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1984880969
| 9781984880963
| 4.09
| 34,666
| Sep 03, 2020
| Sep 22, 2020
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it was amazing
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5★ “There was a jolly atmosphere, and I can understand the reason why. We each of us understand we’re in a gang and we understand we are in the middle 5★ “There was a jolly atmosphere, and I can understand the reason why. We each of us understand we’re in a gang and we understand we are in the middle of something unusual. We understand also, I think, that we are doing something illegal, but we are past the age of caring. Perhaps we are raging against the dying of the light, but that is poetry, not life. There will be other reasons I have missed out, but I know on the walk back down the hill we felt giddy. Like teenagers out too late.” There is most certainly a jolly atmosphere, they are most certainly doing plenty of things that are illegal, and I am delighted they are over the age of caring. What a treat! Like many, I wondered if a media celebrity might be cashing in on his name to get a book published. Well, cash away, Mr Osman – this is great! There is a murder, and then another, and the club's (and my) opinions change as we realise suspects may be future victims. But first, where are we? Kent, England. The setting is a retirement village with an assortment of residents and visitors. The scenario is that the developer has plans to expand right over the old convent cemetery. One of the residents sits on a bench in the cemetery every day, mourning his late wife. Another man, a minister, wanders through, reading the various gravestones, which Osman describes with historical poignancy, if I can put it that way. “The older gravestones are more ornate, more showy. The dates of death flick slowly forward as he walks. There are the Victorians all neatly in a line, probably furious about Palmerston or the Boers. Then it’s the women who sat in the convent and heard about the Wright brothers . . . the women who nursed the . . .broken . . . and prayed for their brothers to return safely from Europe. Then there were doctors and voters and drivers . . . both wars . . . then television, rock and roll, supermarkets, motorways and moon landings.” It’s never occurred to me to think of the generations in a graveyard that way, according to the times they enjoyed or endured. Between the general chapters of the story are diary entries from Joyce , who is the newest recruit to the Thursday Murder Club, this charming bunch of elderly amateur detectives. Actually, we’re not so sure about their amateur status, since the group was founded by Penny, a retired Kent Police Inspector, who (illegally) saved the files of their unsolved murders when she left. Penny is now lying, unresponsive and fading rapidly, cared for by her attentive husband. Elizabeth visits her and 'reports' all of the club's findings, as if Penny might offer advice. Elizabeth, yes, well – we know only what she lets slip from time to time, but it’s clear she was some kind of international spook in her day, although I’m not sure her day ever really ended. Little old ladies can get away with a lot, as can old gents, and it is wonderful watching them use their age and supposed weakness to their advantage the same way a girl will flutter her eyelashes to distract a would-be suitor. At one point, a young police officer who is aware of some of what they are doing is worried. “‘If any of this ever gets back to my superintendent, I will personally arrest you and march you into court myself. I swear, on my life.’ ‘Chris, no one will ever find out,’ says Elizabeth. ‘You know how I used to make my living?’ ‘Well, not really, if I’m honest.’ ‘Exactly.’” Younger people are inclined to think that “the elderly” are out of it, past it, over it, and no longer connected. Well, surprise! However, this is more than old people showing up the young, more than a sympathetic look at ageing and care facilities, and more than just fun. This is, in fact, a proper mystery, and I look forward to reading more of Joyce’s diary and more about their exploits, past, present, and future. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jan 13, 2021
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Jan 15, 2021
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Dec 24, 2020
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Hardcover
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9780733642869
| 4.23
| 322
| Oct 27, 2020
| Oct 27, 2020
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really liked it
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3.5★ “ ‘Mum said you ran over the OT’s foot.’ James smirked. Walter harrumphed. ‘People’s feet are too big these days. They used to be much smaller.’ Wa 3.5★ “ ‘Mum said you ran over the OT’s foot.’ James smirked. Walter harrumphed. ‘People’s feet are too big these days. They used to be much smaller.’ Walter Clements is a new widower whose daughter has moved him into the home. She and grandson James visit often, but young teenager James spends his visits fooling around on his phone. “Apparently it was all messages and photographs now. What would these kids reminisce about when they were old? Would they show their grandchildren the photo of their breakfast, or of themselves pouting into a bathroom mirror when they talked about the good old days?” This visit, however, James is impressed with the Tesla, Grandpa’s racy scooter he’s trying to get permission to drive. The foot incident above is only one of the mishaps from his first attempt. Another was knocking over Miss Hattie Bloom. Hattie is there to recover from a fall. “Ladders and hips alike. Both rotten and crumbling with age.” She’s been desperately trying to save the big angophora tree which is home to some owls in her garden. New neighbours want to lop an overhanging branch, and she was protesting. So she’s admitted to the home to convalesce. There Hattie meets the DON, Director of Nursing, who is always referred to as the DON, a sinister Mafia title, but she is, in fact, a decent woman who does her best to be upbeat. Rooms at the Woodlands Nursing Home are named after Monopoly board game properties, also to be upbeat and lighthearted, but it seems to me more appropriate for a primary school than a nursing home. “Depending on how you landed on this particular Monopoly square, the foyer and reception area represented either IN JAIL or JUST VISITING.” It reminded me of a nursing home a friend of mine was in which was a series of hallways connected by circular ‘lounge-dining’ areas that branched off into more hallways leading to more circular areas, like a complicated system of arteries and capillaries. We were always completely lost when we visited, so if you weren’t confused when you moved in, they made sure you would be eventually. But I digress. Walter and Hattie alternate chapters, headed with their first names. In life, however, they are always addressed as Mr Clements and Miss Bloom by each other and the other residents. But everyone is doing what they can to keep the residents happy and entertained – during the day. “‘Morning, Walter.’ It was the activities coordinator with a clipboard. ‘Shall I put you down for the bus trip? The alternative is Twenty Questions at ten-thirty.’ ‘It’s a veritable choose-your-own-adventure in here, isn’t it?’ The lifestyle coordinator, a softly spoken man in his sixties, clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That’s the spirit,’ he said. Nights are another matter. Only one sister seems to understand that old people seldom sleep well all night. People wake up to use the bathroom and may have trouble falling asleep again. Aches, stiffness, memories, new wounds, homesickness. Most of us have been there at some time. “The system” seems designed to keep people in their beds for uninterrupted hours all night long. Yeah, right. The “maverick night nurse”, as the author calls her, has ideas of her own for a Night Owls social club. Let the fun begin! It’s an entertaining read with some predictably poignant moments, but the idea of the Night Owls was new to me, and I love them! Somebody should start a protest movement in nursing homes and retirement villages for all the people who don’t want to be locked up in bed all night. In our own homes, we can fall asleep in front of TV if we want to or go outside and admire the moon and stars. Why not in our last homes? Thanks To NetGalley and Hachette Australia for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted. (Some quotes may have changed, but I try to choose those that I enjoy and think share the spirit of the author’s writing.) ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jan 02, 2021
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Jan 04, 2021
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Sep 20, 2020
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Paperback
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0008334021
| 9780008334024
| 4.09
| 5,940
| Apr 07, 2020
| Feb 20, 2020
|
liked it
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3★ “And it was still hard, being in the park, without remembering Leo. He was a great believer in a constitutional; enjoyed belittling self-important j 3★ “And it was still hard, being in the park, without remembering Leo. He was a great believer in a constitutional; enjoyed belittling self-important joggers and jovially berating cyclists.” Millicent Carmichael is a lonely old lady who’s been feeling sorry for herself and sticking pretty much to her own company. But she’s making a bit of an effort to get out of the house, and what do you know? Someone strikes up a conversation and invites her to join them for a coffee. “I still didn’t have much to write to Alistair about, but at least I’d been invited for a coffee and went, in a way. Baby steps. Old lady steps. Even if I wasn’t quite sure where I was going.” Alistair is her son, her golden boy, the special child and father of her golden grandson, Arthur, but they aren’t nearby. Melanie is his older sister and lives closer, but Missy’s always clashed with her and frequently refers to her unforgiveable fight with her. So if she’s not going to waste away home alone, she needs to take those baby steps or old lady steps herself. Her mother was an activist, marcher, protestor, volunteer, and someone who stood up for herself and others. Not Missy. “Mama would never have given up a career to run a household. She marched to the beat of her own drum, whereas I seemed to listen out for everyone else’s. Mainly Leo’s.” Missy tells this in the first person, and at 78, when the book opens, she has plenty of looking back to think about and figures she’s got very little to look forward to. She tells it today and then reminisces about the past, particularly when she goes through things in the attic or photograph albums. She has stripped her rooms of knick-knacks and pared back the furniture to the minimum she needs for daily living. It’s an almost spartan life – certainly a dull, depressing one. About halfway through, I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. It was pleasant enough, but that was all, though I kept reading, hoping it would touch a nerve or develop into something insightful. This is about someone trying to learn independence late in life, an interesting premise. And there are some delightful turns of phrase. "He slept like he’d fallen out of an aeroplane, on his front, star-shaped, dark eyelashes fanning his cheeks, thumb in his mouth.” Lovely. Unfortunately, the characters seemed made to order to move Missy's story along. I didn’t like being told more than once, in what I imagine were supposed to be mysterious undertones, about her run-in with Melanie. “I blinked to banish the image of my daughter Melanie, wide-eyed in my kitchen, backing away. The guilt gnawed away at me, as it had since that terrible day. Whenever I tried to weed it out, it just took a deeper root.” A little later: “. . . it wasn’t like she ever visited any more – not since that terrible afternoon.” Later again “Our first meeting since those terrible words in my kitchen. . . “ Again “There was always the residue of that terrible day, that terrible fight …” I’ll stop there, at just over a third of the way through, but there are more. We hear similar thoughts about her guilt over some dreadful thing she did in the past. If I had cared about her at first, I no longer did, because it felt like a writer’s ploy to keep me hooked. I like books with prickly people who can be softened up, but this seemed a convenient set-up. There were rather a lot of coffees and jolly walks and wonderful smells wafting from someone’s kitchen. Add a small child and a dog, and what else do we need? There was only one surprise for me, near the end, but even that just felt like a writer's trick. I expect Olive Kitteridge has spoiled me for irritable, depressed old ladies who love and miss their sons. But Olive is definitely a one-off, so I shouldn’t hold that against everybody else, should I? I appreciate the preview copy from NetGalley and HarperCollins, and I know there will be plenty of hearts warmed by this one, just not mine. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Feb 28, 2020
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Mar 02, 2020
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Oct 27, 2019
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
B07C72YBSX
| 4.04
| 28,359
| Jan 24, 2019
| Jan 24, 2019
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None
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Notes are private!
