KiwiFloraReads

DECEMBER READING: RESTORATION by Rose Tremain

This very fine novel was first published in 1989. Writing some twenty years later about this book, the author states that this story was her 'fictional response to the climate of selfishness and material greed that began to prevail in our society during the Thatcher years, from which we have never recovered and for which we are now beginning to pay a terrifying price'. Four years on from making this statement of course, society is no better off. Which ensures that a story such as as this has as much relevance now as it did 25 years ago, and 325 years before that when it is set in the equally greedy time of the reign of Charles II.

When the story begins, in 1664, Robert Merivel is a 37 year old physician. Since he was a child he has been fascinated by how the body works, over the years developing his knowledge and an enormous respect for the human condition. The restoration of a king to the throne of England in 1661 awakens a frenzy of celebration and hedonism in the population at large which Robert is desperate to become a part of. Fortunately for Robert, his father is a glove maker to the King, which does improve his chances of getting close to the King. In a peculiar piece of good luck he cures one of the royal spaniels and finds himself firmly in place at the royal court. But he is really no more than a plaything of the King, a pawn to be used as the King sees fit, and in the process Robert loses some of himself. He finds himself married to one of the King's mistresses, ostensibly to keep another mistress happy. As a reward for this service he is knighted, given lands and a house miles away in Norfolk and forbidden from falling in love with his wife. Naturally he does fall in love, and in a single kingly stroke, all his good fortune is taken away from him.

What follows is Robert's rediscovery of himself and his own personal restoration to the man that was always there, but had been temporarily waylaid by the madness and greed around him. Destitute and homeless, he makes his way to where John Pearce, his oldest friend, a Quaker who had been a fellow medical student with him, now lives - an establishment that cares for mentally disturbed people. All the way through the novel John Pearce acts a bit like Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio - that little conscience just sitting out of sight on Robert's shoulder. Robert always knows that John's way is the right way; he just has some trouble getting on the right path!

The journey of restoring body and soul is long and fraught with the crazy house not being the end of the road for Robert by any means. But slowly and surely, Robert Merivel, Physician and Surgeon, finds happiness and peace and his own self. Robert is a fully rounded character, with his fair share of human failings and strengths. He encourages us all to look into ourselves and find the goodness within, as well as the moral courage to make a stand.

This is a long book, not a light summer read, but one to be savoured and lingered over. The research into 17th century life, in the country, the hideous cities, the court life, treatment of the sick, the Plague, the Great Fire of London, dress, diet, transport, is outstanding. As is the writing. The author is a very classy writer, and I am very much looking forward to reading the recently published sequel called simply 'Merivel'.

DECEMBER READING: Oh Dear Silvia

OH DEAR SILVIA by Dawn French

Review copy kindly supplied by Penguin Books NZ via Booksellers New Zealand.

Dawn French - everyone's funny lady, mainstay of British light television, and yet, like many comedians, also brilliant at serious thought, producing work that has considerably more depth to it than the laughs generated. Should we be surprised then that her second book is a serious book? Poignant and reflective, it highlights how in life the wires that hold our relationships with family and those dear to us can become quite tenuous, and how difficult it can be to repair those bonds. And that is often because we don't know what caused them to bend and break in the first place, so of course can't then fix them.

This story is all about Silvia, and how every single meaningful relationship she has had in her life is in absolute tatters. Strangely, Silvia is in a coma, lying in a hospital bed, in a vegetative state. So, rightly or wrongly, we never actually hear from Silvia herself as to how or why she is in this current predicament. For the purposes of the story she is a prop, but a prop who is the focus of the visitors that come to see her, to talk/shout/cry/reflect/scream/laugh, as they come to terms with the fact that Silvia may not be around for too much longer.

The cast of 'loved ones' is not huge, but varied and rich in complexity, damaged and vengeful, loving and protective, hurt and sad. So through their stories, we find out exactly how Silvia ended up in this small hospital room facing her own demise. There is her ex-husband Ed, her estranged daughter Cassie and absent son Jamie, her older, completely bonkers sister Jo, her lover Cat, her cleaner Tia, and overseeing all with her warmth and humanity the gorgeous nurse Winnie who, a bit like the chorus that features in Greek theatre, holds the whole thing together.

