Matching Curtains

Matilda: the Musical

Roald Dahl's Matilda is one of my favourite childhood books - the dog-eared, much loved copy sitting on my bookshelf evidence of the great affection in which I hold it. So last weekend, some friends and I travelled to the Big Smoke to revel in the RSC's riotously joyful musical adaptation of the classic. A couple of us were greedily wanting seconds, having seen and loved the show during its original run at Stratford a year ago. And the seconds were just as delicious - Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly, writers of the music and lyrics respectively, have done a marvellous job of capturing the spirit of the book.

The cast are as memorable as the tunes: Bertie Carvel, dragged up as the monstrous Miss Trunchbull, bosoms like ballistic missiles, is inspired as the villain of the piece. As he spat out quintessentially Dahlian insults such as 'maggot!' and 'twerp', his performance culminating in the hilarious show tune 'Phys Ed', he seemed the very incarnation of Quentin Blake's illustrations. As indeed, did Paul Kaye as Matilda's weasly father Mr Wormwood. The child performers were also a joy to behold - the role of Matilda, shared by four girls on a rotating basis, was brilliantly performed just as it had been in Stratford (though I confess I didn't catch either girl's name), with cracking support from the other young performers playing Bruce, Lavender, et al. The energy they bought to the stage was infectious and had me smiling broadly long after the show had ended.

The stage itself was quite the sight to behold: tumbling alphabet blocks provided a colourful frame for events, with desks rising from the floor and swings dropping from the ceiling. There were some fancy flourishes added to the London production, but thankfully nothing which detracted from the the purity and simplicity of the original show. The same cunning effects were used for the infamous pigtail swinging and hair dyeing scenes - not to mention those in which Matilda uses her special powers - to the delighted gasps of children and adults alike.

Like Roald Dahl's story, the show never shies away from the darkness or cartoonish grotesquerie which kids - and lets be honest, adults- love. There are some more poignant moments, but none are too sickly and its great to watch a production in which the kids are the right side of cute. As we root for Matilda to avenge the grown up bullies around her, there are cheeky little pokes at contemporary culture: Miss Trunchbull's office is a parody of a surveillance society, with TV monitors which track her pupils scaling the walls; TV is also pilloried in the Wormwood family home (and perhaps through Mrs Wormwood's ballroom dancing, a swipe is dealt to the likes of Strictly ...? I might be overthinking this :-)). These pokes are complemented with a retro feel to the brightly coloured sets which I loved - the vaulting horses and blackboards of Crunchem School took me right back to primary school, and the C & A bag swinging from Mrs Wormwood's arm would have chimed with many a grown up in the audience.

Minchin, who could almost emerge from the pages of a Dahl book himself with his mad hair and kohl-rimmed eyes, has penned some corking uptempo numbers which capture the ebullience of youth and the right to be 'naughty' wonderfully - the closing number 'Revolting Children' is a little bit School of Rock and a little bit soul. Only the original novel can vie for supremacy as an artistic advocate for a child's right to self-expression. This production is like the best school play ever (and as one of my friends pointed out, will likely become a staple on the school circuit before long); the evident pleasure of the performers is matched by the enjoyment of the audience. And more to the point, its a validation for bookworms like me the world over.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

It was Halloween eve, and rather than face gaggles of Trick or Treaters knocking at our door, we opted instead for some cinematic escapism. Or, more baldly, horrors of a different kind. Lionel Shriver's award winning novel 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' left an indelible impression on me when I read it a few years ago: I remember feeling totally drained upon finishing it. Told from the perspective of narrator Eva, the novel recounts events before and after her teenage son commits a high school massacre. Eva is that most intriguing of storytellers, an unreliable narrator, and the novel raises interesting questions about her responsibility for her son's actions, whether evil is innate or learned, and - more widely - social norms regarding motherhood. On the latter point, I found it interesting to analyse my own shifting responses to Eva as the narrative progressed - the novel is so decidedly ambivalent that it will forever stimulate debate.

