Discuss the last book you read, or are currently reading

[Mark]

Nigeyb wrote: "Just bought a copy on eBay for £4 - thanks again Mark"

You’re sure to regard it as the best four quid ever spent, I promise!

To give you a headstart, and in the interest of tempting others to scoop up a copy, here, in full, is Martin’s introduction to the book, which will give you a very good idea of what’s in store.

In 1973 when I was 15 years of age I elected to take three Certificates of Secondary Education (CSE) as the culmination of my comprehensive schooling. In the hierarchy of school-leaving examinations of the time these were the bottom rungs of the academic ladder, behind the ‘O' level and the ‘A' level. Their purpose was, perhaps, to give some focus to boys and girls who lacked academic ambition and application but showed some signs of having absorbed some of the teachings of the previous five years.

The three subjects I chose were the only ones I enjoyed and the only ones I paid any attention to: English, History and Art. It was no coincidence that the teachers of these subjects at my school all treated their pupils as human beings and had the skills and the enthusiasm to make the subjects interesting. Most of the teaching staff I had come across were counting time to either 3.30pm, the six-week long summer holidays or their eventual early retirement. The History mistress was a young lady fresh from teacher's training college and it was she that suggested I investigate my family history and build my examination project around that. She obviously believed there would be more chance of me seeing that through than a study of the Napoleonic wars or medieval crop rotation systems. I was aware of some of our ancestry from my parents but most importantly my paternal grandmother was still alive and living in Battersea at 85 years of age. She knew it all. She'd been telling us for years but nobody had been listening.

Grandma lived alone in a council flat on the top of Lavender Hill, Battersea and fortnightly on a Saturday I always accompanied my Dad to visit her. As a young boy it was exciting; the train journey up to Clapham Junction and entering the mythical land of London; the red buses, black taxis, busy markets and general hubbub not then familiar in the semi-rural Epsom where I lived; the climb up the pavement hill and the last second visit to the off-licence to buy her a large brown bottle of Guinness. On entry to her flat I was immediately immersed in a dark and Samk world. The curtains were nearly always drawn (my grandmother was such a contrarian she probably opened them at night) and a musty smell of old empty biscuit tins prevailed. Besides a tiny kitchenette and an even tinier bathroom the flat consisted of one room dominated by her large imperious double bed with Jesus Christ looking serenely down at the pillows from a crucifix on the wall above them. At the foot of the bed stood a small table covered in a leathery tablecloth and with a chair at each end. On the table lay Grandma's magnifying glass and the Daily Express. Her habit of reading through the glass was a cause of great amusement to us children. In the corner was a television that was already ancient and sported a preposterous aerial like an upturned tuning fork on top of and dwarfing the actual set. Compared to our home, which itself was only a three-bedroomed council house her living accommodation seemed to me like a cupboard. Sometimes she tried to persuade us to accept a piece of Christmas cake or a ham sandwich but Dad normally said we had just eaten. ‘The problem is,' he advised later, ‘there's no telling which Christmas exactly the cake dates from.'

Dad explained to her that I was producing a family history for my schoolwork and asked if she could help by putting flesh on some old bones starting as far back as she knew. In a flash she transported us back in time by 150 years by producing a prayer book from her bedside drawer that had belonged to her grandfather and had his pencilled inscription on the inside cover.‘

It says Patrick Bradshaw, I thought his name was James,' queried Dad and Grandma told us both then how he had come over to England from Ireland when the potato famine of the 1840s struck thereby interrupting a centuries-old pattern of agricultural living and that he changed his name to combat prejudice against Irish immigrants. In a single sentence she had tied the family into the general history of the country and beyond and so began an unfolding of the family ancestry that became ever more fascinating and convoluted as we led her down particular roads on numerous subsequent visits.

Her recall was vivid and precise and we heard of men making a living on the Thames and a river that had claimed the lives of at least two close family members, the discovery of a drowned aristocrat's body and the curse of the ensuing reward, of labour strikes and family feuds, of suicides and fatal accidents, of poverty and depression, of the spectre of drink, murder and wars, of the bombardment of Battersea by the Luftwaffe but also of the love, the loyalty, the laughs and the weddings, babies and trips to the Kent hop fields that made life bearable. Indeed she was never maudlin or sad as she recalled these often harrowing passages of her life. That was life. That's how it was. Everyone she knew was in the same boat. Although she took great pride in the strides made by her descenSamts and recognised the growing comfort of the modern world it was a boat she would have happily climbed back in to if she could.

