Backslider tries ROOTS again in 2017

Failed miserably last year to tackle ROOTS (house extension took over my life) but rearing to go this time.
Commencing with Bleak House which I started previously but abandoned.







Non-ROOTs completed 2017
1. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton 17.04.17
2.

Welcome back! There is no failure, one page read is a success! I loved Bleak House!

Welcome back, good luck, and have fun!

Welcome back and enjoy your reading, hopefully in a finished house.

Thank you for the kind messages. I'm enjoying Bleak House - I've laughed out loud at some of the character descriptions and sharp observations, and the satirising of the legal profession is exquisite. Not for the faint-hearted at nearly 1000 pages but I'm very glad I picked it up again.

I'm not sure what will be next from my ROOTS pile - sometimes you have to go where the mood takes you...

Yes, thank you, I will - in a new room looking onto the garden, a perfect quiet spot thanks to triple glazing!

Welcome back and Happy 2017 ROOTing!
Have you seen this http://www.librarything.com/topic/247424# -- group read for Bleak House?

A newly finished house sounds wonderful - esp. one that contains a room that looks onto the garden :)

Thanks avanders, most kind - Cicero's quote sums it up:
'If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need' Seeing one from the other is a bonus!
I did notice the Bleak House group read and will join forthwith - looking forward to the discussions already :)

>8 floremolla: great quote! I don't garden..... but I'm very lucky that my husband does! ;)

Welcome back, Donna! I did not see you ticker in the ticker thread or your name in the list with members. But I'm sure you will eventually add those.

>8 floremolla: That's very true! Garden and library should always be close together.

Ah, thanks, connie53, ticker is now in the ticker thread, hope that's me all set. Off to a slow start learning the ropes as I didn't even get this far in 2016.

>9 avanders: lucky you!

>11 floremolla: Yes, you did it all! I'm having a slow start too, so don't you worry.

Bleak House completed. Hurrah! Not what I expected; it was a hugely enjoyable read - tragic, comedic and surprising by turn, and in good Dickens tradition, there were surprising turns of event, bad people suffered consequences and loose ends were carefully tied up. Most satisfactory.

I had a look at 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and it seems I've only read around 11%, however, many are also on my To Read list so I'll prioritise those for ROOTS 2017, the next five being:

Regeneration Pat Barker
The Feast of the Goat Mario Vargas Llosa
Vernon God Little DBC Pierre
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
Animal Farm George Orwell

Congrats on finishing Bleak House!

>14 MissWatson: thank you! Much as I enjoyed it I'm looking forward to reading something a bit shorter next :)

>13 floremolla: Congrats on finishing Bleak House, on of my favorites. I've also read Heart of Darkness (boo) and Animal Farm, which I use every year in the classroom when teaching about Communism (yeah!). Happy reading!

>16 Tess_W: thanks! Bleak House is now one of my favourites too. I'm not thrilled about the prospect of reading Heart of Darkness - I'm aware of the post-colonial criticism, but it's one I feel I should read. And Animal Farm, I'm not sure how I missed that one in my youth. Both books have been lying around our house for several decades - ROOTS has been the nudge I needed. I see you're a big George Elliot fan - she's also on my radar for ROOTS 2017!

>17 floremolla: She's probably my favorite author, followed by Thomas Hardy.

>18 Tess_W: I only have Far From the Madding Crowd on my TBR list but Hardy is also on my radar. Thank goodness it's snowing here today, perfect excuse for curling up with a book or two :)

Regeneration completed. I found this fictionalised account of real events and characters especially thought-provoking in this period of 'celebration' of the centenary of WW1. Pat Barker has expertly fitted so many social issues of the time into this relatively short novel - the changing role of women, homosexuality, emerging psychotherapeutic theory and treatment - all in the context of 'the war to end all wars'. Fascinating insight into the evolution of war poetry also, and the writers and poets who dared to criticise. Thanks to the internet every book read these days is a portal to further information - I've already spent an afternoon reading short biographies of Owen and Sassoon and revisiting their poetry. Lest we forget....

>20 floremolla: As a history teacher, I often use WWI poetry when studying the Great War. I can't get too immersed in it, because that's not my job--but I tell students that war and history did not happen in a vaccum, people still loved, read, wrote poetry and music. The two I use are:

In Flanders Fields by John McRae
For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon (which is often read at the centotaph on Remembrance Day)

But I have read and used both Sassoon and Owen in the past.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

>21 Tess_W: both very poignant poems. When I was young and learning about it at school WW1 seemed very distant, but as I've got older it seems to have come closer.

A few years ago my husband's family was given a large suitcase full of memorabilia that had been left behind in the attic of the house they grew up in. We learned so much about his grandfather and great-uncle - who perished in the battles of Tardenois and the Somme respectively - from letters, diaries and testimonials, that we feel we knew them and WW1 wasn't just something that had happened to other people.

I hope sometime to curate and put the documents online to supplement data that has already been posted about these remarkable men's lives.

Animal Farm completed. Caustic satire on the rise and fall of communism under Stalin; how idealism was betrayed by power, corruption and lies. Ironically there are many parallels with the modern political systems that we call 'democracy' - power still corrupts and lies persist in the form of 'spin', 'alt-truth' and 'fake news'; pensioners don't get what they were promised; policies and alliance are changed without explanation; and outsiders are presented as bogeymen to make us fearful....I could go on but instead will search out something a bit more cheerful for my next read!

>22 floremolla: Sharing those documents would be wonderful!

>23 floremolla: Absolute power corrupts absolutely!

Vernon God Little completed.

From the opening paragraphs where it becomes evident we are witnessing the aftermath of a high school shooting through the eyes of the fifteen-year-old expletive-prone eponymous antihero - who's about to be wrongly implicated in said crime - it's clear the author is consciously trying to shock the reader. It would be easy therefore to dismiss the book as 'trying too hard' or just to be repelled by the grotesque imagery of Vernon's observations, his vivid sexual fantasies and his cruel descriptions of the inhabitants of his small Texan town - but there are nuggets of comedic and observational gold nestling in Vernon's story.
I enjoyed the bitchy dynamics of his mother and her diet-obsessed friends; the slapstick antics of various chases; his cultural references; the comic characters (a diet-failed policewoman, an inarticulate lawyer); and Vernon's malapropisms (including his mantra, 'shifting the powerdime').
There's also the cleverly worked-in satire on subjects such as the role of the media in leading public opinion (Vernon is convicted and sentenced to death following a media frenzy that connects him to every death across the state) and the rise of reality tv (his chief tormentor franchises a Big Brother-style tv show on Death Row where the voters decide who's next for execution).
The character of Vernon himself is well-observed, especially his efforts to make sense of his predicament through his own philosophical cogitations and 'learnings'. I didn't feel he was a particularly sympathetic character initially - I felt more empathy for his hapless mother and the vulnerable Ella - but eventually found myself rooting for the underdog, hoping he would be cleared of the crimes and that his persecutor, the slimy Eulalio, would get his comeuppance.
Overall, there's a lot of graphic detail in this novel that's not for the faint-hearted but it's offset by humorous observation, entertaining characterisation and a good plot. The final few chapters were pacy and clever and raised my opinion of the whole novel from three and a half to four stars.

>25 floremolla: I must admit that VGL is a book that has never appealed to me - my book group read it once and I decided to sit out that month. I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to fiction and I thought that I just couldn't stomach a sweary and not-especially-likeable protagonist. I think from your review I made the right decision! (for me!). My husband has the book and we have really really different literary tastes - if it's a book he likes (especially fiction) then the chances are I'd wimp out after a couple of pages! (whereas if it's a book I like he'd probably just be bored!).

>26 Jackie_K: I don't actually know how VGL came to be on my bookshelf - it's not the kind of fiction I'm drawn to (I'm a romantic at heart!) so maybe my husband bought it. It didn't take me long to get beyond the expletives etc and into the story. It reminded me somewhat of trying to get into Trainspotting, which I must have managed too well as I found myself thinking swearily in an Edinburgh accent for days afterwards!

Heart of Darkness completed.

A mercifully short novella but possibly the most reviewed and analysed book ever so I won't attempt a treatise. It was still very thought-provoking however - it takes the form of a tale told in first person to a small captive audience, reminding me of the Ancient Mariner, cursed to tell his tale for some moral purpose - redemption ultimately I suppose.

The darkness pervades all, from the landscape to the hearts of the men charged with exploiting the riches of the land and de facto the indigenous people of the Congo. Joseph Conrad thought he was taking the moral high ground by having his protagonist, Marlow, feel pity and despair for the native people who were callously used as machines by his colleagues in the Company, but in fact the author's treatment of them in his novel is almost as dismissive. They're incidental elements, 'scenery', two dimensional figures who illustrate Marlow's story but don't get to have any real persona or story told from their perspective. It's a white man's world and women are also dismissed as needing to live in ignorance of unpleasantness lest it spoil their pretty worlds.

This was one of the earliest major novels of the twentieth century - at the time, its exposure of the evils carried out in the name of imperialism must have been controversial and the depictions of brutality and suggestions of sex with 'natives' would have been shocking. I don't imagine many women would have been encouraged to read it. Despite its faults, however, Heart of Darkness is a valuable piece of writing because it's a snapshot in time and hopefully sets a benchmark from which to measure the progress of humanity and equality in the so-called civilised world. Four stars.

Flaubert's Parrot (audiobook)

I downloaded this during 2016 with the idea I should read all of Julian Barnes' work because I'd enjoyed and admired The Sense of an Ending and Arthur and George so much. Those books are very dissimilar so I wasn't sure what to expect of Flaubert's Parrot.

I found it quite difficult to follow at first on audiobook. Nothing to do with the audiobook narrator (who was excellent in my opinion), rather it was the subject matter. There appears to be little in the way of 'story' or 'plot' for a significant part of the book. Instead it was reminiscent of a dissertation - or even a series of dissertations - on various aspects of the life of Gustave Flaubert, including a period of his life during which he borrowed a stuffed parrot from a museum and it became his 'muse'.

All of this is narrated by the main character Geoffrey Braithwaite, a retired doctor, widower and Flaubertophile who finds that two different museums in France are claiming to hold the authentic eponymous parrot and he makes it his business to establish which is the genuine stuffed bird.

