed thanks to the actions of her African American parallel, the servant called Sarah, who escapes on the night.

But Manon's obsession in life then becomes the hunting down of her 'property', determined that the slave be returned to her. She is not jealous of Sarah's status as bearer of her husband's children, nor does she actually need her around as a servant, she is just transfixed with the concept of what she owns must be returned to her, regardless of whether that be a human being or not.

I think I was mostly disappointed that the theme of oppression did not seem to be resolved. Manon's circumstances change but she was still entrapped in the same mode of thinking; Sarah made a break for freedom but her fate ultimately was to serve without question. Maybe this was the point? It certainly got across the mentality of the time and how slavery managed to persist for so long.

Apparently Property was a total shocker when it won the Orange Prize in 2003, beating out Donna Tartt and Zadie Smith, and that does not surprise me. I mean, it would have surprised me hugely at the time. Yeah, you know what I mean.


A note on the cover: The cover pictured above is not the cover I had. The cover on the large print edition was a really weird, heavily detailed and yet naive illustration of a ye olde sitting room with a fireplace. Not a good choice really, considering. And also ugly.

--
Property by Valerie Martin. Not recommended.
Published in 2003. Set in New Orleans in the mid-1800s.
#44 from 'The List'

Posted by Bel. The time is 11:20am here in Wellington, NZ.

This book is a romance of the sort of absurd proportions that it seems only the hot-blooded South Americans can get away with.

Florentino falls forever in love with Fermina and when after a secret engagement, built up through barely a spoken word, she arbitrarily changes her mind, and he cares not. He waits throughout her 50 year marriage to the dashing Urbino and professes on the day of his death that he loves her still and hopes that now they have a chance to be together.

Perhaps it's called Love In The Time of Cholera because it makes the reader feel a bit ill?

Oh, I jest, I jest. But you do have to be in the mood for this kind of novel. And you have to be willing to buy that someone would stake their heart on someone they barely know and who rejected them. Yet this is the tale of undying love - plus of course, of all the action he gets during those intervening years. (Red hot Latin lovers, as I was saying.)

Plot aside, Garcia Marquez's writing is just amazing. Many a pencilled line was drawn under phrases which stopped me in my tracks. (Unfortunately my copy has already been loaned on, otherwise I would be quoting verbatim right now.) His is a style that which you will either love or hate, with long sentences (paragraphs, and chapters) that may well put you off - or you will be swept up and oblivious to the lack of structure in this way.

The focus of the book shifts from character to character, in time and location, with lots of flashbacks and flashforwards, covering a several parallel lifetimes' events in great detail. It's not until more than a third through the book that we see things from Fermina's perspective.

Until then, her dramatic actions seem very arbitrary and hard to comprehend. Her character is just a shallow thing, adored by the men for no good reason other than her beauty (especially as she is loved from afar by Florentino, who doesn't even really know her). But once we get inside her mind, she is easier to admire. Essentially, however, this is more a tale of obsession and of love for love's sake.


IMPORTANT NOTE:

Whatever you do, do not, repeat: do not watch the film version of this book. The movie Love In The Time of Cholera may look like it might be good, with its reputable cast and decent director, but it is NOT. It is AWFUL. Even if you think "well, I hate long-winded writing and I'm not much of a novel reader anyways, but I feel like a nice mushy romance - let's get this out of a Sunday afternoon" - STOP! Resist! Do not do this to yourself. Please.

And if there is any chance of you reading the book, I double my pleas. Just avoid the film, at any costs.

That is all.

--
Love In The Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Sort of recommended.
English translation published 1988. Set in Columbia, late 19th C - 1930s.
#44 from 'The List'

Posted by Bel. The time is 4:38pm here in Wellington, NZ.

Many fruitless times I have typed The Face of War into the Wellington City Library computer and have had zero results come up. I couldn't just skip a title that is on The List, so I decided I would 'read around' Martha Gellhorn instead.

