I always want grown-ups to like me but find it difficult to behave in a way that seems to consistently please them. Grown-up love appears to be ver
I always want grown-ups to like me but find it difficult to behave in a way that seems to consistently please them. Grown-up love appears to be very conditional, and they are not conditions I can really abide by - not for long, anyway. One minute they’re laughing at the fact that I know what “existential” means and the next moment they’re all “Can you shut up now? You’re really getting on my nerves.”
I think this quote, taken from an essay/chapter called “I’m Going to Miami”, reveals a lot about Minnie Driver’s personality - true when she was a child, and probably still true. She describes herself (and also her signature mop of hair) as “a lot”: she has a big, emotional personality, she asks a lot of questions, and she doesn’t know how to not be herself, even though her chosen vocation is acting (and also singing and writing).
This memoir gives you a good sense of Minnie’s Driver’s personality, passions, and unorthodox life: she’s funny, intelligent, and she knows how to tell a story. Although she had a lot of success in her early 20s, in an important sense - certainly in terms of motherhood and finding a life partner - she was a late bloomer.
The structure of the book is particularly interesting. Driver makes no effort to connect all the dots of her life; instead, the reader gets a series of stories, all representative in their way. It’s Driver’s top ten of the really important stuff, ending with her mother’s death.
By the way, if you enjoy this book I would also highly recommend Driver’s podcast “Minnie Questions”. ...more
I listened to this book on audiobook over a period of several weeks - one long car trip from London to southwest France and then mostly on my daily waI listened to this book on audiobook over a period of several weeks - one long car trip from London to southwest France and then mostly on my daily walk. In my mind, the title was “Love, Marriage” - in other words, the two words and ideas were separated by a comma and very much separate states or entities. It’s only as I prepare to review the book that I realise it is also a phrase: a “love marriage” as opposed to an arranged one. It’s a phrase used repeatedly in the book, yet my imagined version of the title would work equally well.
The book begins with an engagement between Joe and Yasmin and then proceeds haltingly, and problematically, to . . . well, that would be spoiling things. When the book was first published, I read that the author was fond of Jane Austen and wanted to write a modern update on the Marriage Plot story. The relationship arc of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, complicated and ambivalent though it may be, has nothing on these two. In the opening scene, the prospective bride - 26 year old Yasmin Ghorami - is fretting because her mother is insisting on bringing a Bengali feast encased in Tupperware to the first meeting between her family and her fiancé Joe’s mother. The reader expects a culture clash: Primrose Hill intelligentsia vs South London immigrants. As it turns out, though, this is the least of it.
In many ways, this book is like that banquet of Bengali specialities and side dishes. There is a lot of it, maybe too much, and the story could have been a complete meal without quite so many condiments (characters) and spice (sexual content). The biggest problem, though, is that the main characters - Yasmin and Joe - are on the bland side, and even unlikeable. The secondary characters (particularly Yasmin’s mother Anisah and her best friend Rania) are far more interesting and intriguing.
Life isn’t simple. It’s a phrase that Anisah Ghorami repeats at various times in the story. It turns out that Anisah’s ‘love marriage’ is far more complicated than Yasmin has understood, and Yasmin’s own relationship with Joe (not to mention her parents) proves to be far from straightforward as well. She doesn’t really know or understand Joe completely, but then she doesn’t understand herself, either.
One of the most important subplots is Yasmin’s job as a Junior Doctor with the NHS. (Joe is a doctor as well, but not as conflicted about it as Yasmin is.) Yasmin has become a doctor largely because her father is a doctor and he wanted that for her, too. It’s the pinnacle of immigrant success. A lot of the book’s narrative is devoted to Yasmin’s days on the hospital ward: everything from her relationship with patients to her conflicts with other doctors and nurses on the staff. In some ways, Yasmin’s career story is a separate book: adjacent to the Marriage Plot, but quite separate from it as well. Perhaps that’s no accident and the author was deliberate in the way she weighted the story. In a modern love story, perhaps love marriage (or love, marriage) is only a smallish part of two enjoined lives.
I read Ali’s celebrated Brick Lane many years ago, and despite the similarities - the London setting, the Bengali culture - they didn’t really seem like books by the same writer. Certainly this is a very different London and it’s very much a second-generation immigrant story as opposed to a first-generation one. It’s far more light-hearted, too, despite the serious content. But for all the sprawling nature of Love Marriage, it’s also a story about a young woman growing into herself....more
"It bothers you, doesn't it?" Mia asked suddenly. "I think you can't imagine. Why anyone might want something other than a big house with a big law
"It bothers you, doesn't it?" Mia asked suddenly. "I think you can't imagine. Why anyone might want something other than a big house with a big lawn, a fancy car, a job in an office. Why anyone would choose anything different than what you'd choose." Now it was her turn to study Mrs. Richardson, as if the key to understanding her were coded into her face. "It terrifies you. That you missed out on something. That you gave up something you didn't know you wanted."
I was recently on a long-haul flight and I watched the first five episodes of the Hulu miniseries of this book, featuring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington as two very different mothers in the community of Shaker, Ohio. It was maddening to not be able to finish the series, so I read the book as soon as I could visit a library and get my hands on it. Although the TV series doesn't deviate hugely from the book, there are some important differences in tone and emphasis. The TV series exaggerates the qualities of each of the two mothers: Elena Richardson, the controlled perfectionist (Reese Witherspoon) and Mia Warren, the aloof, enigmatic artist (Kerry Washington). Although this is an ensemble story, the miniseries makes Elena Richardson the focal point. In the book, there is a 3rd person omniscient narrator and the portrayal of Elena is far more restrained and balanced.
I can see why exaggeration makes for sharper TV drama, but the strength of of the novel is in its nuances - its grey areas. The setting is Shaker, Ohio: a planned community in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. The book is set during the late 1990s, and the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal is referred to in the one of the chapters. Shaker is an affluent community, proud of its prosperity, orderliness, high standards and progressiveness. There are a variety of ways to read this novel, but certainly its examination of the 'American dream' is one of them. The author sets up a clever dichotomy with the Richardson family, who are representative of the apex of Shaker society, and Mia Warren and her 15 year old daughter Pearl, who briefly settle there in a rental home owned by Elena Richardson. The Richardsons' lives are substantial and weighted down with all of the fruits of American consumer society. Mia Warren and her daughter travel light and know how to make do with very little. The youngest Richardson daughter, Izzy, is drawn to Mia Warren and what she has to offer, while Pearl is dazzled by the Richardson family, with their absolute sense of security and confidence. Elena and Mia are both portrayed as loving mothers, but they have made very different choices in their lives and that impacts what they value - both for themselves, and for their children.
There is a significant subplot in the novel which features a young Chinese woman and another middle-class Shaker resident, who happens to be one of Elena's oldest friends. It results in a court case which divides the community and serves as a flash point in the uneasy relationship between Mia and Elena.
