Random Jottings

It is a Truth universally acknowledged...

....that books based on characters in Jane Austen are very silly and usually pretty poorly written. This has been proved true once again by an extremely daft book I picked up (yes it is that 3 for 2 promotion again which has been responsible for me picking up the odd clanger now and then, but at least I didn't pay for it) called The True Darcy Spirit by Elizabeth Aston. This author has also written Mr Darcy's Daughters (apparently he and Lizzie Bennett had five) and also The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy.

This novel tells the story of a distant cousin, Cassandra Darcy, who lives at Rosings and is the grandaughter of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.  She elopes disastrously with a young naval lieutenant who is just after her money and abandons her when it is not forthcoming, and is cast off by her family.  The family lawyer turns out to be Horatio Darcy, cousin to the well known Mr Darcy, who is also haughty and proud and dislikes Cassandra the minute he sees her (so we know how it is going to end then).  Apparently, Cassandra is to be punished by being sent off to live with Maria Rushworth and Aunt Norris who, as we all know, has been disowned by her family, the Bertrams of Mansfield Park.  Cassandra could not contemplate the awfulness of her fate so ran away again (at this stage I did wonder if she was going to smuggle herself aboard Captain Wentworth's ship).  The whole thing was just too silly for words.

I made the mistake of checking this book out on Amazon and within ten minutes found My Recommendations deluged with sequels to Jane Austen.  You can buy (if you are interested):

• Mr Knightley's Diary
• Mr Darcy's Diary (cannot resist this one!)
• Conviction: a sequel to Pride and Prejudice
• The Second Mrs Darcy
• Darcy's Pemberley
• Darcy and Elizabeth: Days and Nights at Pemberley

You will notice one thing, that with the exception of Mr Knightley's diary most of these books are sequels or stories about Pride and Prejudice.  Joan Aiken, many years ago produced the first of these books, Mansfield Revisited and has also produced one on Jane Fairfax, but the Austen industry does seem to concentrate on Pride and Prejudice ad nauseam.  As far as I know, nobody has tried to write further about Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, for which I can only be thankful.

I think Jane Austen would find all these rather amusing.

Restless

Having picked this up a few weeks ago as one of the 3 for 2, the usual promotion in Waterstones, I then spotted a review of said book over on Patternings which I read with interest before I had even opened my copy.  Not sure if this is always a good idea but it prepared me for what was coming and made it sound an interesting and intriguing read.

Well, I did find it interesting but not exactly earth shattering.  The book starts with Ruth finding out that her mother, Sally Gilmartin, is really Eva Delectorskaya, a fully fledged and trained spy who speaks fluent Russian, can use a gun and has actually killed.  The book is told from two view points, that of Eva and that of Ruth and I have to say that while I found the sections told by Eva to be gripping, I found my attention slipping when we reverted back to Ruth who seemed to me to be an extraordinarily uninteresting person. She teaches English to foreign students, seems to be writing a thesis, and gets involved in a very half hearted way with German anarchists and a demonstration against the Shah of Iran.  The book is set in the 70s and it all sounds very artificial and badly researched with these story lines involving Ruth going absolutely nowhere.

The blurb says that Eva has to do one last mission and cannot do it on her own, hence, Ruth. Quite frankly, she could have done it on her own and I think the book would have been much better if we had had the one narrative.  Ruth seemed totally surplus to requirements.

It is a good, gripping spy thriller which is very very filmic, if the Ruth scenes are left out which would tighten the story up much more.  I indulged in my usual pastime of casting the main parts and it was obvious that Cate Blanchette could play Eva, and Ralph Fiennes Luke Rohmer (having read some reviews on Amazon another reviewer also plumped for Cate B) and if a film is not too far away, I would not be surprised.

So a good way to pass a couple of hours, but not sure I will bother with exploring this author further.