I found some of her fiction in stack and a travel memoir on the shelves. As I'd managed to figure out that The Face of War was a collection of journalistic essays, I went with Travels With Myself And Another as the next best thing and a good place to start.

And what do ya know, folks, we have not just another instant winner great read, but a bona fide heroine to add to the Bona Fide Heroines list.

Martha Gellhorn reading documentation on how smoking is evil.

Travels With Myself And Another starts off with a funny, dry and decidedly non-PC tone that only gets more funny and less PC as the book goes on.

Gellhorn opens by saying that no one really wants to hear about anyone's travels. The moment you mention the sights you seen, their eyes glaze over. But travel disaster stories are a whole other thing, to be traded and devoured and relived in a thrilling way unimaginable at the time. This book is her collection of "horror journeys", where her indefatigable adventurous spirit lead to disasters in various foreign forms.

Covering various continents and decades of her life, some of the most entertaining anecdotes come from Gellhorn's resolute spirit butting up against, well, against pretty much everyone.

This covers from a camp East African guide who refuses to drive her anywhere when they go on safari, to the terrible travelling companion that her partner of many years Ernest Hemingway was while they traipsed through pre-industrial China.

Gellhorn with a local and "U.C.", short for 'the Unwilling Companion'.

After devouring these well-crafted tales and being filled with wanderlust, I needed to know more about Martha. Her wikipedia page only filled me with awe, as it breezily listed her career which careened from the Spanish Civil War, to being among the first to arrive at Dachau, to covering the conflict in Vietnam and even in her 80s still reporting from the front line. It is no surprise that this determined woman chose to take her own life when her health began to fail in her 90s.

You can imagine my JOY when I stumbled across Caroline Moorehead's definitive biography Gellhorn: A Twenty-First Century Life, in my favourite Wellington secondhand bookstore, Arty Bees.

I am only up to chapter three and already she has met and interviewed Diego Rivera and Sergei Eisenstein - this is aged 21 years, after dropping out of college and moving to Paris, striking up an affair with Colette's stepson.

Her dramatic life may yet make it to the silver screen. Variety reported last year that a biopic was planned, as Gillian Anderson's production company had bought the rights to Caroline Moorehead's biography. With a female writer/director attached, this could be promising - especially considering that Scully won't have to go all Oscar-bait to play the role:

--
[anything] by[/about] Martha Gellhorn. Highly recommended (durrr).
Published 1934 - 1988. Set in pretty much everywhere.
#43 from 'The List'

Posted by Bel. The time is 2:03pm here in Wellington, NZ.

This is the first time I've read The Bell Jar, and although familiar with some of Sylvia Plath's poetry, I'm not a fan and wasn't really amped for this novel.

Also (and it's dreadful to have had this association, but somewhat unavoidable), the image of GOOPy Gwyneth Paltrow mooching around in cardigans in Dunedin - oh I mean, Cambridge - is inextricably implanted in my mind.

Reading this brilliant book has successfully wiped all that away.

The first third of the book, set in the glitz and glam of 1950s New York City, shows our heroine Esther as the somewhat reluctant member of a group of interns for a top fashion magazine editor. This reminded me a little of that section of The Girl's Guide To Hunting And Fishing, but with more of a delightful sarcastic humour.

I loved the moment where hedonistic intern Doreen, with her Marilyn Munroe hair, passes out drunken in a pool of vomit outside Esther's hostel door, and Esther contemplates it, and then delicately closes the door again, deciding to deny all knowledge. (Recovery position, people!!)

Returning home to the suburbs, Esther is devastated to learn she has not been accepted into the writing course she had her heart set on. Imagery is used with her thinking of many figs on different branches, all representing various choices in her life, future paths that may be taken. Esther sees these all withering before her fingers even get a chance to grasp them. (There is also the added layer that the character lives in a time when even with education, her choices were rather limited and most people's ideals were for a women to be a lovely housewife.)