What makes a good mother? Who is best qualified to raise a child? The author cooks up a plot which asks these questions whilst remaining neutral on the answers. She doesn't demonise or idealise any of the mothers in her story, and that's true of the American culture she describes as well. Shaker is a planned community which strives for perfection, but that doesn't stop one of its citizens from wanting to burn it down....more
In order to make a great painting you need to destroy paintings. There is no real way of 'saving' them. You may be pleased with a painting, or part
In order to make a great painting you need to destroy paintings. There is no real way of 'saving' them. You may be pleased with a painting, or part of it, but in order to go deeper you need to scrape the image down or wipe it out, completely. I am often haunted by lost images - paintings that I've destroyed and that will be resurrected - and I can torment myself with the memory of them.
Almost always, I go back and read the beginning again after I finish a book. In this case, I read nearly all of the book again. To be fair, this book 'reads' quickly - in clear language, with short chapters and some photographs and lots of pictures (mostly the author's work). Equally importantly, the material of it was compelling to me.
The memoir is organised by theme - really, the important people, and subjects, of the author's life. Paul describes herself, not as a "portrait painter," but as an "autobiographer and chronicler of my life and family." There is a notable clarity and honesty to this book, and she doesn't waste time on superfluities. (There is no way for me to know this for sure, but I suspect Paul is not much given to chatting.) The book has an austere and grave quality - no humour, no anecdotes - and it all feels like it has been pared to down to essentials.
Painting is the most personal art form: it is like a handwritten letter, with the character of the artist's 'handwriting' adding to and enriching the message.
In the Prologue to the book, Paul quotes her husband Steven Kupfer's opinion of her memoir. "There is a tenderness in it, and as I've said, generosity, and something more that comes with the recognition that the past with its pains and joys has a place and a voice that the present can and should allow." It was that word 'generosity' that really snagged my attention. Does he mean that she is generous with her audience? She seems to share much of herself, and surely that is what is most wanted (and often denied to the reader) in a memoir. She doesn't attempt to soften her behaviour, her emotions or the choices she has made. There is never any sense that she is calculating in terms of presenting a burnished portrait of herself. My other thought is that Kupfer is referring to her generosity with others: the elephant in the room being artist Lucien Freud.
Celia Paul became involved with Lucian Freud when she was 18, and a student at the Slade School of Fine Art, and he was 56. There is a long history of old, well-established artists and their much longer lovers, of course, and it never seems to end well. In the sense of mentorship, and mutual inspirations, perhaps much may be gained from both sides; yet there is still something unsavoury and vampiric about it. Freud already had a long string of wives, girlfriends and children to his name, whilst Paul was a virgin when they met. Also, her father was the Bishop of Hull. (She was born in Kerala, India, where her parents first went as missionaries.) She was the fourth of five sisters, and had been sent to all-girls' boarding schools. In other words, it's difficult to imagine that she had any emotional preparation for the being the lover of a complicated genius with an unconventional and messy personal life. Although she does touch upon the emotional trauma she suffered from their relationship - particularly in the early years, when she felt so out of her depth and so at the mercy of her obsession with him - one senses the restraint she imposes on her memories. Either she chooses to remember mostly the good things, or at any rate that's what she chooses to write about. (A day trip to Bristol is shared as a particularly happy and uncomplicated day they spent together.) She at no point describes herself as the victim of anything. She rigorously avoids anything that might be described as self-pity. At any rate, she seems at pains to put her relationship with Freud in the best possible light.
Although the relationship with Freud gives the book a sort of 'celebrity' (not to mention 20th century art) currency, the main relationship of her life has actually been with her mother. Paul describes their mutual devotion, and also goes into some detail about her mother's central importance in her life. Not only was her mother her main 'sitter' and subject, but she also enabled Paul's career as an artist in the most fundamental way: she became the primary carer of Paul's son Frank. There are quite a few things I would like to unpack here - using 'therapist' speak - but Paul is matter-of-fact about her choices. And by matter-of-fact, I mean unapologetic.
One of the main challenges I have faced as a woman artist is the conflict I feel about caring for someone, loving someone, yet remaining dedicated to my art in an undivided way. I think that generally men find it much easier to be selfish. And you do need to be selfish.
4.5 stars I learned about this book because it was shortlisted for the 2019 Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize. ...more
It seemed to me that my childhood had been much richer and more interesting than that of children today. Laura Ingalls Wilder
After finishing Prair
It seemed to me that my childhood had been much richer and more interesting than that of children today. Laura Ingalls Wilder
After finishing Prairie Fires, I felt the need to reorient my feelings about the ‘Little House’ books which had played such a cherished role in my reading childhood. I read about half of the first book in the series - Little House in the Big Woods - and immediately experienced that familiar, disorienting sensation of finding the book both the same and yet somehow different than I remembered it. Although this is by far the ‘cosiest’ of the Little House books, in many ways, it does set what will be the consistent tone for the series. There is the contrast between being safe indoors the snug little house and the magnificent but sometimes hostile natural elements: in this book, the wild animals (bears and panthers), the intense cold, and the dense woodlands. There is the happy family: Ma (patient, gentle and competent), Pa (fun-loving, musical, brave and competent) and the three sisters. There is the self-reliance of the family. Ma and Pa seem to know how to do everything required to ‘keep’ a family, and they do it all well. I had forgotten how this book treats its young readers to a hog butchering session - and also a lesson in meat preservation - in the very first chapter. (The family are making their preparations for winter.) There is, above all, the sense of ‘plenty’: plenty to eat, plenty of space, plenty of love.
This is a rather long preamble, but I do have a point to make: although, by the end of her life, Rose Wilder Lane had taken to emphasising that the ‘Little House’ books were ‘true in every detail’ and ‘true autobiography in the third person’, biographer Caroline Fraser paints a very different picture of Laura Ingalls and her parents Charles and Caroline, the most famous pioneering family in American history. Drawing upon a prodigious amount of research, and setting the family history against a historical context that takes in politics, economics, agricultural policy and climate change, Fraser ‘grounds’ the Little House books within a great American experiment called the ‘Homestead Act’ of 1862. As Fraser says, ‘For whites, free land was the original American dream.’
The Homestead Act that LIncoln signed into law in May 1862 promised 160 acres - a quarter of a square mild of land, or a ‘quarter section’ - to every citizen over twenty-one who wanted to stand up and claim them. The offer was open to anyone who had never taken up arms against the United States, including single women, immigrants, and freed slaves. For a ten-dollar filing fee, potential homesteaders could claim their acreage, and then had five years to ‘prove up’ by cultivating the land and building a structure on it.