I knew little about Flaubert, although I'd read Madame Bovary, his most famous work. I wasn't sure I wanted to know about him in the graphic detail depicted in this book, however, eventually Geoffrey's reflections on the life of Flaubert draw parallels with his own life and we learn a little about the loss of his wife. These parts of the novel are brief but searingly poignant. Barnes is so talented at planting tiny emotional nuggets among a much bigger context that - as with The Sense of an Ending - I wanted to go back and read them again as soon as I finished the book (hence I've ordered a copy of the paperback for ease of reference). Four and half stars.

I omitted to specify my personal definition of ROOTs at the beginning of this thread but basically it's any book, ebook or audiobook acquired before 01.01.17. I realised I'd been acquiring books in all of these formats over the past few years but abandoning them after just a few pages.

Life gets in the way, as they say, and I need to a) not feel that I'm 'wasting time' when I'm reading, and b) be in the right frame of mind (which is closely related to a)). My mother was reminiscing this morning how, when I was young and had my nose in a book, I literally couldn't hear anyone calling my name, nor did I have a clue about the passage of time - I wonder if it's possible to get back to that zone as an adult? :)

>30 floremolla: That's a great zone to be in....I've been in it since about 2011, after about a 20 year only "half" there zone.

>31 Tess_W: that's reassuring, thank you!

Flight Behaviour completed.

An unhappy wife and mother of two, Dellarobia, unexpectedly finds herself at the centre of a natural phenomenon that could be an important indicator of global warming. In the course of an unseasonal winter she finds a purpose among the scientists who come to observe and measure the phenomenon.

In telling Dellarobia's story the writer, Barbara Kingsolver, shares her extensive knowledge of the ecology of the insects at the centre of the book and along the way touches on almost every societal ill pervading poor communities, from obesity to poor attention spans and class discrimination to climate change denial. In fact, very little dialogue takes place without a discussion on environmental or socio-economic woes.

I sympathised with Dellarobia - she seemed authentic, smart and sassy but also uneducated and self-doubting. The characterisation throughout was very good, and the prose style was easily equal to the task of creating beautiful imagery or describing farming techniques. There was also an unequivocal resolution to conclude the storyline.

The downside of the novel, however, was that it was over-burdened by too many of the above-mentioned societal woes - instead of feeling enlightened, I felt I was being beaten over the head relentlessly by everything I already knew about what's wrong with the modern world. Well-intentioned by Barbara Kingsolver no doubt, but I suspect she's mainly preaching to the converted and sometimes a few points well made are more effective than a bombardment. Three stars.

>30 floremolla: "My mother was reminiscing this morning how, when I was young and had my nose in a book, I literally couldn't hear anyone calling my name, nor did I have a clue about the passage of time - I wonder if it's possible to get back to that zone as an adult? :)"

I am happy to hear that I am not the only one dealing with this (well, not that I am happy you having issues...) I was the same way when I was younger and I could read anywhere and despite distractions. Now it seems I can't read unless it is quiet and there's no one around. It does cut into reading time. I find it frustrating.

>30 floremolla:,>34 Sace:

Just today a friend and I were talking about a nearby coffee shop. She said that she went there from time to time to read because when she was at home she couldn't concentrate if all of the housekeeping wasn't done. I think that may be it, those things yelling for our attention. I rely fairly often on a quote I read by Hugh Downs, a TV broadcaster in years past, "time wasted is not necessarily wasted time".

When I was in high school my mother worked part time and on the days she wasn't home after school I was to fix dinner. My dad got home before she did and one day he came in to the kitchen cabinets being burned because I had let a pot of beans cook dry and somehow a fire started in the pan and the flames went up under the cabinets. I was in the next room reading and was totally unaware. He saw no humor in that situation.

>34 Sace: >35 clue: yes exactly - glad I'm not alone :) I need quiet and to feel I've no chores silently yelling at me - then there's the challenge of not drifting off to sleep after a few pages (a curse of middle age!)...

>35 clue: such a good quote for those with busy lives - guilt-free downtime recharges the batteries.

My parents would have been apoplectic if I'd caused a fire while reading but maybe not surprised! - probably explains why I was never entrusted with cooking :)

>35 clue: Oh my! While I would really like to recuperate my attention span, I'm not sure I want to lose track of everything. I did get a chuckle out of your description of your father. "He saw no humor in that situation."

>36 floremolla: "...drifting off to sleep after a few pages (a curse of middle age!)..." I've got that curse, too!

When I was younger (in my 20's) I would read all night and still go to work and have no problems the next day. Sadly, no more all nighters for me!

>38 Tess_W: oh that was a great feeling - just carrying on reading till you finished the book, regardless of the time! I don't sleep well at night nowadays - the converse middle age curse to falling asleep in daytime >37 Sace:! - but don't usually feel like reading then. Just. Can't. Win.

Having said that, I'm making progress with ROOTs and am trying to sort out my next group of ROOT-reads for March. I went off-piste in February (with Flight Behaviour instead of The Feast of The Goat) but I reserve the right to do that occasionally :) ...so...in no particular order

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
number9dream by David Mitchell
Arcadia by Jim Crace
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

>39 floremolla:Great Expectations one of my favorite Dickens. The story builds, so persevere!

>39 floremolla: I've never read Great Expectations - as discussed on other threads, I need to have seen a TV version first! However, what I have read is Mr Pip which I thought was fantastic, and I did wonder if I'd read Great Expectations first if I'd have got even more from it?

>40 Tess_W: good tip about Great Expectations, I found Bleak House similarly gathered pace as it went on, and I really got sucked into the story, and couldn't put it down!

>41 Jackie_K: yes, it really helps to have an idea of the story arc with some books. Conversely, I enjoyed the BBC series 'Dickensian' but because I hadn't read much Dickens I probably didn't fully appreciate it - but among other storylines it gave the 'backstory' to some of Bleak House's main characters and it was nice to feel I already 'knew' them when I started the book. Sadly the programme was discontinued after one series or it might have prompted more people to explore Dickens' books.

>41 Jackie_K:
>42 floremolla:
I have this "fetish" that I can't watch the movie or TV version of any work of literature until AFTER I read the book. It's like the cherry on top. I've tried to watch the show pre-reading, but it seems to ruin the book for me.

>43 Tess_W: I am very similar, Tess! But I have to make an exception for Dickens, otherwise I would never get the characters and various threads of stories all right in my head!

I have to say, I was extremely proud of myself for reading War & Peace the other year without the aid of a TV adaptation first! And I think that having read it, I appreciated the subsequent TV version more.

Villette (audiobook and ebook) completed

Apparently partially based on the life of Charlotte Bronte herself, Villette is the tale of a young woman, Lucy Snowe, who has been through hard times, has no immediate family (though we never find out why) and has to make her living in the world, eventually arriving in the Belgian town of Villette and becoming a schoolteacher.

Lucy Snowe knows herself to be plain-looking and reserved to the point of being cold (Bronte called her Lucy Frost in an early draft of the novel), however, through her first person account, from her everyday thoughts and feelings to her stream-of-consciousness internal tirades, the full range of her character and a soul in turmoil are revealed to the reader. She can be snide, highly critical and intolerant and no-one escapes her judgement but she is also isolated and vulnerable in a culture that is strange to her.

The storyline focuses on Lucy's viewpoint as the narrator, and follows her for a number of years as various characters and events in turn provoke her ire, her understanding, her respect and ultimately her love. Along the way there are secrets and coincidences and paranormal mystery, as befit a 'gothic novel', though overall these didn't so much contribute to the story as make it ever more convoluted.

I enjoyed most of Villette but was disturbed by Lucy's offhand prejudice against anything and anyone not British and Protestant and upper class. Her reaction to the Roman Catholic religion in particular was venomous and difficult to put aside when considering her 'as a person' (even allowing for different social mores of the period it was a peculiarly vicious attack that made me wonder if it reflected Charlotte Bronte's own prejudices).

Nonetheless (romantic fool that I am) I was disposed to see Lucy find happiness after her trials and tribulations but, Reader, it was not to be in marriage! The ending of the book is an early example of a deliberately ambiguous ending - "Reader, they were the three happiest years of my life..." foreshadows the event. It could be inferred that that Lucy's intended perished in a shipwreck while returning from his three year sojourn overseas - but the reader is invited not to be troubled by a sad ending and to imagine instead that he had returned and they lived happily ever after.

It's such a beautifully written and heart-felt final chapter it goes some way to redeeming the shortcomings of the novel. Four stars.

>45 floremolla: Thank you for the review. I have *ahem* 2 copies. I clearly wanted to read it so much I (unintentionally) bought 2 copies. I absolutely loved Jane Eyre. Eventually I will get around to Villette. I think I'm afraid of not liking it.

>46 Sace: I loved Jane Eyre too - my first introduction to the classics - but it was the only Charlotte Bronte book I'd read. Villette seems to be just as highly regarded by some literary critics, I think not so much for its being consistently good, but because it was possibly quite ambitious and experimental for its time. I hope you enjoy it if you read it!

Edited to change image size.

>48 floremolla: I'm with ya, Donna! Besides flower gardening, I grow veggies in the summer. This summer I'm going to try some hay/straw bale gardening and see how that works, at least for a few tomato, green pepper and cucumber plants.

>49 Tess_W: I was looking for an apt image to experiment with posting images and that one sprang to mind. I think my garden might be a postage stamp compared to yours, and I'm all about low maintenance nowadays - though not the kind that involves paving over everything. I like creating nice spots to sit in and enjoy the views but we never seem to have enough good weather :( Good luck with the veg!

>50 floremolla: I'm all about low maintenance now too, since 2 new knees that I can't squat on....I can walk, ride a bike, bend over, but not squat very low, hence trying the bale gardening. Where are you from that you don't have enough good weather? I'm from Ohio, so to sit out and read we have May-October-with May & October very iffy! But since I don't work in the summer, I'm usually out in the garden, the deck, or the pool from about 10 on every day. We live on about 5 acres so sometimes I'm so distracted by the wildlife that I will sit there for a couple of hours with a book in my hand, but not read a page!

For about the past 5 years when my knees were so bad I could barely walk, we scaled back a lot on the garden. I think last summer (when I had knee surgery in June) we planted 12 tomato plants, 6 pepper plants, two rows of green beans, 1 cucumber plant and 1 zucchini plant and about 6 potato eyes and we got at least 4 dozen potatoes. What we didn't eat in fresh tomatoes I froze the juice and we are enjoying it in Chili and tomato soup this winter. I make the zucchini into 2 different kinds of bread. The excess peppers I stuff and freeze. That's about all I want to do any more. Besides that I have 2 blackberry bushes that I get 4-5 quarts from every year and 6 new strawberry plants---planted last year, that I'm hoping to get at least 1-2 fresh bowls from.