There are moments in this book when you just want to give this young lady a shake of the shoulders and say "Buck up! It'll work out!". But from the halfway point on, her decent from inaction to depression is very well characterised. And although the final lines of the book are open-ended, I felt that it was positive and that Esther was on the right track. Her actions in the closing chapters had been self-directed and about achieving things for herself - the opposite of the frozen inertia that defined the slump into depression.

It is very hard to write a review of this book, let alone read it, without the spectre of Sylvia Plath's suicide looming over. I guess I'd always assumed that a novel published mere weeks before the writer killed themselves might not be the most fun to pick up. But despite The Bell Jar's autobiographical content, it is not all doom and gloom, and is actually very entertaining.

Last thing: The cover above is unfortunately not the one that was on the shelf at the Wellington Central Library when I swung by. It was one that incorporated the image below, which I assume is of Sylvia Plath, which seems a bit much like blurring the line, considering the character Esther makes frequent mention of using a typewriter.

--
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Recommended.
First published 1963. Set in New York/Massachusetts, 1950s.
#42 from 'The List'

Posted by Bel. The time is 4:05pm here in Wellington, NZ.

Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is an autobiographical story of growing up as a young black girl in a world defined by its boundaries, yet still determined to grow and flourish despite all set-backs.

Early in the book, there is a wonderful example of the lack of perspective that segregation brings. Young Maya sees the laundry baskets carried by the women who do housework for white households in the area. She is amazed to spy among the heaps of clean clothing the same style of underwear that she and her family wear! To her, whites are akin to an alien species. To imagine that they would be wearing underwear and doing normal everyday things is simply impossible.

As well as these basic insights, there are some moments in the book that are truly shocking. Because Maya's grandmother runs the general store, she has been able to help out local people during the worst times of the Depression. This includes a white dentist who lives on the other (wealthy) side of town. She calls on him to repay the favour when Maya is crippled by toothache. They approach the house via the servants' entrance after walking across the distance of the town, the little girl howling all the way with pain.

The reception they receive is chilling. The dentist flatly refuses to help them, culminating with the brutal statement that he would no more put his hand inside a negro's mouth than he would a dog's.

There are many difficult and even traumatic moments related in the book - the sexual abuse and rape that takes place when Maya is eight years old is the hardest to read, regardless of the outcome, in which he is taken to court and then murdered by her uncles. But overall the tone is positive and uplifting. This is not someone who is overwhelmed and downtrodden by the circumstances, and there is some comfort in thinking that the young girl of this "story" will experience the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and all that will entail.

One of my favourite moments of Obama's election was this interview with Maya Angelou, where (if you watch through to the end) she recites my favourite poem of hers. Watching it the morning after America elected a black man to its highest office, tears were brought to my eyes.

Maya Angelou on Barack Obama's presidential win and reciting "Still I Rise"
(Can't embed the video, sorry - you will have to click over to Jezebel to enjoy it!)

PS It should be noted that Angelou read a poem at Bill Clinton's inauguration - he who was famously called "the first black US president" by none other than Toni Morrison, author of The Color Purple and also Beloved, which is on 'The List' and I thought I reviewed ages ago but now I can't find a post for. Whoops.

--
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. Highly recommended.
First published in 1969. Set in Arkansas, Missouri & California, 1930s/40s.
#40 on The List. 24 left to go!

Posted by Bel. The time is 1:49pm here in Wellington, NZ.

As always, I was influenced by the cover and was not hopeful about this book. I had to request it from stack and it was a bit battered, with loopy hand-drawn daisies on the front - a bit 'flower power' and not reminiscent of the educated and privileged 1930s setting I was about to immerse myself in.

The Group opens with a wedding and ends with a funeral, covering a hectic decade in between, seen through a shifting prism of eight lives. The group of young American women have just finished college (Vassar, which doesn't mean much to me, but I've learnt is quite small and exclusive) and are on the cusp of adulthood in its various incarnations.