The Homestead Act seemed like a great idea, giving opportunity to thousands of poor but hardworking Americans, but Fraser points out (with thoroughness) some of the catches. First of all, the land was already ‘settled’ by Native American tribes - which proved to be problematic in all sorts of ways. Secondly, much of the land was not particularly suitable as farmland. Although I vividly remembered how drought, fires, locusts and freak weather events (like hail) seemed to destroy the Ingalls’ crops every year, I had never realised that there was more than consistent bad luck at work in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory. Indeed, Fraser makes a solid case for manmade global warming as millions of acres of prairie native grasses were stripped to plough thirsty crops like wheat. Business practices of the time conspired against the farmers, too - what with railroad monopolies, and the constantly shifting prices of commodities. The point being that homesteading was a risky undertaking in the second half of the 19th century, and more than half of the homesteaders failed to hold onto their land ‘cheap’ though it was.
The first half of the book covers territory that will be somewhat familiar to ‘Little House’ readers. Although the books change the chronology of some events, and leave out some of the most painful failures and losses, this is material which fascinated me. The second half of the book is far more problematic, though - especially for anyone who adored the books and continues to feel emotionally invested in them.
First of all, it takes place - not in the prairies of the Great Plains - but in the low Ozark mountains of Mansfield, Missouri. In 1894, after losing both their homestead in De Smet, South Dakota, Laura Ingalls Wilder, her husband Almanzo and their 7 year old daughter Rose travel by covered wagon to Missouri and start over again. Laura and Almanzo spent the rest of their lives there, and had only minimal contact with De Smet and the rest of the original Ingalls family. Secondly, by far the greatest part of the book actually chronicles the difficult relationship between Laura and her daughter Rose. As Rose is a complicated and mostly unlikeable person, her own convoluted (sometimes quite bizarre) story does not make for pleasant reading.
Although her reputation has not survived into the 21st century, Rose Wilder Lane was a writer and journalist of some renown during her own time. Although she started out writing ‘yellow journalism’ and highly fabricated ‘biographies’ of famous men - Herbert Hoover for one - she became best known for her political pieces. By middle age, she was a vociferously argumentative libertarian and her political beliefs increasingly informed her writing. She was also a key ‘collaborator’ in bringing the ‘Little House’ books to life - not just by utilising her contacts in the literary world, but also in the way she shaped the stories as not just an editor but also a co-writer. The authorship of these books - this legacy - is one of the most important themes of the biography.
Wilder provided the stories, the details and the personal perspective, while Lane shaped and polished her mother’s raw material and often introduced the all-important emotional arcs and the ‘cosiness’ to counteract the darker elements of the stories. Fraser sees this collaboration as ultimately necessary in the creation of the series: . . . ‘Once again their combined talents overrode their respective weaknesses, producing something that neither one could manage on her own.’
The strong bonds of the Ingalls family are what sustains them through their travels - not to mention their many tribulations. It’s terribly sad to realise that Laura and Almanzo were not able to recreate the happy family structure so celebrated in the novels. For whatever reason, Rose seems to have been difficult - and struggled with a toxic mix of shame, vanity/pride, and the feeling of being an outsider - all of her life. Fraser, as biographer, tries to explain Rose’s personality and motivations, but she cannot make her anything but thoroughly unlikeable. I didn’t even find her pitiable, really.
The final bit of the book discusses the ongoing legacy of the ‘Little House’ books and the way they have been used as cultural propaganda, not just in the United States but in other countries (Japan, for instance) as well. There are also details of how the ‘Little House’ books came to be controlled by Roger MacBride, one of Lane’s ‘protégées’. I won’t go as far as to say that this biography spoiled my memories of the ‘Little House’ books, but they certainly proved the point that truth is stranger - sadder, and often more tragic - than fiction....more
The thing that would always mean more than everything else: the goldish warmth of his wife, the heat of their mutual desperation; two bodies findin
The thing that would always mean more than everything else: the goldish warmth of his wife, the heat of their mutual desperation; two bodies finding solace in the only way they knew how, through the language of lips, his hands along her spine, her spine against the tree trunk, the resultant quiet that occurred when they came together, until she pulled away, smiled up at him and said, “Just don’t let the girls catch us,” before she buried herself once again against him.
But of course they saw.
This family saga opens with a happy scene: the backyard garden wedding of Wendy, the oldest daughter of Marilyn and David Sorenson, in the Oak Park neighbourhood of Chicago. Well, let me be accurate: Wendy is incandescently happy. Her parents, who have just endured years of Wendy’s miserable and rebellious adolescence, are happy, grateful and relieved. But Wendy’s three younger sisters - Violet, Liza and Grace - are three unexploded bombs, all of them needy and dissatisfied in some way. Only when I had finished the book, and then reread the first chapter, did I fully appreciate how deftly the author set up the complicated and shifting dynamics of family happiness.
There’s that famous saying about parents: that they are only as happy as their own unhappiest child. There’s also the truth that gradually dawns on all parents: that the work isn’t done when your child turns 18 (or 21, or whatever age you define as adulthood). The emotional work of parenting is never really done. Early on in the book, Marilyn reflects that she is finally coming into her own; that she finally feels somewhat free of the tether of being a mother. Of course, such a thought inevitably invites chaos. Welcome to the annus horribilis of the Sorenson family.
From the beginning, the story of the Sorenson family shifts back and forth in time. At first, I found these time-shifts disorienting. My ability to focus on the story was hindered a bit. But gradually I came to appreciate this structure and how it enabled the author to piece together her story. The shifting dynamics in Marilyn and David’s marriage - not to mention the relationships between the sisters, both with each other and with their parents - were (of course) always impacted and shaped by what had come before.
The closeness of Marilyn and David’s marriage - embodied by their enduring physical attraction to each other - is both family legend and myth. The passage I quoted from at the beginning of this review gives a sense of the “magic circle of two” created by the parents, and how all four daughters are outsiders looking in. To varying degrees, all four daughters feel both jealous and intimidated by the happiness of their parents’ marriage. And yet, the truth is more complicated than that. Marilyn and David are both only children and they also share the unfortunate history of having lost their mother when they were children. In an important sense, they only have each other; unlike their daughters, who share the complicated and mysterious bonds of sisterhood.
The especially tangled dynamic between “Irish twins” Wendy and Violet - less than a year apart, and born when their parents had just married - plays a particularly important role in the storyline. Loyalty and betrayal, competition and camaraderie: the ways in which Wendy and Violet have supported, and undermined, each other become the dramatic plot points on which the story turns. Although Marilyn and David have been loving and supportive parents, their daughters have felt compelled to keep secrets from them.
If you are someone who finds family dynamics endlessly interesting, this book will probably appeal. The author’s decision to not prioritise one character’s point of view over another’s - the book is told from the third-person limited point of view - allows the reader to judge for herself (or himself) the rich and complicated internal landscape of family life. ...more
Like her character Amma, whose voice is the opening chapter for this novel, Evaristo started out as a playwright and political/cultural acti4.5 stars
Like her character Amma, whose voice is the opening chapter for this novel, Evaristo started out as a playwright and political/cultural activist. I sense that this background - of experience, creative approach and concerns - informs and shapes this novel on every level. The author’s choice to write the novel in free verse, with no punctuation, is only occasionally ‘poetic’; instead, it is direct, vivid, conversational and accessible. I wasn’t even aware of ‘reading’ - the experience was more like being exposed to auditory performance.