Well written, with vividly drawn characters, it is a fearless director who takes on such weighty material. I'm pleased to say that director Lynn Ramsey has done a sterling job with this disturbing and compelling adaptation - a job which has won the praise of Shriver herself (see her recent Guardian article). Ramsey respectfully includes many key scenes, and I think it is to the movie's credit that we never see the full extent of Kevin's attacks at the school. With only one exception, the casting is superb. Tilda Swinton is tremendous in the role of Eva, eliciting both pity and disapproval as a former high flier uncomfortable with motherhood; Ezra Miller is an inscrutable Kevin, giving one of the creepiest performances I've ever seen. They are exactly as I'd imagined their characters, and though the source material could risk a melodramatic cinematic treatment, both manage to ground the story in a reality disturbingly close to that of the audience. Ramsey plays on their almost androgynous physical similarities to reinforce the perverse connection between mother and son, through visual flourishes and clever camera work matched by her decision to play with the natural chronology of events, flipping between a wine-guzzling, dead-eyed Eva's memories and present day reality. In doing this, our own perceptions of Eva as victim and catalyst for Kevin's crime become increasingly confused, making for a sophisticated presentation of the age-old nature/nurture debate. Is Eva a victim of Kevin, as much as he is a victim of her? I couldn't help thinking of Mary Shelley's own famous analogy of maternity as I watched Eva face the abuse of those who had suffered at the hands of her son, whilst reliving the memories of her own losses.

It's a shame then, that the weak link in the chain comes in the form of character actor John C. Reilly, an actor I am deeply fond of. As Eva's husband Franklin, he portrays a man desperately clinging onto an ideal of family life, apparently unable to digest the warning signs displayed by his son. Unfortunately though, in Reilly's hands his treatment of Franklin's denial comes across as chumpish; he seems to have wandered in from the set of a stoner comedy and lacks the complexity needed to make his character believable. The likes of Aaron Eckhart or Philip Seymour Hoffman would have been far more convincing as a partner for our uncompromising lead. This certainly doesn't lessen the impact of the movie though - even though I knew what was coming, Ramsey ekes every last drop of suspense from the tale to devastating effect. An arresting opening scene paves the way for food-based symbolism which even at its most mundane, is alive with portent: Kevin gnawing at a cooked chicken, slathering jam on sandwiches, or tearing at a piece of bread in a restuarant. All of these otherwise innocuous moments add up to a growing sense of terror, placed as they are within a cunning temporal structure.

Ramsey has done a fine job with challenging material, raising important and often uncomfortable questions about feminism and motherhood. Why do we blame Eva for her son's crime, when her husband is so clearly in denial about his son's problems? His blind optimism could be read by feminists as a cultural legacy of nineteenth century attitudes to women and the 'wandering womb' complex - a hangover which undermines female self expression to dangerous effect. That this is a mother's story only reinforces this idea. Also interesting is the issue of mothers failing to bond with their babies: when Eva ironically coos at an unresponsive baby Kevin that she was happier before he was born, we are shocked. But it's an interesting scene and one which I feel Ramsey was brave for using - what happens when a mother doesn't like her child? Is this a deep-rooted fear which rather than address, we choose to cower behind shock? These aren't questions for this blog, as I know I'm moving further away from sharing my thoughts about the film, but they are certainly worth considering.

I would imagine that this film will speak strongly to all women, and look forward to discussing it more in the future. It's not a movie which one can discuss or form a response to straight away -  never have I felt such a tangible silence in an audience than after this movie - but as with the novel, it leaves a legacy of profound discomfort and questioning which extends far beyond the world of movie making.

Jarvis Cocker at Cheltenham Literary Festival

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WARNING: this article contains much fawning.

Last weekend, we went to see my All-Time Hero Jarvis Cocker speak at the Cheltenham Literary Festival (what is that, reader? You didn't know of my admiration for the bespectacled wonder? Come now. You've clearly not been paying enough attention!). Saturday  was a day of great anticipation, as I was transformed back to my thirteen year old self, becoming increasingly enthusiastic (and squealy) about the evening. Not even being temporarily locked out of the house could diminish my excitement, and I am afraid to say that the glass of wine I knocked back after we entered Cheltenham's baroque Town Hall did nothing to dampen my ardour. Jarvis + vino + books = a very silly Lindsey.

Books ... that's right. I should tell you what brought Jarvis to the Cheltenham Literary Festival. Jarvis's wryly observational lyrics have long been feted by critics and indie crowds alike, so it will come as no surprise to know that Faber have decided to publish a collection of his lyrics in a tome entitled 'Mother, Brother, Lover' (so called, Jarvis ironically confided, because he used these terms so often in his lyrics, the title handily suggested a degree of deliberation). It was this collection which he was there to promote, and which I was so desperately keen to hear him discuss.

Before I go on, I should declare myself as someone who, despite loving the written word, has an uncomfortable relationship with literary festivals: I find the crowds they attract to be uniformly middle class, characterised by an elitism and intellectual arrogance which I despise (and typically, lots of floaty scarves). I tend to feel deeply uncomfortable and very cross during such events, so it says something about Jarvis's cache that we travelled from the depths of South Oxfordshire all the way to Gloucestershire for his talk. I was intrigued to see what kind of crowd he would attract, and whilst there were some of the usual suspects in attendance, there was also a large number of folk who, like us, had loved Jarvis and Pulp since their teens and who clearly represented a committed Pulp fanbase.