>51 Tess_W: I'm in central Scotland - the weather is very unpredictable. For me, warm dry days have to be snatched when they appear and anything going on indoors is immediately abandoned or transferred outdoors!

I sympathise with your knees! Mine have seen better days too but thankfully still function for gardening. I've worked really hard for the past four years to adapt and improve our house and garden - we spend *a lot* of time at home as my husband is disabled and unable to travel - so I'm hoping to take time out for relaxation in the garden this year, including lots of reading, with giant cups of tea. Though it might have to be in the shed if the weather doesn't play ball ;)

There's nothing to beat home grown produce made into soups or juices - yours sound wonderful! My neighbour gives me his surplus zucchini (or courgettes as we call them here) so I must try a bread recipe. But for now, I'm content to stick to minimal-effort container-grown potatoes, strawberries, cut-and-come-again lettuce and herbs and should be thinking about getting my chits and seedlings soon...

>52 floremolla: Oh wow, I had picked up that you are in the UK but not that you are in central Scotland - me too! (I'm in Stirling) Our weather is certainly a challenge for gardening. Until a couple of years ago we had an allotment, but the weather was so awful (in particular cold and unusually dry during March-May when what we needed was warmth and more rain - can't believe I'm complaining about not enough rain in Scotland!) meant almost everything I planted apart from the potatoes and the previous winter's onions and garlic didn't thrive (understatement!). In addition to that, I was recovering from wrist surgery, making digging a bit more of a challenge than usual, and had a toddler who wasn't of an age where she could really come down there with us, so I just couldn't give it the time it deserved and we had to give it up. Last year for my birthday my husband built me a big raised bed for our back court (we have a communal back court, and only a postage stamp front garden), so we have been able to grow a few things, I'd like my daughter to eat fresh things and know how they grow and where they come from. Last year we had lots of salad greens, mouli, a bit of squash and tomatoes (most of which I turned into chutney), as well as blackcurrants from the bush I salvaged from the allotment. This year we'll do much the same, other than not so much mouli, and hopefully courgette instead of squash (if the slugs don't get them again like they did last year. Stirling slugs are voracious!).

>52 floremolla: I haven't tried lettuce yet, it's very hot here in June-August (sometimes 100 F) and lettuce doesn't do well. I've been reading though and I need to plant it early spring and late fall to avoid that heat. The birds got to most of my blackberries last year and so to protect them this year and my strawberries I'm going to cover them with some cheap toile you can buy at a fabric store. I have to wait until the week before labor day (last weekend in May) to plant because we are likely to have frosts up till then.

>53 Jackie_K: yes, we're about 25 miles south west of Glasgow, so not too far from Stirling. Moved from the city 27 years ago to get a garden and a good school for our children, now we're still here and they're living in the city :)

We have a bit of a microclimate around here because we're quite high up and have snow and rain when there's none down the road in Hamilton. And then there's the midges. Gardening is definitely a challenge but I potter happily from early spring to late autumn and try to be philosophical about weather related losses!

How big is your raised bed? There are some great projects in Glasgow with raised beds on vacant land and people have done amazing creative things with them, from flowers, fruit and veg to hanging baskets and wildlife feeders. And it's great for kids to learn about and appreciate their food from a young age. My daughter was apt to help me around the garden from early school age till hormones kicked in - she's happier on a sun lounger these days but will still give me a hand if pushed or bribed!

>54 Tess_W: wow, we never get 100 F! We don't get as much frost as we used to either - the first year we lived here I was planting summer bedding in front of the house and every local who passed told me it was too early - first week in June to be sure of no frost! I never had the patience though and because the soil there is sandy and gets the morning sun I had no problems. In the back the soil is heavy clay, more shaded and takes longer to warm up but it's rich and holds moisture, so rarely needs watering or feeding.

After 27 years, and much trial and error (and many, many, plant deaths) I kind of know what works. But I'm also *still* a sucker for the odd exotic thing that needs TLC including wrapping against frost or growing in a container and bringing indoors in winter! Good luck with the lettuces, there must be a suitable variety - I like Lollo Rosso because it looks quite pretty in a tub.

>55 floremolla: Ah ok I can place you now. When I first moved to Scotland (in 2005) I stayed for a few months with friends in East Kilbride till I bought my flat in Glasgow (we moved to Stirling in 2011). And my childhood penpal (with whom I'm still in touch; we started writing when we were 11 and are now in our 40s!) came from Uddingston, so not too far away. In our 20s my penpal moved to London (where I lived at the time), and ended up moving to a house about 10 minutes walk from me. Her sister only got as far as Hamilton. It's a very small world!

My raised bed is only about 1m x 2m, but it took a ton bag of compost to fill it! We have a 1m x 1m plastic polytunnel, which we started the leaves off in last year, they thrived so I think we'll do that again. My husband is into more exotic salad leaves, so we tend to grow various Chinese leaves which do add a bit of spark to a salad!

>57 Jackie_K: that's the area - we're in Strathaven, equidistant from EK and Hamilton. Population about 7500 but punches above its weight as a destination for day trippers and lots of events. It's a nice place to live and I must confess to living, working and studying within a 25 mile radius all my life too and it's been no hardship!

Hope it's a good summer this year and you get maximum produce from your bed and polytunnel. I'll look out for the Chinese leaves, they sound nice. I just took a walk to bottom of the garden earlier and noticed my neighbour has cut the shrubs that screen my 'sitooterie' (ie place where one sits oot) from his garden - grrr. I'm going to have to look for some hanging plant thingys to drape on the fence now - a gardener's work is never done!

Great Expectations completed

Dickens' tale spans over twenty years in the life and development of its protagonist and narrator, orphan Pip, from his boyhood in the charge of his unloving sister and her kind blacksmith husband, to his becoming a gentlemen at the generosity of an unknown benefactor, who bestows on him 'great expectations' of a substantial inheritance. Such expectations come as great comfort to Pip who has fallen in love with the haughty and disdainful Estella and cannot hope to win her unless he is 'much improved'. Pip will thus spend many years a slave to this love and the pursuit of improvement at the expense of the happiness of those who hold him dear.

Great Expectations' storyline is lengthy and serpentine, weaving in and out of locations and encompassing Pip's journey from the humble countryside to the city of London, through schooling with the henpecked Mr Pocket, sharing lodgings with his former adversary Herbert, and his exposure to the world of criminality and the law through his guardian Mr Jaggers and later his mysterious benefactor.

Characters are introduced here and there along the way - experience of Dickens tells us that each of them will play a role in bringing this story to a conclusion - and they span the panoply of human nature, from angelic kindness to demonic villainy, and cold hearted manipulation to steadfast love and friendship.

Joe the noble uneducated blacksmith, Miss Havisham the bitter spinster, Jaggers the intimidating lawyer, and Pip himself, bright but blinded by unrequited love and shame of his humble origins - Dickens seems to revel in depicting his characters in all their looks, peculiarities and imperfections and the dialogue he gives them is so apt that they seem human beings of real substance, even if they are only minor players.

Dickens excels at imagery and wringing emotion from the reader - the book had so many memorable scenes that it is difficult to choose the best but, for comedic value, Pip's dining episode with the Pocket family was a highlight, and the numerous examples of Joe's love and care for Pip were most touching.

Unsurprisingly there are morals to the story and consequences for wrongdoers, secrets abound and are ultimately laid bare, and guilt must be assuaged by penitence if there is to be redemption.

Pip's realisation that his benefactor is Magwitch, a criminal he'd aided as a child, spurs him to redeem himself by foregoing his great expectations, finding gainful employment and forgetting about Estella. Even Magwitch himself, shown to be a sorry product of his desperate upbringing, is capable of redemption and his final scene with Pip was heartrendingly told.

From a meandering start the novel builds up tension and then the twists and turns of the story come thick and fast and continue to hold the attention right up to the final pages - and ultimately Great Expectations is as much a crime thriller as it is an epic romance. Five stars.

Following suggestions from a fellow writer, Dickens changed the novel's original ending before publication - in a later edition he subsequently made a further change to the final phrase to introduce some ambiguity.

The updated published novel sees Pip and Estella, now a widow, meet by coincidence at the same place they first met as children - they express their regrets for what might have been and resolve to be friends though clearly there is more than friendship in their feelings for each other.

Emerging into the sun together Pip "saw no shadow of another parting from her". Some read this as 'he failed to foresee the shadow of their parting' - others as 'he could not see a shadow over their future together that involved their parting'. I prefer the latter.

Arcadia completed

Chosen as an early ROOT because I'd so admired another of Jim Crace's novels, Quarantine, this novel is entirely different in style. On the surface it's about octogenarian business tycoon, Victor, building a massive glass shopping emporium, 'Arcadia', as a lasting monument to himself, and his betrayal by his right hand man, Rook. As it progresses however the novel reveals itself to be more of a philosophical consideration of the nature of urban development, in particular its tendency to serve the urban elite at the expense of other social groups.

The story is narrated by an anonymous journalist and would-be writer, 'The Burgher', who makes his presence known only occasionally but who seems to be omnipresent as he describes what happens in places and times where he could not have been witness.

There is intrigue from the outset as Rook, is mugged in an underpass while he has ventured out of the tower block where he works for Victor, to buy provisions for the latter's 80th birthday party. It quickly becomes clear that the attack is not opportunistic: Rook has been 'taxing' Victor's tenants at the local produce market and vengeance is in the air. So begins a series of events that give the novel its plot line.

Characters are few and thinly described. Victor's life story is related from birth, through his widowed and poverty-stricken mother Em's journey from countryside to the city, and the development of her begging 'business', to the point at which Victor is orphaned and abandoned as a seven year old and has to make his own living as a produce entrepreneur. While this section of the book romanticises the countryside through the stories Em tells Victor and her desire to return there some day for a better life, the rest of the novel avoids sentimentality and the characters themselves are mainly unsympathetic. We are told nothing of Victor between aged seven and eighty but that he has become a cold man. It may be that the author was making a point here about the pursuit of capital making people uncaring of others' needs.

The city itself is not given a geographical location, which may be to avoid drawing parallels with actual places and people, but more likely to signify how universal is the process of urbanisation. Arcadia, Victor's new shopping emporium, will be built on the site of the old established produce market. 'Arcadia' means 'rural idyll' but Victor's urban representation is a sterile environment that packages up the rural and natural world like a theme park - at the same time it physically displaces the last vestige of their real representation, the old market with its village-like atmosphere, its own language and culture, its dirt and its connectedness with the real countryside.

