Other Stories

We'll Meme Again...

Oh the punnery. I'm hilarious.

Chartroose and her Book Barrage posted this meme yesterday and today I'm taking on the mantle. A lot of it may be ground I've covered before, but since when have I let that get in the way of some good, solid, memery?

1. Who is your all-time favourite author, and why?

I can give no one answer to this: instead, I am giving two. Virginia Woolf is the first. My love of Mrs Dalloway is well-documented and it is no exaggeration to say that this book changed my outlook on life when I read it at 19. Being of the age when Mrs D believes herself to have been happiest, I could relate on a number of levels to the way she talked about her magical summer. But then, in the book, she's in her early 50s and still trying to recapture the person she was at 18, she is wondering when everything changed, and why it all changed. I didn't want to be like that. It sounds corny, but I decided after that fateful reading to find happiness where I could, to take life as it comes, and to make the most of everything. I hope I've stuck to that. I try to, at any rate. I don't want to wake up one day and wonder where my life went.

And, of course, there is A Room of One's Own, which is just an incredible rallying cry for women to assert some of their independence through writing (amongst many other things). I have a beautiful little embossed paperback edition, which was the first present Boyfriend ever bought for me, and I love it. I was wondering whether there was irony in the fact that a man - whoever that man may be - having bought me my favourite edition of that particular book, but I've decided there isn't. He knew it was a book I loved, and which meant a lot to me. It was an extremely thoughtful gift.

Then there's Orlando, which is much overlooked I think. There's a boy in the 17th century. He grows up. Then he turns into a woman. And lives for hundreds of years. It's brilliant. Chameleon nature of sexuality and all that. Lots of pictures of Vita. Love it.

My other favourite author is Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre is simply an amazing book and I have no earthly idea how many times I've read it. Villette is also fantastic and I remember as a teenager sitting on my bed with a French dictionary trying to translate the French passages.

2. Who was your first favoutite author? Do you still consider them amongst your favourites?

I'd love to be able to give some incredibly precocious answer to this like "Oooh, yes, I first appreciated the majesty of Dostoyevsky at 3 and a half" but I can't. The honest answer is Ann M. Martin, author of The Babysitters Club series. I devoured those books! I was probably 8 or 9 at the time, and every weekend when I went to the West End of Glasgow to see my dad, he would take me to John Smiths on Byres Road, or the big John Smiths in town, and he would buy me another Babysitters book. Without fail I'd have finished it by that night. I just could not get enough of them. I wanted to be beautiful and artisitic like Claudia with her big, almond-shaped eyes, but instead I was undeniably more like the tomboyish Kristy. Hey, at least the name was close.

The first time I went to America, when I was 9, we went to a book shop in some mall somewhere, and I discovered that they had lots of Babysitters books that were much further on in the series than I could get in Britain, it being an American author and all. I came back with stacks of the American editions and let me tell you I was quite the envy of my friends when I produced number 63 in the series. We were only up to 49 in the UK! Thank god my parents encouraged my reading, even when my dad wasn't a reader at all. They realised pretty early on that books (and music) were more or less the only things I was interested in as a kid, and nurtured accordingly. Thanks, mum and dad.

Is she still a favourite? I can't say I read her anymore but I have very fond memories of them.

3. Who is the most recent addition to your list of favourites?

This is a toughie. I think probably Brian Moore (thanks to Palimpsest), or Nicola Barker. Rather different authors, but both excellent.

4. If someone were to ask for your favourite authors right now, who would you say? Who would you add after reflection?

Well, obviously all those mentioned above. Add to them some Dickens, some Sarah Waters, some Ali Smith, some Michel Faber, some Margaret Atwood, some Wilkie Collins, and some Armistead Maupin, and you've covered much of my range.

After thinking for a second, I'll add Iain Banks (no sci-fi M for me) because of a long-standing love of his writing (even his slightly ropier recent stuff), and I'll add Sylvia Plath because her poetry is astounding and gets a bad rap as really depressive when in reality the majority of it really, really isn't, and I'll add Katherine Mansfield because her short stories are sublime, and I'll add Rebecca West because The Return of the Soldier is an amazing book, and I'll add Emily Bronte purely and simply because of the masterpiece that in Wuthering Heights.

So, that's your meme for today. Tag, you're it.

The Crimson Petal and the White - Michel Faber

The only bad thing about reading a big thick history book like The Victorians is that it takes a while. I am still thoroughly enjoying it, and would go as far as to say that it is quite probably the best history book I have ever read, but I'm not quite finished. Approaching three quarters of the way through though, so progress continues apace, but this leaves me conspicuously short of blog posts in the meantime.

So, I have decided to revisit some of my most favourite books, until I finish the non-fiction behemoth and get back on the fiction wagon. Today: The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber.