The evening began amazingly well, following an elbow brush with Jarvis (forever forth to be known as The Elbow Brush) - he's really very tall, you know. After he strode on stage to the sort of cheers you don't normally hear at such events, he explained that he would be be giving a presentation on the significance of lyrics (his own and other people's) - taking on the role of Professor Cocker, if you will. A whimsical and interesting discussion of the frankly incomprehensible lyrics to the Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie', investigated by the FBI for suspected pornographic content, broke the ice perfectly.  After his mini slide show, Jarvis then shared some of his early lyrical forays with us, drolly delivering the naive 'Life is a Circle' before going on to chat about the process of writing itself. When discussing the difference in writing poetry and lyrics, he treated the audience - after some prompting from interviewer John Wilson - to a recital of what are undoubtedly his most famous lyrics, 'Common People'. In doing so, he reminded us all of his unique singing style, which in many Pulp tracks fuses spoken word with song - listen to 'Wickerman', one of my favourite tracks, for a great example of this.

The discussion was genuinely fascinating - and deeply reassuring to anyone with writer's block. Jarvis spoke of his early expectation that there was some Nirvana to be accessed before he could write meaningful lyrics, followed by the realisation that there was much to be gleaned from everyday life, citing the poet Roger McGough and TV as early influences on his now familiar style. He also discussed the pitfalls of using firsthand experiences in one's work, and made a humorous confession to a hatred of opera (I couldn't help but cheekily wonder what some sections of the audience made of this!). Though the Town Hall was full to capacity, Jarvis's confidential manner gave the illusion of a conspiratorial, relaxed chat - he was erudite, witty and down to earth. A highlight for me was his tale of being picked up by joyriders in a Ford Mondeo after his Hillman Imp broke down, one of whom politely offered him a chocolate lime! His reflections on class were insightful without being polemicising, and his self-effacing but wise observations struck a real chord.

A short Q & A session after the talk, which I was far too nervous to participate in (recovering as I was from The Elbow Brush), was followed by a quick drink in town and an hour and a half car journey home. The evening was worth our Cotswolds Odyssey, to share in the company of a man who inspired me to be myself as an awkward teenager and who continues to plough his own distinctive path. An enjoyable if all too brief insight into one of the finest lyricists of our generation.

Seek out your old Pulp CDs now. And if you're hungering for something new, have a listen to this:

Yes Man - DVD review

Before anyone starts snickering at this criminal lapse in taste, I have been through a bit of a crisis and in my defence just wanted to watch something mindless and funny. Yes Man, based on Danny Wallace's hilarious book and true account of saying 'yes' to everything following depression after a relationship breaks down, would seem to fit the bill with its outlandish plot and optimistic theme. Or so I thought. Hmm. Jim Carrey plays Carl (based on Danny), with ever quirky it girl Zooey Deschanel as his love interest. His marriage has broken down and he's in a slump, staying in every night and refusing to engage in life. After being dragged to a seminar extolling the virtues of 'Yes', led by a frightening Terence Stamp, Carl takes 'yes' to as many conclusions as possible.

The premise and source material for this is pretty good stuff (although I bet Dave Gorman is mightily pissed off that his kind of weird quests have been co-opted to secure much greater financial reward by his best mate), so it's a shame that the movie doesn't work as a comedy. The book is genuinely funny, so how could things have gone so very badly wrong?! Part of the blame lies with the casting of Carrey, who is just so much older than the rest of the cast that he looks completely out of place, as well as being extremely annoying. His rubber faced gurning belongs to the 90s and Ace Ventura and it's this which - unfortunately - he falls back on here. He can do dark and emotional (see: The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine), so it's frustrating that he doesn't give a more sophisticated performance here. Not that the film relies upon dark or emotional (or indeed sophisticated), but Carrey has range which seems to have been abandoned at the set door for Yes Man, favouring a lazy comedy-by-numbers approach. The rest of the cast seem almost embarrassed to be involved in the movie and the only highlights come from the fantastic Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords) as Norman, Carl's fellow bank worker, and the aforementioned Ms Deschanel who takes kooky to whole new levels here. It is with Darby the laughs are garnered and through Deschanel that the charming romantic aspects of the story actually overtakes the comedic, to save the film from its dire script and terrible central casting.

Danny Wallace was obviously on board for this travesty, as he appears in a cameo at the end of the film, but it's hard to see why. This movie could have been so much better with someone like the ubiquitous Seth Rogen or adorable John Cusack as Carl. Rogen fits the age criteria and has the slacker factor, Cusack would have brought with him the mainstream likeability factor (sadly Carrey's casting must have been to bring this and draw in the punters - doh). My respect for Danny Wallace has totally diminished after watching this movie - he clearly saw it as a way to make a quick buck. Either that or is still saying 'yes' to any offer he is made. Will he never learn?!

