Teaser Tuesdays

Quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences from the book you’re reading to tempt others.

"Immortality of a kind, a limited immortality, is not so hard to achieve after all. Why then does he persist in inscribing marks on paper, in the faint hope that people not yet born will take the trouble to decipher them?"

Summertime by J.M. Coetzee

A Gentle Reminder...

... that Persephone Reading Week begins a week today (August 24th)! Both Verity and myself are very excited and have a lot planned for you all. Have you been able to narrow down and set aside the Persephones you intend to read next week? Have you been able to resist reading them? I have struggled to narrow my potential reads down, I don't have a stack yet in case it tempts me, and have struggled despite the lack of a tempting pile with the desire to begin reading them anyway! I think that I have decided on my five (yes, I am being overly ambitious) and then I read something about another Persephone I have on the grey shelf and impulsively decide that I want to read that one instead and the elimination process resumes.

I see from Darlene's blog yesterday that people are beginning to prepare and some aren't ready yet. I am also now considering dressing in grey all of next week...

Heliopolis

Another contender for this year's Man Booker Prize, Heliopolis by James Scudamore was a welcome discovery, which is what's so great about the prize and challenging myself to read the longlist: it opens me up to literature and writers that otherwise I may not have encountered.

I loved this novel. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting but it surpassed whatever expectations were there. I was reminded slightly of Haruki Murakami in its surrealism but also thought there were definite aspects of magic realism, perhaps because of its South American setting, which lends itself to the genre beautifully.

Ludo, the main protagonist, is twenty-seven years old and works in São Paulo; he was born in the the largest favela (shantytown), Heliopolis, before being taken in with his cook mother by a rich family who later adopted him. Now, Ludo is sleeping with his adopted sister, Melissa, who is also the wife of his best friend, Ernesto, and is about to undergo a transformation in a week that sees him in dramatic situations whilst he, with hindsight, recounts his past and attempts to control his present.

Each chapter title refers to particular food or drink with that dish or beverage central to the narrative in that chapter; as scents and tastes often form our memories, so too do they for Ludo. I was amazed at food's centrality to the plot when there was no mention of it in the synopsis, excluding reference to Ludo's insatiable appetite; it is one of the things that makes the novel exceptional in my eyes. Food imagery pervades the text and Scudamore uses food to describe experiences and emotions.

I wanted to press my fingertip on the metal of the pan to mark the moment, make it permanent. I thought of watching it sizzle as the hot oil erased my fingerprint and coloured the skin. What would it smell like? The burnt hair smell of a car wreck? Charred and succulent, like steak? Sweet and sickly, like plum sauce?

The setting came across to me as futuristic and even dystopian, with the rich seldom on street level but always landing their helicopters on heli-pads on buildings ensuring that they never mix with people from the favelas in the poorer element of the city or engage with the tedium of everyday life.

During the day, he might hop to another high-rise to meet someone for lunch, or to attend an afternoon meeting, but he never touches the pavement. It's not just a question of safety: if he went by car he could get snared in a traffic jam lasting hours. Nobody who's anybody gets driven to work in the city these days.

I then thought that the descriptions of São Paulo could be embellished realism as it is the largest city in Brazil and the nineteenth richest city in the world. However, reading Simon's review of Heliopolis and the subsequent comments, the insight provided by The Converted One suggests that the depiction of São Paulo whilst illuminating is actually toned down. Moreover, if anyone wrote a non-diluted version of his home city, The Converted One thinks that no one would ever go. This fascinates me as I have always wanted to visit Brazil and although Scudamore's description of favela life and poverty are often grim, it doesn't deter me in any way; Scudamore lived in Brazil so I imagine his representation of the city is realistic. In comparison, I am reminded of reading The Other Hand last week and thinking that Chris Cleve did Nigeria no favours as a tourist destination; it is interesting the power that literary description has over a place and how good a job Scudamore did in transporting me there whilst presenting the city fairly.