There was so much information to go on and Dad warned that we should not take everything she told us for granted. Much of what she had revealed was new even to him and he was sceptical. When she made an aside that she attended the great cricketer W. G. Grace's funeral because she was, for a time, his charlady Dad interrupted. ‘Are you sure Mum? I haven't heard that before?' ‘Course I'm sure. You couldn't mistake ‘im, could yer? Not with that bleedin' long beard.'

We visited Somerset House in London and collected what birth, marriage and death certificates we could and these in turn would prompt new questions. Sometimes she may have had a small detail wrong but generally everything we found backed up what she was telling us. We visited the newspaper archive at the Lavender Hill Library almost next door to my grandmother's flat and confirmed many of the other events and circumstances she described.

In a very short period she gave me enough material to knock up my project and I focused mainly on family events that tied in with known historical ones and submitted the thing. It was all blue ink and felt pens interspersed with glued in copies of birth, marriage and death certificates. Pride of place went to a copy of a letter sent to my grandmother from Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for War, commiserating with her on the loss of her husband in the Great War. Miss Benthall, my young History teacher, praised the finished product highly and was amazed at the amount of research she thought had gone into it. I did not let on that nearly everything had come from my grandmother's lips and bedside drawers. When I was eventually awarded a Grade 2 CSE rather than the Grade 1 she expected Miss Benthall said it must have been because of a poor performance in the written examination. She was right there – I never sat it. My interest had moved on. Whilst I continued to visit my grandmother right up until her death at 100 years of age in 1988 I never really dug much further on the actual family history front but continued to absorb the stories she told me. Events of seventy years earlier were recounted as if they were yesterday. What she said to him and what he said to her. Who was a rum one and who wasn't. Sitting at that table and listening, now sharing the Guinness as an adult was as close as I could get to travel back in time without a Tardis of my very own.

In the last couple of years I have had my interest in genealogy reawakened mainly by the Genes Reunited internet site, part of the Friends Reunited stable. Within a few weeks of my uploading the family tree, as I knew it, I was contacted by two separate site members who shared the same great great grandfather in Battersea. Dots were quickly joined and even more of my grandmother's apparent musings were confirmed. It led to the discovery of two living relatives – a niece and a nephew of Grandma - both now in their 80s and both still living in Battersea. They told me so much about my grandmother's middle years. It was a delight to find them because not only did they share Grandma's facial features but also they spoke with that distinctive old Battersea accent that I thought I would never hear again and had often tried to conjure up in my mind. If Genes Reunited continues to grow at its current rate, within a few years everyone really will be connected and all will be able to see at a keystroke in exactly which way. From Genes Reunited I moved on to the 1901 census site and from there to earlier census information from various other portals. My searches took me to war graves, the records of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen, newspaper archives, police records, war diaries and much, much more. All this practically without leaving my desk.

Slowly but surely a picture built up of my family history with detail I could never have imagined. More importantly I now had a context to my grandmother's eventful life that had not been easily attainable 30 years earlier. Belatedly I began to appreciate (as much as one can that does not live it) her life and her times. I regretted laughing at her quaintness, her quirkiness, her superstitions and antiquated ideas. I realised what a remarkable woman she was and decided the least I could do was write a book about her life. As she would say – you couldn't make it up.

Therefore Battersea Girl is a novel of sorts but it is chiefly a story of my grandmother's long life. I have borrowed from the library of poetic licence and inserted a couple of fictional themes and characters and merged one or two others, I have mixed up some names, places and events because after all I am not the only person descended from and connected to the characters in this book, and I have guessed what the various people did and said in different circumstances. I have had to follow a number of thought processes in deciding what made certain people do certain things. Nevertheless I would estimate that 80 per cent of the events recounted did actually happen and are supported by documentary evidence. For me, the remarkable thing about this life is how unremarkable it was for the period. So many people I have had contact with who are researching their family histories have found similar stories and patterns. If the book prompts just a few people to mine their family's past and derive just some of the enjoyment and fulfilment that I have then I judge it to have been a worthwhile exercise and Mum, don't fret, we'll do your side next.