Crock of the Day - Easter Sunday

 

Well you have not had a Crock of the Day since Tuesday so here the one chosen for today.  The sun is shining, the daffodils are blooming and here is a jugful of them.  I bought this jug in a pottery in Majorca back in 1994.  I have a little matching bowl as well which I use for beating up eggs when I make an omelette.  I love the combination of yellow and green and always use it for daffodils.

I was on holiday for one wonderful week with a very special person when I bought this and so it holds a lot of memories for me.

I hope you like it.

Keeping the World Away

I have just finished reading this rather marvellous book and wish to write about it while the impression and feelings I am experiencing are still fresh in my mind.  It is Easter Sunday and as I awoke at 6 am with the sun shining in the window and I am all alone, but not lonely, in my little apartment, I decided to finish off this latest Margaret Forster which I had to put down last night when sleep overcame me.

The reason I mentioned being alone and not lonely, is because this book tells the story of a painting, how it came to be painted by a woman living alone in an attic room in Paris and its adventures, the various people who come to own it and the one thing they have in common - they like and wish to be alone, to keep their separateness, their own personality.  None of these women are in any way reclusive or selfish, they have relationships, they have friends, they have family, but ultimately realise that they are happy alone.

The painting is by Gwen John, a British painter who died in 1939, sister of Augustus John.  I had heard of them but know very little (there is a bibliography at the back of this book and, alas, I now feel that a Gwen John read is coming on).  Apparently "Her choice of subject-matter throughout her career remained based on the figure - usually a single figure, and usually a woman in an interior".  I have tracked down an image of the painting used as the focal point in this book and according to the note attached to it:

"The empty chair, discarded clothes and open book suggest the artist's invisible presence, and the painting conveys much about her life, a sense of controlled passion, of order, quiet and absolute calm"

The story opens with a young art student, Gillian, viewing a painting in a gallery and wondering about its history.  Not the history in a catalogue or book, but its domestic history. Who had owned it?  What were the feelings of the people who had hung it on its walls, had they appreciated it or taken it for granted?  This is a very intriguing thought.  It is well known that Van Gogh never sold any of his painting while he was alive so one assumes they were in a corner unappreciated and ignored.  He gave paintings away in settlement of tradesman's bills or just to free up some space in his studio, so what did the recipients think of them?   I look at my print of the Yellow Room or Sunflowers and while I love them (Van Gogh is my favourite painter), I am not sure that any recipients of any of his paintings felt that here was a work of genius.  They were probably propped up on the mantelpiece or forgotten or used as a doorstop or something of that kind.  Would I recognise such a painting if given to me - I very much doubt it.

Margaret Forster has woven a simply wonderful story around this painting.  Her last novel Diary of an Ordinary Woman, I found slightly disconcerting as at first appearance it appears a non-fiction book, but then discovered it was not.  It had the same mixture of reality and fiction as Keeping the World Away but this time I had no problem with it.

I have been reading Margaret Forster for some forty years now and I think this is her best book yet. I daresay this is because I feel a connection with all the women in this story and understand their feelings which is, of course, is what a book is meant to do, engage the reader and make them feel that the author understands them perfectly.  I had hesitated buying it when it was first published, but could not resist it when I came across the paperback last week.  I am very glad I picked it up.  So far, one of my books of the year.

"It has a history.  I don't know what it is, but something is there, more than the paint on the canvas. Don't you think so?  Don't artists want to put more than the paint on the canvas?"

The Death of Dalziel

The above title of the latest Reginald Hill book made me pause.  Surely he was not going to kill off the Fat Man?  Was he going to go the way of Inspector Frost whose author has also said he is going to kill him off?  I have just finished this book and it is nip and tuck all the way with an ending that made my mouth fall open and, therefore, I certainly do not feel I can say any more for those of you who will be reading this.