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

I finished reading this a while ago but it remains so potently alive in my mind that I felt a blog was in order. Cat's Eye is a marvellously insightful look at the relationships between women and girls. Writing from the first person perspective of Elaine, a painter who returns to her hometown Toronto for a retrospective of her work, the book flits between Elaine's past and present to show how her art and indeed her life more generally, was influenced by a childhood friendship with a girl called Cordelia. The 'friendship' is predicated on the quiet bullying that so often takes place between young girls and which Elaine is a victim of, being perceived as 'different' to her school friends by virtue of her nomadic existence with her academic parents. At first we see Cordelia as a nasty little girl and feel for Elaine as she navigates the tricky terrain of girlhood relationships, but the tables turn when the girls re-establish their friendship in adolescence and Elaine shows herself to be equally adept at the subtle little torments perpetrated by teenage girls. When we move back to the present, we see Elaine is haunted by memories of Cordelia and are given an insight into her relationships with men, her daughters and the fact she has never had a close female friend since Cordelia.

I think any woman will relate to something in this book. The odd power dynamic between young girls is depicted so vividly it takes you right back to how it feels to be a teenager (just as it does Elaine), also illustrating the control memories can have over our actions. Time is everywhere in this book, both in the psychological, spiritual sense and a more scientific way, as expressed by Elaine's brother Stephen's work into space-time dynamics. It is inescapable, Atwood is showing us. We see through Elaine's actions the pervasive influence of the past and also, more subtly, how we must learn to accept the past if we are to find peace. Elaine is haunted by long gone events and we see that in order to cope she became like the cat's eye marble she had as a child: cold and detached, cutting herself off from the potentially nurturing connections she could have made with women (as evinced through her visions of the Virgin Mary). She prefers the company of men and admires their same sex friendships, which are presented in a more straightforward and less sinister way than those between women, but doesn't seem to blame men entirely for the way women behave. Through her presentation of the dynamics between women she insinuates that they bear responsibility for their own actions, empowering them even as they are destructive to their peers. I enjoyed the fact that Cordelia and her sisters share names with King Lear's 'pernicious' daughters and that Atwood subverts the good daughter Cordelia through her character of the same name, showing that women are neither completely at the mercy of men nor divided into categories of good and bad as in King Lear: Cordelia may act out because of her distant relationship with her father, but she has strength even if it is misused; strength which leads to her being both bully and - ironically - victim.

Women everywhere know what it is to be a young girl and have school friends turn against you one day, with no apparent reason, only to pick up the friendship on another day. Reading this book can be a distressing experience but that's because of its honesty and Atwood's skill. The difference between the friendships men share and that of women is perhaps rather stridently expressed but no less affecting for it. This novel is exquisitely written and is - rather appropriately for a story about an artist - extremely visual and engaging. It is a very feminist novel but sophisticated enough not to lean solely on this theme or be too onesided - everyone is presented in shades of grey. Atwood writes evocatively of the social changes in Canada and the remnants of colonialism, as well as the art movements Elaine is part of and witness to, to create a world we quickly become part of and identify with.

It is however, the feminine which is the mainstay of the novel. If a bloke read this book he would be astonished at the intricate, cruel games young girls play and the longlasting effect they can have. Elaine ironically still misses Cordelia as a fifty-something and her striving is our lesson to try and accept the past instead of demand resolution. I have experienced the most nourishing friendships with women as well as more destructive 'Cordelia'-esque ones, full of bitchiness and snide asides. Both are possible and it's Elaine's tragedy that she has never had the positive experiences. In some ways I wish that this book showed the sisterly elements of female companionship as well as the more damaging aspects, but it is no less truthful as a result - it is perhaps all the more powerful because of its exclusion. Cat's Eye is a devastating but compelling experience and a book that all women should read.

Morvern Callar by Alan Warner

After the density of John Updike’s prose I was relieved to turn to Alan Warner’s debut novel Morvern Callar, so named after its heroine and told from her perspective in what is indisputably a far more successful attempt by a male writer to enter the female psyche than Updike’s wretched efforts. Stylistically too, it was immediately a marked contrast, being so much leaner a read compared to Updike’s knarled – if poetic - verbosity. However like Rabbit, Run, Morvern Callar proved somewhat depressing; Morvern is a young woman who lives in a small, deprived port in mid-1990s Scotland and who works in a supermarket, spending her free time with various down and outs and getting wrecked. If the word chav had existed back then, it would no doubt sum some of the characters up well. The book opens with her boyfriend’s suicide and Morvern’s singular choice to hide his body and behave as if nothing had happened, telling friends he has merely gone away as she uses his cash to holiday and rave. As the story unfolds we are offered glimpses into why Morvern behaves in the way she does, even if we don’t necessarily see it as the most moral of choices. There’s a quote on the back of my copy of the book comparing the novel to Camus’s The Outsider and I’d have to agree that there’s much in this amoral, existential tale which resonates with Camus’ work.

