Christine Macrae: The good book guide 4
Discuss my book selection in the Forum - and add you own recommendations.
Book page 4. Reviews.
My lover's lover. Maggie O'Farrell. Review.
This is apparently, similar to O'Farrell's debut novel, After You'd Gone. I hadn't read that and don't feel tempted now. My lover's lover is a rewrite of Rebecca with the rival still alive and though O'Farrell acknowledges the influence, it's not in the Du Maurier class. Full of unexplained mysteries and alternating narrative viewpoints, what is not in doubt is that she can write. She could however, write even better if she left some things out. She clings to adjectives and adverbs and deadens her language with unnecessary similes and three-for-the-price-of-two ways of saying things. I felt the fabric of the story came undone only a few pages in, and frayed even more as soon as we understand that Siobhan is alive and well. That leaves the narrative dependant on characters flattened by the weight of superfluous description - and the sense they don't have a clue themselves what they may or may not do next. This business of fickle fate, tied in with who is or is not sane is rather tiresome, but to be fair, I stuck with it till the end. The London location is super and the American one OK, but China and Australia seem contrived.
Find it at Amazon: My Lover's Lover
The Dark Ship. Anne Macleod. 11/9
You can tell from the prose here that Anne Macleod is a gifted poet. Her style owes more to Neill Gunn or Grassic-Gibbon than Kelman and Welsh and is appropriate for this story that spans the twentieth century with such confidence. There is more to the Dark Ship than lyrical language and vivid description, there is an ambitious structure meticulously wrought and an apparently effortless grasp of narrative. Iain Alexander Murray, the enigmatic WW1 poet is a masterful creation, a character beautifully rounded off at the end with the collection of his work, published posthumously in 1919. The voices of Lewis ring throughout this book, which, though it has had praise heaped upon it, deserves even more.
Find it at Amazon: The Dark Ship
Scotland's Millennium Canals. Guthrie Hutton, Stenlake.
Published to coincide with the completion of the Millennium Link, and the opening of the astonishing Falkirk boatlift, what Guthrie Hutton doesn!=t know about Scottish waterways is clearly not worth knowing. He is Chairman of the Forth and Clyde Canal society and designed Para Handy for the Beeb. But this is no esoteric account for inland waterway buffs; it brings Scottish industrial and social history to life with fascinating text and illustrations. Covering the period from 1768 to 2002, this book charts the rise and dominance of canal transport, its sorry decline and recent revival. Before the railways, long before the motorcar, Scotland's commercial links were by water. If you want to know about Port Dundas in the Napoleonic Wars, the Kirkintilloch cholera epidemic of 1832, the speedy "hoolets" taking passengers briskly between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and much more, this is the place to look. An inspiration!
Find it at Amazon: Scotland's Millennium Canals: The...
New Writing Scotland 19. On the road home it was suddenly. Ed Moira Burgess and Janet Paisley. Kevin MacNeil, Gaelic Adviser. ASLS
From Tony MacLean's rules of high-rise living to Larry Butler's great little piece on an alarming incident in the Botanics, this has something for everyone. I like Anne Macleod's film outline, "John Depp is Big Leggy" which reinforces the opinion she is one of the best around, and Margaret Beveridge's "Speedy Delivery". The idea of an SQA module in Obs and Gynae, cutting medical training down from five years to forty hours is pregnant with humour! Can't comment on the Gaelic of course, but some of the poetry, particularly the Val Thornton is terrific.
Scottish Fairy Tales. Lomond Books
Included simply on grounds of cost, this book is widely available in Glasgow at £2.50! It's even in Kelvingrove! Why lash out on a plastic dinosaur when you can have an astonishing range of traditional tales for the same outlay. Once purchased, the trick is to ignore the dodgy paper, dated typescript and Victorian prose and enjoy stories so long out of copyright, they were never in it. Thomas the Rhymer, Michael Scott, the fairy boy of Leith et al jostle for position among bogles, brownies and sea maidens. The 70 stories, illustrated with oddly endearing old prints scattered over the 445 pages are less than 4p each!
Find it at Amazon: Scottish Fairy Tales
Recommendations.
How to Read a Book.
Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. Touchstone.
There is a book on everything and reading is no exception. Not that this is recent; it dates from 1940 and was updated in 72. The recommended reading list, with its classical canon from the 9th century BC (Homer) through Calvin and Lenin to Solzhenitsyn, is staggering. This book is a tour de force of the great US tradition of self-improvement. For those who aim to be "a demanding reader" the advice could not be better. It outlines levels of reading and approaches to different types of book, fiction, history, philosophy etc. Adler recommends we read books "that must seem to you to be beyond your capacity?.There is no limit to the growth and development that the mind can sustain." The preachy, no slouching around on beaches with Dick Francis tone, does get wearing but this book raises important questions.