[Mark]

Black Teeth And A Brilliant Smile, by Adelle Stripe, is absolutely superb. Kitchen sink noir, with extra grit... poignant, inspirational and heartbreaking. I’m just a the half-way mark, and not wanting it to end.

[Nigeyb]

Yes, can certainly endorse that top tip Mark - a brilliant book


Try and watch The Arbor (dir by Clio Barnard) too if you can

[Nigeyb]

My post from 12 March 2018 pasted here again for your convenience....


I've just finished 'Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile' (about the life of troubled playwright Andrea Dunbar). I chose it for my book group.

Improbably Adelle Stripe has managed to make a page-turner out of this material, and that is a credit to both her writing skill, and also to the extraordinary Andrea Dunbar. All the dialogue rings true and the glimpses into Andrea’s thoughts and feelings are also completely credible. It’s a brilliant, concise (230 pages), darkly humorous, tragic, fascinating book which brings a talented, troubled, shy young woman to life whilst also unerringly evoking 1980s Britain. Wonderful.

5/5

Click here to read my review

[Mark]

Ah, I hadn’t realised that you’d beaten me to the book, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised... nor surprised that you rated it so highly yourself. What a fantastic little book... as evocative and engaging as books come.

And thanks for the Arbor tip... will definitely search that out, as well as Rita, Sue & Bob Too, which I’ll cop to never having even heard of before tucking into the book. I’ve got a lot of catching up ahead of me...

[Nigeyb]

I suspect Rita, Sue & Bob Too may well have dated quite badly. It's a weirdly knockabout adaptation and I seem to recall Andrea was not too happy about it. Sort of Mike Leigh meets Carry On.

The Arbor on the other hand is the perfect accompaniment to the book - a really clever film made for very little money

[Mark]

The Arbor is listed as being available on dvd stateside, so I’ll order a copy. Thanks, as always, for the tip!

[Nigeyb]

I'm into the final 50 or so pages of the mamoth...


To Serve Them All My Days by R.F. Delderfield

Here's the Wikipedia page...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serv...

To Serve Them All My Days mirrors the history of Britain in the post-Great War era, casting David's experiences against the difficulties, contradictions, and social issues of the inter-war years. David's life focuses on how Britain comes to terms with the turmoil of the Great War, the General Strike, socialism and the formation of the National Government in particular. Some commentators have remarked on the similarities between this book and the earlier Goodbye, Mr Chips, which has a similar theme but is less pointed politically and socially.

It's not very Hamiltonian but spans the interwar decades and I must confess, despite its sentimentality and content, I am loving it. A five star read.

I know CQM is vaguely hep to R.F. Delderfield. I will certainly be reading more of RFD's work.

It's a qualified recommendation because, whilst it won't be everyone's cup of tea, I am sure some will be as entranced as me.

[Nigeyb]

Nigeyb wrote: "I've just finished...




This Little Ziggy by Martin Newell

A terrific memoir by Martin Newell, the greatest living Englishman. This wonderful 260 page book contains describes Martin's life from childhood to the mid-1970s and the end of his Colchester glam rock band Plod."

His follow up The Greatest Living Englishman is due in late November. More info here....

https://thecleanersfromvenus.bandcamp...

With his glam-rock days over, Martin Newell embarks on further adventures in a DIY pop career that remains steadfastly outside of the mainstream music business. Forming Cleaners From Venus, a lo-fi rock band, his songs soon gain an international cult following. Tangled up in the coat-tails of punk, he is befriended by Captain Sensible, XTC's Andy Partridge and various other musical oddballs. Then, defying all advice and expectations, he becomes a widely published pop poet.

Covering two decades from 1975 to 1995, The Greatest Living Englishman is the second instalment of Martin Newell's funny and poignant rock memoir. It is the sequel to This Little Ziggy.

[Mark]

Nigeyb wrote: "His follow up The Greatest Living Englishman is due in late November. More info here..."

Thanks for that topmost of timely tips... will absolutely be placing a pre-order within the next 24 hours. May even preface it by re-reading This Little Ziggy, which I thought was fantastic.