As yet I have only read five of the thirteen longlisted titles for the Booker but so far I am championing Heliopolis; yes, it even surpasses The Wilderness, one of my favourites this year, in my esteem for its brilliance and originality.

Some favourite passages:

My mother wouldn't have dreamt of showing me how she really felt, but her sadness was as evident in the chicken stew she ladled on to my plate as if the meat had been simmered in her tears.

As the music struck up, I swept away the debris of the meal, collecting the intact steaks and pocketing them, munching on them like apples, getting the meat down even when it hurt my throat to swallow, devouring it so it wouldn't go to waste, trying to get round the tables and clear as many of them as possible so that my mother wouldn't see them coming back.

By the time it was over, so was the storm, leaving behind fresh air, dripping leaves, and roads that gushed in the evening sunlight with milky orange water. As usual, the rain brought hordes of frogs out on to the driveway, croaking and belching and slipping about in the mud. The guests' roaring cavalcade of off-road vehicles smashed them all in a euphoric blare of car horns and klaxons as it sped back to the farm. Their burst bodies lay there crisping for days afterwards.

Ulysses Reading Challenge Update II

It's that time again: time to update you on my progress with Ulysses by James Joyce.

I have to say that I am surprised that two months and close to two hundred pages have already elapsed. Reading a chunk a day via email is perhaps not so conducive to understanding and becoming engrossed in the text but it is certainly the best and easiest way, I think, to discipline oneself to read it, by incorporating it into my daily routine and treating it like any other email.

Ulysses lends itself to quick reading with its short spurts of prose and dialogue and its innovate form. In Search of Lost Time v. 1: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust was far more of a challenge to read every day and I have postponed that for the time being but increased the length of the Ulysses excerpt.

Do people who climb Mount Everest enjoy it or are they doing it simply for the challenge? I'm not disliking Ulysses, nor am I finding it a chore, but I am glad that I am finally reading it.

What about you? how are you getting on with reading Ulysses or other similar challenges to read long, intimidating texts?

Bookshops II

Last week saw the launch of my blog series on favourite bookshops (interior photographs of the first to feature are forthcoming). For my second post in this series, I would like to share the independent bookshop I mentioned at the close of last month's Book-centric Memories post. Last year during a visit to Florida for three weeks, the middle week of which we spent in Sarasota on the Gulf Coast, I came across Sarasota News and Books on Main Street. Also a cafe with tables outside, this foliage-covered store was an instant hit and in one week I visited three times and would have more if it had been within walking distance from our apartment. I sampled (all in the nature of market research, of course) the bookstore, the newsstand, and the cafe stocking up on American editions of books (one that I was looking for, that was out of print in the UK), magazines that aren't available here or that are imported at an escalated price, and key lime pie at the cafe.

This is definitely a book lover's paradise and, open until late, it was a sociable hub; I imagine that the welcome air-conditioning helps in the intense humidity. My visit after dinner one evening was my favourite wander and the free bookmarks they give with their books contributed to my return. It had a reasonably good selection of books to choose from for a relatively small shop (it's on one floor) and browsing the books kept me as intently occupied as any of the bigger chains did during my visit (Borders was no different from here at home and Barnes & Noble had a fabulous range of notebooks and bookmarks but the books themselves left me a little cold as the overall layout reminded me of a warehouse). I only hope that next time I visit Sarasota that Sarasota News and Books is still thriving and that I can while away some hours in contented, air-conditioned bliss.

The Silver Shelf

Previous posts have shown you some of my colour-themed shelves, which are a mix of titles all with their cover cover in common. My silver shelf is slightly different (and less exciting, I think) in its being devoted to one imprint, Penguin, and their silver modern classics. As a book lover I am a huge admirer of Penguin's designs through the ages (I covet this book and also this one) and have orange, mint, silver, and now white Penguins gracing my shelves. However, as you may know I also like to have matching sets of books so I treat my Penguins by colour and the silver ones live together on the shelf above. Where on this shelf I have incomplete collections of author's works (as in the case of Anaïs Nin, Jean Rhys, and Vladimir Nabokov) I will try to track down a copy of the silver edition rather than the new white, to maintain their uniformity. Saying that, the remainder of my Virginia Woolf collection (I have all but one of her books) are in various editions and it hasn't killed me... When it came to novels that I required for University -like Woolf and Joyce- then I often went for the cheaper or more readily available edition rather than striving for a matching set, which explains why they differ.