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none
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0
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not set
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not set
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Apr 03, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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B07NPSBNCH
| 3.87
| 735
| Jun 01, 2018
| Mar 20, 2019
|
really liked it
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3.5~4★ “You know, Mediterranea, I can’t get my head around the fact that now . . . you’re the oldest Solenza.” Trust a younger brother to cheer you up! 3.5~4★ “You know, Mediterranea, I can’t get my head around the fact that now . . . you’re the oldest Solenza.” Trust a younger brother to cheer you up! This is an interesting and timely graphic novel. The characters are recognisable, normal, everyday people of older middle age you could easily know. They have both hit bitter reality checks and are having trouble dealing with life. Mediterranea’s mother has just died, and she, not her brother, is the one who has been caring for her, so now, she’s not only grieving but she’s feeling the weight of age herself. Mind you, she’s only 61, hardly over the hill. [image] Illustration of her brother reminding her she’s the oldest in the family now She heads for home, and the weather and the night aren’t doing much to cheer her up. [image] Illustration of her waiting for the bus on a dark, wet night On board the bus, a woman tells her child “you need to give up your seat for old folks.” Boy, that hurts! We also meet Ulysses, a long-haul truckdriver who is being retrenched at 57. [image] Illustration of Ulysses ‘handing in’ his keys in anger He makes excuses to be in the neighbourhood to say hello and tries to pretend to his mates that he’s enjoying his forced retirement. [image] Illustration of Ulysses with his truckie friends Meanwhile, Mediterranea, who used to be a girlie model, checks out every sag and bag and wrinkle. She’s sure not the girl she used to be, and it saddens her. [image] Illustration of Mediterranea inspecting herself in the mirror I have chosen only discreet illustrations to give a sense of the realism of the story. The author and artist pull no punches. They know where people bulge and wrinkle roughly as they age and how worrying it can be, and they show it warts and all, the whole glorious body. Meanwhile, Ulysses is doing his best, or his worst, depending on your point of view, to pass the time. Daytime TV, evening sudoku, walks in the park. He makes excuses to chat to the cashier in the supermarket just to have someone to talk to. [image] Illustration of Ulysses walking through the park without stopping to chat We also see, in pretty graphic detail, Ulysses making his regular visit to his “comfort woman”, as she’s referred to later in the book. She’s a younger woman with a picture of her family by the bed! It’s not loving sex, but she seems fond of him and manages to give him a little relief, so to speak. We see her a little later in the story, where she’s also shown as a very real person, not just some sex object. We know Ulysses and Mediterranea have to meet, of course. That’s why we’re still reading! It happens when she is visiting her gynaecologist, and it turns out that Ulysses is in the same waiting room also waiting for the doctor – his son. [image] Illustration of meeting at the doctor’s office They begin chatting, and she mentions she runs a cheese shop. The inevitable happens, he visits the shop, they become friendly and start flirting a bit and going out a bit and he finds out she was the equivalent of a Playboy bunny in France, and one thing leads to another and we have quite a different sort of bedroom scene. Several of them, all very lovingly drawn, with less and less detail and more and more gentle blurring of the wrinkles and warts and all. [image] Illustration of some love scenes graduating from full colour to charcoal and chalk sketches There is a lot of story, back story, history, shared memories of songs and events, wine and cheese and music and fun. There’s a lot of teasing about their names and what they mean. It’s more than a superficial glance at loneliness, it’s a heartfelt CONGRATULATIONS! to anyone who’s been brave enough to risk connecting with someone new at any age. Also, Ulysses mentions at their first meeting that he hates reading, which reminds me of the importance of graphic novels. There must be millions of people who love stories and would enjoy a book like this while they would never read pages full of only words. I enjoyed it very much. I hope the few illustrations I’ve shared will give you a sense of the depth of the story and the love that has obviously gone into producing it. I did find some of the translation a little awkward and the songs unfamiliar, which made me feel like an outsider at the party sometimes. But it's a graphic novel, so the pictures make up for it, and overall, I like it. Thanks to NetGalley and Europe Comics for the preview copy which is available as Read Now on NetGalley. If you’ve not tried a graphic novel before, I suggest you have a look. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Mar 22, 2019
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Mar 22, 2019
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Mar 22, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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9780008196936
| 3.83
| 14,326
| Jan 11, 2018
| Jan 11, 2018
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None
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Notes are private!