The really outstanding quality of this book is its ‘voice’ - or more accurately, chorus of voices. I was hugely impressed by Evaristo’s ability to make each separate voice so unique, strong and believable.
Although each ‘voice’ or chapter could be read as a stand-alone, a large part of the charm and interest of the novel is in the way the voices are blended together. Evaristo creates a symphony from each difference voice (instrument); the separate stories blend and harmonise, and at times one voice alters our perception of the voice before. This book is a master class in perspective, particularly in the case of the mother/daughter characters: Amma and Yazz, Carole and Bummi, and Shirley and Winsome.
The author is also quite unflinching (and humorous) about the messy, complicated, nuanced truth of women’s lives. Most of the characters are what (as a convenience) might be described as ‘black’ - although the majority of the characters are mixed-race, and their backgrounds vary a lot in terms of ethnicity, culture and age. Without ever blatantly stating this as being the case, the entire novel seems to serve the idea that not all ‘black’ women are the same, and yet there is something specific to black women’s experience.
Evaristo definitely has her finger on the pulse of contemporary culture in London, but her understanding of the past is equally strong. Many of the strongest characters in this book are the older ones - first-generation immigrants from the Caribbean or Africa, and also a fascinating mixed-race character whose family history in England stretches back to the 19th century. She’s certainly not the first author to put black women at the front and centre of the story, but this is a very entertaining and worthy addition to the canonical pantheon of writers including Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou and other strong contemporary voices like Diana Evans and Oyinkan Braithwate. ...more
Pastry is pure pleasure to give and to receive. It is almost always a celebration, even if it’s just a small one. * Puddings aren’t sustenance. PuddinPastry is pure pleasure to give and to receive. It is almost always a celebration, even if it’s just a small one. * Puddings aren’t sustenance. Puddings are joy. * Puddings are emotional. They are bound up in memory and nostalgia.
The subtitle of A Half-Baked Idea immediately gives the reader a sense of its contents: How grief, love and cake took me from the courtroom to Le Cordon Bleu. Author Olivia Potts plunges straight into the heart of the matter: at age 25, and in the final year of her pupillage to become a barrister, she must cope with the sudden and horrendous loss of her mother. I’m not sure that baking actually helps her to cope with her overwhelming grief - although the ‘plot’ seems to suggest it - but it is clear that the criminal court system does not provide the sort of emotional succour that she is needing.
This book is very much about Olivia’s grief process - and she is very specific in the details of how her mother’s death affects her. There is the early stage of trying to cope by being super-competent - for instance, she volunteers to take over the ‘boring admin’ that accompanies death. Then there is her long stage of what she describes, darkly but entertainingly, as ‘Grief Top Trumps’. And finally, there is the actual therapeutic stage of really acknowledging and coping with her grief - and no doubt writing this book was as therapeutic as exploring her feelings with a therapist.
The first half of this book is very much about her mother, her own mourning process, and frankly, perhaps rather too many details about the Old Bailey, wigs, commuting and the British court system. The second half of the book deals mostly with the intensive pastry course ‘Diplome de Patisserie’ at the Cordon Bleu cooking school. The device which links them is recipes, which are sprinkled throughout. I don’t know if Nora Ephron was the first to do this, in her classic Heartburn, but Ephron’s ‘roman a clef’ definitely comes to mind.
Olivia Potts is at pains to tell her readers that she does not come from a particularly ‘foodie’ background, nor does she have a mother who cared overmuch for cooking. The early recipes (a banana cake with Rolos in it) and her mother’s recipe for Shepherd’s Pie (which includes baked beans, to my horror) definitely come under the category of ‘home cooking’ - and that with a Northern slant. (I did like the way that Potts talks about her Northern background without the need to make a joke of it or be defensive of it in any way.) As the book evolves, and as Potts becomes moulded by the rigours of the Cordon Bleu way of baking, the recipes change and become far more sophisticated and adventurous. And rigid. And ridiculously complex.
Let me now insert myself into this book, as readers tend to do. I, unlike Potts, have always loved baking - and grew up in a house with a mother who loved baking. In the back of my mind, I’ve always had a fascination with the idea of doing just this sort of baking course. In fact, that is probably why I couldn’t wait to get my hot little hands on this book. The reality check was huge, though. The key is probably in this sentence: ”Patisserie is about precision. It’s all about control.” Although Potts plays up her clumsiness and lack of natural baking ability, it’s very clear that she is an ambitious woman with a hell of a lot of drive. I’m not sure that pastry was as much about ‘joy’ for her as it was about control. Frankly, the patisserie course sounded horribly joyless to me - unless, perhaps, for the incredible sense of accomplishment in learning all of these fiddly (and sometimes ridiculous) skills. Give me an apple pie or gingerbread cake any day; the decadent desserts that she learns to create aren’t really something I would want to eat. Not that eating is the point. Anyway, I was surprised at my own response, but I found the detailed descriptions of her culinary adventure probably the least interesting bit of this book. Let me qualify that: they were interesting, but also oddly offputting.
3.75 stars
**
Thanks very much to Olivia at Penguin/Randomhouse for a copy of this book. It was packaged so enticingly with recipe cards and some of the ingredients (Rollos, Biscoff spread and Henderson’s Relish) used in the author’s recipes....more
A House Full of Daughters, Juliet Nicolson’s memoir/biography of the maternal line of her Sackville/Nicolson family, was the book which first piqued mA House Full of Daughters, Juliet Nicolson’s memoir/biography of the maternal line of her Sackville/Nicolson family, was the book which first piqued my interest in the colourful antecedents of Vita-Sackville West. I wanted more, much more, about Pepita - the Spanish dancer who became the longtime mistress of an English aristocrat - and her eldest daughter, Victoria, who was twice over the chatelaine of Knole (through her father Lionel, and then her husband - and first cousin - ‘young’ Lionel). This biography, written after the death of Vita’s mother Victoria, was clearly an important primary source for Nicolson’s later biography, yet even though it is much longer on detail (at least certain details) it also manages to feel very conjectural and unsatisfying in terms of the character portraits.