As with the Inspector Lynley series the TV dramatisations are merely 'based on the characters of' and have very little connection with the books themselves, with the stories and characters going off in totally different directions.  Do not watch the TV Dalziel and Pasoce and expect them to exactly mirror the stories, they don't.  The TV series is most enjoyable and so are the books, just keep them separate that is all.

I read my first Reginald Hill book about four years ago, another one of those random grabs in 3 for 2 at Waterstones and the like.  It turned out to be Death's Jest Book, a most erudite and literary murderer, so densely plotted and written that I had to have a dictionary by my side to check some of the words used by the author.  This was followed by Dialogues of the Dead which followed on from the previous one and tied up a lot of rather surprising loose ends.  As you all know by now, I am a binge reader so having discovered the Manchester duo, I decided to read the earlier ones of which there were some dozen or so.  I have to say I was slightly disappointed in them.  They were all well written straightforward thrillers, a good read and of their genre, excellent but they were not a patch on the two I have just mentioned.  Those two books were really streets ahead of the others in plotting and characterisation.  This latest one is of the same high standard and had me gripped from the start.

Dalziel and Pascoe are sent to the scene of a siege where a gun man is holding some hostages in a newsagents shop which is suspected of housing a terrorist cell.  As the fact the gunman was spotted and reported by Hector, one of the dimmest policemen ever to grace the Yorkshire Constabulary, nobody takes it very seriously but they certainly do when suddenly the street is rocked by an explosion and a bomb is detonated with Dalziel and Pascoe caught in the blast.

While Dalziel is critically hurt in the explosion Pascoe receives only marginal injuries and sets about trying to track down the perpetrators.  The security services have written it off as an accident, with the terrorist suspects having paid for their clumsiness with their lives.  Pascoe is not so sure, particularly as a shadowy group calling themselves the Knights Templar start executing suspected terrorists in the cause of public justice and he finds a link with the bombing.  He is seconded to the Anti-Terrorist unit investigating the incident and soon begins to wonder if there is a leak in the department, a contact who is feeding information to the Knights Templar. 

This is great stuff, real page turning and gripping and I sat up very late on Friday night to finish it off, secure in the knowledge that I did not have to get up early the next morning to go to work so could indulge myself.  And, without revealing anything, I can tell you now that there is a final twist to the story on the very very last page which took my breath away.

And does Dalziel die?  Well you will have to read it and see............

Suffer the Little Children

I finished this last night and was very sad to close the book on the final page.  I have a year to wait now before another one so I may just have to re-read some of the others which I raced through last summer.  I am sure I will enjoy them in a more leisurely way this time.

Leisurely is the key word here.  As with the Alistair McCall Smith books I have recently blogged about, these Donna Leon stories (I hesitate to call them crime thrillers or mysteries) are not exactly pacey and will not have you sitting on the edge of your seat.  If the Precious Ramotswe books are to be read accompanied by a mug of Red Bush Tea, and the Sunday Philosophy Club series with a cup of coffee and a piece of Edinburgh shortbread, then all of Donna Leon must be enjoyed with a glass of wine and a bowl of pasta or, failing that, more coffee but this time accompanied by a freshly baked pastry from the local pasticceria.

We are left in no doubt that Venice is a decayed and corrupt city or, at least, that is how our hero Commisario Guido Brunetti views it.  Of course, he loves it.  It is his home town but he is saddened and disillusioned by what he sees.  He is an honest man trying to do his job and has the misfortune to work for Vice-Questore Patta, a vain and idle man more interested in his social position than being a good policeman.  (Mem:  I do think Vice-Questore sounds SO much better than Chief Inspector, don't you agree?)  To balance out his melancholy, Donna Leon has given Brunetti a happy family life with academic wife Paola and two teenage children, Raffi and Chiara.  (You have to warm to a wife who says she can't help her husband do research on the internet as she is reading The Ambassadors by Henry James.  You also have to warm to a husband who understands perfectly and does not mention that she has already read it four times). 