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none
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0
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not set
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not set
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Mar 22, 2018
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ebook
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B0716T9RWW
| 4.09
| 2,883
| Jan 2015
| Oct 05, 2017
|
really liked it
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4★ “Luckily old age has come to my aid: I have worked out that for the sake of my health it’s better not to listen to family problems. After all, you n 4★ “Luckily old age has come to my aid: I have worked out that for the sake of my health it’s better not to listen to family problems. After all, you never solve them.” Cesare Annunziata is a grouchy old widower who likes to think he’s at odds with pretty much everyone. He’s determined to be miserable. I don’t hate people, it’s just that I’m too caught up with myself to attend to anyone else. Even Caterina always said the same thing: ‘You’re not bad, you’re just an egoist.’ I’ve never agreed with that. An egoist is someone who pursues his own well-being at all costs, whereas I’ve never attained well-being. I’ve even failed as an egoist.” Determined. His daughter actually dotes on him, but he finds her difficult to deal with. “She’s a brusque character, all sharp edges and tetchiness. I would never deign to look at a woman like that; I like broad curves, the kind to be approached in a low gear. Sharp bends weary me – they force you to shift up a gear or two. My daughter is like an alpine pass, a sequence of switchback turns.” His son, Dante, is obviously gay but has never told Cesare, who just wishes Dante would say something and get it over and done with. Cesare doesn’t care. Where Cesare differs from someone like A Man Called Ove, or other lovable curmudgeons, is that he still loves the ladies! His appetite for admiring and commenting on them hasn’t dimmed in the slightest, and he maintains an active relationship with a prostitute, Rosanna, who’s become something of a friend. “Rossana makes you think you’re a better man. Maybe she’s pretending, but even if she is, dear Christ, she’s a great actress.” Some of his observations are a little uncomfortable, but having known many politically incorrect older men in my time, I know he’s not alone making them. “At first I didn’t notice her; as a boy you try to flirt with older women, to feel important. And at the end of the day that isn’t so much of a mistake, because in fact you have your whole life to flirt with the younger ones.” This began slowly for me, and I’ve shared a lot of quotes to indicate the tone and style of the translation. It grew on me after a while as did Cesare. I enjoyed the natural way he came to understand a bit more about himself and his family and to accept, even if grudgingly, what life still has to offer an old bloke. The cat lady, his old mate, the art community his son is part of, his daughter’s possible affair – these are all things he’d kind of like to avoid (and enjoy his wine instead), but he can’t seem to help being dragged into their problems. He is a bit of a dirty old man, but he does have some redeeming qualities. One final quote: “I drain a glass of wine in one gulp. I think life must be a woman: when it needs to point out a mistake you’ve made, it doesn’t beat around the bush.” I enjoyed it very much. Thanks to NetGalley and Oneworld Publications for the review copy from which I’ve quoted (so quotes may have changed). ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Dec 02, 2017
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Dec 02, 2017
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Aug 31, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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B01N7WIQSZ
| 3.64
| 452
| unknown
| Nov 07, 2017
|
liked it
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3.5★ I was delighted to discover Jacob M Appel’s short stories and have another collection I’m looking forward to. This was a full-length novel, and I 3.5★ I was delighted to discover Jacob M Appel’s short stories and have another collection I’m looking forward to. This was a full-length novel, and I enjoyed Millard and his plans to finish his life on his 75th birthday. He has a lot to accomplish before the end of the day, including helping his latest lover with her premature demise first. Delilah was a well-known actress and counted many famous people among her friends, but now she’s bed-ridden and gradually disintegrating. She’s read up on the topic, joined a group and managed to secure the necessaries to kill herself cleanly and peacefully while she’s still capable of doing so. “The queen-sized bed in the adjoining room, where they’d first made love, had long been surrendered to boxes of adult diapers and cases of puréed baby food. A second childhood lacking the only solace of the original: hope.” Millard is a psychiatrist whose usual position is to talk people down from virtual ledges, not encourage them to go through with such lethal plans, but in this case, he’s sad and lonely since the death of his second wife, and he understands Delilah's desire not to go on, particularly as the only thing she has to look forward to is a further decline. I enjoy Appel’s style and turn of phrase. “Her tone carried a distain heavier than words, as though she’d pinched soiled clothing between her thumb and forefinger and was searching for a hamper.” He has his kids to consider, his first wife, his patients, and his staff at the hospital, but at 75, he’s feeling there’s nobody much left to talk to who remembers the things he remembers. We know Millard is 75 today, and he was 13 when the armistice was signed at Pamunjon, which means he was born in 1940. I am now 75 and was born in 1942. He is frustrated because he keeps making references to things that today’s young people have never heard of. He talks about “Bringing Up Baby”, a 1938 movie featuring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. And he reminisces at length about Jimmy Durante. The romantic comedies of my youth (and Millard’s) would have been Rock Hudson and Doris Day or Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood. Johnny Carson was “our” comedian. I've seen the other people, of course, but they are not the generation of entertainer I'm missing. Millard mentions that nobody would have described Harry S Truman as a second-rate haberdasher; he says someone’s voice sounds like the patrician tones Eleanor Roosevelt might have used to call Franklin. He talks about a coat someone wore every day during the year Eisenhower left office. My generation would be more likely to speak of Kennedy or LBJ. There are so many references like this in every chapter that I felt a bit beaten over the head with them. All right, all right! I get it! BUT, the real reason he has nobody to talk to is that these are all things that might have interested my parents (and his), who were young marrieds in 1940 and interested in politics and movies and entertainment at the time. Almost without exception, all of Millard’s nostalgia is that of a man probably thirty years older than he is. My dad loved Dinah Shore, and probably liked Hedy Lamarr, Jane Russell, Lana Turner and Rosemary Clooney, too. These are not the women that today’s men of 75 would be lusting after in their memories. Monroe and Bardot and Loren and Ann-Margret might be more likely. I suspect there are aged care facilities where people are still playing music that was popular during WW2, thinking that all old people listen to that music, when they should probably be playing Elvis, Dylan, the Beatles, and the Eagles now. Millard speaks of missing Glen Miller. If only the story had taken place say thirty years earlier so that these hundreds of probably well-researched little time bombs would have fit, I might have enjoyed it more. As it was, I kept bumping into what I felt were anachronisms. I suspect that younger readers may not notice them (all old people are the same age to some), but then they may not have the same sympathy for Millard’s nostalgia and situation. As I said before, I do enjoy Appel’s writing. He’s a doctor (among other things) and has a keen eye for hospital procedure. Senior staff clock off at the end of the day and leave the running of the place to over-worked, over-tired interns who can’t control the families and visitors who basically do what they want. “Narcotics and tranquilizers, declared taboo at noon, flowed like mountain springs six hours later. Parents smuggled candy bars to their diabetic children; love-blind companions trafficked malt liquor and miniature schnapps bottles onto the detox unit.” All in all, well-written and entertaining but disappointing for me because of the anachronisms. I loved the last chapter, though! Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books and the author for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted. I’m looking forward to the next lot of short stories. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Dec 19, 2017
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Dec 23, 2017
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Aug 26, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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1455542172
| 9781455542178
| 3.93
| 17,202
| Jun 01, 2014
| Jul 11, 2017
|
really liked it
|
4★ “As part of her plan of action to combat the dementia, Grietje has composed, with my help, two new notes she is to carry with her at all times: ‘Wha 4★ “As part of her plan of action to combat the dementia, Grietje has composed, with my help, two new notes she is to carry with her at all times: ‘What to do if I get lost’ and ‘What to do if I don’t remember exactly who someone is.’ Both notes start with: ‘Please forgive me, but I’m a bit forgetful.’ . . . ‘With a little luck, next year I’ll believe in Santa Claus again!’ said Grietje gaily. ‘Yes, just keep going the way you’re going, and you’ll get there soon enough,’ Evert egged her on. She liked the prospect of trustingly leaving her shoe by the hearth again. ‘Santa Claus could leave me an arch-support insole!’ ‘Made of marzipan.” . . . I must try to be thankful for every happy day, as Grietje is, and I am trying with all my might, but sometimes I’m just not mighty enough.” Hendrik is a bit of a grouchy old fellow, but it’s not long before he realises that it’s not just his age and infirmity that have affected his mood, it’s the continuous complaints and “organ recitals” at the dinner table (a phrase I only ever heard used by my aunt, who was exasperated by hearing all the gory details about other people’s organs). Hendrik discovers that pranks are a lot of fun, and his disposing of some unwanted cake in an aquarium stirs up more than a few dead fish. It's a major incident, and the authorities seek to investigate! The first part of the book seems to be mostly anecdotes and descriptions, which certainly ring true from my experiences with family and friends and community service organisations, but they didn’t interest me. Been there, done that (well, as an outsider, for the time being). But I persisted. As he got to know more people and make some particularly special friends (who formed the Old But Not Dead Club - a truly inspired idea), he became involved in their lives and so did I. They consume a lot of wine and whisky and enjoy life. He is happily surprised. “On parting, a kiss on both cheeks. I felt myself get all hot and bothered. Jesus, I’m eighty-three years old!” He often refers to the residents as “inmates”, and the authoritarian manager, who tries desperately to control things (impossible), is indeed something of a warden, claiming nobody is allowed to see The Rules (those rules they seem to keep bumping up against with their bright ideas). And some of their ideas ARE bright and inventive. The "Club" gets up to all sorts of things. Hendrik was not a fan of aids and equipment, from incontinence pads to mobility scooters, but as he sees what others are dealing with (and how much fun the scooters are), he does learn to adapt and look forward. After all, if he wants to get out and about . . . “I really must make a point of asking my geriatrician next time if there’s anything that can be done about the leaky part or if I’ll just have to resign myself to wearing diapers. Not so long ago I used to think that was when one lost one’s last shred of dignity, but I realize that I have now lowered the bar a bit. The frog in the cooking pot, that’s me.” I had the same mixed feelings about becoming attached to these elderly folks who are fading and falling apart, but their good humour and companionship won me over. They are not all genteel by any means, and some have quite "direct" language, but nothing offensive except to those pernickety old residents who deserved to be offended! Here’s a link to one of the Dutch mobility vehicles he lusted after. The Canta mobility vehicle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canta_(... And here’s another to how the Dutch have made use of their cycleways which Australia can only envy. Sigh . . . https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/20... And a last link – to Publisher’s Weekly which says that Hendrik Groen is an alias. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b... Thanks to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Oct 03, 2017
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Oct 10, 2017
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Jul 01, 2017
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Hardcover
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B003SNIZV2
| 4.37
| 11,929
| Sep 05, 2000
| unknown
|
it was amazing
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4.5★ “Where, I have asked myself, is this reflection? It is not on the top of the water, for if there is a little current the river can slide frictionl 4.5★ “Where, I have asked myself, is this reflection? It is not on the top of the water, for if there is a little current the river can slide frictionlessly and freely beneath the reflection and the reflection does not move.” There’s a saying that you never step in the same river twice. So it seems reasonable for Jayber Crow to ask the question. Where IS the reflection? Most of his life he wonders what purpose he serves by being alive in the world. Every once in a while he has a sudden epiphany or inspiration or urge and changes direction without warning, seeming to feel it was preordained and meant to be that he should take a next step. His life began by the river at Port William, where he was orphaned and had to move, first to another family and then to school. Thinking he felt a calling for the Church, he studied at college but there was too much he couldn’t reconcile. “But these preachers I’m talking about all thought that the soul could do no wrong, but always had its face washed and its pants on and was in agony over having to associate with the flesh and the world. And yet these same people believed in the resurrection of the body.” He wondered what kind of a preacher he’d make, feeling as he did about the Bible. “. . . when I preached, I thought, I would just not mention the parts that gave me trouble—“ That didn’t seem feasible, so he took off rather suddenly from college and wandered away to find himself. He’d learned a bit of hair cutting at school and luckily happened upon a barber looking for an off-sider, so he settled – for a bit. But once again, he got itchy feet and took off, feeling the pull of Port William and the river. He arrived at the height of a flood and luckily again happened upon a fellow with a boat, who ferried him across the river and told him they needed a barber in town and he knew the perfect building. For years his barbershop was a pivotal stop on the male social calendar, some men calling by daily to read the paper and yarn, while some had a shave and a haircut. He heard all the gossip, but it was almost as if it didn't matter what they said in front of him. He felt he was living on the edge of things, never quite included, like a bystander in his own life, but it never seemed to occur to him that possibly everyone feels like this at one time or another. He’s a bit like the kid who thinks everyone knows how to do everything except me. Why am I so dumb? Why am I left out? But he had fun, too, buying a car, flirting at dances in the bigger town nearby, worrying more about the flesh and less about the soul. “I was well acquainted with the unforbidden, but now that I was accumulating a little money I invested some in the forbidden. Wherever I could locate the forbidden—and with our clientele, it wasn’t hard—I went and tried it. Wherever the sirens sang, I went ashore. Wherever I heard the suck of whirlpools and the waters gnashing on the rocks, I rowed hard to get there. It’s a little bit of a wonder that I didn’t get cast up from the depths in several pieces, or at least contract a foul disease.” He reckons what saved him was his love of books and miserly nature. “I was a cut-rate prodigal.” That’s only the barest of bones of what is a rich,deliciously philosophical treatise on life and the nature of man. He despairs of the loss of the small, self-sufficient family farm with a team of mules and a hardworking family. “We went steadily from one thing to another, from can see to can’t see, and then on by lamplight . . .” He is no fan of the would-be corporate farmer who clears all the trees, fills sheds full of machinery and grows single crops, all on borrowed money. The soil grows hard and sour and the almighty dollar rules. It’s a familiar theme of The Good Old Days. He even has the retired folk moving to smaller holdings where they can still house the mules and raise chickens and vegetables, but he doesn’t really clarify where the food and goods come from for those without land. It’s a romance, but for one who has lived on the land, I know that everybody can’t farm their own few acres with mules and expect to feed the world. Even in Jayber’s early years, more was needed – there were already a lot of hungry people. I got tired of the preachiness, I must admit. He opened his barbershop in the late 30s, before WW2, the calamity that sent so many young men and women to their doom. “Nothing could reduce the strangeness and dreadfulness of that phrase, ‘gone across the waters.’” By this time he’d taken on a second job as church janitor and gravedigger. No longer a religious man, he still enjoyed the company of churchgoers on a Sunday morning and the company of the quiet departed in the graveyard. “I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated with presences and absences, presences of absences, the living and the dead.” This book is such a collection of quotable quotes, aphorisms, epigrams, anecdotes, and memorable phrases, that it needs leisurely reading to let you mull it over and soak up the atmosphere. I didn’t like the political tone here and there, but I enjoyed the narrative and the wonderful descriptions: “His chin stuck out, when he wanted it to, as though he used it for pushing open doors.” A building: “The whole thing was slung a little askew like an old dog half-minded to lie down, and it was badly in need of paint.” Ultimately, it’s a life that begins and ends with the river. “I stop and look at it. I think of its parallel, never-meeting banks, which yet never part. I think of it lying there in its long hollow, at the foot of all the landscape, a single opening from its springs in the mountains all the way to its mouth. It is a beautiful thought, one of the most beautiful of all thoughts. I think it not in my brain only but in my heart and in all the lengths of my bones.” It's on my Old Folks shelf along with other favourites like A Man Called Ove and Britt-Marie Was Here. I enjoy seeing how people have lived their lives and what they've learned or taught others. ...more |
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Sep 18, 2017
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Sep 28, 2017
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Jun 01, 2017
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0062225553
| 9780062225559
| 3.81
| 29,905
| Nov 22, 2016
| Nov 22, 2016
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it was amazing
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Update - great interview explaining the fiction http://www.powells.com/post/interview... 5★ “The girl’s lips were painted red as Bicycle hearts and diam Update - great interview explaining the fiction http://www.powells.com/post/interview... 5★ “The girl’s lips were painted red as Bicycle hearts and diamonds, and they parted to reveal an Ingrid Bergman smile to go with the sunglasses. My grandfather heard a sound inside his head that he compared, years later, to the freight-train rumble of an earthquake. He felt he was standing in the path of something fast-moving and gigantic that, in its blindness, was bound to carry him away. Swept off his feet, he thought. This is that.” A love story, a history, a fantasy. Who knows how much of each comprises this amazing “biography” of the narrator’s grandfather? He’s shown to be an inventive, rocket-mad tinkerer and engineer (we think) whose first name we never learn. He’s built hundreds of models, ostensibly for NASA, and now he’s dying and talking to his grandson, “Mike”, about things he’s never spoken of before. As Mike says: “In my family, in my lifetime, we preferred to leave the business of feeling, and talking about feeling, to people with nothing better to do.” Grandfather is not a talker, but he’s a lover and loves the ladies. The opening quotation is how he described meeting Mike’s grandmother, a gorgeous, mercurial, mad butterfly of a woman who could sew copies of the latest designs much as his grandfather could make or repair almost anything. These two could have created a life on a desert island, I’m sure, and in many ways they DID live on an island of their own making. Grandmother’s wonderful, terrible madness had a life of its own, as did her mind, and her daughter, the narrator’s mother, was certainly scarred by it. Grandmother brought her young daughter ("my mother") to America after the war, which was when Grandfather met them. Mother is much loved but often neglected, due to craziness and business. There is an extensive history of the various businesses the family is involved in, and mother's upbringing is disjointed and colourful, to say the least. My experience with memoirs and biographies is that while they may reveal some embarrassing personal anecdotes or unfortunate traits, and they may try to delve into the soul, they seldom go into the bedroom. It’s one thing for a lover to tell all about his or her own love life, often a case of “the older I get, the better I used to be” (pardon my sarcasm), but for a grandson to write the kind of intimate, almost voyeuristic sex scenes included here is really unsettling! His grandparents share a visceral passion for each