[Nigeyb]

Sounds like the perfect plan Mark - I'm really looking forward to volume 2 of Martin's memoirs

[Mark]

Nigeyb wrote: "Sounds like the perfect plan Mark - I'm really looking forward to volume 2 of Martin's memoirs"

Done, dusted, and eager for my copy to turn up through the combined might of the US and UK postal systems.

Not content to stop there, I then moseyed over to Amazon US, where I found that Martin’s wonderful The Greatest Living Englishman album has been reissued on heavyweight vinyl, with new sealed copies going for only $18. A bargain, so I’ve ordered a copy. How could a Man Of Taste not?

Many thanks again for not only the heads up, but for turning me on to Newell and his work in the first place.

[Nigeyb]

An absolute pleasure Mark

[Mark]

Nigeyb wrote: "Sounds like the perfect plan Mark - I'm really looking forward to volume 2 of Martin's memoirs"

My copy turned up in today’s post, minutes after I’d finished The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun [which I recommend]. Will be tucking into The Greatest Living Englishman tonight, if I don’t pass out like a drunk toddler first.

[Nigeyb]

That was quick Mark


I know nothing about The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun, though note your five star rating

The description sounds great though...

In 1931, a young woman writer living in Germany was inspired by Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to describe pre-war Berlin and the age of cinematic glamour through the eyes of a woman. The resulting novel, The Artificial Silk Girl, became an acclaimed bestseller and a masterwork of German literature, in the tradition of Christopher Isherwood's 'Berlin Stories' and Bertolt Brecht's 'Three Penny Opera'. Like Isherwood and Brecht, Keun revealed the dark underside of Berlin's "golden twenties" with empathy and honesty. Unfortunately, a Nazi censorship board banned Keun's work in 1933, and destroyed all existing copies of The Artificial Silk Girl. Only one English translation was ever published, in Great Britain, before the book disappeared in the chaos of the ensuing war. Today, more than seven decades later, the story of this quintessential "material girl" remains as relevant as ever, as an accessible new translation brings this lost classic to light once more. Other Press is pleased to announce the republication of The Artificial Silk Girl, elegantly translated by noted Germanist Kathie von Ankum, and with a new introduction by Harvard professor Maria Tatar.

[Nigeyb]

Nigeyb wrote: "Will be tucking into The Greatest Living Englishman by Martin Newelltonight, if I don’t pass out like a drunk toddler first"


Keep up posted with your thoughts Mark


Sounds wonderful....
With his glam-rock days over, Martin Newell embarks on further adventures in a DIY pop career that remains steadfastly outside of the mainstream music business. Forming Cleaners From Venus, a lo-fi rock band, his songs soon gain an international cult following. Tangled up in the coat-tails of punk, he is befriended by Captain Sensible, XTC's Andy Partridge and various other musical oddballs. Then, defying all advice and expectations, he becomes a widely published pop poet.

Covering two decades from 1975 to 1995, The Greatest Living Englishman is the second installment of Martin Newell's funny and poignant rock memoir. It is the sequel to This Little Ziggy.

[Mark]

Nigeyb wrote: "That was quick Mark..."

Apparently, the stateside shipments of the book post out of Florida, so mine turned up remarkably quickly. I started reading it last night, as planned, but didn't make it very far before falling asleep. Very good so far, though, and all indicators point to a very fun and well-written read... exactly as expected.


Nigeyb wrote: "I know nothing about The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun, though note your five star rating..."

I loved it, and I reckon you will, as well. It's not miles away from Patrick Hamilton, really, but the actual writing is a bit more -- what’s the word? -- freeform? Sort of like the literary equivalent of all the artwork that the Nazis confiscated and destroyed, in the sense that it was an adventurous step away from the usual. Slightly expressionist, maybe? If that makes sense?

Either way, yeah, I highly recommend it, and have marked it as one to be re-read down the line. It left me wanting to read more by Irmgard Keun -- I think there’s only three or four others, all of them slim, and all of them currently in print through Penguin UK [save for one, After Midnight (1937)], which Penguin UK will return to print in May 2020.

[Nigeyb]

Thanks Mark. More essential books to get read.