The book is structured as two parts: the first about Pepita, and the second focusing on Victoria’s life after her mother Pepita’s death when she was still only a child. On Pepita’s side, the conjecture is largely due to the lack of primary sources. V S-W is limited by other people’s descriptions of Pepita, and perhaps even more so, by her own lifelong romanticised ideas about this ‘half gipsy’ Spanish dancer of a grandmother. Actually, there is far more substantiated detail about Pepita’s mother Catalina than there is of the shadowy figure of Pepita. There was certainly no lack of the biographer’s sources when it came to Victoria - who was a prolific diarist and letter writer, in addition to being intimately known by her daughter - and yet I still felt that the daughter’s portrait of her mother lacked balance and completeness. This feeling was reinforced when I started reading Nigel Nicolson’s biography of his mother titled Portrait of a Marriage. He claims, with believable support, that in Pepita his mother had done “too much honour to her father and too little to her mother. She emphasised her mother’s eccentricity to the detriment of her truly remarkable personality and gifts.” After giving some details of that commanding and charming personality, Nigel points out how many important and intelligent men that Victoria captivated. “The list of her conquests dispels the impression left by Pepita that she was nothing but a scatter-brained charmer, for men like Sir John Murray Scott, Pierpont Morgan, Kipling, Lord Kitchener, W. W. Astor, J.L. Garvin, Auguste Rodin, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Lord Leverhulme, Henry Ford and Gordon Selfridge would not have sought her company again and again after a first meeting unless she had as much to offer them as they to her.”
Daughters can be notoriously hard on their mothers, and certainly Victoria seems to have been an exceptionally difficult mother in many ways. Vita does end the book on a note of tribute, though, for she describes Victoria “as always herself” and goes further to say that “to be always oneself to that extent is a form of genius.”
Juliet Nicolson mentions that this biography was hugely successful, especially in America, when it was published in 1937. I’m not surprised by that success, because it ticks all of the boxes that Downton Abbey did 80 years later. Not only does it feature the sort of rags-to-riches storyline adored by Americans, including social success and scandal in Washington D.C., but it also reveals the inner workings of an aristocratic English family. Vita was a successful novelist, but she was also a well-known ‘society’ figure whose family had become infamous twenty years before because of two high-profile trials (both involving inheritances).
Closing thoughts: although it’s an entertaining read, particularly if one enjoys memoir, I would probably only recommend it for the Vita Sackville-West enthusiast. Having said that, as unusual as her own life was, Vita’s life was no more extraordinary than the lives of her grandmother and mother. ...more
In her Preface, author Victoria Glendinning writes that she would like Vita’s story ‘to be read as an adventure story’. Then she goes on to say that ‘In her Preface, author Victoria Glendinning writes that she would like Vita’s story ‘to be read as an adventure story’. Then she goes on to say that ‘I think she would like that too’.
There was never any doubt that Vita Sackville-West was going to have an extraordinary life. As the only child of Victoria and Lionel Sackville (who were themselves first cousins), Vita had the whole of Knole - not so much a house as ‘a mediaeval village with its square turrets and its grey walls, its hundred chimneys sending blue threads up into the air ‘(The Edwardians, V S-W) - as her playground. It was rich stuff, and by age twelve Vita was writing stories inspired by ‘the fantasy (that) was Knole, her ancestors and herself’. Despite this ancient and noble heritage, she was not really a heiress; not only did she not get to inherit Knole (which she thought of forever as the great tragedy of her life), but there wasn’t much of a fortune either. Except for a smallish allowance from the estate’s Trust, and gifts from her mother (much dependent on Lady Victoria’s whim), Vita had to earn money throughout her life. Indeed, she was always the main wage-earner in her marriage. Despite social expectations that she might marry well, bear children, and perhaps become one of society’s leading hostesses, Vita struck a far more independent and unconventional path. Yes, she did marry Harold Nicolson - and they had an enduring and largely successful marriage - and yes, she did have children (two sons, Ben and Nigel) - but the domestic side of her life was never really the main and most important aspect of her life. She had immense drive, energy and discipline, and what struck me most were her accomplishments: foremost (for me) being the daily writing habit which produced novels, poetry, lectures, essays, articles, not to mention an enormous correspondence and a consistent diary; although others might more highly rate her nearly lifelong (self-taught) passion for gardening, which led to the creation of Sissinghurst and an acknowledged signature style expressed in more than 25 years of gardening essays for The Observor.
Other than Sissinghurst, she’s probably best known for her connection to Virginia Woolf - and for being the inspiration for Woolf’s creation of the gender-mutable creation of Orlando. Glendinning takes a chronological approach to Vita’s life, and certainly doesn’t play down the ‘50 or so’ important sexual/emotional relationships of Vita’s life, all of them (with the exception of her husband Harold), with women. (She seems to have been most active between the ages of 20 and 40, but Glendinning mentions that she was having romantic attachments to the very end.) Her immense charisma and need for companionship and excitement contrast with her shyness and love of solitude - which become far more pronounced as she gets older. Glendinning is brilliant at exploring all of the contradictions of Vita’s character and somehow making them seem like an integrated whole (albeit complex) personality.
For future reference (for myself) and to give a sense of the complexities and contradictions of Vita’s character, I am going to reference one of Glendinning’s most complete personality assessments:
The cluster of characteristics that were always to be hers had already developed: a distaste for the idea of marriage; an apparent candour with her intimates that was not candour at all; a capacity for sustaining multiple relationships; the division in her mind between passionate and companionate love; her fantasy - to be realized - of ‘living alone in a tower with her books; also, her disinclination to let anyone who loved her go - keeping them on a string, rebuffing them if they asked too much of her, but drawing in the life sharply if they showed signs of straying.
I was never bored - which cannot always be said about biographies! The historical span of Vita’s life would have been enough to interest me - born in the opulent Edwardian age, she lived through both world wars and the immense social changes that came about partly because of them - but she truly did have an approach to life which was uniquely her own in so many ways. From the beginning, this portrayal of Vita fascinated me and I would definitely rate it as as a demonstrably well-researched and insightful exploration of a unique personality of the 20th century....more
”’There’s nothing to be done about it,” Aunt Libby said now. She meant us, our family. Being female. She referred to it as if it was both a miracle an”’There’s nothing to be done about it,” Aunt Libby said now. She meant us, our family. Being female. She referred to it as if it was both a miracle and a calamity, that vein of fertility, that mother lode of passion buried within us, for joy and ruin. ‘None of us can no more than look at a man and we’ve having his baby.’”
As the (otherwise misleading) title suggests, this is a book about matriarchy and the matrilineal: a house full of women. ‘The Queen of Persia’ (her husband’s name for her) is mostly known in this novel as “Gram”: “with her soiled and faded apron and her exhausted face, marked like an old barn siding that had withstood blasts and abuse of all kinds, beyond any expression other than resignation and self-regard.” Hired out as a serving girl by the time she was a teenager, and married young to a taciturn and rough farmer, Gram’s predictable life of child-bearing and physical labour is disrupted by an unexpected legacy. When a rich, childless uncle leaves her a fortune, Gram builds a large house (“three floors and fourteen rooms”) and from that point onwards, she is calling the shots . . . or at least acting as benefactress and landlady, and giving all five daughters, four granddaughters and the various men of the family (all minor characters) the rough edge of her tongue.