The title, as all good Victoriana-o-philes will know, comes from a poem by Tennyson called 'Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal' ("Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white"), a poem about love and longing, and to be frank, a little bit of lusting too. How apt this is for this wonderful, wonderful, all-consuming book.

"Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before. You may imagine, from other stories you've read, that you know it well, but those stories flattered you, welcoming you as a friend, treating you as if you belonged. The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether."

So opens this novel set in the dark, dirty streets of Victorian London. The story follows a headstrong young man-hating prostitute called Sugar as she progresses through the rigid social structure of the times thanks to a liaison with William Rackham, gentleman and newly crowned head of Rackham Perfumeries. At home he has a daughter and a wife - his wife is confined to her bed, hysterical in the way that only Victorian women could be. She is, perhaps, his madwoman in the attic.

This is a chunky book - my paperback edition weighs in at 835 (very good quality) pages - but my word I zipped through it. The beauty of it is that Faber is a genius at character. Every single person, no matter how inconsequential, pops out of the page a fully formed human being, elliciting sympathy or derision or hatred as appropriate. And London herself becomes as much as character as any person in the book - the city is perfectly etched with no details left out. No dim corner is too dirty or deprived for our eyes, and this means that the social inequality of the Victorian class system is laid bare for all to see. We watch Sugar as she drags herself from 'The Streets' to 'The World at Large', but then what happens to her?

The ending of the book caused some controversy with readers when the book was published in 2000 because it... no, I can't tell you. All I shall say is that Michel Faber had enough letters (both pleading and admonishing) to write a follow up book of short stories called The Apple in 2006. I can tell you that when I closed The Crimson Petal and the White, I was bereft, and it remains one of the best books I have ever read. It, like the London, and like the characters it is populated by, is "vast and intricate", and leaves quite the indelible print on the memory.

I read that there is to be a film adaptation. I could see it working as a film, but I'm not sure I would want to see the film itself. I think I'm too attached to the book to be able to let go of the mental picture I have of the characters. *Sigh*. Wonderful book. Wonderful, wonderful book.

Facts and Links

Fictional reading is still taking somewhat of a battering, and at times like this, poetry is a god-send. Recently I have been reveling in Emily Bronte's poetry, especially "No coward soul is mine", which in itself is very high up in my list of favourite lines from poetry.

I'm still ploughing on with The Victorians by AN Wilson, which is proving to be one of the very best history books I have ever read. The scope is incredibly far-reaching without the reader feeling short-changed on any particular topic: it really is an incredibly well-written book - and much funnier in places than you might expect. If you've any interest in the Victorian period, then I implore you to look past its bulk and settle in.

Did you know that during the Irish famine, many adults starved because potatoes were the only crop they were able to grow, and even then they could only grow enough for personal use? Many people ate literally nothing but potatoes - up to 13 or so POUNDS per day - so no potatoes = no food. Meanwhile, the UK government were still having Irish corn exported. Tragic stuff.

My other fact of the day - and this is nothing to do with Victorianism - is that today in the UK there are more members of the National Trust than of any political party. How awfully British.

In other news, here are some links I have loved recently:

• Literary tattoos!
• Bookmooch rocks. Free book swaps mean new books without the environmental impact of making more paper. Have picked up some excellent Virago Modern Classics in original green livery.
• Really interesting F Word discussion on having children late in life.
• This is a BRILLIANT piece from The Observer about Fern Britton and her gastric band.
• Freelance Mum is one of my new favourite blogs.
• Lorrie Moore: A Life in Books.

Right, I'm off back to the 19th century.

Haworth

Haworth was amazing. Truly, it was Bronte-tastic. The museum was full of incredible things: the tiny books the children would write for their tin soldiers; first editions of the novels; letters; Emily's dress; embroidery not just by Emily and Anne, but also by Maria Bronte, who died as a child; Branwell's paintings; Patrick Bronte's Book of Psalms and magnifying glass; the sofa on which Emily died; locks of the sisters' hair from mourning envelopes.

I had intended writing a long and effusive post about how incredible it was to be so close to these real belongings of the authors I idolize, but as pretentious as this sounds, I honestly can't find the words. This hampers a blog post somewhat, so instead I shall share with you a few of the photos I took on the day.



The Bronte Parsonage (above)


Gate between Parsonage and Church (above)



The Dining Room where the girls did most of their work (above)

Haworth the village was also beautiful - hugely hilly as one would expect from the Yorkshire moors, and quite windy which added to the general sense of Wuthering-ness. It was *glorious*. I have more photos on Flickr.