I can’t say that reading this was especially gratifying but it was certainly different. Morvern herself is a memorable character; someone slightly off the rails who nevertheless refuses to apologise for who she is or lurch into self pity for what has been a pretty miserable start to life. She seems neither to belong in the murky world of the Mantrap (the port’s dodgy nightclub-cum-bakery) or her foster family – she’s looking for a more meaningful existence in her own unique way. Her thoughts and speech are presented to us starkly, offering an insight into her soul which prompts us to reflect on the contrariness of life as well as offering a subtly feminist critique of Morvern’s world (again, impressive that it’s a male writer who does this so well!). Although sparse, the text insidiously comes to demand a greater commitment from its reader than some more ‘psychological’ novels: this is not a book to be taken at face value. Warner’s gift is to show readers Morvern’s development and changes rather than explain them, and he handles dialect well to create distinct personalities for each of his characters, showing how each person’s behaviour can impact on Morvern without emotionally descriptive clutter.

The community Morvern is part of is a realistically presented group even if the events unfolding in her own life seem totally incredible: I could really hear the Scottish voices and see the desolate environment in which she lives. Warner creates a very precise mileu often by using the rawest of language, drawing out moments of unusual beauty in the most unexpected of places. The motives behind Morvern’s unconventional behaviour are only partially explained and when we discover the Spanish meaning of her surname, silence, it seems apt. Morvern is an enigma but a character who in spite of everything, wins our admiration for her spirit and tenacity. It’s credit to her characterisation that I could overlook the novel’s somewhat outrageous premise and whilst I’d be careful who I recommended this tale to, I’d finish by advising that it’s completely original and certainly hard to forget. I read Warner’s second novel The Sopranos when I was in my teens and getting to know Morvern has encouraged me to return to it – expect a review in the future.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

As mentioned in my last blog, I recently acquainted myself with the work of John Updike. He's someone I've been meaning to get into for a while and his recent passing reminded me of the fact. As one of the 'great American writers', his stature has always somewhat intimidated me, but he was on my list of authors who must be read and I was determined to familiarize myself with him this year. So I grabbed myself a copy of the first in his Rabbit series, Rabbit, Run, and settled down to read it. This was at the height of my recent brush with antibiotic hell, so was maybe not the most cheering of novels to plump for, but be that as it may, I persevered with Updike's densely woven prose and can reveal that I feel, well, rather ambivalent about it.

Rabbit, Run is set in the late 1950s and is the story (for want of a better word) of Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, a former high school celebrity renown for his skill on the basketball court whom we meet as a married twenty-something regretting that his existence has become, in his words, 'second rate'. He leaves his alcoholic, pregnant wife Janice and young son Nelson for Ruth, a good time girl, before returning to them after his brief foray into another life proves too guilt-ridden to continue with and the pleas of local vicar John Eccles convince him to give his marriage another try. My first thought upon reading the book was how similar Updike's style was to Jack Kerouac's - there's a thickly poetic quality to his writing which after the cleanness of Richard Yates was initially tough going. That's not to say I didn't enjoy some of it though - Updike creates a tangible atmosphere and evokes a sense of place well. The industrial suburb of Mount Judge, Pennsylvania, is both comforting and claustrophobic for Rabbit and we sympathise with his conflict as he struggles to conform to family life and the mundanities of his existence as a salesman (so far, so far American Dream gone wrong). However Rabbit is not a character we can empathise with easily. He is, in short, a bit crap. His prevaricating between wife and mistress is cruel to them both and although he tries to do the right thing, he seems fundamentally incapable of committing to either woman and ends up hurting each of them. In particular, there is a horrifying scene towards the end of the book which I won't reveal here, but which is a shocking symbol of all that is wrong with the Angstroms' marriage - and indeed Janice's mental state. In an afterword written by Updike in my copy of the novel, he writes that he was trying to counter the celebration of personal freedom extolled by Kerouac to show how abandoning one's responsibilities impacts upon those around them, and through the flawed - realistic - character of Rabbit, he does this effectively. We might not like Rabbit, but he acts as many people do in real life and who's to say we have to like our literary (anti-) heroes?! It's not for us to judge Rabbit; his predicament is that of many people then and now, trapped in an existence he fell into, and it's impressive that Updike creates such a well formed protagonist. If we don't like him, it may well tell us something we don't want to know about the human condition, however extreme. I also liked the way actual historical events were covertly threaded through the narrative, helping to establish a sense of history and context for the characters' actions. We are all influenced by external events, however seemingly remote, and we meet Rabbit when America is on the brink of great social change. Apparently the rest of the Rabbit series continues to reference historical events and for readers of the day it must have felt as though they were growing up with Rabbit, which I imagine prompted a great difference in their response to him compared to that of modern readers.