The book is startlingly modern and easy to read, with a humour that has lasted well. Anyone that has had a group of close female friends will relate to woven relationships, gossip and assignment of roles that goes with the territory. And although I say 'modern' some of the most interesting aspects of the book come from observing the dramatic changes in society that have happened so rapidly.

At the opening of the book, one character (Libby? Dottie? Helena? I forget. I'm a shocker with ensemble casts.) is directed by her lover to seek out contraception. This is a mortifying prospect and she discusses with a friend that they are fortunate it is even legal in their state. The only option is to be fitted with a diaphragm, a complicated and uncomfortable procedure in that day and age - especially thanks to the unfeeling male doctor.

Other issues, such as the occasional nonchalant anti-Semitism, underline how much times have changed.

Although this book is dominated by female narrative, the men in their lives play an important part. One woman marries the wrong man, despite their creative affinities, and has to battle through their disaster zone of a marriage. The parents of another decide to split and her dad moves into her New York apartment with her, becoming liberally politicised and annoying her with what we would call his glaringly obvious 'mid-life crisis'. Another casts aside men altogether, returning from years spent in Europe with a lesbian partner at her side.

Despite their education and privilege, the women in The Group don't come across as haughty or grating as you might expect. The Depression-era setting plays a big part, helping to make the ear and circumstances deeply resonant to today's "current economic climate".

After some googling, I've seen many comparisons made to Sex and The City, but those tarts don't have any of the depth and resilience of these women. The restrictions that kept them dominated and to being literally locked up in one case, were societal, not self-inflicted. Their aspirations are always for self-improvement - and not by way of consumerism.

Here are a couple of covers that popped up on the interwebs. This imagery I like, other than the candy coated colour corrected - but I suppose that goes hand-in-hand when Candace Bushnell has penned an introduction. They've even put her name into pink, in case anyone was still confused at this stage that this might not be a group of WOMEN we were all talking about.


This design I probably prefer - perhaps they could do a reissue with the photo from above with the cute leopard print coat and make my life complete?

--
The Group by Mary McCarthy. Highly recommended.
First published 1963. Set in New York, 1930s.
#39 from 'The List'

Posted by Bel. The time is 1:35pm here in Wellington, NZ.

To truly succeed, a graphic novel must work on both levels - appealing on a visual level while hand-in-hand delivering a story makes you want to keep turning the pages.

The autobiographical Persepolis does this wonderfully, as the bold black and white images enhance and strengthen a narrative that is breath-taking enough on its own.

This is a coming-of-age story, not just for a woman wrestling with self-image, feminism and romance, but also for her nation, as it is torn apart by revolution, religion and attacks.

I took this book to the gym with me one day, to read while pedalling away mindlessly on the exercycle. Big mistake. I found myself brought to tears in the middle of working out - yes, just by a comic book, but man, this one sure packs a whallop at times.

Funny, honest, thought-provoking, educational. If you didn't dig the movie, trust me - there's much, much more here.

--

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi - Highly recommended
First published 2000. Set in Iran/Austria, 1970/80s
#6 on 'The List' of 75 books total i.e I read this ages ago

Posted by Bel. The time is 4:13pm here in Wellington, NZ.

For one whole year now I have read nothing but books from 'The List'.

Okay, there have been a few exceptions, but probably less than five! And two of them were for work. Almost everything I have read has been reviewed on this site (label: 'The List'), but I thought today was a good day to go over it as a whole...

'The List' came from this article on Jezebel entitled 75 Books Every Woman Should Read: The Complete List. It was a collective response, compiled by the blog editors from commentors' suggestions, after Esquire magazine had released a list of '75 Books Every Man Should Read' that they felt was "myopic" due to its old white dude predominance (in fact, one female author, four non-white authors *shudder*).

This list is not without its biases too. Obviously, it tends towards female authors and themes, but more unintentionally many of the authors are from the United States. I think this is one of those unfortunate stereotypes where Americans just don't think far enough outside the square. Part of this is because they have a fantastic education system that focusses on their own history and own literary successes - but it does mean that other cultures get left out in the cold.