Feminist Feasting

Typepad seems to have undergone a transformation, so forgive me if this post takes on a random variety of incarnations before it looks like usual. There are all sorts of weird buttons here in the "compose" page, and it may take me a while to get used to it.

Of course I may get it right first time and you lot will never know the difference, in which case, ignore me.

I am not at work. I am at home. I am sitting on my bed with my laptop on my knee with an open notepad and a pile of table-thumping feminist books beside me. It's a beautiful thing. Having reached the end of my first year of the MA, I am being a disgusting swot and doing some reading around what I want to do for my dissertation next year, ie, Victorian feminist literature. My self-prescribed reading list between now and October includes:

• Cassandra by Florence Nightingale
• The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar
• The New Woman and Other Emancipated Woman Plays
• The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siecle by Sally Ledger (who teaches on my MA, I am such a goodie-goodie)
• The Feminist History Reader edited by Sue Morgan
• A Widening Sphere edited by Martha Vicinus
• Suffer and be Still: Women in the Victorian Age also edited by Martha Vicinus
• Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors: Victorian Writing by Women on Women edited by Susan Hamilton
• A New Woman Reader: Fiction, Articles, and Drama of the 1890s edited by Carolyn Christensen Nelson

Never mind some re-reading of various novels and short stories by Victorian women. There's no doubt I've set myself quite a task, and I fear that as a result there will be fewer contemporary fiction reviews within these blog pages, but this is nothing if not an honest account of what I read. I'm sure I'll manage to slip a few contemporary treats in along the way. :)

Nearly finished The Story of a Marriage - only about 60 pages to go. Had a busy day yesterday and so didn't get the chance to read quite as much as I hoped. Today, hopefully more. Am going into London soon and hopefully the journey each way will give me ample time to polish it off.

I got tagged! Again!

The lovely Sara at A Salted got me right back for tagging her with the 'Six Random Things' meme by tagging me for a more bookish meme. This time the rules are:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

So, given that I spent a large part of this weekend getting myself right back into the Vanity Fair zone, and that I am now carrying it around in my bag, that's the book which is closest to hand at the moment.

Page 123 sees us right in the middle of one of the devilish Rebecca Sharp's letters to Amelia Sedley, and the three sentences after the fifth find Becky at her most scheming and spiky:

"Your India muslin and your pink silk, dearest Amelia, are said to become me very well. They are a good deal worn now; but, you know, we poor girls can't afford des fraiches toilettes. Happy Happy you! who have but to drive to St James's Street, and a dear mother who will give you anything you ask."

Ooooh, she's a sly one, that Becky Sharp.

Now, who am I tagging this time? Well, I don't want to tag the same people again, but that doesn't leave me with many options. So, I tag anyone who wants to have a go. Hurrah!

Silent in the Grave - Deanna Raybourn

I have been shamefully lax is reading this review copy that was kindly sent to me by Mira Books at the end of last year, but I'm pleased to say that it was very much worth the wait.

Silent in the Grave is the first in the Lady Julia Grey series of whodunnit novels set in Victorian London. No one here needs reminding that "Victorian" and "London" are two words guarenteed to make me rub my hands in booky glee, and this novel was no exception. The story starts with the immortal lines:

To say that I met Nichola Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.

And that really sets the tone for the whole shebang. Lady Julia Grey - feisty, independent, though still with a touch of endearing vulnerability - finds evidence that her husband's death was quite probably not natural, and with the help of the brooding, mysterious, and decidedly Heathcliff-esque Nicholas Brisbane sets about trying to unravel the mystery.

Now, I'm going to be straight with you here. This isn't a literary masterpiece, and I doubt it'll be troubling the Nobel Prize for Literature jury, but that is not to say that this isn't a great book. It really is just bloody great fun; a page-turner in the great tradition of page-turners. The word "rollicking" could have been conjured up expressly for this book. It's obvious too that Deanna Raybourn, the American author of this novel, absolutely delights in all things London-esque: she plainly had as much fun writing Silent in the Grave as I did reading it. Joy just drips from the page, which is a difficult feat in a murder mystery.

Just, er, one small point, and the Victorian Studies geek in me really apologises for bringing this up, but it was the only thing that annoyed me about the book: the word "gotten". No one says that over here. We just don't use that word in Britain, and certainly not in 1886. So, Ms Raybourn, if you happen upon my blog, please, delete "gotten". It stuck out like a sore thumb in an otherwise delightful book. Thanks. :)

There isn't much more I can say about this novel. It's got a brilliantly worked out plot, it elicited a couple of audible gasps from me towards the end as the demise of Edward was revealed in all its glory, and it'll hold your attention right to the end. It's great fun. And now I'm off to find volume two in the series.

Sweet F A

Finally, I can delve back into my piles of unread books because I'VE FINISHED THE ESSAY! Woo! I'm handing it in tonight, I can't wait.