For all that, what I definitely did not like was Updike's treatment of women. His descriptions of Janice are downright insulting; when he writes from her perspective he completely infantilises her and as for Ruth, she is described as nothing more than a sexual object, defined primarily by her physical attributes. When he tries to create an internal monologue for her, discussing her previous sexual experiences before Rabbit, he goes some way to atone for such chauvinistic presentations of women, but even this feels laboured and lacking in realism. I was also not a fan of the way he wrote about sex. Apparently the Literary Review awarded him the dubious honour of winning their Lifetime Achievement Award for bad sex writing and I can only jump on the bibliographic bandwagon and wholeheartedly agree with their decision. If you need evidence, take this description by way of proof: 'His sea of seed buckles, and sobs into a still channel'. Now I'm not asking for Lawrentian ecstacies every time I read about people making love (although surprisingly Updike claims to have been influenced by Lawrence), but purleease. This is quite possibly the bleakest description of a climax I've come across in some time. Great sibilance yes, but 'sobs'?! You take my point.

Rabbit Run was, I am sure, a very controversial novel in its day, publishing as it did shortly before the sexual revolution of the sixties, but I must confess that I found Updike's presentation of women deeply offensive - in contrast to Richard Yates, who for the most part at least stuck to presenting Revolutionary Road from Frank's perspective, the exploration of female psychology feels too pat to have any real integrity (compared to Yates' attempt at conveying April's thoughts). I can't help but wonder what Updike's wife at the time made of his female characters. I found it very hard to detach this distaste from my appreciation of the characterisation of Rabbit and the very human contradictions and flaws he embodies, which probably explains my ambiguous response to the novel as a whole. I respect its achievements and I'd certainly continue to read the series, but am wary of how Rabbit's women will go on to be handled - I suspect I will need to prepare myself if I do venture forward with Rabbit's progression through recent American history.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

I seem to have been doing a lot of reading about disenchanted Americans and broken lives of late, which understandably has had the effect of leaving me rather maudlin. I feel the need to post a blog on the matter if only to cleanse myself of said feelings(!), so here we go ...

First up is Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road. You'll remember I reviewed the film and promised I'd get hold of the book - well, I kept my word. I enjoyed it so much I gave a friend a copy for her birthday. Hang on - I say enjoyed, that's not quite the right word given the book is possibly one of the most bitter treatments of relationships I've ever read (don't worry, I didn't just give said friend an utterly miserable tome to see in her birthday). We know the plot so I won't elaborate all over again, as the movie adaptation is pretty loyal to the source material and even lifts entire chunks of speech from the novel. RR is a cauterizing analysis of a failing relationship and everyday life which manages to be both of its time and yet endlessly relevant to today, with strong characters who feel immediately very real. Having read the book after seeing the movie, I was stunned to find how completely Yates' description of Frank could describe Mr DiCaprio:

'He was neat and solid, a few days less than thirty years old, with ... the kind of unemphatic good looks that an advertising photographer might use to portray the discerning consumer of well-made but inexpensive merchandise ... But for all its lack of structural distinction, his face did have an unusual mobility: it was able to suggest wholly different personalities with each flickering change of expression.'

How wonderfully this evokes DiCaprio's own mercurial features; he seems made for the role. He certainly had some great source material to work from, as the novel is told pretty much entirely from Frank's perspective. Where the book differs is in it's presentation of Frank and April, who are depicted as rather more bohemian than in the film, and about whom we're given more insight into their upbringing. Granted a movie can't convey everything a book can, but you'll remember that I felt where the film fell short was in provoking emotions from the audience. The book succeeds in this completely. The last time I felt so drained by a reading experience was after reading Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin, another incredibly depressing but well written book. Yates' style is at once economical and devastatingly astute; his description of Frank's working day will make any office worker cringe. We may not have the martinis at lunch and the typewriters have given way to Dell computers, but whoever works in an office 9-5 surely can't fail to empathise with this passage, in which Frank reflects on the daily grind:

'Over the years he had discovered slight sensory distinctions between it and all the others of the building; it was no more or less pleasant, but different for being 'his' floor. It was his bright, dry, daily ordeal, his personal measure of tedium. It had taught him new ways of spacing out the hours of the day - almost time to go down for coffee; almost time to go out for lunch; almost time to go home - and he had come to rely on the desolate wastes of time that lay between these pleasures as an invalid comes to rely on the certainty of recurring pain. It was part of him'.