There were quite a few seemingly obvious ones that got missed as well. There's no Margaret Atwood on 'The List'. The Vagina Monologues isn't there. Katherine Mansfield doesn't get a mention, despite the fact she's probably more well-regarded overseas than she is here.

But all in all, it's a solid effort. I'd only read 7 of the books when I started. Now, with a recount to sort out various mix-ups, I am up to 42. That means 26 to go! Yes, I did abandon Middlemarch and A Vindication of the Rights of Women, but I am planning to make another attempt - on Middlemarch, at least. So really only 25. Assuming all of the rest are readable. And something has to be pretty awful for me to give it up, I'm dogged like that with books, though who knows why.

I've been able to find every book so far at the Wellington Central Library, bless! However I am now hitting a few dead end. Alison Bechdel's Fun Home has been out each and every time I have looked on the library catelogue. FOR A YEAR. I am quite keen to read this graphic novel, having enjoyed her other work and being a fan of applying 'The Bechdel Rule' to films.

I'm also having to read around Martha Gellhorn. They don't have her collection of war journalism, The Face of War, but do have collections of letters and travel memoirs, as well as some novels in stack, so I figure this will have to do as a way of getting to know her writing.


Below is the complete 'The List' for your perusal - let me know if you would like it as a handy one page Word doc, perfect for keeping handy in your wallet:

• The Lottery (and Other Stories), Shirley Jackson
• To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
• The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
• White Teeth, Zadie Smith
• The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
• Excellent Women, Barbara Pym
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
• Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
• The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
• Like Life, Lorrie Moore
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
• The Delta of Venus, Anais Nin
• A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
• A Good Man Is Hard To Find (and Other Stories), Flannery O'Connor
• The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
• You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down, Alice Walker
• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• Fear of Flying, Erica Jong
• Earthly Paradise, Colette
• Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
• Property, Valerie Martin
• Middlemarch, George Eliot
• Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid
• The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
• Runaway, Alice Munro
• The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
• The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
• You Must Remember This, Joyce Carol Oates
• Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
• Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
• The Liars' Club, Mary Karr
• I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
• A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith
• And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
• Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
• The Secret History, Donna Tartt
• The Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley
• The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker
• The Group, Mary McCarthy
• Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
• The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
• The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
• Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag
• In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez
• The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
• Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
• Three Junes, Julia Glass
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
• Sophie's Choice, William Styron
• Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann
• Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
• Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
• The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
• The Face of War, Martha Gellhorn
• My Antonia, Willa Cather
• Love In The Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Harsh Voice, Rebecca West
• Spending, Mary Gordon
• The Lover, Marguerite Duras
• The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
• Tell Me a Riddle, Tillie Olsen
• Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
• Three Lives, Gertrude Stein
• Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
• I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
• Possession, A.S. Byatt

Posted by Bel. The time is 5:15pm here in Wellington, NZ.

A double up book review, because I read these very quickly and as they were both set in the Caribbean, with themes of racism, colonialism and a young woman struggling to establish/maintain her identity, it almost felt like a flow-on from one to the other.

Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea was written in 1966 as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's classic Jane Eyre. It could work as a stand-alone book, but the characters are so much more enriched if you are familiar with the story of Jane Eyre. (SPOILERS ahoy, if you aren't!)

The book's main character, Antoinette Cosway AKA Bertha Mason, is best known as the ominous crazy woman in the attic of Brontë's 1847 tome, responsible for 'haunting' the lovely lead and wreaking fiery havoc.

Wide Sargasso Sea tells of her early life, where being Creole means she cannot feel part of, or be accepted by, white or black society. She comes to be distanced from her remarried mother, and Antoinette's own marriage only causes further harm. The unnamed British husband (a young Rochester) seems to despise the marital arrangement, despite his profiting financially from it. He basically persistently mind-fucks with Antoinette, unable to transcend the communication gulf between them - and increasingly intimidated by his perceived fears about her race and family history of mental illness.