One of the noteworthy things about this story is that it is told from the first-person-plural point of view - a narrative choice so unusual that I cannot think of another book that employs it. It’s the youngest generation, the granddaughters, who collectively tell the story of their family and the big house in Ohio. “There were the four of us then, two his own daughters, two his nieces, all of us born within two years of each other. Uncle Dan treated the four of us the very same and sometimes we thought we were the same - same blood, same rights of inheritance.” Interestingly, at the very moment that the narrative voice emphasises the “sameness” of the four girls, a disruption - a change - has begun. Celia, one of the girls, is suddenly differentiated; over the course of one summer, she physically ripens and suddenly becomes a magnet for all of the boys in the neighbourhood.
In her excellent introduction to the NYRB edition, Meghan O’Rourke describes the book (so aptly) as “less a plotted story than a deeply felt and powerfully inhabited symphony.” There are five “Parts” (not chapters) and the book is less interested in chronology and plot line than characterisation, atmosphere and cause and effect. Each “Part” takes the name of a character, but all of the characters are too interwoven to exist separately of each other. The major event of the novel is the death of Grace, mother to two of the girls (Anne and Katie). This is not so much of a spoiler, as Grace’s death has already happened when the story begins. The four granddaughters all have names, and different physical and emotional characteristics, but that narrative voice of We/Our constantly resists their separateness.
Even more so than the granddaughters, Gram’s five daughters have different characteristics and have chosen different paths in life. This is most obvious in the case of (“Aunt”) Elinor, who is a career woman in New York City. Like Gram, she enjoys bestowing gifts on the others. (Money is definitely power in this book, and most of the men are emasculated by their lack of it.) When Grace is dying, Elinor imposes her Christian Scientist beliefs upon the household and attempts to control events - “events” being life and death. Gram’s skepticism and fatalism contrast sharply with her daughter Elinor’s belief in prayer and the power of positive thinking.
But somehow these individual differences, as large as they may be, are less important than the novel’s insistence on the female condition. Or maybe it’s the human condition. Sex leads to love (maybe), marriage (maybe) and children (maybe), but not happy endings. As O’Rourke describes it, “Sex is the charge that turns love, all too often, into hardship and conflict for both men and women.”
Despite being given top billing in the title, Gram is not obviously the story’s protagonist- and yet her model of enduring life casts a long shadow. On the day of her daughter’s funeral, she dresses up and takes herself off to the picture show. “All’s any of us can do is keep going, though there ain’t no sense to it.”...more
”To strip the wallpaper off the fairy tale of The Family House in which the comfort and the happiness of men and children have been the priority is to”To strip the wallpaper off the fairy tale of The Family House in which the comfort and the happiness of men and children have been the priority is to find behind it an unthanked, unloved, neglected, exhausted woman. It requires skill, time, dedication and empathy to create a home that everyone enjoys and that functions well. Above all else, it is an act of immense generosity to be the arthcitect of everyone else’s well-being.”
“To not feel at home in her family is the beginning of of the bigger story of society and its female discontents. If she is not too defeated by the societal story she has enacted with hope, pride, ambivalence and rage, she will change the story.”
“I was unmaking the home that I’d spent much of my life’s energy creating.”
This memoir, this “working autobiography,” deals primarily with two great losses which happened to Levy within a year. Perhaps I should say that these two losses underscore everything she writes: they provide both the setting and the plot developments of a story in which Levy describes herself (only partly because she is a writer) as a character. “I was more interested in a major unwritten female character.” The first loss is the ending of her 25 year marriage, and inescapably how that is also connected to the loss of the family home, and perhaps most profoundly to the loss of the identity she had within her marriage. The second loss is the death of her mother - another loss ultimately connected with the deepest sense of self and identity. “My mother was my link to Africa and to England. Her body was my first landmearc. She was my primal satnav, but now the screen had gone blank.”
Amidst these losses are the everpresent demands of life - not least of which are the financial/material demands. Levy writes about the struggle to rebuild, to sustain, to survive. I always like titles which have a double meaning, and this is a very potent one. Levy is writing about the “cost of living” in a financial sense, and London is certainly a hugely expensive place in which to live, but she is also talking about the cost of living in a very emotional sense.
”At the end of the day I would begin the long walk up one of the highest hills in London to cook supper for my daughter. Sometimes I stopped to get my breath back by the gates of the local cemetery. It was such a long walk in the dark. The night smelt of moss and the wet marble of the gravestones. I did not feel safe or unsafe, but somewhere in-between, liminal, passing from one life to another.”
I had a hugely emotional connection to this book, and undoubtedly that had something to do with its many parallels to my current situation in life (in age, marital status, location, being the mother of two daughters, and even in the sense of being dislocated from my country of origin). But it was also the writing itself which appealed to me. Levy is fond of symbols and metaphors, as am I. If this kind of symbolic joining up does not bring you pleasure, does not lead to greater/richer/deeper understanding, then you probably will not embrace the author’s style or find so much meaning in her words.
It’s a short memoir, and not a comprehensive one, but I copied down pages of notes from it. So many of her words had a real weight to them, and I could feel them sink into my mind in a way that is rare....more
“When I teach topics in third world literature, much time is lost in trying to explain that the third world is locatable only as a discourse of conven“When I teach topics in third world literature, much time is lost in trying to explain that the third world is locatable only as a discourse of convenience. Trying to find it is like pretending that history or home is real and not located precisely where you are sitting, I hear my voice quite idiotically say.”
You might want to spend a few minutes reading and reading this statement, and then trying to ‘unpack’ or decode what Suleri is trying to say. If you aren’t interested in working hard for meaning, you probably shouldn’t even bother reading this book. It’s not about the length - because it is not even 200 pages long, but it took me weeks of careful reading to conquer it. (Yes, the verb ‘conquer’ feels like the right word; this book is definitely a challenge.) In Kamila Shamsie’s Introduction, she warns that the sentences in Meatless Days are “always intelligent, always elegant, sometimes baffling,” and having finally finished this most unusual of memoirs, I would definitely agree. I was often pleased by Suleri’s writing, but it is almost never easy to figure out what she is talking about. Her narrative line is rarely straightforward, and she has a tendency to bend and distort metaphors to the point of obscurity, confusion and even meaninglessness. (I assume they mean something to her, but her analogies will be lost on the average reader.)
If she has written a twisty memoir, notable for its obfuscation, perhaps it is because Suleri does not find ‘identity’ or ‘culture’ or ‘home’ an easy thing to define. Child of a Welsh mother and a Pakistani father, Suleri was born into a house divided by languages and culture. Her father was a prominent journalist, whose life’s work was defining and helping to ‘bring into being’ the Islamic Pakistan that was created in 1947. Her mother, meanwhile, was teaching writers like Jane Austen at the university in Lahore. Her paternal grandmother Dadi was a native of India, a speaker of Urdu and not the Punjabi tongue which predominated in Lahore. As a further complication, Suleri is writing her memoir from several degrees of displacement: as a resident of New Haven, Connecticut, and as someone who has lost several of the important women (grandmother, mother, sister) who helped define ‘home’ for her.