There is the small matter of a five week reading project with a presentation at the end of it to prepare for, but this weekend, I say here and now, will not see a jot of MA work being done. This will be the first weekend for bloody ages where I have had to either study, go to a work thing, have anyone to stay, or just generally have plans. We have no plans at all, absolutely nada between Friday evening and Monday morning. And do you know what we plan to do? Nothing. Sweet, beautiful nothing.

I am going to wander around the house in joggy bottoms and a band tshirt and bare feet. I shall read at least a book and a half, hopefully. Boyfriend will tinker with his new guitar (to be used specifically for slide, I hear), and no doubt we'll manage to stagger along to the pub for a couple of pints. They have green beer at the moment. Something to do with unripened hops, apparently.

I'm also going to await the arrival of my latest purchase: The Complete Novels and Stories of Kate Chopin. Bliss, I tell thee.

The Sad Shepherd - WB Yeats

Today, beloved readers, we're going high brow. High brow-ish at any rate. With my current strict reading diet of all things Yeatsian, I felt I couldn't not have a post about it. However, I wanted to spare you my cackhanded literary analysis, so I have decided to go minimalist and share with you my favourite Yeats poem (so far... I haven't read everything he's written). It is one that I wasn't familiar with before I started work on this essay, but I've been finding myself reading it every day. Enjoy.

The Sad Shepherd (1885, published 1886)

There was a man whom Sorrow named his friend,
And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming,
Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming
And humming sands, where windy surges wend:
And he called loudly to the stars to bend
From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they
Among themselves laugh on and sing alway:
And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend
Cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story!
The sea swept on and cried her old cry still,
Rolling along in dreams from hill to hill.
He fled the persecution of her glory
And, in a far-off, gentle valley stopping,
Cried all his story to the dewdrops glistening.
But naught they heard, for they are always listening,
The dewdrops, for the sound of their own dropping.
And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend
Sought once again the shore, and found a shell,
And thought, I will my heavy story tell
Till my own words, re-echoing, shall send
Their sadness through a hollow, pearly heart;
And my own tale again for me shall sing,
And my own whispering words be comforting,
And lo! my ancient burden may depart.
Then he sang softly nigh the pearly rim;
But the sad dweller by the sea-ways lone
Changed all he sang to inarticulate moan
Among her wildering whirls, forgetting him.

Daughters of Decadence

I actually originally read this book of women's fin-de-siecle short stories last year, but it has been more or less a constant companion ever since. In those gaps where time is too short to read a healthy dose of whichever novel I am on, a quick dip into this wonderful collection is the perfect reading substitute.

Edited by Elaine Showalter (feminist academic and one of My Heroes), this collection rescues fin-de-siecle literature from the clutches of the dominant male writers of the time such as Wilde and Haggard. This was the time of the New Woman, and women were writing furiously. As Showalter says in her excellent introduction:

"Not only as heroines of drama, but also as competitors in marketplace, women were a major presence in the new literary world of the 1880s and 1890s. They were writing with unprecedented candour about female sexuality, marital discontent, and their own aesthetic theories and aspirations; and speaking to - and about - the New Women of the fin de siecle. Famous, even notorious, in their own day, these women writers have been overshadowed not only by such distinguished male contemporaries as Conrad and Wilde, but also by minor novelists like Haggard and Stoker."

It's time for the women to step forward and take the credit they are due. Arguably the most famous story in this collection is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story The Yellow Wallpaper, which I defy anyone not to love. The story was written in the 1890s after she had been suffering from post-natal depression, and had been treated by Dr Silas Weir Mitchell. He had made her go through the rest cure, and she was not allowed to do anything by stay quietly in bed - she could not even read or write. Now, I can tell you here and now that if I was shut up somewhere in the country without recourse to a healthy dose of books I would be throwing myself out of a high window in fairly short order. Charlotte PG instead waited until she could write again and wrote this furious, eloquent, heartbreaking story of a woman in just such a situation, descending from depression into true madness in her confinement.

However, the lesser-known stories are just as wonderful. Kate Chopin - best known for her novella The Awakening - opens the collection with a very, very short story called An Egyptian Cigarette which sees a woman who smokes a cigarette brought back from Cairo for her and slips into a druggy dream of Egyptian Gods, and a mysterious man.

There is also a feminist counterpart for Conrad's The Heart of Darkness: Charlotte Mew's A White Night. It is narrated by the heroine's brother, Cameron, and follows Ella, Cameron, and Ella's new husband King on their honeymoon to Spain. There they witness the ritual burying alive of a veiled woman, which Showalter rightly calls "a warning of female destiny in the contexts of patriarchy", then sees the party's reaction to it. Ella is massively disturbed and transforms from strong New Woman into speechless hysteric, while Cameron believes that "the woman didn't really count", the whole thing was merely a "spectacle" and a "rather splendid crime".