I'm probably making this sound a rather dark and dreary book - and it's true that there's no happy ending. (Especially when you take in account what occurs once Rochester gets her back to ye olde England!) But Wide Sargasso Sea is a good read, with descriptions of the island life and scenery that are lush and livid, expressing the vitality that Antoinette once had. I found it unusual that chunks of the book where in the first-person from Rochester's perspective, when I'd expected it very much to be Antoinette's personal tale. But it did give perspective on his behaviours and thus on their impact on her and her mental stability.

To follow that up, I read another book set in the Caribbean, telling a young woman's story - some themes overlapped, but fortunately it was all somewhat lighter to read.

Annie John has that 'autobiographical' feel to it, and is described by wiki as being "an imaginative account of her experience". (Apparently Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Richardson, but changed her name in the 60s as her family did not approve of her writing.)

As in Wide Sargasso Sea, Annie's relationship with her mother becomes distant as she grows older. The awkwardness of the mother-daughter relationship and the conflict arising as the adolescent begins to establish their own identity is beautifully rendered. There is a lot of pain, but at the same time it is such an important thing - and something that is so frequently reduced to cliche in American television, etc.

Colonialism (and its dangerous restrictions) is another dual theme. Education is important to bright-spark Annie, but the school she attends in mired in an institutionally British approach which she seems unable to help rebelling against. This is emphasised by the issues that arise when she is ill, and her mother must sneak in the obeah woman (AKA voodoo, the Haitian word apparently) because her father only approves of 'Western medicine' - just as in Wide Sargasso Sea Rochester was suspicious of anything potentially associated with these local traditions.

Funnily enough, I felt there were some parallels with Jane Eyre even. Annie strikes up an strong friendship with another schoolgirl, similar to the relationship between Jane and Helen early on in Jane Eyre. In both books, this does not seem to be an explicitly lesbian connection, but rather a celebration of the intensity of friendship unique to that age and an exploration of sexuality that happens sometimes at that turbulent phase of hormones and chemistry.

--
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - Recommended if you have read Jane Eyre
First published 1966. Set in Jamaica, 1840s
#36 on 'The List' of 75 books total (39 to go!)

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid - Recommended if you were an angsty teen
First published 1985. Set in Antigua, 1950s.
#37 on 'The List' of 75 books total (38 to go!)

Posted by Bel. The time is 5:00pm here in Wellington, NZ.

Filled with magical realism and historical details, this compelling story plays out over several generations of a vivacious Chilean family, divided and united by love, ghosts and politics.
I highly recommend this book - not just because it is a great read with wonderful memorable characters, but also because it tells an important story of South America.

...

I wrote that review thing for my goodreads profile back in November 08, when I was into it for about 2 minutes. I must've been feeling not very into anything that day, because although The House Of The Spirits was one of the first books I read off 'The List', it went straight to my All Time Faves list and remains there.

A quick note on the cover, to begin: The picture here is of the cover that I had. But! It is sort of an optical illusion, in that there are metallic sort of lines down the image, so you only see it on specific angles, or in a certain light. And I was like, half through the book before I even NOTICED!! Weird. But then I ALWAYS SAW IT from then on, so I was like 'how was I blind to this before!? Did someone switch books on me...??'.

But anyhoo, seriously - this is an amazing read. Soon after I read In The Time Of The Butterflies, which also has a tumultuous South American setting and I was like "meh... it's not The House Of The Spirits though, is it?".

--
The House Of The Spirits by Isabel Allende - Highly recommended
First published 1985, Chile
#4 on 'The List' of 75 books total (71 to go!)

Posted by Bel. The time is 8:01am here in Wellington, NZ.

I've found it's quite good to get out a novel and some short stories simultaneously, because then when you feel like you need a bit of a break from your book, you can dip into something else, without having to pick up the narrative thread again and get all confused. At least, that's how I work.