Food plays an important part in Guido's life and all of the these books are littered with mouth watering descriptions of meals:

'Paolo had simmered tuna steaks in a sauce of capers, olives and tomatoes. He and his son Raffi shared the last piece of fish and Brunetti spooned the remainder of the sauce onto his own second helping of rice.  "Dessert?" Chiara asked her mother......."There's fig ice cream" Paola said filling Brunetti with anticipation "From that place over by San Giacomo dell'Orio.  The fig's sensational"

Sensational it was and after the four of them had managed to knock off an entire kilo, Brunetti and Paola repaired to the living room, each with a small glass of grappa, just what Brunetti's Uncle Ludovico had always prescribed to counteract the effects of a heavy meal'

Gorgeous.

Suffer the Little Children opens with an attack on a doctor, a highly thought of pediatrician at a large hospital in Venice. He and his wife are in bed when intruders burst in and club the doctor over the head while he is trying to defend his family.  His young 18 month old son is grabbed and taken away and it is only by accident that he sees the jackets of those who have broken in and realises they are the Carabinieri. 

Brunetti is called in as he knows nothing of this raid and a scandal is brewing at the over reaction and behaviour of those involved.  The child they took away was illegally adopted and a tip off sent the police to their home.  The doctor and his wife are never to see their son again.  As I mentioned earlier in this post, these books are not your typical thriller and action is muted, but for all that they are an absorbing read.  As the story progresses the reader will realise with a growing sense of disbelief just who made the anonymous call to the police and will find it hard to understand why.

I love these books so much I find it hard to view them objectively and hate to criticise, but I have to say that I do not think this is one of the best of the Brunetti canon.  I think my favorite is my very first read set in the Opera House in Venice with the murder of a conductor which, as I posted last year, combines a crime novel with opera and Venice, a triumvirate that is pretty unbeatable, in my eyes anyway.

But no matter how uneven the odd one may be, I just love the overall atmosphere and ambience of these stories and rather envy those of you who might now pick one up and find they have another thirteen to go.

Crock of the Day - Tuesday

I am aware that my blog is currently looking like a child's picture book with not much text and lots of large, brightly coloured photographs adorning the page. This is because I am running around at work like a lunatic, have had another pretty difficult day and am about to to hie myself off to bed. Also I have just spent the last hour converting all my recently read books back from Japanese Amazon to the UK site. Heaven knows what gremlin crept in there. So brain nice and woolly at moment.  I will blog more at the weekend when I have time.

In the meantime, I thought that you might like to see today's crock.  This was bought in the shop next to the Pump Room in Bath where I visited last summer.  I had not been to Bath for ages and had forgotten just how gorgeous it is.  The entire city is a designated Heritage Site so nothing and nobody can knock it down or change it in any way which is a truly wondrous thought. 

One of the very few pleasures of watching Persuasion on Sunday was seeing the location and identifying in which part of the city was being filmed.  We went in July and the weather was beautiful, the sun shone everywhere and it was just a joy to be there.

La Serenissima

Tired tonight so am just going to sit and read and at the moment I am reading the latest Donna Leon - Suffer the Little Children.  As you know, I gorged on all of these books last year and read all 13 in one month so am trying not to hurry this one too much as I will have to wait another year for the next. This is going to be rather difficult as once started I tend to read right through, all those wonderful descriptions of Venice and the Rialto and the coffee and pastries and pasta and sauce.  Bliss.

Persuasion

DIRE DIRE DIRE

I have just watched the latest Persuasion.  This DVD will not be adorning my shelves at any time in the future I can tell you now.

One of the most wonderful endings in all of Jane Austen is the letter Captain Wentworth gives to Anne Eliot in Bath and her reaction to its contents.  I have blogged about this already so will not repeat myself but here is the link should you wish to re-read it (Persuasion -Post 1)

Frederick is listening to Anne talking to Captain Harville and the part of the conversation that triggers off his letter in which he says 'dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman' is overhearing Anne say that the only privilege she claims for her own sex 'is that of loving longest, when existence or hope is gone'.