This process is being repeated globally as markets (and other low real estate value uses) are displaced by new development to poorer neighbourhoods...until gentrification moves them on again - each time they move they lose their character and their vitality, serving poorer produce to poorer customers, till the market is no longer viable. Poor customers meanwhile have no voice in this process - they are systematically denied access to good quality goods and services because retail establishments like Arcadia are priced and managed so that they serve only the urban elite.

For me Arcadia is not so satisfying as a 'story', rather its strength lies in its descriptive passages, its rich use of language and how it works as a modern 'fable' to illustrate the moral issues of urban development - the characters each seem to represent different aspects of society, the plot line echoes the power of capital over society and the narrator represents how writers may witness and record societal interactions and outcomes but are powerless to intervene. Clever and thought-provoking. Four stars.

Edited to correct touchstone link.

Great review, Donna! Goes on my wish list. However, your link is going to Anna Karenina!

>61 Tess_W: The touchstone links are being really cranky at the moment!

Oops thanks for pointing that out - there are also several books of that name, so I should have given it some thought! Corrected now.

>61 Tess_W: hope you like it, it's kind of lacking in the joy department but a worthy read :)

>63 floremolla: Since there are almost 500 books on my wishlist, it may be awhile (if ever) that I get to it. I have started using my wishlist now instead of just buying the books and it has certainly cut down on my buying and on the books that were once stuffed into my many shelves. When I started LT in 2011 I had almost 1000 paper books to read. That number is now about 500 (or less). About 95% of the paper books were re-homed and now my shelves are only single-stacked; which was my goal. Good thing that people can't see my e-reader shelves!

>64 Tess_W: wow, that should keep your family and friends going in gift ideas! I've only recently started to catalogue my books on LT (most are now added) but like you I'm finding it a great tool to hone my buying, reading and weeding out. And at last I know what I've actually got - so many have been 'lost' on loan and 'gained' from borrowing! E-books remain a muddle though, as my husband and I share a kindle account but not the same taste in books...

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours separating books on my RL shelves into 'read' and 'TBR' and sorting by author - noting the grotty ones I want to replace and the authors I'd like more of. It's very satisfying to have a new area of my life 'under control' although I think most of my RL friends would raise an eyebrow and call it 'book geekery'. Whatever, I'm glad I've found an outlet for it here. ;)

>65 floremolla: There's something really satisfying about that sort of book geekery, isn't there? My shelves were sort of sorted when I moved here, but as that was over 5 years ago and I've bought more books since (Surely not? Ed) they've gone to pot a bit and I really need to sort them out again. I've tried to keep things relatively ordered - so although they're a mess, pretty much all of my fiction books are at least on the same shelves - but the non-fiction is a bit more chaotic. I know where pretty much everything is, but it would be nice to have them a bit more logically shelved. I think that's a job for the next few months - I am hoping to start freelancing, so need to massively declutter and sort out our spare room so it is useable as an office, and that is where many of my books reside.

I did try to organise my ebooks into collections on my kobo, but a software upgrade managed to wipe them all out (luckily not the actual books, just the groups I'd organised them into). So they're just sitting there in random order, and I'm fine with that (at least they're not taking up lots of actual space!).

>64 Tess_W: That's what I've done too, mainly put things on my wishlist rather than buying. It has helped a lot (although not eradicated the buying entirely! I'm not that self-disciplined!). My wishlist is around 230 now.

>66 Jackie_K: it is a truth universally acknowledged that bookshelves (drawers, cupboards...) will not remain in a state of organisation beyond the first occasion you don't have time to put something back properly. :)

At least we know what we've got even if we don't know exactly where....

Good luck with organising your home office. Mine is a repository for piles of general paperwork and professional literature I'll probably never look at again, but I managed to fit in a nice Ikea Hemnes bookcase with doors that holds lots of books (fiction and non-fiction) and boxes of family photos - the books are neatly displayed behind glass at the top and the messy bit is hidden. I recommend it. And because I can do images now....

Harvest completed.

Inspired by completing Arcadia and remembering I'd another of Jim Crace's novels on Kindle, I added Harvest to my March ROOTs. It was a quick and satisfying read and, like Arcadia and Quarantine a novel that could be taken at face value or mined - deeply - for symbolism.

As with Arcadia the setting, this time an isolated village, is unnamed - it seems to exist outside of relationship to any other geographical place or authority but character names and references to heritable property laws suggest it is England. There is little to place it in time except archaic language and references to some items and practices that could be identified as late fifteenth/early sixteenth century. It is in fact some kind of 'Arcadia' (rural idyll) where 58 villagers subsist on the land, as their forefathers have done before them, serving the Master of the Manor, Master Kent, who is a fair man and respected by the villagers as they go about their relaxed way of life, relatively unencumbered even by religion.

The novel opens with a series of events that disturbs the community just as they complete their Harvest - smoke alerts them to the fact that three strangers have settled in one of the village fields and built a shelter. Within hours the Master's dovecote is set alight killing his white doves. Already the symbolism is heavy with the white doves of peace being destroyed and 'strangers' referencing 'change'.

Another stranger has arrived, but this time by authority of the Master. Mr Earle is a land surveyor tasked with mapping the fields, the forest, the cottages and other landscape features - the villagers are mistrustful but uncomprehending of his purpose.

All of this we learn from the narrator, Walter Thirsk, a villager for only 12 years, he arrived with Master Kent, as his 'sideman' when Kent's wife inherited the estate. Walter himself then married a villager but was subsequently widowed and he inhabits a middle ground where he is not quite villager but not 'of the Manor' either. We learn that he has strong grounds to believe the fire was started by village youths, high on magic mushrooms after harvest celebrations.

Walter has had some education and is cleverer than his villager counterparts (whom he implies are 'inbred') and he is often privy to confidential information from Master Kent. Thus he learns that the map-making is part of a plan for introducing 'enclosure'*.

Walter learns that the plan for his village is not Kent's but comes from a competing heir to the estate - the death of Kent's wife in childbirth having negated his claim to ownership, her cousin Edmund Jordan has come to claim ownership, with ambitions to introduce sheep farming. While Walter can see the implications ahead, the villagers are being told not to worry, everyone will benefit from the new regime.

The entire story takes place within a week and in a matter of just a couple of days there are deaths, wrongful arrests, accusations of witchcraft, brutal attacks and escalating fear among the villagers - throughout, Walter tries to make sense of it all and decide where his allegiance lies.

The xenophobia against the stranger settlers - themselves displaced by enclosure - has made them scapegoats for the dovecote arson and their punishment is brutal. While the two men (father and son) are placed in pillory (a crucifix-like stocks) the woman's head is shaved, she is left to fend for herself and she becomes the focus of feverish suspicions when Kent's beloved mare is killed. The villagers dub her 'Mistress Beldam' for her good looks but it's clear the name is meant to denote 'bedlam'.

Two village woman and a small girl are arrested because they've inadvertently insulted the new Master - they are accused of witchcraft and treated appallingly. The disintegration of the community follows rapidly and culminates in the villagers attacking one of Jordan's men. Fearful of retribution all of the villagers flee in the night and only Walter is left to surmise that Jordan has taken advantage of the villager's xenophobia and orchestrated events to clear the villagers out to make way for his sheep.

As the old and new Masters and the 'sidemen' leave the village to purchase sheep and make arrangements, Walter is left as care-taker of the estate but cannot reconcile what he has witnessed and allowed to happen without speaking out. Vengeance is left to the strangers.

Like Arcadia, Harvest is a fable or allegory for a particular type of global societal ill, and again this features land ownership and the powers it confers on those who have it, whether acquired by heritable rights or acquired by business tycoon. Other parallels can be seen - how communities' suspicion of strangers turns to blame and fear and ultimately violence - and how witnesses to atrocities justify their silence. These are not just global but timeless issues, just as relevant today as in Tudor times. Once again Jim Crace tells a simple story but layers it with meaning if you care to look. Four and a half stars.

*In England the enclosure movement began around the mid 1400s and essentially was a 'land grab' by the rich and ennobled, who seized 'common lands', i.e. land in public ownership, tilled and grazed for centuries, and created larger tracts that could be grazed extensively and intensively, with the proceeds accruing to the new owner. Common land farmers were therefore forced off the land and had to find alternative employment if they were to avoid destitution. The practice continued well into the 1800s where in Britain it culminated in the Highland Clearances in rural Scotland as land in England came under pressure for housing and industrial development - this shameful period of history which all but wiped out the Highland population was suppressed from public knowledge until John Prebble published "The Highland Clearances" in 1963. During the 500 years of the enclosure movement in Britain, similar land grabs were being instigated around the world and the practice continues today on every continent.

>69 floremolla:, Wow-I teach about the Enclosure Act when I teach about Industrialization in England. To this date I've never known anybody who knew about it, except I would assume Brits would. There is a doggerel that I use in this unit: They hang the man, and flog the woman, that steals the goose from off the common; But let the greater villain loose, that steals the common from the goose. If my students can "decipher" this they get 5 bonus points.

>70 Tess_W: I'm going to steal that doggerel - no idea where I'll use it but it's a classic! I like that you're teaching young people to think.

I was aware of the Enclosure Act - having studied urban and regional planning - but sadly I didn't learn about the Highland Clearances in school, history was all kings, queens and battles in my day.

I skimmed through this article while reading Harvest and will save it for closer reading.

http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain

>71 floremolla: Thanks for the article! I have it saved for future perusal. I also just briefly mention the Highland Clearances in that unit, also. Don't get me started on my rant about how history was/is taught. While I do believe one needs to now those people and battles to intelligently discuss history, I believe the why's and therefores are just as important. For example, we study the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima by the U.S. visa viz Col. Tibbets on this date, etc. etc. But I take it a couple steps further. We read stories of survivors. We read the diary entry's of President Truman and also read the opinions of experts (Douglas Macarthur, Winston Churchill) on possible alternate solutions. Then the grand finale is the students have to write a paragraph on what they feel should have been done and have to back it up with historical facts and figures. Much more interesting than just the facts! I'll stop now. Sorry, I get carried away!

>72 Tess_W: don't apologise, being passionate about your profession is a very special thing, especially in public service - it makes you go the extra mile and feel you've really achieved something in the end. Plus the hours fly by more quickly if you're enjoying yourself!

>72 Tess_W: I want to take one of your history classes now!

>74 Jackie_K: I just hate it when people tell me their history classes were so boring!