These are all truly fantastic stories, and I heartily recommend that you all go and haste ye to a place where you can buy it. Go, go, go! You won't regret it.

(And what a gorgeous cover - lovely Virago designs strike again.)

Nota Bene

Some things to note:

1. I have having some technical issues. Things don't appear when I want them too. There should have been posts between Thursday and now. They've disappeared from everywhere, and at the moment I don't have time to re-type.
2. Technical issues, part the second: my sidebars aren't updating.
3. I have been in Scotland all weekend, with a sum total of 10 minutes internet time. Scotland was alright. Scottish. Spent most of the time with my mum, which was largely very enjoyable. Slept in my old bedroom and rued the day when I was 15 and painted my room DARK purple. Felt oddly compelled to go out and buy some nice, neutral paint. Apologised to my mother eleven years on for being the most appalling goth and forcing her to have a purple room in her house. That said, I haven't lived at home since I was 17, and she still hasn't got around to repainting it herself.
4. Guiltily eschewed essay reading and finished Clear by Nicola Barker instead. Loved it. Loved it more than I loved Darkmans. (CLAIRE! I know I forgot to point out to you how commuter-unfriendly Darkmans is, but trust me on Clear. It's paperback! And only 340-odd pages! If you enjoyed Darkmans, you won't regret this, I promise.)
5. Did make serious progress with old Herbert G W, though, and I aim to finish it tonight or tomorrow. Still not loving it, but can now say with absolute certainty that The Island of Dr Moreau is the best Wells I've read, tinge of racism not withstanding.
6. Lewis, 9pm Sunday nights on ITV, is amazing. Last night they blew up a house just along the road from me.
7. I have recently become massively addicted to this bread.

That is all. I am beavering away at battling the gremlins, and normal service short resume shortly.

Places to go, people to see...

Today, I am a little behind. Being stuck in bed for a week meant that I whizzed through a few books because frankly I was incapable of doing anything other than reading, sleeping, coughing, and drinking litres of orange squash. In the space of a week, I (finally) finished Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which I'm not planning to review here largely because I can't think of anything intelligent to say about it other than it took me a few chapters to get into it, it's a gory, rollicking, good fun book, the story is really nothing like the film, and if you're into a bit of Victorian weirdness then you could do far worse than to pick this one up. I'm not just saying that because I work for the publisher. Y'all know that I keep my work life and Other Stories life separate unless they genuinely overlap.

I also read the third Inspector Morse novel, The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn. Decent whodunnit. Buckets of sexism, which annoyed me. The other two books read were The Ice Palace by Terjei Varsaas, and Watch Me Disappear by Jill Dawson. Enjoyed both, and proper reviews are forthcoming, once I have time to down and formulate my thoughts and pencilled notes into something approximating a book review.

Meanwhile, I am in full-tilt MA mode, and have also been completely sucked into Vanity Fair when it comes to recreational reading. It's a big ole book is Vanity Fair, and given that I'm only getting time to get through 50 pages a day at the moment with everything else going on, then progress is not particularly speedy. However, Thursday is uni day, so at least I have an hour each way on the train to London to have a bit of read.

Talking of having a bit of a read, off you lot pop and take a gander and what's been floating my cyber-boat this week:

• I'm doing more posts on the good old OUPblog at the moment. Two this week - one on Captain Scott, the other on Prozac - with another one to come tomorrow.
• 1-15 March is the Oxford International Women's Festival. Hooray!
• 2007's Oddest Book Titles are...
• Scottish Friend and I went to see Juno last night - and it was fantastic. Knitter Friend reviewed it over on her blog too.
• The curious case of the forged biography.
• Following on from the stories I linked to yesterday, there's another good piece in The Independent today about violence against women.

A couple of these links will pop up on tomorrow's OUPblog link love post from me, so these will give you a head start. But do stop by tomorrow OUPblog post for bunnies and staircases and other stuff too.

Tourists, books, and Victoria Wood

It's Monday morning and for once I feel fairly buoyant.  The weekend was a complete success, other than the cold, which I have been tactfully ignoring. I have one gripe though: tourists.

Now, I know that Oxford is a beautiful and historic city, and that this means that lots of people want to come and look at it. But do they really have to move in packs? Packs that suddenly stop in front of you, taking up the entirety of any walking space there might previously have been and look up the way with mouths agape? On Saturday I was trying to walk up Broad Street to meet Academic Friend for lunch and it took me forever to cover a relatively small stretch of ground thanks to tourists meandering and stopping and generally really pissing me off. Added to this was the fact that there was an animal testing protest slap bang in the middle of the road, so there were quite a few people ambling about with awkward placards, plus triple their number in police officers (complete with cameras) and bloody riot vans everywhere.