But let us not forget that the book has been written by a woman renowned for her comedy, both in writing and performing. This story reeks of Dawn French's voice. This may be distracting for some, but I loved it. I could hear her voice saying large chunks of the dialogue or even doing an audio version of the book. I could see in my mind's eye exactly how the nutty sister Jo looks and behaves. There are some truly hilarious moments in this story, that may well have you laughing out loud. There is a page of exquisite writing when Ed is looking at Silvia's hands lying on outside of the sheets - a page of writing about her hands - how do you make a page of writing about a pair of hands so beautiful? But it epitomises so gently and poignantly the intimacy of a marriage or relationship. We know from her comedy how cleverly Dawn French captures the human condition, and here she shows she can also do it in writing.

This is a great read, not too deep, not too shallow, but with just enough pathos, loose endings tied up, and the power of love and forgiveness to make it amazingly satisfying. Ah yes, you think when you finish it, that had a little bit of everything, and in just the right quantities.

READING IN DECEMBER: Intimate Death;

INTIMATE DEATH: HOW THE DYING TEACH US TO LIVE by Marie de Hennezel.

This book is also known as 'Seize the Day' depending on the publisher.

I work closely with terminally ill patients, helping them compile biographies of their lives to leave their families. And yet this process is as much about the patient as it is about the legacy being left. Is there anything more cathartic and indulgent than telling a complete stranger stories about your life, and then seeing it in writing and adorned with photos? For the patient it gives dignity and honour at a difficult time. For me, and I imagine other biographers, it is perhaps one of the most humbling and humane things that can be done for another person. And brings home to me, so much younger than most of the patients I deal with, the title of this book - how the dying teach us to live. Death is a subject that in our Western civilisation bubble, we choose not to think about until we are suddenly confronted with it. In the flood of emotions that corkscrew through us, we find death is something we are really quite ill equipped to deal with. This beautifully written, and at times achingly sad book lifts the lid on, quite simply, what it is like to die. The author is a psychologist/psychotherapist who specialises in caring for palliative care patients. She works mainly in hospice settings in France. This book has been translated from French. This woman has compassion in buckets, and it seems to me walks a very fine line between her professional role in caring for the patient, and her instincts as a human being to nurture and love those she is caring for. She takes a number of patients of various ages suffering from various illnesses - cancer, aids, motor neurone - and shows us that one's last journey need not be as sad, awful, and heartbreaking as we think it is. By giving these patients dignity, talking to them, letting them talk, not wallowing in sadness when with them, the whole business takes on new and uplifting meaning. The most important things I got out of this book? The importance of a smile, the importance of the touch of hand on hand, and what it really means to be human.

NOVEMBER READING : WAITING FOR SUNRISE

WAITING FOR SUNRISE by William Boyd

In our book club we love William Boyd. His books are always satisfying, complicated, great plots, interesting flawed protagonists, or as one reviewer puts it - there is always a 'Dude with a Problem'. And the author himself is timeless, judging by the photo that graces the book covers. Although as an aside, the photo on the cover of this, his latest, does actually resemble a man who could be approaching 60 years of age!

Lysander Rief is a young Englishman, an actor, who is the son of a now deceased famous actor father. He is engaged to a young actress. He comes to Vienna in 1913 to seek a cure for a personal and private problem, Vienna of course being the home to Sigmund Freud and his theories of psychoanalysis. Lysander is very much an innocent abroad, rather dull, indecisive, bit of a wimp really. In Vienna he meets a wide assortment of very interesting people ranging from his fellow lodgers, his therapist, a fellow patient with whom he has a very complicated entanglement, and some fellow Brits. Life suddenly takes a very dark turn for Lysander, and it seems as if he goes through a personality transplant in the process. The result is a man of action who would not be out of place in a John Le Carre novel. Suddenly his life has a purpose, ie save it, and in the process uncover a mole deep inside the British military machine.

Because of course, by now it is World War I. Lysander is quite literally, thrown in the deep end, on his quest to solve the intelligence leak. This takes him to the trenches, to Switzerland, back to England, tripping around all over the south coast, dealing again with his complicated entanglement, finding true love, and finally managing to derail the traitor. Quite an achievement really for someone whose life only months before appeared to be going nowhere.