Wow you're making great progress - Congrats!
Also just dropping by to say Hi ;)

>76 avanders: aw, thanks! Like everyone else I've been stealing a look at your thread every now and then to check for baby news, so it's great to get an update and lovely to see you back here! :)

The Feast of the Goat completed

Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Laureate for Literature, combines history and fiction in this examination of the last day of General Trujillo's dictatorial regime in the Dominican Republic in May 1961, his assassination, and the aftermath.

Cleverly interwoven is the story of a fictional father and daughter who have fallen foul of the regime in its last weeks. This story continues 35 years later highlighting the longer term effects of a brutal regime. This fictional story also binds together the novel's other two narratives - one told initially from General Trujillo's point of view and, after his death, the repercussions for his government. The other from the point of view of the group of assassins waiting to ambush Trujillo and the repercussions for them after the event.

Owing to the true historical nature of the events, the facts of Trujillo's assassination and the aftermath are depicted with some accuracy which necessitates an extensive number of characters, many of whom are referred to variously by their first names, contractions of first names, surnames, nicknames and military rank, which can be confusing, especially as some share first names or surnames. However, it is an effective reminder that this was a real event involving real people.

Throughout the novel the real characters engage in imagined dialogue designed to portray their personalities and motivations. This transforms the narrative from dry historical reference to a work of 'faction', which works well for those not well disposed towards the former (myself included).

Vargas Llosa reveals the Trujillo regime in all its brutality, misogyny and corruption - and the Generalissimo himself is revealed as cruel and manipulative, without boundaries. It is not hard to see why some of his closest allies betrayed him - he would demand to have sex with their wives or daughters as proof of loyalty and would respond to people accused of insurrection by murdering their entire families. The novel includes several examples of his cat and mouse tactics and his use of the press to slander his opponents.

General Trujillo reigned at times as blatant dictator and latterly as dictator hiding behind a puppet president. His assassination did not result in an immediate coupe as planned. Government conspirators took cold feet and allowed Trujillo's exiled son, Ramfis to return and assume command - thus followed a particularly brutal period of torture and killings and Vargas Llosa does not hold back from describing the barbaric treatment meted out by Ramfis to the assassins, their accomplices and their innocent families, to avenge his father's murder.

Trujillo's family eventually left the country - along with their vast wealth - and the puppet president survived to tread a successful path in appeasing both government allies and political opponents, earning him three periods of presidency, the last one up till 1996 when The Feast of The Goat was written.

Not a novel to 'enjoy' as such, given its subject matter, but a very worthwhile read. Vargas Llosa is said to have intended it as a lesson to younger generations; "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Four and a half stars.

>78 floremolla: That sounds like a very heavy but rewarding read!

>78 floremolla: Sounds right up my alley! Going on my ever expanding wish list.

>79 Jackie_K: >80 Tess_W: it was a challenging read - there's a lot of information about a country and culture of which I'd been completely ignorant, a lot of confusing characters and switches of timeline, and the harrowing matter of torture. An interesting insight though into politics in the Caribbean in the mid-twentieth century.

With only two days of March left I won't manage to read all of number9dream so will postpone that till April and continue with Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means. It's so short I might squeeze in The Driver's Seat too. Plus a short audiobook I've nearly finished - Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin, an apt one with Easter approaching, narrated by Meryl Streep in mellifluous style.

>81 floremolla: Ooh, I read Testament of Mary a couple of years ago and really liked it - it gave me a huge amount to think about. I don't think it's as daring or provocative as the author thinks it is, but he writes so beautifully.

The Girls of Slender Means and The Driver's Seat completed

Two novellas by Muriel Spark

The setting of The Girls of Slender Means is The May of Teck Club, a rather claustrophobic old fashioned London hostel institution for impecunious young women. The year is 1945, when war was in process of ending and a new world of possibilities was opening up, especially to women.

The overarching story concerns Jane, a journalist and former resident of the hostel, who is researching for an article she is writing about the life of a young man she had known who has been killed abroad while working as a missionary. The story is then told in flashback of how she befriended him when he was an anarchist, atheist and aspiring author, and brought him to the hostel - he is beguiled by the set-up and quickly becomes attached to the resident femme fatale until a tragedy occurs. In retrospect Jane wonders if this is what caused him to renounce his lifestyle for religion and missionary work.

Hostel life is vividly evoked, in all its postwar food-rationing, soap-borrowing, brown wall-papered banality. Characters seem authentic for the time while their concerns about love and money and calorific intake are timeless. Spark's wry humour is evident in barbed comments between the girls and sly asides to the reader, mainly about spinsterhood which the girls dread.

The tone of The Girls of Slender Means is light hearted, jokey and unsentimental, which makes the tragedy which unfolds at the end quite shocking, despite some heavy foreshadowing. This is a book that will bear rereading to appreciate the craft which Spark has brought to it. Four stars.

In The Driver's Seat, Lise, a young woman from an unnamed northern European city, takes a break from work to go on holiday. From the outset where she is buying a new outfit for travelling and preparing to leave for the airport we gather that something is off-kilter with Lise. Her choice of garish clothing, her loud-voiced over-reactions to people, her tendency to lie and boast ostentatiously - the fact that she deliberately goes off with her friend's car keys when she'd promised to return them - immediately provoke curiosity as to what is driving her. Of course, she believes she is driving herself - she has an immediate purpose, which is to find a man, the right man. Her ultimate purpose is only revealed at the end.

En route she meets a variety of men, most of whom just want to have sex with her, except one, whose reaction to her is to run away. She quickly succeeds in becoming a nuisance in her hotel with demands and accusations. She leaves to find her man but instead befriends an elderly lady - their time together as tourists is quite amusing (the old woman's thoughts on hippies and airline pilots are hilarious) but again Lise's behaviour is odd. By the time they part company it is clear Lise is having a mental breakdown. Before the day is over she meets 'her man' and her destiny.

Lise's fate is foretold in the early chapters of the book. Spark stated that she deliberately set out to create a "whydunnit" as opposed to a "whodunnit" and she does this successfully in her spare unsentimental style.

As with The Girls of Slender Means, the story is told by an omniscient narrator with knowing asides to the reader, foretelling of the future of some character and Spark's trademark brevity and wit. An uncomfortable read about an uncomfortable subject, but that's what the author was driving at. Four stars.

I picked up these slim volumes at a book festival last year where I heard a first class account of Muriel Spark from a journalist who befriended her in her later years. She was a remarkable character with an unconventional life. Having now read four of her books, the other two being The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie and Memento Mori, I think she has a distinctive style but at the same time no two books are alike because of her skillful pushing of boundaries of structure and subject matter. I'll definitely be reading more of her work.

>83 floremolla: You write such great reviews! I don't have the patience or the time for reviewing!

The Testament of Mary completed

I downloaded this audiobook while waiting for Colm Tóibín's Nora Webster to come out in paperback. I was intrigued to see it was narrated by Meryl Streep but the reason for that became clear when I discovered The Testament of Mary was originally written as a monologue and had a Broadway run - cut short despite being nominated for three Tony awards, which perhaps indicates it wasn't putting 'bums on seats'.

Mary - the mother of Jesus, though she never refers to him thus - is looking back over her life in her final days in exile in Ephesus. She never believed her son was the son of God and she ponders on what it was that could have turned a sweet boy into a young man driven by, as she sees it, a lust for power over people. And as she ponders on the passage of time she wishes she could have a second chance to go back and do things differently.

She ruminates over her son's "so-called miracles" - Lazarus raised from the dead, the water turning to wine at the wedding feast at Cana, his appearance to his friends, walking on water when he was supposedly in the mountains - and sceptically infers from these some kind of trickery or mass hysteria.

Aside from feeling guilt that she didn't intervene sooner in her son's spiritual journey - though she did warn him when she was told he was being watched by both the Roman and Jesuit authorities - her greatest burden is that she was not with him when he died.

The crucifixion is described in gory and harrowing detail and Mary's reaction in this telling of the story is very human - she cannot bear to watch her son's slow death and flees. Some days later she dreams of water rising from a well and her son being whole again. But she ascribes this to a dream, not a vision of reality.

As the long days pass and she awaits her death we learn she is constantly "watched" and "protected" by "visitors" and it becomes clear these are her son's disciples. They also seek to have her subscribe to their version of events - alternative fact: she held the body of her son when he was taken down from the cross, she washed him and laid him to rest.

Artistic depictions down the ages have shown the Pietà (the dead Jesus in the arms of Mary) as the definitive image of Christ's sacrifice and Colm Tóibín was knowingly courting controversy with this work which could easily be interpreted as seeking to subvert Christian doctrine.

Having been brought up Catholic but been atheist since my teens I was highly familiar with the subject matter and did not have any unease with this version of events, though I can see some scripture-led religions would have difficulty with it. I'd also read Jim Crace's Quarantine some years ago, which similarly presented a series of events taking place in the desert in biblical times and an explanation of how stories of these events might have been carried and spread and built-upon over time. For me, this gave a very human aspect to some well known bible stories and how they came to be - and presented Jesus as a man, but an exceptional man nonetheless.

Meryl Streep's reading of this work was not so much a reading as a first rate performance - beautifully delivered in soft flowing tones with great richness of feeling that brought tears to my eyes more than once. Her performance elevated this audiobook to five stars for me and it's the only audiobook I've ever considered listening to again almost right away.

First quarter of the year down (or last quarter if you're in local government) and a brief summary of ROOTs out and...ahem, what's crept in...

ROOTs

January - read but not recorded on LT
1Q84 by Haruki Murikami

February
Bleak House
Regeneration
Heart of Darkness
Flaubert's Parrot
Flight Behaviour
Vernon God Little
Animal Farm

March
Villette
Great Expectations
The Feast of the Goat
Arcadia
Harvest
The Girls of Slender Means
The Driving Seat
Testament of Mary

'Creepers'

January
GCHQ Quiz Book

February
SJ Peploe hardback Guy Peploe
Celebrate hardback Pippa Middleton
Flaubert's Parrot paperback Julian Barnes
New Writing from Africa 2009 paperback various

March
Vanity Fair audio (ROOT paperback owned)
Cold Comfort Farm paperback Stella Gibbons
Talking It Over paperback Julian Barnes
Love Etc. paperback Julian Barnes
The Ambassadors paperback Henry James
In Search of Times Past by Marcel Proust
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by RL Stevenson
The Warden by Anthony Trollope

Decisions, decisions, now about April's ROOTs...will start with these and see how it goes:

number9dream by David Mitchell
Vanity Fair by W M Thackeray

>84 Tess_W: well, thank you - I probably don't really have time either ;) but I do think it makes me consider what I've read - and of course it's handy for those times when I can't quite remember what I've read....