Find it at Amazon: How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book)
Donald Bain, a Scottish Colourist. William Hardie Ltd.
A beautifully simple guide to one of the less well known Scots painters, Donald Bain, born in Kilmacolm in 1904, died in 79. He moved around France, worked in the Clyde shipyards during the war, and knew Matisse during his stay in St Paul de Vence. There are some stunning plates of Bain's remarkable oils and watercolours. He designed A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Margaret Morris Celtic Ballet in 1948 and believed "Cézanne is the master most modern painters ignore." What adds to this book is his correspondence. He wrote to J.D. Fergusson from Paris, the Alpes Maritimes, and from back home "en Ecosse." The voice in the letters is as determined and confident as his use of colour.
Twentieth Century Scottish Drama. Ed Cairns Craig and Randall Stevenson. Canongate Classics.
11 classic texts, chosen to give an overview of the century, from Barrie's Mary Rose and Bridie's Mr Bolfry, to Roddy McMillan's Bevellers, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off by Liz Lochhead and Chris Hannan's Shining Souls. The introduction summarises the development of Scottish theatre, how emphasis shifted from the amateur SCDA to a professional theatre, notably with the establishment of the Citizens and Edinburgh festival productions. Scottish political and artistic life in the latter half of the century had drama at the cutting edge. It continues to thrive. Homage is paid to McGrath and others who were omitted simply because they are widely available. An essential book.
Find it at Amazon: Twentieth-century Scottish Drama...
Damage Land. New Scottish Gothic Fiction. Ed Alan Bissett. Polygon.
Bissett's understanding of "Gothic," is widely inclusive. The recommended bibliography includes Jenkin's Cone Gatherers, Tam O Shanter and Kelman's "How late it was how late." It is, he asserts, "not a genre but a way of seeing. It is that which is going on beneath the world?. does not believe in the unity of self? almost all of Scotland's great modern novelists seem to have captured this is in some form or another." Ali Smith, Michael Faber, Laura Hird et al fashion narratives of varying degrees of grimness round AIDs, vampire kisses and so on. Maggie O'Farrell's "You are Here" deals with the same subject as her novel mentioned above. Whether the Scots, who apparently have an unquenchable thirst for murder and ghoulish horrors, are uniquely distinguishable by this, is a moot point. Find it at Amazon: Damage Land; New Scottish Gothic Fiction
Hey yeah right get a life. Helen Simpson. Vintage.
In this, Simpson's third collection, each story complements the others, depicting the hectic whirlpool of women's lives, at work, at home, and on holiday. The characters are confronted by situations ranging from excruciating to hilarious. It is a book in which anyone who has had children will recognise some classic situations and laugh at their own experience. Simpson chooses her words with care and her ear for dialogue is acute. Scots will find the description of a female banker's interpretation of a corporate Burns night in "Burns and the Bankers" an enlightening read. These stories peer into other lives and the longing to learn more about the characters and discover how things worked out adds to the pleasure of having them pop up here and there in one another's stories.
Find it at Amazon: Hey Yeah Right Get a Life
Five Quarters of the Orange. Joanne Harris.
This was the June book for the Hillhead library afternoon reading group, an excellent institution, highly recommended. The majority decision was favourable, with members inspired to go seek out Chocolat and Blackberry Wine on the strength of it. Only two people, of whom I was one, were not happy with it, mainly because Framboise, the main character is such a vicious creation, with fewer redeeming features than her late mother, siblings and children, all of whom are damaged and loveless to varying degrees. The father's death before the novel begins foreshadows many more. But those who found her childhood in occupied France totally believable and her later story a satisfactory conclusion to the menacing events in the wartime village, heavily outnumbered the two of us. We were reminded that war and occupation have such consequences. Joanne Harris did an enormous amount of research so authenticity is not in doubt, and her structure, based on a diary/recipe collection, is impeccable. Many fans of her earlier books were disappointed with "Five Quarters", perhaps because it reneges on the metaphorical use of food as love, with orange peel as a weapon of torment, a bitter family feud over recipes, and well fed children demonstrating virtually Shakespearian ingratitude.
Find it at Amazon: Five Quarters of the Orange
Events
Ottakar's
15th July
Ex-SAS soldier turned novelist, Chris Ryan, will be signing copies of his new hardback 'Land of Fire', plus the 'Alpha Force' books for teenagers, in store from 1pm.
C Macrae. July 02.
Archive: Book Guide 3
Discuss my book selection in the Forum - and add you own recommendations.
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