By the time I got to the Bod I was fuming and muttering under my breath. There I met Academic Friend who was likewise suffering the curse of the tourist. Apparently you can get a guided tour round the Bod, including the reading rooms. Lovely for the tourist. Not so lovely for the people who are (to use Academic Friend as an example) sitting trying to work on their, you know, doctoral thesis that's due in a very small number of months. Tourist parties were at such a level that Friend was giving up and going home to study, for it was quieter than the library in which she had been generally peered at by sight-seers. Unsurprisingly, the first portion of our lunch was generally spent ranting about tourists.

In other weekend news, I read two books (The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham and The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas), made a further dent in Sweeney Todd, which had been sitting idle for a couple of weeks, and had glorious night of Chinese food, beer, and much dancing with my beautiful friends. I have also been devouring the DVD of the TV series Victoria's Empire, where Victoria Wood goes around the countries that used to make up the British Empire. It really is a treat, and I'll be talking more about it in days to come.

Connections

It strikes me sometimes that I read books that sort of link between each other, without even meaning to.

Take, for example, Asylum by Patrick McGrath, which I started on Saturday (and am now half way through). It's the story of Stella Raphael, the wife of the Deputy Superintendent of a mental hospital, and the obsessive, dangerous, passionate love affair she embarks on with Edgar Stark, a patient who is in the asylum because he murdered his wife. They meet because Edgar, who had been a sculptor on the outside, has been trusted with repairing an old Victorian glass conservatory in the asylum's grounds.

I picked up this book because another of Patrick McGrath's books, Dr Haggard's Disease, was one of the best books I read last year. It was the first novel of his that I had read, and Asylum had been recommended as another great McGrath novel. So, it was somewhat of a coincidence that the novel was set in a building described thus:

"It is built on the standard Victorian linear model with wings radiating of the main blocks so all the wards have an unobstructed view across the terraces to the open country beyond the Wall. This is a moral architecture, it embodies regularity, discipline, and organization."

The idea of moral architcture in vast Victorian asylums is a massive chunk of what I wrote my recent essay on for university. To see the words "moral architecture" popping up again so soon, and in a novel, made me jump a little. Not just that, but the fact that Edgar is working on a Victorian glasshouse correlates exactly to another major part of my essay: the Crystal Palace. I was comparing the Crystal Palace, built in 1851 to house The Great Exhibition, to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, also built in 1851, and how to both come to embody far more than they were originally meant to . I'm rambling, but you get the general idea. It was to do with progress and anxiety.

Anyhoo, this weird link between recent reading materials is not a new thing. I also read Dracula recently, as regular readers will know, and that has a character locked in an asylum who occasionally breaks out and flees to a bit old Victorian house to wait for his Master. Victorian asylums again. And, a large part of Dracula is set in Whitby. The book I read before Dracula was Attention All Shipping, which talks about the same headland in Whitby as that which appears in Dracula.

This is weird.

Bwah ha ha ha...

Things have being getting a bit spooky over in Kirsty Towers.

I’ve just started the second module of my course, entitled ‘The Victorian Supernatural’, which just sounds so amazing I begin gibbering and tripping over my words as soon as I think about it. Seances! Fairies! Vampires! Blood! Ghosts! The Victorians lived in an age plagued by religious doubt so they turned to The Other Side readily, hungry for reassurance and/or answers. All of which seems to somehow correspond with the age we are living in today. The beginning of the 21st century has seen reams of papers dedicated to the discussion of religion, in one way or another. Whether it be the current flood of atheist polemics, or dissecting the relationship between the western/Christian world and Islam, or the millions of people fascinated with contacting the dead (usually on TV, I notice), we seem to be as desperate for answers as we ever were.

Which helps to account for the fact that gothic tales, in print or on celluloid, are selling as well as ever. Sweeney Todd is taking the world by storm for a start. I’ve agreed to go and see it with some work colleagues, but I am the world’s most squeamish person, and I’ve already read something about brain splatting on concrete. Urgh. See, the thing is, I can quite happily read about all those things*. I’d like to think that I have a pretty good imagination, but my brain knows I’m a bit sensitive to anything gory, so sensors it out for me, which is good of it. Which is just as well, given my current reading matter.