[Mark]

Nigeyb wrote: "Keep up posted with your thoughts Mark..."

I finished reading The Greatest Living Englishman this morning... absolutely superb. The old couldn’t-put-it-down cliche applied, perhaps even more so than it did with This Little Ziggy.

Roll on volume 3 of Martin’s autobiography!

[Nigeyb]

Roll on indeed. Sounds like another essential memoir. I can't say I'm surprised. He's a great writer.

[Mark]

Recently made my way through the nearly 700 pages of Berlin Finale [1947] by Heinz Rein. It’s right up there alongside Hans Fallada’s superb Alone In Berlin, and a masterpiece of the Rubble Literature genre.

This review puts it better than I ever could do...

https://www.heraldscotland.com/arts_e...

[Nigeyb]

That's quite a claim Mark. It was you who introduced me to Hans Fallada - and that was a mightily top tip. Looking forward to getting familiar with Heinz Rein and Finale Berlin. Indeed so confident am I of intrigue and interest that I'll set up a dedicated thread.

[Mark]

I could see the novel not being for everyone, but then what novel is? I’ll very much look forward to hearing your thoughts, if you choose to read it.

[Nigeyb]

You've always steered me right Mark - so I feel I can read this with confidence

[Mark]

I tried reading Berlin Alexanderplatz [Alfred Döblin, 1929] twice or thrice, many years ago.

I never managed to get past 75 pages [roughly {I don’t keep a diary, so I’m never sure of these things (not 100%, anyhow)}] before violently kicking the book across the floorboards.

Penguin UK recently published a brand new translation by Michael Hofmann. I really dug his translations of Hans Fallada and Kafka and Irmgard Keun, so it sorta made sense to give Berlin Alexanderplatz one last chance.

I finished with it today [ie: I actually read it, cover {front} to cover {back}], but what a total fucking chore.

I’d welcome a heated argument with any Goodreaders thinking that Berlin Alexanderplatz is a towering work of literary genius. Any takers?

[Nigeyb]

I'd love to be able to help you out Mark but I've never read Berlin Alexanderplatz.


This reviewer gives some background to the book's style....

......there was a craze for giant plotless novels that tried to slice through an entire city or even country and look down at the thousands of humans milling around like badly dressed ants and itemise them all. These huge novels (Ulysses by Jimmy Joyce, U.S.A by Johnny Dos Passos, The Waste Land by Tommy Eliot - not a novel but the same kind of thing) use newspaper clippings, adverts, random dialogue, doggerel, children’s rhymes, radio announcements, political proclamations, Greek myths [they love those] and anything and everything to collage & mash together ALL OF MODERN LIFE in a frantic attempt to mirror the stressed-out psychological dissociativeness and allround bonkers quality of how we live NOW (multivalent) as opposed to how we lived THEN (linearly)

Based on that description I can see how these type of books could be very tedious if the reader doesn't quickly connect with the technique

He goes on to say....

I am impressed that many goodreaders proclaim their love for this massive stodge of tiresome detail, dull unattributed conversation and rancid behavior

[David]

I’m tending to become more and more sanguine about ditching reading material that doesn’t connect with me. I began reading Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse a couple of weeks ago, and found the first chapters of each flat enough to put the books aside. Likewise, scattered around the house, there are books by Barbara Kingsolver, treatises on Comminism, Beevor’s Spanish Civil War and Battle of Kursk volumes that haven’t passed muster within the first 50 pages. I turned yet another year older last week, and life’s too short.
Finally, in that review, whoever called the author “Jimmy Joyce”, deserves kicked up the arse, the fecking bollix.

https://youtu.be/x4hG6sOw34w

[Nigeyb]

We can never have enough Father Ted

[Nigeyb]

I'm pretty sure Jimmy Joyce was the singer with the Vagabonds

[David]

😆

‘Tommy’ Eliot suffered from ear wax, chronic tonsillitis and had corrective reading glasses, a significant influence on Pete Townshend’s late 60s work.

[Nigeyb]

That's the fella

[David]

I’m surprised that he didn’t ‘know what day it is’ in ‘Christmas’, though, what with his being quite sure that April is the cruellest month and all that.

No wonder Mrs Fripp recorded ‘It’s A Mystery’. That and so much more, Toyah.