I know it is all only fiction and made up, but the changes that take place in Lysander I did find a little far fetched. Maybe his psychotherapy treatment produced a truly new man! Maybe those acting genes finally kick in. The book could be psycho analysed forever in an attempt to understand the author's purpose. But it doesn't really matter because this is a very readable, action filled, page turner of a book. The story may be a little uneven, the ending a bit of an anti climax, but William Boyd's writing, as usual, is flawless. It doesn't take much for him to pick the reader up and throw them into the action too.

READING IN NOVEMBER - Waiting for Sunrise; Bitter Almonds; We Are All Made of Glue; The Blasphemer

BITTER ALMONDS by Mary Taylor Simeti and Maria Grammatico

I have mixed feelings about this book. Firstly what sort of book is it? Is it a recipe book - 111 pages of its 229 pages are recipes; secondly is it biography of Maria Grammatico or thirdly is it a memoir of Mary Taylor Simeti telling how she came to be telling Maria's story. And these two latter stories cover the first 118 pages.

There is a terrific story here in the life Maria Grammatico. In the 1950s, her impoverished mother sent her, at the age of 11, and her older sister to live in the enclosed and cloistered world of the local convent. There were approximately 22 people living in the convent of whom 13 were nuns, the rest young girls such as Maria and her sister. Maria lived here till the age of 25, when she left the convent. The only skills she had were how to make the delicious, dainty, delectable pastries, sweetmeats and biscuits that she had 'acquired' over the years living with the nuns. The nuns produced vast quantities of these morsels to sell to the locals on feast days and religious celebrations/ceremonies. None for the girls. It was an appalling existence really for young girls. There was never enough food, very few comforts, very little if any freedom, no celebrations or fun of any kind. The one solace for Maria was the kitchen. Now, in her fifties, she still lives in the town the convent was in - Erice - and has her own very famous and highly regarded Italian patisserie where she makes, by hand, all the delicacies she had learnt all those years ago. On You Tube there are some lovely films of Maria in her kitchen and interviews with her about her life. I would love to have had the whole 229 pages about her life, more about what convent life was like, more about what happened to her when she left the convent, how she started her business - I kid you not, it is summarised in one paragraph. Very very disappointing.

So is the book then a memoir of the writer, Mary Taylor Simeti and how she came to meet Maria and write the book. Unfortunately there is almost as much about this as there is about Maria. Mary is a successful writer herself, married to a Sicilian and living on Sicily. Her books about Sicilian food and travel are highly regarded and would appear to be well worth reading. But to me, this little book, should not be about her, and unfortunately it is. She intersperses Maria's story with snippets from her own, and the thread really does at times become quite confusing.

Then we come to the remaining 111 pages of recipes. And glorious they are too! From almond dough, almond cream, ricotta tart, citron jam, marzipan, fig biscuits, preserves - 46 recipes in total. And all this is marvellous to read too! But is it perhaps just a little too much?

My overall feeling on finishing this book was that I felt cheated. And that Maria actually deserved more. Maybe one day someone will write a real biography of Maria's story instead of this offering.

WE ARE ALL MADE OF GLUE by Marina Lewycka I actually really liked this book, despite the many negative reviews that have been written about it. No, it is not nearly as good as her first novel 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian' or even 'Two Caravans', but I found it hugely enjoyable with its convoluted slightly ridiculous plot, equally eccentric and stereotyped characters, and at times really quite funny. I enjoyed this novel far more than the author's latest 'Various Pets Dead and Alive' which I reviewed in September, even though it is all over the place and has more threads going on than an out of control sewing machine. Georgie Sinclair has recently separated from her husband Rip (ridiculous name). She has two children, the younger one Ben is still at school and lives with her. The daughter, Olivia is at university. Georgie has a rather strange job writing for a trade magazine that specialises in glues and adhesives. So all the chapters are headed with some sort of adhesive that may or may not be relevant to the contents of the chapter, for example Rubber, Biopolymer, The Attraction Between Adhesives and Adherends'. Very intriguing. Her husband walking out after an argument over the attachment of a toothbrush holder to the bathroom wall has left Georgie in a bit of a state. In the process of venting her rage by throwing all his precious LPs into a skip she meets an elderly, possibly eccentric lady who resides nearby called Mrs Shapiro. An unlikely friendship begins to unfold. Georgie suddenly finds herself named by Mrs Shapiro as her next of kin following an accident that requires the latter to stay in hospital for a spell, and then run the gauntlet of compulsory and permanent removal to a rest home. It becomes Georgie's 'job' to protect Mrs Shapiro's interests from the Social Welfare bureaucrats, the local real estate agents/sharks, feed the stray cat population, and try to find out more about Mrs Shapiro, her mysterious past and hopefully some relatives. At the same time Georgie is dealing with her Ben who is losing himself in the cyber universe convinced the world is going to end any day, Rip the husband, her closet romance writing (dreadful),and her own search for new love. This book highlights just perfectly how there is nowt as queer as folk, that we are all bound together in some way or other, and that out of any situation that may arise, with a little effort there is always a way forward. Yes it has it faults. For example I am still not really sure why the marriage reached such a crisis point, the overly simplistic view of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, even the mysterious past of Mrs Shapiro. But despite all this it is a joy to read, and likely to leave a smile on your face at the end of many of the gluey chapters.