I have devoured Dracula over the last few days, including several nightime stints in my reading chair (I’ve had the cold. I can never sleep when I have the cold), and really enjoyed it. I have read it before, during a particularly hot summer in Cornwall five years ago, so it was much more atmospheric to sit in the dark on a cold January night reading about the evil Count and the amazing Professor Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker and Dr Seward and Quincey Morris and Mina, not to mention poor Lucy Westenra, the innocent vampire bride. I think I’m going to write this term’s essay on Victorian gothic literature, and am preparedly gorging myself on a blood-rich diet of Sweeney Todd, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and a book of Bram Stoker’s short stories, Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Tales. I am also relishing The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Gothic Tales… Cranford they ain’t.

So, before the nights start getting too much shorter, I am going to happily sit and freak myself out a bit. And probably have quite a lot of nightmares.

* Apart from when I tried to read American Psycho. Eek! Never got to the end. In fact, gave the book away fairly quickly. Urgh urgh urgh. I actually felt physically sick.

I am back! Hello!

Well, apologies for the radio silence. It has all been very hectic at Kirsty Towers. Boyfriend has been sick (though the jury is out on whether it was a nasty stomach bug or the re-heated chilli he ate the evening before he fell ill), I am behind on all matters domestic, and I'm working on a rather important essay for university. All that and the small matter of a full time job.  So, sorry about that.

But I'm back, bright eyed (nearly) and bushy tailed (sort of). I haven't managed to finish What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn yet, as I am momentarily paused just over half way through to allow for university reading.  However, I am enjoying it. Reminds me of the ambition I had for approximately 10 minutes when I was a child to be a private detective (quickly superceeded by the ambition to be a writer, which I still have, and which I am still no closer to realising). I imagine that my Mickey would have been Snuffie the Hedgehog. Never got as far as staking out the St Enoch Centre though. Let's face it, I was never going to hack it as a private detective.

I am, though, reading a fascinating book for my essay: The World for a Shilling: How the Great Exhibition of 1851 Shaped a Nation by Michael Leapman. It's incredibly readable, and just really, really interesting. My copy is from the university library so I looked into buying my own copy as I imagine that it might be a book I go back to time and time again. From my preliminary (non-private) investigations it would seem that it out of print, or at least currently unavailable. Amazon marketplace, here I come. I guess it can't have sold that well if it's out of print already (the paperback came out in 2002). Shame - the reviews on the back cover are excellent, and the book itself is really well written and a fantastically enjoyable read. Sad.

And so Christmas approaches. It has crept up on me this year. Last night I finally got around to buying the last of my Christmas cards and wrapping paper. I have some presents but nowhere near all. I can't be bothered putting a tree up because I'm going up to Glasgow for Christmas itself, and the mogs will only climb it every five minutes. Bah humbug, etc. Plus, I'm working right up to the 21st, so I'm hardly going to be at home anyway. Instead, once I get them tested by the facilities people, I'm putting fairy lights up round my desk. At least that way I'll get the benefit. Hmph.

Next week is the Week of Christmas Parties. Oh, my poor liver. But, I have bought A Dress (gads!) that I shall wear with Heels (bejeesus!) and I will Do My Hair and Make-Up (who are you, and what have you done with Kirsty?). I will probably feel like a transvestite the whole time, but one has to make an effort, doesn't one?

Inventing the Victorians

I finished Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet last night. I've read it before, in about 2003, but I was returning to it on the instruction of the fabled MA reading list.

This is no dry academic text though. Written by a journalist (and you can tell) it is a break neck tour through everything we think we know about the Victorians but have basically got completely and utterly wrong.

Aside from the previously mentioned lion in a wheelbarrow on a tight-rope (they weren't so hot on animal welfare), they were also responsible for the tabloid newspaper, sex contact ads, junk "email" (by way of the unsolicited telegraph), and were completely obsessed with violent murders and freak shows. Gay and bisexual pornography abounded, and this was the period that coined the phrase "top shelf".

It also explained the derivation of the phrase "Sweet FA". Fanny Adams was an 8 year old girl who was brutally murdered and dismembered near her home. The case was all over the newspapers, and photographs of her grave were sold for people to have framed in their homes as a reminder of good behaviour. Around the same time, the navy was getting a new type of ration: diced mutton in a can. So, in the grand tradition of distasteful armed forces humour, they started calling it "sweet FA" colloquially. Nice.

The book also talks about much pleasanter things: home decoration; the Victorian attitudes to women and children; the development of the cinema. Really very interesting and well written.

===============================================================

Latest OUP blog post - on blasphemy and Monty Python - over here.

A Wheelbarrow... with a LION in it

I confess that I don't have an enormous amount to report.

Progress continues apace with Darkmans. As DGR said before me, it's the kind of book where even if you can't get a complete handle on what is happening, it still compels you to read on. It is strange, but quite wonderfully written, and a quarter of the way through I am already keeping my beady eye out for Nicola Barker's other books.