other. The characters are always “my grandfather” or “my grandmother” or “my mother” except for uncles and others, who are identified by name. So even when the story is about these people in their youth, we follow “my grandfather”, hiding from the Germans at the end of WW2, or lusting after young women. In this instance, his grandparents are adults, but still! This is not something I imagine a grandfather would ever have discussed with a grandson, nor most of the rest of his private life either. And if anyone had told ME this, I don't think I could have repeated it! I will put this behind a spoiler lest I offend any delicate sensibilities. Grandfather is having trouble sleeping, separated as he is from his wife. (view spoiler)[ “He rolled onto his side, and in time my grandmother returned to his thoughts. She lay naked across their marriage bed on her belly, with her legs pressed together and my grandfather standing by her feet. His gaze traveled up an arrow of shadow that pointed to the cleft in her ass. Her ass, that ripe and downy apricot. He took hold of her feet by the ankles and opened her legs. He fell asleep and was roused from a dream of a girl he’d been sweet on in high school by the blare of the bell that must have provoked it. When he opened his eyes, he was in prison. In twenty months it would be 1959.” (hide spoiler)] Incidents and stories are not told in chronological order, and occasionally I’d be confused about whether “I” was the narrator or the grandfather recounting his exploits. But it never stopped me from enjoying the book. WW2 gave grandfather a close encounter with a V2 rocket, the stuff of dreams for him, and while he hated Werner Von Braun for the atrocities of the Nazis (because he used labor from the camps to build his designs), he also felt sorry that these marvellous inventions that should take man to the moon were being used for war. “The rocket was beautiful. In conception it had been shaped by an artist to break a chain that had bound the human race ever since we first gained consciousness of earth’s gravity and all its analogs in suffering, failure, and pain. It was at once a prayer sent heavenward and the answer to that prayer: Bear me away from this awful place. To pack the thing with a ton of amatol, to hobble it so that instead of tearing loose once and for all from the mundane pull, it only arced back to earth and killed the people among whom it fell, was to abuse it.” I don’t know what the significance of the matches on the cover are, but a particular cigarette lighter figures all through the book, as do the moon and the stars. Many a match or lighter has ignited a rocket, though. The moon and the stars are always where the grandfather’s focus is. Sneaking out one night with a friend, up to no good . . . “By design they had chosen a moonless night, but the weather was clear, and over my grandfather’s head the circuitry of heaven was printed in bright joints of solder.” I would love to believe it all, the priest in wartime France, the woman in Florida who seduces the grandfather, the mad plan to blow up a bridge, the arrow that puts out an eye – all of it. The Jewish experience in America during and post-WW2 was particularly special, because while the war was fought to stop Hitler and save the Jews, they were still outsiders and tended to band together behind a protective wall of tradition and culture, language and food. At least that’s the feeling I got from this. And I enjoyed the wisdom of recognising that while we may break free of the shackles of our upbringing for many years, as we get older, we find ourselves retreating back into some of the beliefs and routines of our childhood. Here, the mother is now making chicken soup for the dying grandfather. Perhaps it's a way of pretending we're living in a time when there was an adult in charge to take care of us. I wonder. Love the stories, love the book. I couldn’t bear to live with any of these people (nor they with me, I suspect), but I’d love to know them. In fact, I feel I do. ======== P.S. Having been asked whether this is fiction or not, I will quote the Author's Note which introduces the book. I love the throwaway comment, "with due abandon". :) Author’s Note "In preparing this memoir, I have stuck to facts except when facts refused to conform with memory, narrative purpose, or the truth as I prefer to understand it. Wherever liberties have been taken with names, dates, places, events, and conversations, or with the identities, motivations, and interrelationships of family members and historical personages, the reader is assured that they have been taken with due abandon." P.P.S. Re "red as Bicycle hearts and diamonds", see http://www.bicyclecards.com/product-c... ...more |
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Oct 12, 2017
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Oct 17, 2017
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May 08, 2017
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1590172337
| 9781590172339
| 4.25
| 1,654
| 1981
| Jul 10, 2007
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it was amazing
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5★ “‘There is no typical Guernseyman,’ Horace said to me. ‘They are each a one-man band, and all as cussed as they can be. The Yanks come of every race 5★ “‘There is no typical Guernseyman,’ Horace said to me. ‘They are each a one-man band, and all as cussed as they can be. The Yanks come of every race and nation; but are all alike at rock bottom. They have two gods they worship: dollars and dames; and the dollars are for the dames. The Statue of Liberty is a woman.’” This is a rambling, fascinating, frustrating, infuriating fictional autobiography of an old man from the island of Guernsey, who writes about ‘his’ life from 1890 to 1970. The real author, G.G. Edwards, lived a similar lifetime from 1899-1976. Much of the storyline may have been drawn from his own life, but whatever the reality, it reads like the real thing. Well, as much as I would know about how a Guernseyman might talk and think, that is. Here’s a small example of its rambling nature, which is like visiting someone and looking through their photograph album and they stop to tell you the history of each of the people. It can be tedious and boring, and only politeness stops you from saying so. But, if the stories are insightful and intriguing, it’s easy to get sucked in and want to know more. “I got more out of Archie Mauger, who I used to have a chat with sometimes. He was the son of the Tom Mauger who Harold built a house for and who was the son of old Tom Mauger my father worked for.” We don’t need to want to know more about the Maugers, but we do know Harold and Ebenezer’s father. Ebenezer is writing this in his last years, relying on his memory and what he’s been told. “I wouldn't know even now what really happened, if it wasn't for my Cousin Mary Ann. . . I discovered she knew more of what had happened between the four walls of every house in the Parish of the Vale and the Parish of St Sampson's and the Parish of the Catel than anybody else on the island.” She was widowed young and went around to people’s houses to help, so they always found something to give her. “My Cousin Mary Ann was a very wise woman. She said very few words and listened to every word that was said. 'Mais wai, mais non-nein' was all anybody could get out of her; but not a word that she heard did she ever forget. Her relations hardly noticed she was there and would say anything in front of her. After all, she was only ‘La pauvre Mary Ann’” So she's just nodding and saying Yes and No and not calling attention to herself. “The poor Mary Ann” for whom everyone felt sorry, but who was absorbing all the secrets and gossip while she was helping with the cooking or washing. She comes across as benign and kindly in the beginning, but later we (and Ebenezer) realise she was cunning and resourceful. His very best mate from childhood was Jim. They got up to mischief, but mostly of a good-natured sort. Ebenezer gives us a lot of gossip about who is Church, who is Chapel, who is Wesleyan as well as who’s speaking to whom and why. Entertainment is where you find it. “One Sunday evening when we couldn't think where to go, I said to Jim, ‘How about going to hear my great-aunt preach, eh?’ He said, ‘Goodness, I didn't know you have a great-aunt who preaches!’ I said,’'Well, she is not my great-aunt, really. She live with my great-uncle.’ He said, ‘Then she is your great-aunt by marriage.'’ 'They're not married,’ I said. ‘Then she's your great-aunt in sin!'’he said. ‘Golly, let's go and hear her!’” Two of the other boys, later men, in his life were his cousins Horace and Raymond, sometimes referred to as Le Horace and Le Raymond. They were the sons of his aunts Prissy and Hetty, known as La Prissy and La Hetty, his mother’s sisters. Now, I’m doing it. Leafing through the family album, but these four people are major forces in Ebenezer’s life. Note the French influence in the references to their names, too. Horace was a rough and ready kid, always in trouble “a born American” as Ebenezer calls him “always showing off”. Raymond, on the other hand, was a quiet boy who seems drawn to the church, more as a place of sanctuary than a true calling. Ebenezer speaks of them often and muses about how they think, what they think, what they believe. Raymond even lived with him for a while. And in amongst it all are the girls. Ebenezer is partial to the young ladies, and I get the impression he didn’t have much trouble attracting one. “Sunday nights for a few weeks I went out with Ivy Lake from Lowlands . . . She was very loving and all that; but I soon found out that was as far as she would go, unless she had been to Church first. That didn't suit me. So I changed over to her friend, Mildred Three-in-a-bed. I can't remember what her other name was, but that was the name she was known by. Her mother kept a lodging-house for seamen on the South Side. It may have been true what the boys said about Mildred, for she was a good-natured girl. The last I heard of her she was married to a Gordon Highlander and gone to Bonnie Dundee.” Mildred Three-in-a-bed! The reminiscences and humour are great fun, and of course, he had to tell us where she ended up. He hates the English, but saves his special disdain for those from Jersey, their rival Channel Island. There are those who say this is what islanders tend to be like. Parochial, narrow-minded. It’s where we get the word “insular”. But I have to say, it’s an attitude I’ve seen in towns and communities everywhere. You’re not really accepted until your family has been there for some generations (and even then…), and your worst rivals are your neighbouring townships, island or no. The humour and philosphising and judgmental pronouncements by Ebenezer of what he deems correct are entertaining to read, but there is a strong undercurrent of suffering from WW1 and then the depression. Guernsey is a bread basket and food bowl where everyone, at least everyone who is anyone in Ebenezer’s eyes, has a garden and chickens and a pig or two, so they manage until The Occupation during WW2. The Nazis change everything. The Germans are already starving, so when they move in and take over Guernsey, the gardens are raided and Ebenezer and everyone around is close to starving. Some people collaborat or at least help the Germans a bit, to save themselves. He hates the Nazis but has some sympathy for those who try to be kind. But Ebenezer knows himself better than he lets on as he writes. He shows off, lets us know how special he is, how he looks after things and does for himself. It’s easy to read between the lines at what he’s missing in life, largely because of the high bars he sets for people and his rather controlling nature. “All the people I have liked most in my life have been the very opposite to me. Jim, Liza, Raymond, Tabitha, my Uncle Nat: none of them was mean; but, if the truth was known, I have always been a mean little sod myself. I have always held something back, and seen to it I kept on the safe side. It is good to be shown up in your old age for what you are. It is a terrific read, impossible not believe it is a real autobiography. So much of the author’s own story and family are similar to this, including the ending, that perhaps it’s a life he might have led had he stayed on Guernsey. It’s not idyllic, but the simplicity has a certain raw charm. It's not really historical fiction, because the author wrote it about his own lifetime, but readers of historical fiction will certainly enjoy it. If you’d like to see a good review with a few photos and many short quotes, see Cecily’s here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more |