Although my own cultural dislocations are not nearly as intense as Suleri’s, I did read this book (mostly) as I was visiting my ‘native home’ of Texas. (I have lived in England for many years, and can entirely understand the feeling of belonging to neither place -but somehow being permanently displaced.). I can also very much relate to the grief and feelings of loss which permeate the book. It’s a memoir told in a series of character sketches, and as Suleri gets to the end (or more accurately the core) - those being the chapters relating to her sister Ifat and her mother - she builds an emotional momentum that had me finally connecting with her writing. I never could completely decide, though, if the book was beautiful or entirely too inpenetrable. Most reviews seem to be either 5 stars or 1; but I am settling for the ambivalence of 3 stars.
Note: I read the recently released Penguin paperback which is part of the ‘Women Writers’ series. Thanks for very much to Penguin Books for this book. ...more
It might be premature to write a ‘review’ of a cookbook I’ve yet to cook from, but this lovely lifestyle-memoirish book also falls into one of my veryIt might be premature to write a ‘review’ of a cookbook I’ve yet to cook from, but this lovely lifestyle-memoirish book also falls into one of my very favourite categories: cookbooks which read like novels. Marte Marie Forsberg is a professional photographer and her gorgeous still-lifes of food, silverware, the English countryside, her dog Mr. Whiskey, and her own stylish self make this book a visual feast. Many of the photographs are set against a black background and they have the rich detail of an Old Dutch Master painting. Forsberg is herself Norwegian, and Norwegian flavours are the most obvious culinary influence - although many of the recipes start from a traditionally English base, and there are also recipes which are inspired by her time in Italy. The book is divided into seasons, and seasonal dishes - many of them associated with Forsberg’s childhood and her mother’s style of cooking. ‘My Mother’s Recipe For’ is the tagline for many recipes, and her mother is clearly the guiding spirit of the book.
The inspiration behind the cookbook is Forsberg’s transition from being a world-travelling urban-dwelling photographer to a ‘slow living’ lifestyle in an English cottage in the countryside. It’s a potent fantasy, and one that will appeal to many readers (whether or not they are cooks). Forsberg hints at sadness and loss, and there is definitely the sense (reinforced through excerpts from letters and phone calls she exchanged with her mother) that she has come to the countryside in order to heal and perhaps to ‘find’ herself. As is often the case, ‘finding’ herself has much to do with reconnecting to the traditions of her own rural childhood. Cooking, foraging, preserving, bottling and baking are a way of connecting again to the nourishment she found in her mother’s kitchen. It’s all very beautiful and inspiring and I wanted to make at least 75% of the recipes - which is a pretty good hit-rate. I’m going to try her ‘No-Knead Country Loaf’ first. ...more
At the beginning of this novel, Eleanor tells the reader a little bit about herself. She works in an office; she does the accounts. She is nearly 30, At the beginning of this novel, Eleanor tells the reader a little bit about herself. She works in an office; she does the accounts. She is nearly 30, and has been in her job since she graduated from University at 21 with a degree in Classics and a black eye and a broken arm from an abusive boyfriend. “I’m a self-contained entity,” claims our protagonist. She lives alone, and she goes about her business with a robotic and unvarying regularity. Her overconsumption of vodka on the weekends is an obvious tip-off that Eleanor is not nearly as ‘fine’ as she would like to think.
What immediately becomes apparent is that Eleanor is a very lonely young woman who uses routine and a rather warped sense of superiority to keep herself ‘safe’. Her pedantic use of language and thoughts processes, combined with her lack of social cues and seeming empathy, might lead one to the conclusion that Eleanor is ‘on the spectrum’ - but ultimately we never really known that. What we do learn is that Eleanor has been deeply traumatised by her past. I think of the metaphorical language of being ‘frozen’, and in many senses this book is about the painful process of coming to life again. An old man named Sammy and co-worker Raymond are warm human beings who bump into the frozen Eleanor, and despite herself, she begins to thaw.
“I wasn’t good at pretending, that was the thing. I had decided, years ago, that if the choice was between that or flying solo, then I’d fly solo. It was safer that way. Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.”
Mental health problems are rife in our society, and this book absolutely makes the case that trauma + isolation is a very dangerous combination. From the first, the reader is aware that Eleanor is hiding pain behind her scarred face. But what is so heartening about this book is that it is not until Eleanor starts being supported, both by friendship and professional care, that the more grisly details are revealed. The book has a very hopeful ending, and thank goodness for that, because I think the vast majority of readers will become attached to Eleanor (prickly and unintentionally funny) along the way.
There is no beautiful prose in this book - it’s not ‘literary in that sense’ - but the author builds up a very convincing portrait of a damaged young women living in a world (Glasgow, in this case) which is actually (thankfully) made up of a far more normal and benign range of human behaviour. I’ve never met an Eleanor, but the voice rings true. One of my favourite details was Eleanor’s choice of computer password: Ignis aurum probat . . . ‘fire tests gold’ (and adversity tests the brave), attributed to Seneca. So perfectly Eleanor. ...more
The ‘action’ of this novel spans a single day: the day of Patrick Melrose’s mother’s funeral. But the effect is almost one of time-lapse, as key eventThe ‘action’ of this novel spans a single day: the day of Patrick Melrose’s mother’s funeral. But the effect is almost one of time-lapse, as key events from the parental past play in the background of our protagonist’s consciousness. In this novel, the reader is treated to the comic-tragic spectacle of Eleanor’s skimpily attended funeral and drinks-party wake, whilst her relentlessly analytical son tries to get to grips with both the finality and ongoing emotional turbulence caused by his mother’s death and life.
There are some wonderful moments of sharp dialogue in this last novel - and I do have a soft spot for the completely horrid snob Nicholas Pratt, who makes a welcome entrance and exit - but at times the storyline does get rather bogged down in Patrick’s solipsistic head. Still, it was an emotionally disturbing pleasure to read - and one can’t help but hope that Patrick makes some kind of peace with himself. The novel ends on a hopeful, even light, note, and at the very least one feels that Patrick’s children will have a happier life than he has managed.
“‘It’s the hardest addiction of all,’ said Patrick. ‘Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, that deep-down need to mean two things at once, to be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.’”...more
Mother’s Milk, the fourth of five Patrick Melrose novels, opens with a graphic description of the birth of Patrick’s first child: “Why had they pretenMother’s Milk, the fourth of five Patrick Melrose novels, opens with a graphic description of the birth of Patrick’s first child: “Why had they pretended to kill him when he was born?”