This is definitely the best collection of short stories I have read so far. I became so enthralled in one story ('Trespasses') that I realised that I was trying to carry with reading it in my lap as I worked on a spreadsheet in the office. Shocking!! But quite an indication that it was a good read.

I presume Alice Munro is Canadian, as all of the stories are set there. (Is anyone else appaulled at the lack of research I do? Ehhh, fuck it.) This was quite a refreshing change, considering how many books on 'The List' are American. It seemed that the landscapes were an integral part of the storytelling, setting the scene in more than just a physical way.

I enjoyed the psychological intracicies that were so deftly drawn in these stories - the way parents were shown as flawed and immature, how someone's fate could tip due to a moment's crushing hesitancy, the disparity of a relationship viewed from outside looking in.

Highly recommended, particularly to those who aren't that keen on short stories. The writing is so good that I am sure you will be won over!

Posted by Bel. The time is 4:09pm here in Wellington, NZ.

Brooklyn is somewhere I associate more with the Beastie Boys, Mos Def and hipsters than anything else. To plunge into a novel set in the poverty stricken world of new immigrants living in turn-of-20th-century Brooklyn meant shedding a lot - no, all - of those connoations.

Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" brings this time period to life in an amazing way. It is so authentic, soaked in detail that make me think that it must be autobiographical (rather than researched in a finicky souless way). The actions and events are driven by the characters, with some now obscure references mentioned by them in a casual way that comes from it being their natural environment.

I get the feeling that I am not making much sense right now - so I'll give an example. At the opening of the book, our protagonist Francie is collecting scrap metal with her younger brother of a Saturday morning, as the few dimes gleamed from the exchange is their only spending money for the week. This is told without pity and without seeking sympathy, but instead revelling in the joy that you felt as a kid earning your own cash and then the equal torment of having to choose how to spend it.

For me, the book explored wonderfully some themes that have grown richer with time: gender roles in the home and the importance of education. Again, this is not done in a heavy handed way, but simply through the characters and how their lives progress due to the circumstances. Francie is determined to finish high school - to start high school even! The dynamics in the family, and the form her mother's support takes becomes engrossing.

I have just done some belated googling and discovered there is a film version directed by Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden). Swoon!

As this is a ye olde book, I thought I'd better get a photo of the cover. It was a little harder to get our bookcase in the background though as we were moving at the time! Shame! However, I hope I get bonus points for managing to get Jeebus, Audrey Hepburn and a nerdy typography book in shot.

Posted by Bel. The time is 4:15pm here in Wellington, NZ.

I'm doubling this one up because they were both quite little books and I banged through them and am already onto a third.

Getting these books out was quite an excitement because they both came up as being 'stack' on the library computer. (Haha I accidentally typed 'stank'.) So I had to go and ask the librarian to get them for me and imagined that they were being fetched from some Hogwarts-like room of towering dusty shelves and a cool ladder than goes along on wheels and other such things which nerds like me fantasise about.

In reality, it meant that one of the book had pages so worn-out and soft I had to be careful turning them for fear they would rip in my fingers and the other wouldn't open right up properly, so I had to kind of guess what word was at the end of each line on the left-hand page, and at the start of each line on the right-hand page. Which, as you can imagine, was hugely annoying. So, stack is stank.

Of the two books, Rebecca West's "The Harsh Voice" is my nomination for Purchase of Shiny New Copy for Library Public Shelves.

Myself reading a book, with books in background. (Books. I love em.)

This was a collection of four novellas, an unusual length - but I liked it as it was long enough to properly get something going, but the restrictions meant that there was real craft to the narrative too. If I had to guess, I'd say that ever-true parable "the love of money is the root of all evil" is the linking theme between each of the tales. This helped them to seem fresh despite the decades which have passed since their writing, due to today's fraught economic climate.

There was some stunningly beautiful writing - I was surprised by descriptions that leapt off the page, such as comparing a young woman's good looks to that of sweet canned fruit, dripping with syrup. Okay, I'm botching it here, but in the book, it totally worked and was brilliant to read. I love when tactile senses are summoned by an author, as well as the visual, and West did this wonderfully.