>85 floremolla: I'm not a big fan of audiobooks, but I'm very tempted by your review! As mentioned above I enjoyed reading The Testament of Mary very much a couple of years ago.

>85 floremolla: >88 Jackie_K: I wasn't a fan of audio until about a year ago. I have a 20 minute drive to and from work 5 days a week--that's 40 minutes er day or 2 1/2 hours per week! I live way out and there weren't any radio stations that I cared to listen to; although I have 1000's of songs on my IPOD, after 10 years they are getting old, also. So I decided to try an audio book and I just loved it! I'm also in the love with the idea of at least 40 extra minutes of "reading" that I get each day that I otherwise wouldn't have. Now I also listen when I walk and this summer I will listen as I weed the gardens. Also, if I can't sleep, which is often, but my eyes just can't handle anymore print, I will turn the audio on and set the timer for 15 minutes and I'm often asleep before the 15 minutes is up! I also take in care on road trips because my husband likes to listen to sports radio. I will take an audio on plane also and alternate between reading and listening. I don't buy audio for most of my books, just always have 1 handy in case I need it.

>88 Jackie_K: I loved Testament of Mary too. For some reason the touchstones didn't work on that post but I'd recommend Quarantine which is similarly thought provoking and there's another called My Name Was Judas which sounds of the same ilk. We were lucky enough to travel to Jordan some years ago and it was an incredible feeling to see the the likes of the Sea of Galilee as real places on a map - we trekked the Wadi Rum in the footsteps of Laurence of Arabia but I was more interested in the ancient history and origins of the bible.

BTW I think Audible was doing a free trial, might be worth trying to see if you like it? I signed up for one credit (download) per month and it's enough for me. It downloads to my iPhone and iPad simultaneously which is very convenient (other audiobook providers are available and honestly I'm not on commission!)

>89 Tess_W: we must be audio-twins! Your listening is just like mine, from the driving, walking and gardening right down to the fifteen minute sleep program. I also commandeered an old Bluetooth speaker my daughter had left here and use that when earphones are too dangerous - cooking with wires dangling is asking for trouble ;)

Looks like you've had a great first quarter! I'm still trying to work out my audiobook groove. In the past I've kept one on my phone for listening when doing the dishes or other chores, and other times I've tried doing word puzzles while listening. Might try colouring next, which might be less distracting than word puzzles.

>91 rabbitprincess: oh, definitely couldn't listen and do word puzzles! Colouring, yes. I have no artistic ability but I like dabbling in watercolours - maybe the right audiobook could inspire me!

number9dream completed

The only David Mitchell novel I hadn't read, though it's the second one he wrote, this is a coming of age story of a young Japanese boy Eiji, trying to find his estranged father in Tokyo. Right away the book plunges into an unusual narrative structure where sections of chapters alternate between real-life Eiji and the worlds of his dreams or imagination.

The book comprises nine parts and, in the second one, a third strand of narrative - memories - is introduced. From the outset of this we lean that Eiji had a twin sister Anju and that she has died tragically - Eiji blames himself for her death.

We also learn that the twins' mother couldn't cope when their father - her married lover - leaves her, and she abandons the twins to the care of their grandmother. While he's in Tokyo Eiji's mother contacts him and explains why she had to leave but he is unsympathetic and has no interest in reconciliation.

Eiji has enough to cope with anyway. Coming from the countryside, he finds the sights, sounds and smells of Tokyo alarming and (inevitably) falls foul of tricksters, but he also makes friends, holds down jobs and meets a potential girlfriend while pursuing various plans to find his father.

Mitchell knows Tokyo well having lived there (and having a Japanese wife) so it seems that his observations of Tokyo's peculiarities are Eiji's and the fast moving claustrophobic city, obsessed with technology, architecture and sex, is brought to life in all its smog and busy-ness. I liked his observation that every morning Tokyo

"...explodes at five pm and people-matter is hurled to the suburbs, but by five am the people-matter gravity reasserts itself, and everything surges back towards the centre in time for the next day's explosion."

Eiji's imaginary world is an opportunity for the author to indulge in what later become trademarks of his work - pastiches of various writing styles and stories within stories. Chapters are marked with little symbols which at first I thought were to indicate imagined sequences but that theory fell apart after a while and sometimes I wasn't sure what was real or not.

The drama lurches from one scenario to another, comedic to tragic to romantic, with diabolical interludes with Yakuza (Japanese mafia), as Eiji finds his way through them and gradually realises his odyssey has been more about finding himself than finding his father - and ultimately about reconciling himself to his sister's death.

On finishing the novel I find myself reflecting more on the author and his writing style than the story itself. It reminds me of an artist I like, Peter Doig, who gathers images and works them into his art, or works the art around the image. Mitchell seems to collect stories and random bits of information and then weave them together. Sometimes that works but sometimes he is so heavy on sharing information it distracts from the story and it can feel like he's just showing off his knowledge (to superfluous effect).

Other times he's so clever it can go right over your head because he's also heavy on cultural references, symbolism, and themes such as the interconnectedness of life. The last is demonstrated by characters, books and movies that recurr in his novels and the number nine often being significant - I read somewhere that as a child he stammered badly over the word nine and dreaded being that age as he'd have to say it if anyone asked him how old he was.

There were lots of good characters in this novel, Mitchell excels at characterisation. Eiji evolved from a chain-smoking, indecisive dork to a very sympathetic character (anyway, who can resist a youngster abandoned as a child?) and this elevated the novel to four stars for me. I hope he pops up again in another novel so we can find out what became of him...

ETC

Fugitive Pieces completed

I don't think a novel has ever had such a visceral effect on me as Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces. Some novels we love for their stories, their characters, their subject matter, the beautiful writing, the feelings they evoke or that they 'speak' to us because we recognise something of ourselves in them - for me Fugitive Pieces had all this and more.

The first part of the book is narrated by Jakob Beer. Early in WW2, with the invasion of Poland already established, seven year old Jakob escapes a Nazi raid on his family's house in the forest. He never knows what becomes of his parents and his beloved older sister, Bella. He hides in holes he digs in the earth until hunger forces him out of hiding, at an archaeological site at Biskupin, and he reveals himself to Athos, a lone archaeologist still working there.

Athos it transpires is a polymath, an academic whose studies of wood and stone, anthropology and literature fill his life. He smuggles Jakob out of Poland into Greece and for four years he hides the child in a hilltop house on the island of Zakynthos while German soldiers patrol and terrorise the town below. In their isolation, Athos, the eternal scholar, shares his passions for natural history and literature with Jakob imbuing him with an exceptional breadth of knowledge and love of language. Though Jakob is grateful, in his grief he lives with the fear that he will lose his own history and language, his memories of his family and the person he was before the war.

As the war ends Athos takes Jakob first to his family home, Idrha, where they restore themselves after four years of privation, and then to Canada as immigrants when Athos is offered a job at a university in Toronto.

Jakob grows up as a solitary figure, unable to come to terms with his experiences. He learns English, earns money as a translator and eventually becomes a published writer and poet. Throughout his life he is dogged with depression. His inability to come to terms with his family's fate and what he experienced costs Jakob his first marriage. He is a broken man until late in life he meets Michaela, many years younger but with love and understanding that makes him whole and reconciles him to the loss of Bella. They move to Athos' former home in Idhra and create an idyllic life on the island and look forward to having a child someday.

A second, shorter part to the book is narrated by Ben, a writer who specialises in the links between biography and weather. He and his wife, Naomi, once met Jakob and Michaela at a party - Ben noticed how his wife was transformed after speaking with them and he himself is an admirer of Jakob's writing.

Ben is also a troubled man. His parents survived the Holocaust and came to Canada where Ben was born. They carry the mental scars of their experiences - they never speak of them but the effect is felt by Ben who has grown up surrounded by their untold grief. When Ben's parents die, revelations of their lives unhinge him and his marriage suffers. Jakob has also died and Ben accepts an opportunity to go to Idhra and retrieve his journals. While there he uncovers an unknown final chapter of Jakob's life and in doing so reassesses his own.

This was poet Anne Michaels' first novel - the descriptive prose is so rich and beautiful it would dominate the book were it not for the equal weight of the grief and sorrow she conveys. The main characters are very well drawn - Athos is particularly sympathetic: loyal, brave and wise and determined that history will not be misrepresented.

The story itself is almost pushed to the background by the prose and the memories being relived by the main characters. This somehow makes the revelations of unexpected and poignant events all the more powerful.

I've had this book for nearly two decades without feeling moved to read it and yet having now read it I don't recall ever being so moved by a novel. Perhaps there's an optimal time for reading a book and it can be almost as much about the life experience you bring to it as the words the author put into it. Five stars.

ETA rating.

>94 floremolla: That sounds amazing. Though I'm not sure if I dare put it on my wishlist!

Hi Donna! So good of you to keep my sleeping thread warm. Thank you for that!

>94 floremolla: Right up my alley, on my wish list it goes!

>95 Jackie_K: from what you've said, this one is probably not for you - some of the most harrowing parts are described quite unsentimentally but the overall sense of grief was palpable and I wept when I finished it.

>96 connie53: you were one of the first to welcome me here, Connie, so it's a pleasure to welcome you back :)

>97 Tess_W: hope you find time to read this one!

Wow you've been reading and reviewing a lot! I see you read Number9Dream -- that's on my to-read list :) Can't wait to get to it!

>99 avanders: hope you like it then, I'm a big David Mitchell fan but it wasn't my favourite! My reviews are getting longer and longer but they help me figure out what I really think of the book and the rating points me towards what I might keep and reread, so it's a useful exercise.

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises completed

Ernest Hemingway's Fiesta is described as a 'roman a clef' - a fictional account of real people and events. This novel, only his fourth published piece, is broadly based on a period of Hemingway's life in the summer of 1925.

It's also described as 'modernist', being characterised by sparse prose, short sentences and terse dialogue. Apparently Hemingway espoused 'The Iceberg Theory': that an author doesn't have to spell everything out for the reader, they only have to know the bare details and they can work out what's going on underneath for themselves.

The novel is divided into three parts, loosely based on the geographical location of the main character at the time. He is Jacob (Jake) Barnes, an American reporter based in Paris, as Hemingway himself was, and the story revolves around the group of American and British expatriates with whom he socialises and travels (thinly disguised real people in Hemingway's circle).