Bleak huh? But I bet it strikes a note. My friends and I are all of a similar age to Frank and on discussing the book with those who've read it, have conceded somewhat bashfully that yes, we can all relate to the drudgery of routine and the shock it presents after the relative freedom of university. The struggle to reconcile youthful hopes with adult reality makes it all too easy to ally ourselves with Frank and April. Who can't relate to the desire to escape the hum drum but also the fear of doing just that? And then there's Frank and April's crumbling relationship. The rare sections of the book told from April's perspective offer psychological insight into how conflicting perceptions can spiral out of control, changing our responses to someone we once loved. The quiet ways in which two people who once felt excited by the other can slip into first hatred, then indifference, are powerfully evoked and have a vaguely feminist feel. Frank's immaturity and misguided opinions condemn him whilst we still seek to understand him, and the action April takes are an indictment of the position of women at the time.

How has Yates been ignored for so long?! As the Wheeler's shared dreams give way to resignation with their lot, metaphors of performance dominate the text and illustrate the fantasy of the American Dream. This has been done to death since Yates wrote RR, but at the time it must have been revolutionary (ahem) stuff. Yates offers us a critique of America in the midst of change. The Campbell's, a more blue collar version of the Wheelers, have kids who seem glued to the television in their lounge, a new gadget that was then such a novelty and now the bone of contention for so many, opening and closing worlds at the same time; the political winds are beginning to stir and the notion of the woman's place being in the home would soon fuel the feminist movement. In some ways the book reminds me of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, as the emancipated mood of the 1960s came too late for McEwan's characters just as it does for April, whose character symbolises the tragedy at the book's core (doubly so because she seems the stronger of the couple). Both books capture an unnamed restlessness, personally and socially. I guess throughout the sixties a book like RR felt old-fashioned and irrelevant, with so much in transition. But although Yates has slipped off the literary radar over the last 40 years or so, the themes of relationships and the constraints of adulthood are timeless and the writing is top class.

Other American authors like John Updike seem to have taken up the cause of the flawed and frustrated everyman, but as I will discuss in a future blog, in my opinion he benefited from timing and a more ambitious authorial strategy rather than a fundamentally better way of writing. Do read this book. It won't cheer you up, but it will astound you with its power.

Time for a MeMe - BBC book list

Kitty over at Other Stories recently posted a book-related meme, apparently based on the Top 100 Books from the BBC Big Read a few years ago. She's encouraged readers to have a go themselves. The list is below and scandalously the BBC believe that most people will have only made it through a mere six of the 100 titles listed. Competitive as I am, I had to indulge.

The instructions:

1) Look at the list and make those you have read bold.
2) Star (*) the ones you LOVE.
3) Italicize those you plan on reading.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (And I never plan to after a very bad experience with The Hobbit. I am sure Peter Jackson's movies have done the job :-))
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte *
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6 The Bible (I've read parts - I was a Brownie back in the day and there was a big connection to the local Church. Am interested in reading the whole thing one day!)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott *
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’ve read a lot of Shakespeare plays, it was a requirement on my degree, but avoided the Histories. I do intend on at least seeing them performed though ...)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien(as a ten year old and hated it - put me off Tolkein for life)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (urgh, urgh urgh)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (more urgh. Perpetuates every Oxford stereotype going)
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy * (my mum recommended this to me as a teenager and impressionable as I was, I loved the Russian exoticism and epic tragedy of it all. Pretentious? For a 14 year old, most probably)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis * (adored, although subsequently slightly concerned by the fact it's Christian propaganda. Was also a regular viewer of the Sunday afternoon TV shows)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen * (My all time favourite Austen - full of longing and desire cloaked in propriety - love, love, love)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis *
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (I was on holiday, ok?! And I only read it so I could speak with authority on how very badly written it was. Every little thing is overexplained to the reader, it's ridiculous)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood*
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan * (Wonderful. Class, sex, war and guilt. What more can you want from a novel?!)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Read last year and on the whole, really enjoyed it - view my thoughts here)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (started and got waylaid. Will begin again, some day)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (loved the poetry of it all)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy* (Words cannot express how much I love this book. Influenced me greatly in my teens - is responsible for what friends fondly dubbed my Jude Complex whilst at Oxford, on which Christminster is based. Am rather proud that I can quote passages at random. Call it Hardy-tourettes)
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (Am I bad?)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (one of my many TBRs)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker *
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (have read parts, am told that's the best way. But not sure it counts as a full read here! One day, once I get my copy back ... You know who you are!)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath *
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (Started reading as a teenager. Never picked up again, reasons for which escape me. I will read it. It simply has to be done)
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker *
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton *
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (Creepy)
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl*
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

OK, so I reckon 53 aint bad - that's over half of the national average (she said, defensively!). But maybe I could have read more: as an English graduate I am shamed that I haven't read more of them! If only for more hours in the day ... Have a go yourselves and let me know how you do - it's great fun! I do love a good list.