THE BLASPHEMER by Nigel Farndale

My goodness, there is SO much going on in this book, it's a minor miracle it is all packaged up and concluded in 492 pages. Is there a God or is there not? Was the earth created in seven days or not? Are there angels or not? And that is just for starters. But having said that, these three questions form the crux of the novel.

Daniel Kennedy is an atheist. He is also an associate professor of zoology at Trinity College in London, and has recently written and fronted a natural history television programme. He lives in London with his long time girlfriend Nancy and their nine year old daughter Martha. When the book opens he and Nancy are preparing to take a trip to where the creation vs evolution debate began - the Galapagos Islands. On the way to their island destination, the sea plane crashes, Daniel makes an error of judgement, but does survive, as does Nancy, although his actions reverberate for months afterwards. Immediately post crash, as penance perhaps, Daniel makes the decision to swim the 14-odd kilometers to shore for help and during the swim has a vision of a young man - angel - who encourages him, enabling Daniel to hang on and eventually reach shore. All is well. Except for Nancy and Daniel's relationship which goes into freefall.

Running parallel to Daniel's story is that of his great grandfather, Private Andrew Kennedy, 21 years old, on his first day facing the horrors of Passchendaele. Andrew is a plumber, a very ordinary young man, brought up to believe in a God and that God is on the side of the right, which naturally includes him. His first day of war is a complete disaster, and he sees a vision which takes him off the battlefield, into a village in France, only to find himself some months later in front of a firing squad for desertion.

As if these two threads don't have plenty of potential for plot and character, the author also throws in radical Muslims and terrorist attacks, a bitter and twisted university academic, nine year old Martha madly in love with her teacher, Mahler and Vaughan Williams, old age and mortality, distinguished military careers, other love interests, and long winded philosophical discussions on whether there are angels or are such visions a frontal lobe malfunction due to extreme stress. Quite frankly it all gets a bit much, with the whole story becoming quite incongruous and far too many coincidences for it to have any chance of being truly credible.

But despite the weakness with plot and lack of character development of some important people in the story, this does actually read very well and is quite a page turner. The author knows how to make a story. I did enjoy it, and who knows, maybe there really are angels out there.

READING FOR OCTOBER - The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut

THE GOOD DOCTOR by Damon Galgut

You know there will be no happy ending when the opening line is 'The first time I saw him I thought, he won't last.' The first two pages are full of words like - tall, thin, dusty, empty, frail, wilting, burden of leaves, ragged trees, basic standard issue, ugly, austere - and the best one of all which sums up the whole mood of the book - bleak. What a writer this man is. From beginning to end the reader is taken on slowly unwinding spool of inevitable tragedy. Danger and a sense of foreboding is all around, as is the disintegration of the physical surroundings and the people themselves.

In the confusion of post-Apartheid South Africa, Dr Frank Eloff is a white doctor who has been working for seven years in a hospital in a remote rural outpost. The town was once the 'capital' of one of the many homelands set up by the apartheid government for self rule by the local tribal groups. There was a president, a flag, a parliament, statues of venerable leaders, in this case the Dictator, in the town square - all the trappings but none of the clout. Now there are no longer the trappings, with empty buildings and bits of statues strewn around the desolate country side. What rules now is violence, suspicion and despondency.