I have also been re-reading Inventing the Victorians for university (just over two weeks to go!). Very, very readable book. I am often asked by various bemused family members why I've got such a thing about the Victorian period, and this book provides some wonderful anecdotes to tell in response. For example, not in this ultra health-and-safety conscious day and age would you find a man such as Blondin. He strung a two inch thick rope between two points high up in the Crystal Palace before tight-rope walking across it sans safety net. Impressive enough one might say, but for the return crossing he came out pushing a wheelbarrow with a lion in it. What a stroke of *genius*! "What can I do to up the old tight-rope ante?... I KNOW! Push a wheelbarrow across... with a LION in it!" Wonderful. Eat your heart out David Blaine, Git Wizard.

In other news, I went to see Jeremy Hardy doing his stand up on Saturday night. Very funny, not least his rant on Channel 4, on cyclists, and his reference to Margaret Thatcher as "the people's Pinochet". And you wait forever for a Jeremy Hardy, then two come along at once. Next week Boyfriend and I are off to see the Oxford leg of the I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue tour, featuring none other than Mr Hardy. Am champing at the bit for a rousing rendition of 'One Song to the Tune of Another'.

Glasgow, doctors, and gothic loveliness

Right, I promise this is the last time I change my blog design for a while. I just get restless.

So, returned yesterday from weekend in the Motherland, complete with a bitching cold. Feel basically dreadful today, and my demon tonsils are threatening gruesome infection. Sorry for the detail but am tempted to do a home tonsilectomy (??) with ice and nail scissors at this rate.

Moving on! Had a fabulous weekend, reading-wise. The interminable train journey on Friday offered the perfect opportunity to finish Dr Haggard's Disease, which has scored highly on this year's reading list. Not quite perfect, but certainly high up.

I also re-read the quite spectacular Poor Things by Alasdair Gray, and dragged Boyfriend up to Park Circus for a small spot of literary tourism as much of the action takes place at 18 Park Circus, and in the 'West End Park' (or Kelvingrove as it's now known). This held no particular interest for Boyfriend, though I did point out that it was at least in part pay-back for the amount of times I've gone to Saville Row with him to point at the roof. Since we're going to London for the weekend this week, I dare say I'll be seeing it again. Any suggestions for literary hotspots greatly appreciated.

It was quite a nice order to read those books in. Dr Haggard's Disease is about a doctor driven mad by his love for the wife of a colleague. They have had a short affair that she has ended when her husband found out, and Dr Haggard has fled to the coast with a broken heart and a morphia addiction to start a new life away from memories of their affair. Then her son turns up, after her death, and Dr Haggard is driven to a new obsession. It's a modern gothic story written beautifully, and has left a certain indelible print on my memory. The image of Dr Haggard running across a field in a black fur coat is an image that I keep coming back to. To say more would ruin things. Needless to say, I'm eager to read more by Patrick McGrath (though not yet - my To Be Read (TBR) pile is increasing steadily again...).

The gothic doctor-ness leads nicely into Poor Things, a story set in Victorian Glasgow. It purports to be the re-discovered story of Archie McCandless MD and his friend Godwin Bysshe Baxter. Godwin is an odd chap, but a brilliant doctor, and Archie tells the story of how Godwin has taken the unclaimed corpse of a 25 year old pregnant girl who drowned herself in the Clyde, and brought her back to life with the brain of her nearly-full-term infant. All very gothic and Frankenstein-esque. At the end of the story is a letter from the woman, declaring the tale to be nothing more than fiction, so it's up to the reader to decide which version of events is the true one.

It's fantastic. I loved it every bit as much as I did the last time I read it, a few years ago. (And this time I won't lend my copy to someone and never get it back). 

Wells Hell

Made myself sit down and finish The Time Machine last night, though it was a real struggle. Thank God it was only 91 pages long, otherwise I might have thrown myself out the window. It was a book for my MA reading list (less than two months to go) so I had to read it, and I should think myself lucky that I didn't feel this way about Bleak House. Forcing yourself through nearly 1,000 pages would be insufferable - forcing my way through nearly 100 was bad enough.

I always feel guilty when I don't enjoy "classics". I feel like I must be missing something, that I must be woefully inadequate in some way. In my defence, I can see why it was on my reading list. I think I know the passages we'll be asked to think about. I can see why it was important in the grand scheme of things.

But I just didn't enjoy it very much. Or, in fact, at all.

Not to worry. I've started Dr Haggard's Disease by Patrick McGrath after reading so many wonderful things about it over at Palimpsest. And I must say that, 30 pages in, I have already fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. The writing is divine and there are just enough clues for you to wonder what is going on without making itself deliberately obscure. What a treat after Wells Hell.