What a brilliant, brilliant novel about the complicated relationship between mothers and their children. Author Maggie O’Farrell describes the Melrose novels as being ‘at once epic and intimate’, and I think this one best covers that range. It’s specifically about the toxic and perpetually disappointed relationship that Patrick has with his own mother Eleanor, but it’s also about the legacy of parenting - and how we are helpless, in a sense, to do anything other than respond to our own models. So Patrick is married to the fiercely, obsessively maternal Mary - whose all-consuming devotion to her two sons feels like another form of abandonment to her husband. Mary is responding to her own mother Kettle, who was both selfish and absent as a mother. And Patrick’s love for his mother’s French home Saint Lazaire - repository of childhood memories, and assumed inheritance - becomes another source of maternal treachery when Eleanor decides to gift it to a ‘Transpersonal Foundation’ and thus disinherit her son. Much of the novel is spent on Patrick’s emotional tenterhooks: he is desperate for his demented, paralysed mother to die, but she cannot even release Patrick (or herself) from the bonds of life. The novel makes a very neat life cycle, but in the end it’s an arrested one: just like Patrick’s emotional state. And the mother’s milk? Bitterness, gall, betrayal - and in this novel, the copious amounts of alcohol which have become Patrick’s latest destructive coping mechanism.
This is one of the funniest of the Melrose novels, but the humour is often painful. Still, Patrick’s two clever and articulate sons do add some comic relief. As ever, I was bowled over by the author’s stylish, intelligent writing - even when he is probing his psychological wounds.
“Mary was such a devoted mother because she knew what it felt like not to have one. Patrick also knew what it felt like, and as a former beneficiary of Mary’s maternal overdrive, he sometimes had to remind himself that he wasn’t an infant anymore, to argue that there were real children in the house, not yet horror-trained; he sometimes had to give himself a good talking-to. Nevertheless, he waited in vain for the maturing effects of parenthood. Being surrounded by children only brought him closer to his own childishness. He felt like a man who dreads leaving harbour, knowing that under the deck of his impressive yacht there is only a dirty little twin-stroke engine: fearing and wanting, fearing and wanting.”...more
I’m not sure that poetry purists would recognise this as poetry: there are no rhyme schemes, no classical allusions, no symbolism, no word play, no opI’m not sure that poetry purists would recognise this as poetry: there are no rhyme schemes, no classical allusions, no symbolism, no word play, no opaque meanings or open-ended possibilities. Instead, the language is very clear and accessible; for many people, this will be a plus. It ‘reads’ a bit like new-age feminist mantras in places: all very consciousness raising, ‘you are beautiful and worthwhile’ stuff. In some poems, this is undeniably affecting; but at other times, I did find it all a bit too accessible to the point of being superficial and rather like a ‘meme’. For example, there is a lot of this kind of thing:
“learning to not envy someone else’s blessings is what grace looks like”
“i will no longer compare my path to others
~ i refuse to do a disservice to my life“
The poems are loosely organised in five thematic sections: wilting, falling, rooting, rising and blooming. The early poems focus mostly on the failure of a relationship and the narrator’s feeling of being abandoned and not lovable. In later poems, the focus shifts to the relationship with the self and also the narrator’s mother. There is a racial/cultural component to many of the poems although it is not made too explicit in the sense of being connected to a specific culture or race. (Many women will be able to identify, including those with ‘white’ skin.). The narrator speaks often of her ‘brown’ skin and other features like her unibrow. External beauty and self-love are big themes. The narrator also makes many connections to her mother’s generation, and its struggles and privations, in order to contrast it to the opportunities an educated woman in a contemporary (and one infers) ‘westernised’ culture benefits from.
I did like the poems, and they are certainly easy to read, but perhaps I am old-fashioned in wanting to ‘work’ more for meaning and not have it signposted at the end of nearly ever poem. ...more
My engagement with the books in the Anne of Green Gables series has been somewhat inconsistent. In this book, the titular character of Anne really begMy engagement with the books in the Anne of Green Gables series has been somewhat inconsistent. In this book, the titular character of Anne really begins to take a narrative back seat to the lives of her children - and I found myself feeling rather bored at times. Each chapter tends to focus on the adventures (or misadventures) of one of the children, with the twin girls Nan and Diana getting slightly more attention than the others. Walter, the sensitive second son, has a starring role in an early chapter: He walks six miles home in the darkness because he is convinced that his mother is dying. (In fact, she is having the seventh and last child Rilla.). But otherwise, he hardly appears - and nor does Shirley, the youngest son. The most memorable episodes seem to involve unreliable friends. The book's storyline does seem to draw a line between having an imagination in a 'good' way, and just telling fibs for one's own self-aggrandisement. Nan, the most imaginative child, does get herself into an emotional bind (just as her mother did) when she begins thinking she can bargain with God.
The most satisfying scene in the book is, by far, the last one. It is Anne and Gilbert's anniversary and she is convinced that he has entirely forgotten about it. After a pretty miserable dinner party, in which Gilbert seems to be flirting with his old girlfriend Christine, Anne experiences a rare moment of painful jealousy and insecurity; but happily, in the end her fears turn out to be nothing but misunderstandings. Although I enjoyed the ending, I did think it meant that the book felt like it was intended for two different readers: those who enjoy the children's scenes may not have much sympathy for Anne's crisis of confidence, and also vice versa. ...more
My engagement with the books in the Anne of Green Gables series has been somewhat inconsistent. In this book, the titular character of Anne really begMy engagement with the books in the Anne of Green Gables series has been somewhat inconsistent. In this book, the titular character of Anne really begins to take a narrative back seat to the lives of her children - and I found myself feeling rather bored at times. Each chapter tends to focus on the adventures (or misadventures) of one of the children, with the twin girls Nan and Diana getting slightly more attention than the others. Walter, the sensitive second son, has a starring role in an early chapter: He walks six miles home in the darkness because he is convinced that his mother is dying. (In fact, she is having the seventh and last child Rilla.). But otherwise, he hardly appears - and nor does Shirley, the youngest son. The most memorable episodes seem to involve unreliable friends. The book's storyline does seem to draw a line between having an imagination in a 'good' way, and just telling fibs for one's own self-aggrandisement. Nan, the most imaginative child, does get herself into an emotional bind (just as her mother did) when she begins thinking she can bargain with God.
The most satisfying scene in the book is, by far, the last one. It is Anne and Gilbert's anniversary and she is convinced that he has entirely forgotten about it. After a pretty miserable dinner party, in which Gilbert seems to be flirting with his old girlfriend Christine, Anne experiences a rare moment of painful jealousy and insecurity; but happily, in the end her fears turn out to be nothing but misunderstandings. Although I enjoyed the ending, I did think it meant that the book felt like it was intended for two different readers: those who enjoy the children's scenes may not have much sympathy for Anne's crisis of confidence, and also vice versa.
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