Perfume by Patrick Suskind

I recently finished Patrick Suskind's Perfume, which seems to have been lauded by so many people I felt quite left behind, having waited so long to read it myself. When I saw it complete with retro-style Penguin cover in an Australian bookshop late last year, I seized the moment and snapped it up (wherever I go, I just can't resist buying books). I have to admit however, my initial excitement at finally having an opportunity to read the book soon waned. For some reason I've been putting off reading it, picking up a number of other books in the meantime, such as Zora Neal Hurston's beautiful Their Eyes Were Watching God. Incidentally, for a great review of the book, see Other Stories' comments here - it was Kitty's review which prompted me to read it, having never heard of Hurston before. And I'm mighty glad I did.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of my experience of Perfume. It's an intriguing enough premise for a book: set in eighteenth century France, the book's central character Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born into the stench of Parisian slums and promptly abandoned by his mother, who later dies. He is passed from various personages throughout his childhood, all of whom he gives the willies by virtue of his having no smell, eventually winding up as first a tanner's labourer and then an apprentice to a aging perfumerer called Baldini whose successes are long behind him (and not even his own to celebrate in the first place). By this point he has realised he has an incredible sense of smell and can make some of the most beautiful perfumes in the world, even if having a natural odour of his own eludes him. The most magnificent smells to Grenouille are those emanating from young virgins, and as he sets on trying to extract the perfumes of his innocent victims - whom he methodically kills off one by one - so he can apply their scents to his own odorless body, the story becomes akin to a thriller and takes on a macabre, melodramatic quality. Sadly, I found little to be thrilled by - a great shame given that things started so well. I appreciated how easily Suskind could conjour up senses of smells in my imagination and really emphasise the link between memory, the self and olfactory experience; not only was it linguistically very creative, it also stressed precisely why Grenouille was lacking a soul, having no smell of his own to live with and thus being compelled to steal that possessed by others. The moment at which this is most obvious is when he takes himself off to live in isolation, away from the smells of humanity, in the cave of a massive mountain, and drives himself (even more) mad as he realises he has no scent of his own. The scenes Suskind writes here are wonderfully horrific and reminded me in many ways of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, full of sublimity and darkness.

However unlike Frankenstein's monster and indeed even Frankenstein himself, Grenouille is not a sympathetic creation and there's little tension or conflict elicited in the reader as a result - I was faintly repulsed by him as a character, no more. Though he is creepy, his emptiness soon becomes a bore and I found myself more interested in the characters Suskind creates around him - like the aforementioned Baldini (a Dickensian grotesque if ever there was one), or Richis and the obsession he has with his daughter, or even Madame Arnulfi and her journeyman Druot. Ultimately although the murderous actions of Grenouille are indeed vile, he seems more a way for Suskind to explore how to write about smell than the basis for a truly memorable character. Intellectually, it's great to consider how Suskind describes scents and his meticulous attention to the ins and outs of creating perfumes is admirable - it allows us to ponder on the uncanniness of smell and the paradox that it is destruction of living things which pre-empts the creation of such beautiful perfumes. This parallels disturbingly with Grenuoille's final macerations and their subjects; his quest for olfactory perfection and the resulting consequences for him and others could be argued to illustrate the slipperiness of semiotics. All great if you're writing a university essay, for sure. There are also complex ideas linking to morality and religion, but they are too cerebral to grab you as a reader, breath held, or make you gasp in the way that all the best thrillers should. And it's this reason - despite some truly memorable and freakish final set pieces - that made reading Perfume more of a chore than a pleasure. I realise I'm going against the grain with this, but I just wasn't gripped enough by the writing style or the main character to properly enjoy the book. Having said all this, I'd be interested in seeing the movie adaptation - I can really see Alan Rickman as Richis and Dustin Hoffman camping it up as Baldini, and I think Ben Whishaw, although far too pretty to play the disgusting Grenouille, would acquit himself soundly as the villain of the tale. How a movie goes about conjouring smells is the difficulty though ... In the meantime, I wouldn't urge anyone to read this book for the pleasure of reading's sake alone.