Grace Paley's "The Little Disturbances of Man" was a short story collection even more strongly thematically linked. Men and women, the relationships that tie them together and the aching distances which continue to keep them apart was the common ground again and again.

I will admit to skipping a couple of the stories, as I found the somewhat repetitous nature of it a little draining. You can only read so much about couples letting each other down, about being in an affair at cross-purposes, about someone being determined to leave for their own benefit, but then deciding to stay anyway. Personally I found taking stupid photos of myself far more entertaining, but that is probably because I am a doofus.

This is me reading a not freaky bit.

This is me reading a freaky bit!!

"The Harsh Voice" by Rebecca West,published 1935 UK.
Recommended (if you can get a good copy). #32 on 'The List'.


"The Little Disturbances of Man" by Grace Paley, published 1959 USA.
Not recommended. #33 on 'The List'.

Posted by Bel. The time is 3:35pm here in Wellington, NZ.

When I began reading this, I thought it was a short story collection. It begins with the first chapter focusing on two deaf-mutes, their lives so closely meshed I wasn't sure if they were friends or lovers. Then the next chapter switches to another person, living in the same town. I realised they'd been briefly mentioned earlier - and then the next chapter did the same thing, each time expanding on their lives and making the fragments vivid and cohesive.

Soon you have met a circle of small town folk, their lives linked and their destinies somehow mapped out. I grew to be immersed in the narrative and neighbourhood, as each character came to life - from the teenage girl yearning for music that might lift her out of the drudgery of being so poor, to the black doctor ill-suited to a time period where racial divides were still so apparent.

It is a book about people trapped in the hard slog and although I found moments of it uplifting, and decided that ultimately the ending is positive, there are some twists in the book that one would generally refer to as a "downer", though I suppose the title "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter" is a warning there. I really enjoyed the style of writing though and found the atmosphere and characterisation so evocative and appealing that it was a joy to read regardless.

A note on the cover (as always). The image above is taken from the wikipedia page, which says it was the first edition's cover. A stunner and a fine example of classy design. The copy I had from from our blessed Wellington Central Library was none of those things. It was a prime example of typical mid-1980s design. Imagine a Napoleon Dynamite style illustration, done with neon coloured pencils. Yup, on a hard cover even. Foolishly I neglected to photograph this monstrocity before I returned it, but I have entertained myself doing self portraits of the two books I have more recently finished. Stay tuned!!

PS Carson McCullers was 23 years old when she wrote this...biiiitch.

Posted by Bel. The time is 7:45pm here in Wellington, NZ.

Judging the cover (as I do), I thought this was going to be a winner. Stark, striking and contemporary - perhaps even futuristic. However these are not words I would use to describe the novel at all.

The writing is of the florid, verbose, convoluted style that brings to mind authors such as Louis de Bernieres and Lily Prior. When I went back and read the preface, it was only to discover this woman was a contemporary of Gertrude Stein (see previous review), swanning about with the arty intellectuals in Jazz Age Paris. I thought, "shoulda knowed it".

By throwing in another adjective-filled phrase where most would put a fullstop, Barnes packs "Nightwood" with language that is intoxifying and full of illusion, creating a sense of musty 19th century antiquity. I found it hard to wade through, especially as the novel is essentially plotless. Through the character's long-winded anecdotal and philosophical conversations, the tale of a love gone wrong transpires, but there is little resolution.

"Nightwood" has been heralded as a landmark of gay literature, and I'm sure it has its historical importance. But don't pick this up thinking it will be an insight to early lesbian counterculture or a tantilising bodice-ripper. Elements still hold - as betrayal and brooding hearts are somewhat timeless - but you will know straight away whether this is your flavour or not, and won't be persuaded the other way I imagine.


I am now reading "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers. Despite a dreadful cover, am loving it and expect to knock it off soon.