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Aug 18, 2020
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Oct 04, 2020
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Apr 11, 2017
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Paperback
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B000FC0SH8
| 3.79
| 858,485
| Sep 01, 1952
| Jul 25, 2002
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it was amazing
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5★ This is one Pulitzer Prizewinner I just love. Poignant, funny, and all those other words I should find to describe great writing. I think of Hemingw 5★ This is one Pulitzer Prizewinner I just love. Poignant, funny, and all those other words I should find to describe great writing. I think of Hemingway as the man who can say, “He was a good man”, and I know exactly what he means. He doesn't need what I once heard described as 'two-dollar words'. The old man is the fisherman Santiago, and the sea is the Gulf off Florida. The old man is gaunt and wrinkled and hasn’t caught a fish in 83 days. He’s been labelled unlucky by the parents of the young boy who has been helping him since he was five, so the boy has to work with other fishermen now. “Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.” Undefeated is right. He has very little except his boat. He and the boy bring the mast, gaff, harpoon and lines back to his shack for safe-keeping overnight. He sleeps with his trousers rolled up around a newspaper as a pillow. That's after he's re-read the paper to check the baseball results. “‘What do you have to eat?’ the boy asked. ‘A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?’ ‘No. I will eat at home. Do you want me to make the fire?’ ‘No. I will make it later on. Or I may eat the rice cold.’ ‘May I take the cast net?’ ‘Of course.’ There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.” The old man loves 'the baseball', especially Joe DiMaggio, whose father, he says, was a fisherman and who played disregarding the bone spur in his foot. He tells the boy “‘Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.’ ‘I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland.’ ‘Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sox of Chicago.’” When he’s alone, he speaks aloud, often about DiMaggio and thinks about needing the same confidence Joe had. “‘I may not be as strong as I think,’ the old man said. ‘But I know many tricks and I have resolution.’” (The cunning and persistence of old age.) Later, when he is suffering with cuts on his hands after many hours of struggling with a giant marlin, he says to himself: “‘My head is not that clear. But I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today. I had no bone spurs. But the hands and the back hurt truly.’ I wonder what a bone spur is, he thought. Maybe we have them without knowing of it.” He’s so impressed with the great DiMaggio he takes it on faith that Joe suffered greatly, even if he doesn’t understand from what. If a hero endures, he can endure. His ordeal at sea would terrify, if not be the end of, most of us, but this is his chosen challenge, his life. He never gives in to fear, no matter how far out to sea he ends up, well out of sight of land, and with only one small bottle of water. It is truly frightening. But, he always seems to know where he is and how to find food - he shakes tiny shrimp out of passing seaweed. “The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.” I must stop. If you haven’t read it, read it yourself. It’s short and it's free in many places. I sure enjoyed it again. I've found a YouTube clip of the battle with the fish from the film with Spencer Tracy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GvTI... ...more |
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1
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Jan 10, 2017
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Jan 13, 2017
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Jan 10, 2017
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B0165HVSXO
| 3.82
| 1,597
| 2008
| Jun 09, 2016
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not set
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not set
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Oct 21, 2016
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Kindle Edition
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B00SN936BU
| 3.91
| 63,132
| May 28, 2015
| Jun 04, 2015
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it was amazing
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5★ “I’m already worried about them. What did you tell me? Something about not being able to fix people’s lives. That was for you, she said. Not for me. 5★ “I’m already worried about them. What did you tell me? Something about not being able to fix people’s lives. That was for you, she said. Not for me. I see, Louis said. Oh I feel better already talking with you here next to me.” And that’s the point. Lots of people feel better having someone beside them to talk to. Not only children need someone to brighten the dark hours of the night. A widow approaches a neighbouring widower who has always seemed a decent fellow, and makes the outrageous proposition that they spend the nights together for company. Outrageous? To everyone else, maybe, but he can see a possible new lease on life and an agreeable companion to share thoughts with. It’s a small town, so of course they attract attention, with Louis wandering to her house in the evenings and leaving in the morning. They’re just chatting in bed, but who’s to know that? And whose business is it anyway? They talk about a parent never recovering from losing a child in an accident, the remorse for having cheated and forever changing a marriage, and how their children and grandchildren are having to deal with the fallout from their childhoods. When Addie’s six-year-old grandson unexpectedly arrives to stay (her son’s marriage is on the rocks), Grandma and Louis try to make him as comfortable as possible. I think this is exactly what a good old American grandparent might have served up. “They ate a supper of macaroni and cheese casserole and iceberg lettuce with Thousand Island dressing and canned green beans and bread and butter and iced tea poured from an old heavy glass pitcher and there was Neapolitan ice cream for dessert.” These days, the kids would be begging for McDonald’s, but this isn’t that sort of story. This is a story where Jamie shares the simple pleasures we like to think everyone grew up with, and some of us lucky ones did. Learning to play catch with a baseball glove, learning to look after a dog, going on picnics, having an outing to the Fair. The perfect old-fashioned summer. And when Louis felt ready to spend the nights with Addie and Jamie was frightened in the dark, Jamie slept between them and they should all have lived happily ever after. The story ambles on through the lazy summer days, slow and sunny. Even the rain doesn’t dampen their enthusiasm at the parade, where every float and service organisation is lovingly described. Addie and Louis slowly uncover their feelings and reveal past joys and regrets to each other, and now they’re revelling in the chance to create new memories for all three of them. But adult children being as unrealistic as they are about their parents, this isn’t going to be quite that simple. Embarrassed? Mortified? “Holly’s coming out for Memorial Day weekend. I think she wants to kick my butt. What do you mean? I think she’s got wind of you and me. I think she wants me to behave.” Holly accuses Louis of behaving like a teenager. He wishes! My own wish is that adult children would realise that their parents are individuals and not just care-givers for them and the grandchildren. Over the years, I’ve had a lot to do with older people and their ‘kids’, so many of whom would tell me, “Oh, no! My father would never accept help from anyone”, or “My mother is fiercely independent and would never let anyone into her kitchen or let anyone bring her food.” Yeah, right. Maybe that was the case when you lived at home, so you still remember your folks as middle-aged and reasonably fit. But these days, if you don’t pay attention to the changes, old friends and even strangers of the same generation, are more likely to understand your parents than you do. Thought-provoking and bittersweet. I enjoyed spending time with a lovely pair of people and sharing what I thought was a great idea. I have high hopes for Jamie. Maybe wisdom will skip a generation. 😊 Note: I didn’t find the lack of quotation marks confusing at all, but some readers might. The dialogue flows so smoothly that I think the extra punctuation might actually have been intrusive. [reviewed Dec 2017] ...more |
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Dec 16, 2017
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Dec 17, 2017
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Aug 09, 2016
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Kindle Edition
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4.33
| 318,637
| Sep 06, 2016
| Jan 01, 2017
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it was amazing