The first twelve titles on the left are actually in a box: the Penguin banned books collection (limited edition) and provided me with a few duplicates at the time but now I only have Lolita and The Annotated Lolita; I won't give up my annotated edition as it's an incredibly good resource and I can't disturb the box-set.

I guiltily notice that there are quite a number of the books photographed that are unread, a shockingly high amount, but they are ones that I look forward to reading some day and that I want as part of my book collection.

I have potential Penguin-centric posts for a future date, including special attention to their cover art, but in the meantime read this fun, Penguin related post from Verity of The B Files, which originated in a suggestion I made.

There you have it: another insight into the bookshelves of Paperback Reader and her many book collecting neuroses.

Bog Child

I wasn't aware of Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd, which was published earlier this year, until I read this article informing me that she had been posthumously awarded the Carnegie Medal. I immediately borrowed the book from the library and upon doing so realised that it was the cover of Siobhan Dowd's debut novel, A Swift Pure Cry, that had been tempting me for some time.

This year I have read some very good Young Adult novels, my first for some time, but Bog Child is exceptionally good. In some aspects Dowd's writing reminded me of that of Meg Rosoff and they were actually friends during the last year of Dowd's life, a friendship originating from their mutual experiences of breast cancer and of writing. I was also reminded somewhat of Brian Friel's fabulous play, Translations, in its subject matter.

Fergus McCann, an eighteen year old boy living in a Nationalist community in Northern Island, is digging for turf with his Uncle Tally when he discovers the body of a child, preserved by the bog. Living during the Troubles, as the Hunger Strikes in Long Kesh Prison -also known as HM Prison Maze- of 1981 are taking place, Fergus thinks that the child has been murdered by "the Provos" but things are not as they appear. Mel, the bog child, is actually from the Iron Age and her story parallels that of Fergus throughout the novel; a novel of sacrifice and betrayal.

I am so thankful that I came across Bog Child, that the librarians' award brought it to my attention, because I adored it. It is a clever, perceptive, and beautiful novel; it is also tragic and heartrendingly sad in parts, in both Fergus and Mel's stories. This is not a subtle or mild novel but one that contains some violence and trauma; it is a coming-of-age story set in a country rife with politics. The political setting is intrinsic to the plot and I wondered how difficult the politics would appear to a child, or young adult, as it isn't easy to understand anyway ... or is that in itself the point, that it is nonsensical but that a child may make more sense of it than an adult and see what needs to be done? I also wondered if the subject matter would even be of interest to a younger audience who hadn't lived through the Troubles? From the reviews I have seen from younger people, these doubts aren't of issue, although teachers -the older audience- seem to be the ones who think that they are. I remember reading or being taught literature that was set during the Troubles and my interest was not adversely affected so I am apparently approaching the subject now as an adult.

This is an incredibly good book and I highly recommend it; it makes compelling and quick reading but is thoroughly engaging and thought-provoking.

Some examples of the writing and passages I liked:

The girl in the bog. Somebody murdering her.
He bit his lip. He couldn't get those little hand, the spools on the finger-pads, the coiled metal of the bangle out of his mind. In his head there was a strange explosion, as if his brain had collapsed like a clapped-out star. He threw down his pencil and shut his eyes.

The tarpaulin around the bog child was pinned down. There was an expectant feel to it. The archaeologists were on their way and the girl inside was waiting. He put his hand to the khaki-green side, itching to see what lay within. But the tarpaulin was weighted down and seamless. It was wrong to disturb her.

My life fell apart like two halves of an apple, with Rur's hand that day on my shoulder being the knife.

I held the life of the person I loved most like a frail moth in the palm of my hand. But it was safe there. Safe always.