The novel's tension derives from Jake's love for Brett, Lady Ashley, a British aristocrat, while Brett's attention is on other lovers including Robert Cohn, a Jewish writer of limited success and a former college friend of Jake. Brett is also meanwhile engaged to the hapless Mike, a bankrupt Scot. Jake is impotent following a war wound and Brett is a serial seductress, so love is somewhat doomed from the outset.

In the first part, set in Paris, the group spends a lot of time drinking in cafes and clubs and are usually 'tight' (the worse for alcohol). They're in their thirties but fretting about getting old and life passing them by. A search for adventure drives them to travel to Pamplona for the Fiesta of San Fermin at Jake's suggestion - for he is an 'aficionado of the bullfight'.

In the second part, Jake and another old friend, Bill set off in advance to Burguete in Northern Spain for some fishing, chatting about their friends and more drinking.

The third part sees the group reunited in Pamplona just before the Fiesta and it becomes clear Brett and Robert have had a dalliance under Mike's nose. Emotions run high at the seven day Fiesta - twenty four hour drinking, the running of the bulls, and an inevitable encounter with a very handsome toreador, trigger verbal and physical clashes among the protagonists. Jake describes how they'd all gone for dinner together after the first of these skirmishes:

"There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people."

Jake's friends, Brett in particular, behave shamefully and jeopardise his relationship with the bullfighters and Fiesta promoters he's come to know. The characters hadn't been very engaging before and by now any residual sympathy was lost, however I was still interested to find out what would happen. Or who would end up with whom.

As the novel progressed, some features of the writing became distracting. There was much repetition, sometimes and not only because a character was drunkenly repetitive.

Dialogue didn't flow - often it wasn't clear who had spoken, or indeed what they meant; characters used a lot of (presumably) hip phrases and upper class English expressions, intermingled with ironic statements, often saying the opposite of what was meant. For Hemingway this was probably an accurate representation of how his own coterie of friends communicated with each other and was probably of its time but it comes across now as cliquish and rude.

Casual racism and anti-Semitism abounds which makes for uncomfortable reading - presumably this reflected the mores of the time among this 'set' of people, predominantly ex-pats who seemed to do little work but live off parental allowances or on credit.

Women didn't feature much in this novel, other than Brett who was somewhat objectified - constantly lauded for her looks and indulged by her men-friends despite being an emotional and financial leech, and a blatant 'user' of other people.

The book is supposed to represent 'the lost generation' of young people who felt directionless after WW1 and yet theoretically had the world at their feet and it does this quite successfully in my opinion - underlying the hedonism is a 'seize the day because you never know if there might be another war' attitude which explains (but doesn't really excuse) the bad behaviour.

If anything else came over well in this novel it was the setting. Despite the paucity of detail in his descriptions Hemingway still managed to convey something of the character and culture of Paris and Pamplona of 90 years ago, and the types of local people he would have encountered. The novel is highly regarded for its depictions of the running of the bulls and the bullfighting and these were much more richly described than anything else that happened in the book.

At the end of the novel Jake travels to San Sebastián by rail where his seaside sojourn is interrupted by a summons to Madrid from Brett who needs him again. Alas there was no resolution to the 'who ends up with whom' issue but by then I didn't much care.

On the strength of this one novel I don't think Hemingway is my sort of writer but I've two more of his tomes on my shelves needing to be ROOTed so I hope to be proved wrong. Three stars.

The Remains of the Day completed

This was a very easy and engaging read from Kazuo Ishiguro right from the start.

Told in the first person by 'Stevens', the elderly butler of Darlington House, as he takes his first ever motoring holiday in south west England in 1956, and plans to meet a former colleague - a housekeeper whom he hopes to persuade to come back to work with him. Darlington House is in need of proficient staff since being taken over by an American who plans to run it with as few employees as possible.

As Stevens journeys the English landscape he meets various people of the lower to middle-classes along the way, who direct him to local beauty spots and give him their opinions on the upper classes. Stevens is already ruminating on his life and with each encounter more light is spread on the landscape of his career.

Stevens prides himself on his professionalism and his unquestioning loyalty to his employers and, while protesting his modesty, feels he possibly achieved 'greatness' in his profession. 'Greatness', he believes, is a combination of personal dignity and professional service to the most important of people, the upper classes in whose drawing rooms matters of state and international affairs are discussed, opinions are swayed and decisions are made for the benefit of humanity.

In parallel he considers his relationship with the woman he intends to meet, Mrs Benn, formerly housekeeper, Miss Kenton. He reflects on the ups and downs of their relationship and it becomes clear that she was desirous of some kind of personal relationship with him but he failed to perceive - or perhaps failed to acknowledge - that fact, and seeing no point in staying at Darlington House, she eventually leaves to marry someone else.

In both his professional life and his personal life, Stevens is a prisoner of his own narrow view of the world. He is devoted to subservience to the extent that he will suffer humiliation in silence rather than lose his dignity - and to a naive belief in the right of the elite to make political decisions, to the exclusion of the lower classes.

Unwittingly Stevens serves a Nazi-sympathising master and does indeed aid him in his activities, from firing Jewish staff and reporting eavesdropped conversations among guests, to playing along as an idiot when used to make a point about the lower classes not having the intellectual capacity to engage meaningfully in politics. From these actions it's easily inferred that Stevens is not much different from Nazi personnel whose excuse for atrocities was that they were 'only carrying out orders'.

As he nears the end of his motoring journey his introspection and encounters have opened his eyes to current public opinion (although it's clear he was already aware) but Stevens clings to his belief that he acted in good faith and carried out his duties to the best of his abilities; yes, his master had made decisions that turned out to be wrong, but he, Stevens thought it "...quite illogical that I should feel any regret or shame on my own account.".

By the final chapters Stevens has had his meeting with Mrs Benn and is thinking over their two hours together. He clearly enjoys her company and ventures to ask whether she is happy in her life - she reveals that after a period of regret she has come to love her husband - there had been a time when she had hoped that she and Stevens might have a life together but now she tries to be grateful for the life she has. Stevens hears this without looking at her and feels his heart will break, but his response is quite perfunctory as he smiles and tells her "You're very correct, Mrs Benn. As you say, it's too late to turn the clock back.".

This is a very poignant but understated moment and the reader longs for Stevens to break out of his repressed personality and express some reciprocal feelings, but he is unable to do so, for it would cost him his dignity. He contemplates the life he has left and the reader has a brief final hope that he might retire to another life, but instead he tries to think of ways to improve his 'bantering' skills to please his new master.

Ishiguro has recreated a convincing world of lords and mansions, butlers and housekeepers, and woven a barely-there love story around an unsavoury chapter of British history, namely the endeavours of some members of the aristocracy, politicians, and possibly Royals, to align the country with the Nazism and Fascism of 1930s Germany and Italy.

In Stevens he has also presented a main character who can be interpreted as a metaphor for a society that almost sleepwalked into being on the wrong side of history. Four and a half stars.

Your reviews are nearly as epic as the books themselves! Thank you though, they give a great overview of the books and a really good sense of whether or not I'd like them.

>102 floremolla: You've convince me! I'm adding it to my wishlist!

>103 Jackie_K: epic, I know - I had unexpected free time - clearly my brain is looking for something to do. The next ones will be more concise hopefully ;)

>104 Tess_W: Remains of the Day was only 245 pages; it really flew by!

The Time Machine completed

Written in 1895 this novel (more accurately a novella at about 70 pages) is probably the most well known of time travel tales. The main protagonist, the inventor of the Time Machine, invites some learned acquaintances round for dinner and arrives late and dishevelled, claiming he's been time travelling for several days despite having been gone for only a few hours. Most of the novel comprises his recounting of his adventures to his astonished guests.

On his first part of his to 'futurity', the Time Traveller encounters the gentle but feeble and unintelligent Eloi who live communally, and later the Morlocks who have evolved to live underground supported by machines. He finds himself in danger from the latter and has to use 19th century knowledge to escape.

Out of interest for the fate of these creatures, and of humankind, he travels further into futurity and, 30 million years hence, witnesses the dying of the Earth. In the permanent twilight he sees that life has reverted to the most basic of forms and, afraid of being overcome by lack of oxygen, he sets the Time Machine to return.

His guests are naturally sceptical and he decides to travel in time again and return with proof but as the story ends he's been gone for three years.

H G Wells was clearly well informed on scientific matters for his time. Darwin had published 'On the Origin of Species' 36 years earlier so perhaps it should not be so surprising that biological evolution is at the heart of this Victorian novel but, being a socialist, Wells links this with social evolution so that his Time Traveller visits a world where the human race has evolved into two species, broadly representative of capital and labour.

Somehow, even in the 21st century this novel avoids seeming dated - it's timeless (ironically). Admittedly it's short on details of time travel and the Time Machine itself but it's a jolly good tale designed to be thought-provoking on where humankind is headed and how the forces of nature will ultimately reclaim and determine the fate of the planet (if we don't blast it to smithereens first). Four and a half stars.

The War of the Worlds completed

Towards the end of the 19th century the planet Mars is dying and its inhabitants need to find a new home. They send cylindrical rockets Earthwards that at first look like meteors crashed into the earth - until they open and brown tentacled Martians emerge. Victorian England is not prepared for such a thing - inevitably they send a 'Deputation' to welcome the visitors but quickly realise these are not friendly guests.

The novel is narrated by the unnamed main protagonist whose interest in astronomy had caused him to witness fiery activity on Mars which we later learn was the rockets being fired. Unluckily he has found himself at the centre of the Martian invasion and, being a man of science, he pauses to observe them even while fleeing for his life. The novel comprises his observations, analyses and postulations.

HG Wells uses his own scientific knowledge to great effect in this novel - dying planets, the relative effects of gravity on different planets, natural selection - and his depictions of the Martians and their tripod fighting machines with their heat rays and Black Smoke are very evocative.

The arc of the story follows the narrator's responses - wonder, fear, hope, relief...and then a nagging worry that humankind not seen the last of the Martians. As with his other novels I found his writing style easy to read and enjoyed some old fashioned words that sent me Googling their meaning and determined to resurrect them or at least use them in Scrabble. Four and a half stars.

The Island of Doctor Moreau completed.

Written in HG Wells' usual engaging style and told through the memoir of a narrator who has survived a shipwreck this novel is nevertheless an unpleasant read. Mercifully it is short at just 100 pages.