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5★+++ (Read and reviewed February 27, 2017) Remarkable! The premise is remarkable, the execution is remarkable, and the fact it captured my interest so 5★+++ (Read and reviewed February 27, 2017) Remarkable! The premise is remarkable, the execution is remarkable, and the fact it captured my interest so completely is remarkable, since I know so little about Russian history or the revolution. I guess it’s obvious I loved it. "Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt," is stripped of his titles after the Russian Revolution and confined to quarters, to live forever in the Hotel Metropol, where he has been enjoying life in a luxury suite until now. Not only must he never leave the premises, he must move to a 10’ by 10’ (about 3m square) room in a garret next to the belfry and leave most of his furnishings behind. But he still has creature comforts, including a choice of places to drink and dine, handsome rooms to sit and read, a florist and barber – all the things a quality hotel would have offered in those days – not forgetting, of course, an unparalleled wine cellar. The Count, as we continue to call him, knows exactly which vintage of which label should be enjoyed with which of the chef’s unique creations, and they are unique. For the Count, a wine “would express all the natural phenomena of its ‘vintage’. In a sip, it would evoke the timing of that winter’s thaw, the extent of that summer’s rain, the prevailing winds, and the frequency of clouds. Yes a bottle of wine was the ultimate distillation of time and place; a poetic expression of individuality itself.” How deliciously delightful, one might think. However, this musing by the Count comes as he’s wandering through the thousands of bottles in the hotel’s cellar, being shown that a Comrade has determined the restaurant will ensure egalitarian treatment of all wines by removing the labels and selling only reds and whites, a task which took ten men ten days to complete. Then he has an epiphany. While we generally value our heirlooms and recipes and keepsakes handed down to us, they may gradually lose value through the generations, but in the case of some kind of upheaval or turmoil, let’s say a revolution, for argument’s sake, it “can cause the evolution of a society to leapfrog generations, sweeping aside aspects of the past that might otherwise have lingered for decades. And this must be especially so, when those with newfound power are men who distrust any form of hesitation or nuance, and who prize self-assurance above all.” Right. And not only that, those with this ‘newfound power’ do not like being shown up by someone who knows his wines. So the Count learns the value of caution and keeping his head down. He takes nothing for granted - he knows how close he’s come to being shot or sent to Siberia, and still could be, at any moment. We hear sadly of his close friends who are suffering. Staff are reminded to never refer to his old title. He is simply Alexander Rostov. But when we meet him, he seems full of joie de vivre and is sporting an admirable set of moustaches. When he falls foul of one of the barber’s customers (who seems to think “the Count” is getting preferential treatment), he is suddenly defaced, so to speak. He accepts every insult and affront philosophically, including now being clean-shaven. His new look attracts the attention of a little girl who asks him “where did they go?”, meaning his moustaches. Nina is nine years old, bright, inquisitive and adventurous. She invites him to tea, and later insists that the Count accompany her in investigating every hidden nook and cranny in the hotel. This makes life not only bearable, but fun, for us as well as them. “Nina had not contented herself with the views from the upper decks. She had gone below. Behind. Around. About. In the time that Nina had been in the hotel, the walls had not grown inward, they had grown outward, expanding in scope and intricacy. In her first weeks, the building had grown to encompass the life of two city blocks. In her first months, it had grown to encompass half of Moscow.” I loved every sneaky minute of their creeping around. He discovers a small, secret space he can assume for his own use, and most of the staff become kind of extended family. Nina helps fill the hole left by the loss of his beloved sister. His life is expanding, too. He learns to enjoy his tiny room/s, his friendships, his meals, and importantly, his routines. He has an affair, he drinks with Americans and spies. Then, suddenly, he has a small child thrust upon him to care for and hide, and he gets a taste of a different kind of limitation: parenthood, of a sort. He mutters to himself. “She is no more than thirty pounds; no more than three feet tall; her entire bag of belongings could fit in a single drawer; she rarely speaks unless spoken to; and her heart beats no louder than a bird’s. So how is it possible that she takes up so much space?!” Anyone charged with the care of a small child knows the feeling. I must quote one more passage as an example of the writing which so captivated me. “Until, suddenly, that long-strided watchman of the minutes caught up with his bowlegged brother at the top of the dial. As the two embraced, the springs within the clock’s casing loosened, the wheels spun, and the miniature hammer fell, setting off the first of those dulcet tones that signaled the arrival of noon.” He uses the same words much later to describe what the little girl sees at midnight. The same words, I think, because this is a twice-tolling clock, chiming at noon and midnight only, so of course she’s seen it only at noon, never at its second chiming, when the brothers embrace again. There are scary moments – these were scary times – and there’s a lot of humour and poignancy. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House / Hutchinson for allowing me a preview copy from which I’ve quoted (so some words may have changed). And enormous thanks and congratulations to Amor Towles for creating such a wonderful world within a world. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 14, 2017
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Feb 27, 2017
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Jul 18, 2016
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Kindle Edition
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1501142534
| 9781501142536
| 4.06
| 100,167
| Oct 03, 2014
| May 03, 2016
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it was amazing
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5★ Loved it! Britt-Marie is an unappreciated social misfit, overlooked and living in the shadows of people who are more important, much like the author 5★ Loved it! Britt-Marie is an unappreciated social misfit, overlooked and living in the shadows of people who are more important, much like the author’s famous Ove from A Man Called Ove. She is as stubbornly awkward and set in her ways as Ove. She wonders why people look offended or startled when she says things to be sociable. “It’s very courageous of you to wear your hair so short when you have such a large forehead.” or “It was very brave of you, putting that tie on. Because it looks absolutely preposterous.” She judges people by the state of their cutlery drawers, with cutlery arranged in the ‘right’ order. She is a fuss-pot who always carries baking soda to disinfect everything everywhere—chairs, rugs, window sills. She grew up in the shadow of her popular, beloved (now late) sister and eventually married Kent, one of the brothers whom they both knew and who has been married before. Kent is an entrepreneur who has many deals and meetings with “the Germans”. We meet her when Kent seems to be out of the picture (greener pastures, we suspect - she has mentioned his shirts always smelling of pizza she hasn’t shared and perfume she doesn’t wear). She goes to the employment bureau, expecting to be given a job forthwith. An employee tells her they’ll be in touch, so Britt-Marie returns the following day. “The girls clears her throat. ‘Look, I’d love to talk further, but as I keep trying to tell you I just don’t have time at the moment.’’ ‘When do you have time?’ Britt-Marie asks, getting out her notebook and methodically going through a list. ‘Three o’clock?’ ‘I’m fully booked today—‘ ‘I could also manage four or even five o’clock,’ Britt-Marie offers, conferring with herself. ‘We close at five today,’ says the girl. ‘Let’s say five o’clock then.’ ‘What? No, we close at five—‘ ‘We certainly can’t have a meeting later than five, ‘ Britt-Marie protests. ‘What?’ says the girl. Britt-Marie smiles with enormous, enormous patience. ‘I don’t want to cause a scene here. Not at all. But my dear girl, civilised people have their dinner at six, so any later than five is surely a bit on the late side for a meeting, wouldn’t you agree? Or are you saying we should have our meeting while we’re eating?’ ‘No . . . I mean . . . What?’ ‘Ha. Well, in that case you have to make sure you’re not late. So the potatoes don’t get cold.’ Then she writes ’18.00 Dinner’ on her list. The girl calls out something behind Britt-Marie but Britt-Marie has already gone, because she actually doesn’t have time to stand here going on about this all day." Britt-Marie returns at 5 to cook dinner at the office, and during the meal tells the girl about an article she’d read about a woman who was found dead in her flat after several weeks because of the smell. “ ‘She had no children and no husband and no job. No one knew she was there. If one has a job, people notice if one doesn’t show up. . . . “I want a job because I actually don’t think it’s very edifying to disturb the neighbours with bad smells. I want someone to know I’m here.” She ends up in the tiny village of Borg which has a delightful assortment of entertaining characters, none of whom understand her (or vice-versa), but she treats them all the same—drunks, hoodlums, orphans, cops—and they certainly can’t ignore her. It's not all fun and games. Tragedy does strike closing-down places like Borg. The poverty and lack of opportunity is palpable, many children are neglected, and worst of all, for Britt-Marie, dirty. And noisy. But they love their football, and she starts washing their gear at the deserted Recreation Centre she is “managing” and learns about the game in spite of herself. “Every time one of the children gets the ball, their teammates are shouting: Here! I’m here!” An old former player sitting with Britt-Marie mutters “If you can be heard then you exist”. “The children play. Call out. Explain where they are. Britt-Marie squeezes her container of bicarbonate of soda until it has dents in it. ‘I’m here,’ she whispers, wishing that Sven was here so she could tell him. It’s a remarkable club. A remarkable game.” It’s a remarkable book with an unexpected ending. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 27, 2016
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Sep 13, 2016
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Jun 06, 2016
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Hardcover
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034089699X
| 9780340896990
| 3.69
| 50,137
| Sep 30, 2014
| Sep 30, 2014
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it was amazing