[Mark]

Nigeyb wrote: "This reviewer gives some background to the book's style...."

Thanks for pointing me to that review... I’d say he’s got it just about right. I read it, and finished it, much more out of determination than enjoyment. A fair, though diminishing amount of the former, and a near-total lack of the latter. In my opinion, an incredible amount of wonderful art came out of Weimar Germany -- both fine art, as well as literature -- which only adds to my disappointment.

Mind you, there were the occasional passages that I truly did like. But for me, a novel has to be much more than just a collection of passages.

[Nigeyb]

Mark wrote: "But for me, a novel has to be much more than just a collection of passages."


Amen to that

[Mark]

The tired old insistence that “life is short” has taken on a new meaning for me -- it was foolish to wait until September of 2020 to first read Graham Greene’s The End of The Affair, because doing so left me with far less time to re-read it over and over again. I’m a fucking idiot.

[Nigeyb]

I'm glad to learn that you enjoyed it Mark. I share your enthusiasm for it.


His books are often very different from each other, as you may well already know

[Mark]

I’m ashamed to admit, but I’ve only read The End of The Affair and Brighton Rock, which I’ve read a couple times and am about to re-read. Are you able to recommend two or three others of his that you think I’d enjoy?

[Nigeyb]

Yes, I'm more than happy to help you Mark


Three GG titles I have enjoyed which I think would hit your sweet spot:

The Confidential Agent (1939) is surprisingly good. I say surprisingly given that Graham Greene wanted it published under a pseudonym so I was expecting the worst. Apparently Greene wrote The Confidential Agent in six weeks, fuelled by Benzedrine, which probably explains the book's powerful hallucinogenic, paranoid and nightmarish qualities. It's a pitch black noir which powerfully distills the mood of late 1930s Britain.

The Ministry of Fear (1943) is a perfect book: accessible, clever, beautifully written, evocative, tense, and quietly profound. A palpable sense of dread and unease runs throughout the story set in the early years of World War 2 in England, primarily London.

The Human Factor (1978) is bleak. I really loved it though. Both tense and exciting, but also an exploration of the dark arts of espionage, human psychology, and individual relationships. All the characters are credible, fully fleshed out, and fallible. The Human Factor is gritty and suspenseful, but also extremely subtle and thought provoking.

[Mark]

Many grateful thanks for putting that together and sharing it -- rest assured, I’ll get on all three of those titles as quick as I can.

A few years back, I ordered a first edition paperback of The Ministry of Fear but, as often happens with things like that, the text ran so close to the gutter that there was no way to actually read it without murdering the spine. Beautifully designed cover art, but it’s of no use to me other than as an object.

[Mark]

At the moment, I’m winding my way through Joan Wyndham’s Love Lessons, and ready to recommend it with unbridled enthusiasm. No shelf of books set in London during The Blitz is complete without it, and that ain’t hyperbole. Put everything aside and walk don’t run. Absolutely brilliant in every way possible.

For more background, here’s an interview with Joan Wyndham, conducted by Paul Willetts.

https://www.paulwilletts.com/2511767-...

[Nigeyb]

Sold. Thanks Mark.


Here's a dedicated thread...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I shall post my reaction as soon as I get to it. Hopefully sooner rather that later

[Mark]

Not sure that this is the right thread to post in, and not sure that the news will thrill anyone apart from Nigel and myself, but I've just seen that summer 2021 will finally bring a new novel from Jonathan Lee, whose High Dive was absolutely superb. Details are still thin on the ground, but this seems to be the space to watch...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1...

[Nigeyb]

Mark wrote:


"I've just seen that summer 2021 will finally bring a new novel from Jonathan Lee, whose High Dive was absolutely superb"

Thanks Mark - that is indeed wonderful news

The Great Mistake (2021) sounds very promising

Roll on June 2021

From the acclaimed author of High Dive comes an enveloping, exultant novel of New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, a story of one man's rise to fame and fortune, and his mysterious murder.