The hospital has gradually been allowed to become more rundown and neglected, staff who leave not being replaced, equipment and fittings slowly disappearing and not being replaced. The black doctor in charge does not want to be there but is powerless to move. Frank no longer really cares, and has come to see the hospital as his refuge from a messed up personal life. Into all this one day walks young recently graduated doctor Laurence Waters, who is on a one year's compulsory community medical practice stint. Being young, idealistic and energetic he wants to make a difference and so has chosen this particular derelict rundown operation to leave his mark.

His arrival, quite simply, upsets the proverbial apple cart. He has ideas, plans, wants to explore, asks too many questions, wants to put things right and in the process upsets the delicate balance between the various groups within the local community. The opposing personalities of Frank and Laurence are at the core of the novel, much like the new South Africa - the old being supplanted by the new. Being the only white men on site, (there is also a doctor husband and wife team from Cuba), Frank is forced to share his room with him. As a result, both unintentionally and deliberately, they constantly irritate each other and this becomes the undoing of both of them.

Damon Galgut is South African and grew up during the turbulent and dark times of the 1960s and 1970s, coming to adult hood in the early 1980s. This was his first novel and made such an immediate impression it was short listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2003. He pulls no punches with what he thinks of the current state of his country of birth, and what it has become. He also appears to have little hope for the future of the country.

But the book does end on a hopeful note, with Frank finally having achieved his goal of being head of the hospital and the many challenges that brings. There is a sense of hope and contentment in Frank's world, although maybe after seven years he has become so part of the local community he works in that he can't actually see a way out.

THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC by Julie Otsuka

A little book of 129 pages, with the most perfect writing. Seven chapters with deceptively simple titles such as 'Babies', 'Traitors', 'Last Day' that capture so poignantly and sadly the lives of a group of Japanese women, ranging in age from 13 to late forties. Early last century, they journeyed by boat from Japan to San Francisco to marry Japanese men they had never met. Apparently hundreds of Japanese women were such mail order brides to America. The book finishes during World War II with the arrest/internment of all those of Japanese descent into camps for the duration of the war. How does a writer sum all that these women went through in just 129 pages?

The author does not use just one voice, or just one person's story, but brilliantly tells numerous stories at any one time by using the collective 'we'. So the chapter titled 'Babies' which is all of five pages long has a few hundred sentences, each one beginning with the word 'we' describing in just one sentence a different experience of giving birth in this new country. So even though the reader only gets a snap shot of any one woman's life, collectively we learn an enormous amount about the overall life of each woman. It is very very clever, very very effective and hardly surprising that this book has won a number of American writing awards.

The author, of Japanese descent, herself has based this story on her own family's experiences after the Pearl Harbour bombing. It is written with such love, tenderness and sense of loss, that the story stays for quite some time after finishing. This is the shortest review I think I have done, but I don't need to tell you anymore about this book. It can be read in one sitting, and fully deserves to be. Unlike many books I read, I am so glad I bought this one because I get to keep it.

THE SEALED LETTER by Emma Donoghue

Before she wrote the riveting 'Room', this Irish author wrote 'The Sealed Letter'. And it couldn't be more different from 'Room'. Based on an actual event and real people, this story is about three individuals in Victorian London who, to their peril, find themselves up against the Establishment, fighting for their honour and good names.

Vice-Admiral Harry Codrington is a career navy man from a family with a sterling military pedigree. He is married to the much younger beautiful and enchanting Helen, with whom he has had two young daughters. Recently returned to London from a posting in Malta, both Harry and Helen are not finding the return to the more restrained and proper society of London very easy. By chance, Helen one day literally runs into her former confidante and companion Miss Emily Faithfull. Fido, as she is known, is an unmarried woman, late twenties, who is a true blue feminist, involved in various causes, as well as being the owner/manager of a successful printing business.