So what does this adaptation do?  Moves this totally pivotal sentence and shift it entirely to Lyme and make it part of the conversation between Anne Eliot and Captain Benwicke.  In the book they discuss poetry and there is no reason whatsoever why this had to be done.  It completely robs the ending of tension. 

Another part of this conversation relates to Caption Harville's reaction to Louisa Musgrove's engagement to Benwick and the fact that he has forgotten his dead fiance, Harville's sister, Fanny and his lack of faithfulness to her memory. This is also transposed and given to Captain Wentworth when talking to Anne in a Bath shop.

Then we have a melodramatic ending with Ann racing through the streets of Bath looking for Captain Wentworth and the final scene is, yes, it is that chocolate box again, and the obligatory waltz between Ann and Frederick in front of Kellynch Hall which he has just bought her as a wedding present.

Add to this some of the slowest tedious acting I have ever seen and a piano score working overtime and it all adds up to a pretty disappointing two hours.

Words fail.

I am going to bed.

Random Ramblings from Random Jottings

Beautiful day today, nippy breeze but the sky is blue, the sun is shining, the daffodils 'are fluttering and dancing in the breeze'  and spring has definitely sprung and the heart lifts with that lovely anticipatory feeling one gets at this time of the year.

I am having a restful day not doing much but lolling around and drinking tea and girding my loins ready for the coming week.  We are now in warp speed getting ready for the Chicago conference with all the invitations gone out and responses coming in, client meetings to arrange etc etc and it will only get worse.  Last year I ended up back at the doctor begging for a prescription for my long abandoned happy pills because of stress and panic attacks and I am determined to avoid that this year (if I can...)

This is a picture of a National Trust property just round the corner from my bijou flatette.  I took it this morning and then when checking my computer realised I have an almost identical one I posted on this blog this time last year.  I had lost the original in the Great Computer Disaster of December 2006.  It is a delightful place and on Sundays parents take their small children along to feed the swans who live here, along with ducks and moor hens and it is all nice and happy.

Fell asleep on the sofa after lunch and woke up just in time to catch Making of a Marchioness on the radio.  Nearly missed it!  I absolutely loved it of course and Charles Dance was perfect as Walderhurst with that beautiful voice of his, Miriam Margoyles as Lady Walderhurst and it was a perfect companion to my lying on the sofa with feet up.  I gave the link in a post earlier this week so do listen if you have missed it.  Final part next Sunday.

Opened my latest copy of The Literary Review which arrived yesterday and the editorial on the opening page was all about updating the Classics.  A new translation of War and Peace is being published and it is 'free of solemn philosophical wanderings', the text is shorter, characters who die in the later version survive in this one but Tolstoy's people 'remain central throughout'.  There's a relief.  As you know, I was very cross with Mansfield Park being mucked about with and the character of Fanny Price being changed to make her more 'relevant' so you know my feelings on this sort of interference.

Worse is to come apparently.  Orion have decided that next month they will be producing Compact Editions of Charlotte, Emily and Jane and George which will see that the books are 'sympathetically edited'.  We are assured that they will nevertheless 'retain all the elements that make them a classic in the first place'.  As the author of this editorial asks why sex up Wuthering Heights as sales figures suggest there is already at least one copy in every home?

Oh, and by the way according to the papers today if you watch Persuasion tonight on ITV, it is to find that Captain Wentworth is in love with one of Anne's nieces. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but she does not have any.  Her only married sister, Mary, has a little boy and her other sister, Elizabeth is unmarried.  I think they mean Louisa and Henrietta Musgrove who happen to be her brother in law's sisters. 

Yes, alright I know I am being nit pickety and after I got Northanger Abbey wrong I should just keep quiet, but Persuasion is my most favorite Jane and I am so hoping they will do it well.....