Andrew Haswell Green is dead, shot at the venerable age of eighty-three, when he thought life could hold no more surprises. The killing--on Park Avenue, in broad daylight, on Friday the thirteenth--shook the city. Green was born to a poor farmer, yet without him there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. And Green had a secret, a life locked within him that now, in the hour of his death--alone, misunderstood--is set to break free. As the detective assigned to Green's case chases his ghost across the city, we meet a wealthy courtesan, a brokenhearted man in a bowler hat, and a lawyer turned politician whose decades-long friendship with Green is the source of both his troubles and his joys. A work of tremendous depth and piercing emotion, The Great Mistake is the story of a city transformed, a murder that made a private man infamous, and a portrait of a singular individual who found the world closed off to him--yet enlarged it.

[Mark]

After years spent wanting to read Blood Brothers [1932] by Ernst Haffner, I finally got down to business this week.

From the publisher: Blood Brothers is the only known novel by German social worker and journalist Ernst Haffner, of whom nearly all traces were lost during the course of the Second World War. Told in stark, unsparing detail, Haffner's story delves into the illicit underworld of Berlin on the eve of Hitler's rise to power, describing how these blood brothers move from one petty crime to the next, spending their nights in underground bars and makeshift hostels, struggling together to survive the harsh realities of gang life, and finding in one another the legitimacy denied them by society.

My review: Very likely brilliant in its pre-translation form, but got utterly lost in the second half of the “time and place” equation through its baffling over-use of Cockney rhyming slang. Reading as an American who is fully-versed in English slang, I had to keep reminding myself that the story took place in Berlin, and not in Bethnal Green.

Four stars out of five.

[Nigeyb]

Sounds very promising - thanks for the tip Mark

[Mark]

I’ve just finished LP Hartley’s The Go-Between.

It may not be the best novel ever, but I’ve certainly not read a better one.

Any pointers for further Hartley reading?

[Nigeyb]

You had me worried at "may not be the best novel ever"


Sady it's the one and only Hartley I have read

I know CQM read on a bit - maybe he'll pop by to enlighten us?

[Stephen]

Mark I've just seen your review of Blood Brothers with its "baffling over-use of Cockney rhyming slang". Its been on my shelf for a while now and it will have to patiently await its turn somewhere further towards the end of the queue. I could do without jellied eels and "luverly jubbly" in a book about 1930s Germany, sounds more appropriate to something written by Hamilton.
So 20,000 Streets now has one less book to compete with for my attention. I've picked it up a few times recently but placed it back on the shelf because gritty realism doesn't sit well with my attempts at maintaining a positive mental attitude during these uncertain times. However gritty realism is my usual diet so it's bound to be opened quite soon.
Just finished Farewell to Salonica a melancholy yet enchanting account of the author's childhood in the multi-cultural pre-WWI Ottoman Empire. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
And a biography of Thelonious Monk (for which is there is a dedicated forum somewhere here). I don't read books about musicians but my wife bought me this for my birthday and I love Monk. If you don't like him then you're rather unlikely to enjoy it.

[Mark]

Nigeyb wrote: "You had me worried at "may not be the best novel ever"


Sady it's the one and only Hartley I have read

I know CQM read on a bit - maybe he'll pop by to enlighten us?"


Surely in my more rational moments I understand that Hartley probably never came close to The Go-Between -- let’s face it, few do -- but it was a work of such perfection that my inner-completist is nagging at me to dip my toes.

Here’s an easier one, then. Can you recommend either of the film adaptations of The Go-Between? I’ll need something to watch after the dvd of The Strange World of Gurney Slade that turned up in yesterday’s post!

[Mark]

Stephen wrote: "Mark I've just seen your review of Blood Brothers with its "baffling over-use of Cockney rhyming slang". Its been on my shelf for a while now and it will have to patiently await its turn somewhere ..."

I could be miles off, but I suspect that the translation of Blood Brothers wouldn’t be as jarring for readers in England, especially for those of a certain age for whom antiquated slang rings familiar. But for an American -- or Australian or New Zealander or Canadian -- the translation failed to brand the novel as German.

Thanks for the Sciaky and Monk tips -- the latter has been on my radar for a while, the former a complete stranger to me before you mentioned it. I’m no jazzbo, not by anyone’s definition, but I’ve slowly been educating myself through the wonders of illegal downloading. Sadly, I have yet to get round to Monk -- I’ve been happily derailed by the works of Jimmy Smith!