Suddenly Fido finds herself drawn back into the unhappy marriage of Harry and Helen, and the disastrous fall out that results from Helen's adulterous affairs. As befits the mores of the time, there is a huge scandal, and a high profile court case as Harry petitions to divorce his wife. As well as producing the usual evidence gathered by a private detective and bizarrely a dress with a suggestive stain on it (this actually happened - move over Bill Clinton), he also tries to discredit Helen by bringing into question the true nature of the friendship between the two women. Back then, if the woman can be proved to be at fault, as well as being tarnished with the label 'divorcee' she also lost all custody, rights to money, marital property, care and any involvement at all with her children - she may as well be dead. No doubt this kept many marriages together. But for someone like Fido, fiercely committed to the rights of women, dealing with this and the rumours swirling around, all placed her between a rock and a hard place.

The actual trial and the subsequent mind games don't occur till the last third of the book. So the majority of the book is the background to the situation, the setting up of the relationships, the careful manipulations. It is so well done and so well thought out that by the time of the trial, we realise that all three people are as much victims of each other as well as of the society they live in. Who would want to live in Victorian England? The poor had a terrible time - Dickens - but the rich or richer, especially if female, didn't really have a much better time.

Although based on fact and real people, the author seems to have created her own versions of Harry, Helen and Fido. No doubt they bear some resemblance to the real people, but they may also enable her to highlight the hypocrisy of the times, as well as the dangerous path many women trod, whether they were unhappily married mothers or independent unmarried businesswomen. Were you allowed to be either way back then? I'm just glad that I was born one hundred plus years later!

READING IN OCTOBER - Rangatira by Paula Morris

RANGATIRA by Paula Morris

It has taken some years for Paula Morris to finish her meticulously crafted and told tale of her tupuna's (ancestor's) journey to England in 1863. Her tupuna was Ngati Wai chief Paratene Te Manu. He was a fierce warrior who fought with Hone Heke against other tribes, and fully embraced the arrival of the European with their muskets and other influences. After a time he converted to Christianity, quickly taking on the mores and ways of the European Christians around him. In 1863, now an exemplary convert, along with 13 other chiefs, he made the long and not very pleasant voyage to England. The chief objective of this tour was to meet Queen Victoria, as was fitting for their chiefly status in Maori society. The trip was organised and funded by members of the Wesley Methodist church in New Zealand, three of whom also made the journey. As well as an audience with the Queen, the other aims of the trip were to allow the chiefs to see what a great nation England was in its industrial and economic development and to allow the English themselves to see first hand the high ranking Christianised chiefs from England's furthest outpost. The whole adventure, that started with such high hopes and I would say honorable intentions, fairly quickly descended into disorder, sickness, exploitation, misunderstanding and tragedy. The story is narrated in the first person by Paratene himself, some twenty years later. He is now an old man and has agreed to undertake a number of sittings for a portrait to be completed by the artist Gottfried Lindauer. This is the picture that is the cover for the book, although apparently the original painting was done from a photo. However we won't let that get in the way of a good story! Mr Lindauer is shortly to leave on a long sea voyage himself and this, combined with the long sitting sessions allows Paratene to reflect on his own life changing long sea voyage. The research the author has put into this book is extraordinary, and it shows in the richness of detail and quality of writing. We experience the discomfort and confinement of being in steerage for the sea voyage through the eyes of Paratene, who has never been in such a situation before, and already sees this an omen for how the rest of the tour will turn out. Hardly an appropriate accommodation for a group of chiefs. We also see the squalor, poverty, violence and ugliness of Dickensian London through the wide-open eyes of Paratene, as well as the luxury and grandeur of the higher echelons of English society they find themselves in. Amidst the chaos the tour turns into, Paratene documents the kindness and concern they receive from perfect strangers who see the Maori chiefs for the symbols of conquest they become. Throughout Paratene maintains his dignity and manners, unlike some of the others in the party. This makes him the perfect narrator for such a tale as at all times he tries to see both sides of what is going on around him. At times I did find his objectivity frustrating - I don't think any person of such intelligence and perception could remain so distanced, almost passive by what was going on around him. Nevertheless, as he is narrating his story some twenty years after the event, it is hardly surprising the urgency, emotion and immediacy of the situation has faded over time. Perhaps what I found most interesting about the whole book was how emphatically and righteously the Christian Maori totally embraced everything European and openly rejected their traditional Maori ways, all in the space of one generation. This included things such as European dress, performance of haka, songs and prayers, learning to read, write and speak English. Quite different from today! As the quote from the Bible on page 137 says 'For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?'