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5★ Touching, funny, sad and extremely frustrating. I kept thinking “NO, Douglas! Don’t SAY that! Just stop! ARGH$#!” But that’s the point. Connie loves 5★ Touching, funny, sad and extremely frustrating. I kept thinking “NO, Douglas! Don’t SAY that! Just stop! ARGH$#!” But that’s the point. Connie loves Douglas in spite of his obsessive nagging and worrying, which is nothing like that of her arty-party London friends. She’s pretty and popular, he’s nerdy and not. Miss Extrovert, meet Mr Asperger. But he’s smart and can make a battery out of a lemon! He tells us compared to his A4 sheet of past relationships, she has a three-drawer filing cabinet. Douglas tells their story in pieces, following their Grand Tour of Europe while reminiscing about the last 25 years. It’s a tale of love and friendship, and how they learned to accommodate each other as the bumped along through successes and over tragedies. “Connie was, in those days, ferociously untidy. . .it was not unusual for her to reach into the pocket of a capacious coat for keys and to pull out a small wrench, a stolen ashtray, a desiccated apple-core or the stone of a mango. . .But, for the most part, I didn’t mind. Light travels differently in a room that contains another person; it reflects and refracts so that even when she was silent or sleeping I knew that she was there.” Now Douglas is intent on ensuring 17-year-old son Albie is prepared for every worst-case scenario in an uncertain future world by bullying him over homework day in and day out and belittling his choice of photography over science (sure, that’ll help). Meanwhile, Albie would rather wing it, like Mum. Connie tells Douglas she might want to split up soon, but first, she wants the three of them to do the Grand Tour. Douglas, grasping for this lifeline (maybe he can win her back!), goes overboard, printing up detailed itineraries with everything scheduled, pre-booked, and pre-paid, with stops at all the major art museums for his arty family. On the trip, feeling his father is ashamed of him, Albie finally rebels and takes off with a wild accordion player for countries unknown. Connie returns to England, while Douglas feels compelled to repair the damage and track his son down and fetch him home to his mother. There’s a wealth of love and tenderness between them, and Connie has always seemed to understand the words that Douglas hasn’t been able to bring himself to say, although Douglas is now starting to doubt it. “…my wife at fifty-two years old seems to me as attractive as the day I first met her. If I were to say this out loud, she would say, ‘Douglas, that’s just a line. No one prefers wrinkles, no one prefers grey.’ To which I’d reply, ‘But none of this is a surprise. I’ve been expecting to watch you grow older ever since we met. Why should it trouble me? It’s the face itself that I love, not that face at twenty-eight or thirty-four or forty-three. It’s THAT face.’ Perhaps she would have liked to hear this but I had never got around to saying it out loud. I had always presumed there would be time and now, sitting on the edge of the bed at four a.m., no longer listening out for burglars, it seemed that it might be too late.” It’s interesting to watch Douglas and Albie grow up on their big tour, and I can see why this was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. I’ll be thinking about these people for a long time. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 15, 2015
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Dec 18, 2015
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Nov 25, 2015
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Hardcover
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1476738017
| 9781476738017
| 4.35
| 601,649
| Aug 27, 2012
| Jul 15, 2014
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it was amazing
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10★s - if only that were possible. Just listen to this bit! This is the kind of book that I bet readers have used up a whole slew of highlighters on. I 10★s - if only that were possible. Just listen to this bit! This is the kind of book that I bet readers have used up a whole slew of highlighters on. It’s hilarious and melancholy, sometimes all at the same time, and you look around for someone to interrupt and share it with saying, “Just listen to this bit. . .” This remarkable story of a cranky old bugger has shot to the top of my favourites list. I recognise people I know in Ove (I’m related to some – oops!), and I recognise the people who care about him and who annoy him. Again, sometimes all at the same time. His widower father worked for the railways and was the (very) strong, silent type. “The palms of his hands looked like someone had carved into leather with knives, and the wrinkles in his face were so deep that when he exerted himself the sweat was channelled through them down to his chest.” At 16, Ove was orphaned, and he took over his father’s job at the railways. He worked hard, said little, lived simply and uneventfully until suddenly, one morning, he came off his shift “and caught sight of her. With those red shoes and the gold brooch and all her burnished brown hair. And that laughter of hers which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast.” Sonja. The love of his life. Today, he is an old man, determined to make the neighbours obey the rules of the Residents Association, determined to win his battles against “the white shirts” in bureaucracy, and determined to ensure his neighbourhood is safe, by prowling around early mornings and after dark to check doors, gates, and locks. He is a determined man. And he is definitely not politically correct. He is also determined to finish his next project, but he is constantly interrupted by a very pregnant Iranian new neighbour, her blond husband (the Lanky One) and their 2 little girls. He meets them when he sees the Lanky One backing a trailer over his flower bed while the wife shouts: “ ‘I said RIGHT! But you carried on reversing to the LEFT! You don’t listen! You never LISTEN! ‘ After that, she immerses herself in half a minute’s worth of haranguing in what Ove can only assume to be a display of the complex vocabulary of Arabic cursing. The husband just nods back at her with an indescribably harmonious smile. The sort of smile that makes decent folk want to slap Buddhist monks in the face, Ove thinks to himself.” Later, Parvaneh, the wife, brings him biscuits. “ ‘Right. Arabian biscuits. Worth having, are they?’ he mutters. ‘Persian,’ she corrects. ‘What?’ ‘Persian, not Arabian. I’m from Iran—you know, where they speak Farsi?’ she explains. ‘Farcical? That’s the least you could say,’ Ove agrees. Nobody seems to understand boundaries the way Ove does. They just barge in and demand that he reply to polite questions and enjoy the saffron rice they take over for his dinner. Ove is a doer, not a talker. He can fix anything, which everyone knows. He loves only Saabs, tolerates Volvos, drops his best friend who, after years of owning Volvos, bought a BMW! Ignorant traitor! He doesn’t understand people, and when we see them through his eyes, we see what he means. Here’s the ticket-seller at the train station: “The slightly porky man on the other side of the Plexiglas has backcombed hair and arms covered in tattoos. As if it isn’t enough to look like someone has slapped a pack of margarine over his head, he has to cover himself in doodles as well. There’s not even a proper motif, as far as Ove can see, just a lot of patterns. Is that something an adult person in a healthy state of mind would consent to? Going about with his arms looking like a pair of pyjamas?” See what I mean? It’s hard not to want to keep quoting things. A remarkable, thought-provoking book. Highly recommended to enjoy with friends. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Feb 09, 2016
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Feb 13, 2016
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Nov 20, 2015
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Hardcover
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0857520652
| 9780857520654
| 3.91
| 152,348
| Mar 15, 2012
| Mar 15, 2012
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it was amazing
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5★ This is a journey to the past. Each slow step, each blister, each new person Harold meets reveals something of the truth of his life to him and to u 5★ This is a journey to the past. Each slow step, each blister, each new person Harold meets reveals something of the truth of his life to him and to us. An unwanted, neglected boy grew up to be an unremarkable man. But for a brief instant, he frolicked at a dance and attracted the loveliest girl, Maureen. They dreamed and planned and married. They made a lovely home with veggie gardens and had one son, David. Harold worked at the brewery for 45 years for an obnoxious bully of a boss (like his father), but Harold learned early to escape notice by fading into the woodwork. Queenie Hennessey worked in finances at the brewery and was an equally unremarkable person. Harold used to drive her to inspect the books of regional pubs. Suddenly, after many years, she was fired and disappeared. . . from the brewery and from his routine. We sense unfinished business. Now, twenty years later, Harold has received a letter from her saying she is in a hospice, dying of inoperable cancer. Harold is disconsolate that he never got to say good-bye. Maureen shrugs, says she’s sorry, but please pass the jam. “That’s the marmalade, Harold. Jam is red. If you look at things before you pick them up, you’ll find it helps.” Hardly happily-ever-after stuff. This is not a stop-and-smell-the-roses parable about how to overcome cancer with positive thinking or how to find yourself by following a quest. This is a specific story about the peculiar forces that caused this relationship to form and disintegrate. Many of Harold’s reminiscences (and Maureen’s) are shadowy and disturbed. He and Maureen became more and more estranged as David grew up and left home and rejected them. Harold writes Queenie a letter and sets off to post it. “Harold thought of the words he had written to Queenie, and their inadequacy shamed him. . . .The letter rested on the dark mouth of the post box. He couldn’t let it go.” He continues walking to another post box, gets hungry, and stops for something to eat, explaining to the girl at the garage where he’s stopped that he’s not buying fuel, just walking to post a letter to someone he knew once who has cancer. She tells him it’s everywhere, but: “You have to believe. That’s what I think. It’s not about medicine and all that stuff. You have to believe a person can get better. There is so much in the human mind we don’t understand. But, you see, if you have faith, you can do anything. . . I don’t mean like religious. I mean . . . believing you can make a difference.” About her aunt, “She said it gave her hope when everything else had gone--.” Harold is thunderstruck. Hope! He can give that! He finds a phone, rings the hospice and announces he is walking to see Queenie and they must please tell her to wait for him. “Because I am going to save her, you see. I will keep walking and she must keep living.” He takes off from the bottom SW toe of England to the top NE corner of the border with Scotland (627 miles). He’s an unremarkable man with, at last, a remarkable purpose – to save a friend. He shares his story with everyone who asks, and they in turn, share their deepest fears – as passengers on a plane do. Old ladies at tea (who offer encouragement), professional trekkers (who offer walking and camping tips), kindly villagers (who offer food and sometimes a bed). There’s a map at the back of the book that traces the route with place names for those of us unfamiliar with the geography. I loved the descriptions of the landscape, the weather and the towns as well as the beautiful illustrations by Andrew Davidson. P.S. For me, it was particularly interesting reading this because I had just read Us, the story of a man trekking across Europe after his son, which had the same impulsiveness (and blisters) and a difficult relationship between father, mother and son. And immediately before this, I read Tim Winton’s early book of short stories, Scission, which includes “Wilderness”, the story of a couple whose only real connection with each other is accumulating exactly the right hiking and camping equipment and doing treks together. That was their glue. My reviews of those two are below. Us https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Scission https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jan 08, 2016
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Jan 10, 2016
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Sep 19, 2015
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Paperback
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