The unfortunate Edward Prendick finds himself rescued first by a merchant ship - and then when they refuse to carry him further after an altercation on board, rescued again by a strange-looking group of individuals who are taking caged animals to an unnamed island.

Over the course of a few days on the island Prendick hears animals screaming in pain and begins to form an idea that the island's 'master', Moreau, is experimenting with turning men into beasts. This proves to be inaccurate but the truth is just as abhorrent. Despite his revulsion, Prendick tries to accept what is happening as he knows there's little chance of getting off the island for another year.

However, the order established on the island by Moreau, and enforced by his assistant Montgomery (an implied disgraced medic) - has started to break down and eventually men and beast-folk descend to the basest of animal instincts and fight to the death. Prendick realises he has to get off the island and we know from the outset that he achieves this. Back in civilisation he cannot forget the dreadful things he has witnessed and he believes that his now highly-developed animalistic senses cause him to see danger in every human face.

The descriptions of Moreau's experiments, and the creatures resulting from these, were horrifically evoked. The science fiction of this novel is based around the idea that species of living mammals could be altered through surgery and that sentient beings could be created from animal brains by developing language. Wells could not have imagined that the discovery of DNA and ways to manipulate it would be real-life ethical considerations within a century.

He also didn't anticipate that casual racist references would be viewed with equal disgust. Four and a half stars.

>106 floremolla: I quite like the sound of that one! (especially the 70 pages bit lol) I wonder if it's on Project Gutenberg? (and whether I can go there and not go mad on acquisitions!).

>109 Jackie_K: But it is free on Amazon for ereaders

>110 Tess_W: Thanks Tess. I got it from Project Gutenberg in the end, as I don't have a kindle so only download free kindle books from amazon if I can't get them anywhere else. My kobo and Sony ereaders both take books in epub format and aren't compatible with kindle books, sadly. I do have the kindle app on my laptop, but would rather read on the ereader if possible because of the lighting, and also because my main reading time/place is in bed - so I only have 3 or 4 books on the app for that reason. I closed PG down as soon as I'd downloaded it, so I wouldn't be led into any more temptation!

Also, I don't know how you feel about writing instead of reading, but the Scottish Book Trust have just announced the theme for this year's Book Week Scotland publication - if you fancied having a go (I might, maybe, perhaps, although I don't have anything immediately come to mind for the theme) the details are here: http://scottishbooktrust.com/writing/nourish

>112 Jackie_K: I had spotted that but didn't think the theme was inspiring. I always think my writing is a cross between a planning committee report and a letter to an elderly aunt. Maybe I should try to break out of that with something more creative, even if it's just as a personal exercise. I'll give it some thought...and yes you should give it a go if you have the time!

>113 floremolla: Yes, it's not as inspiring as previous years (I was just enthusiastic as it's the first year I've discovered the theme in advance of the actual week itself!). I was quite amused by the vegetarian at steak poem that's already been submitted. I'm a bit disappointed that all the submissions so far seem to be about food though - nourishment is about so much more than that!

>114 Jackie_K: I agree, food is not necessarily what I think about when I hear the word nourish!

Hope you like The Time Machine, I was pleasantly surprised with it and it propelled me through the other two.

Hi Donna, back again on your thread. I love your enthusiasm for ROOTing and the group.

I you need any help, for instance how to make stars, just give us a yell ;-))

>100 floremolla: I think that's a great reason to write long reviews :)
I have only read 2 books by David Mitchell so far, but look forward to reading the rest! (I've read Slade House and Cloud Atlas)

and WOW congrats on all your ROOTs!

Yes, I do LOVE your reviews! Unfortunately, I get alot of BB's from great reviews! I guess because I have to write for my profession, it's just that not fun on here, but sure is fun to read!

>116 connie53: Hi, thanks Connie, yes I need to learn how to do stars. You always have such a colourful thread, you could do a series of tutorials!

I'm enjoying the group - people were very welcoming from the start which made it easy to just dive in :)

>117 avanders: thanks - I do like seeing that ticker move along!

>118 Tess_W: I love seeing how other people review their reads - lots of great insights and quirky takes on books. And I'm amazed how organised some people are with their reading data, but that's a step too far for me just now!

Can anyone advise? I'm reading my first non-ROOT of the year - where would be a good place to record non-ROOTs reading if I don't want to commit to any further challenges? I'm anticipating it'll be a mixed bag of stuff from BBs and extending my ownership of favourite authors' works.

>120 floremolla: you could do that here. Maybe add a new ticker to your first post for NON-ROOTs and create a list of them there. That's what I did in my first 4 posts or so. You can't add posts but you can certainly edit posts and include anything in there.

I send you a private message

>121 connie53: Connie has a great idea! Last year I had 2 tickers, one for roots and one for pages read. Cheli ignores all but the roots, so it's all good. I've seen several posters with 2 or more tickers.

>121 connie53: >122 Tess_W: that makes sense, keeping everything on one thread would be the most convenient way of doing it. Thanks for your help!

>123 floremolla: In addition to the ticker you could make a list of the titles under it if you want a record of those.

>124 clue: thanks, yes, I will do that!

>123 floremolla: I see you followed my advice, Donna! Looks good! You can even add a list of ROOTs there!

>126 connie53: yes, I'll probably do that, thanks. And thanks for the email about the stars, I'll look at that later too!

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man completed

Set in Ireland in the late 1800s/early 1900s, James Joyce's first novel was written in the 'modern style' (like Hemingway but 'wordy'). It comprises five chapters, each representing a 'life stage' of the author's alter-ego Stephen Dedalus, up to his leaving university. With each successive chapter the text becomes more complex, reflecting his intellectual growth.

Chapter one covers the early years, from first childhood memories of nursery rhymes through his primary education at Clongowes (which Joyce himself attended).

At school, Stephen is a quiet, observant child who dislikes sport and is casually bullied by the older 'fellows'. He learns an important lesson when he is unfairly and severely punished by a Jesuit priest teacher and - not prepared to accept this injustice - makes a complaint to the headmaster. In the first of a series of epiphanies he feels a sense of power from this and it makes him briefly a hero among his schoolmates (though the Fathers themselves merely find it amusing).

In the second chapter we learn more of Stephen's home life - his father is 'fond of the drink' and the family and friends engage in political discourse around the questions of religion and Irish autonomy (a key republican figure supported by the largely Catholic population has committed adultery, causing support for him to be controversial).

The fortunes of the Dedalus family decline through the father's ineptitude and they are forced to move to Dublin. With the help of one of his teachers, Stephen is fortunate to win a scholarship to continue his education in the city.

Towards the end of this chapter there is a sudden change of tone where Stephen (now 16) changes from being a model pupil, with talents in acting and writing, and a romantic attachment to a young girl, to being obsessed by sex and prowling the streets looking for prostitutes.

In the third chapter the boys are being lectured before they go on religious retreat. The lecture is an epic rant on the Catholic faith's 'four last things' of life - death, judgement, hell and heaven. The language takes to extreme the imagery familiar to anyone brought up in that faith in the last century - sinners suffering eternal damnation physically and spiritually where all the senses are abused night and day, a million, trillion times worse than anything imaginable on earth. For all eternity.

Stephen, a sensitive soul with a precocious intellect, is shocked into another epiphany: that he should relinquish his sinful ways and bind himself to God. He therefore enters a state of self-imposed asceticism where he will not allow any of his senses to be 'sullied'.

In the fourth chapter, his religious devotion causes him to be invited to join the priesthood and Stephen goes off to think about it. Seeing a beautiful young girl and wishing to capture her beauty in words, he realises in another epiphany that his true vocation is as an artist - a writer and poet.

The final chapter takes place while Stephen is at university and comprises discussions with fellow students on theology, philosophy and the nature of art. He reveals that he no longer believes in his religion, but he does not disbelieve it either. Nonetheless, in his final epiphany, he realises he needs to leave Ireland to find freedom of artistic expression, unconstrained by his religion.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was not intended to be an autobiography but rather to illustrate how key events in Joyce's life - and the pervasiveness of the Catholic religion - shaped him and eventually led to his exile.

A memorable book for its esoteric discourses, passionate stream of consciousness writing and vibrant vocabulary. I'm surprised how much I liked it.

Ethan Frome Non-ROOT completed

An unnamed first person narrator, a temporary resident of the fictional New England town of Starkfield, is intrigued by a local character, Ethan Frome, a tall lean man with a singular air of tragedy and a twisted body as a result of a 'smash up' twenty four years before.

Starkfield is small town of unforgiving climate and unforthcoming inhabitants and our narrator resolves to satisfy his curiosity before he moves on. An opportunity presents itself when snowy conditions render travel to neighbouring towns only possible by horse-drawn sleigh. Ethan Frome agrees to transport him for payment. On their return journey one night, the weather closes in and Ethan invites his passenger to spend the night at his all-but-derelict farm till the snowstorm passes.

The winter landscape is as much a character in this tale as Ethan. It's lean and spare but starkly beautiful as a background for Ethan's romantic yearnings for his wife's cousin, Mattie Silver, who lives with them as housekeeper - for Zeena is indisposed by vague nervous symptoms and unable to do physical work.

Ethan has already cared for his father and mother through fatal illnesses and marries Zeena thinking she will care for him, but she is a bitter woman, disappointed in her life with Ethan, where they work hard but barely subsist, and the harsh six month long winters are a struggle to endure.

Ethan's quiet longings for Mattie are brought to the fore when he sees her laughing with a young man and jealousy makes him desperate to declare his love. Zeena meanwhile is alert to Ethan's romantic notions and her hypochondria escalates till she demands he finance a trip for her to see a new doctor, which will take her away overnight. Ethan worries about the expense but envisages an evening spent with Mattie....

Ethan and Mattie spend a quiet evening by the fire, afraid to voice their mutual love and all the time aware of Zeena's empty chair. Zeena returns the next day to tell Ethan that Mattie will have to leave, she is being replaced with a more capable housekeeper. Ethan considers running away with Mattie but they have no money and he would be leaving Zeena with nothing, which his conscience won't allow.

In defiance of Zeena's orders he resolves to take Mattie to the station himself using their sleigh. On the way there they take a detour to go sledding as he had promised Mattie he would. The reader knows that Ethan has had an accident and tension builds when he and Mattie finally voice their love for each other and decide that they will aim to hit a tree and bring their pointless lives to an end.

The outcome of the smash-up is revealed when the narrator enters the farmhouse and sees two women, Zeena - and Mattie who's been paralysed these past twenty four years. Zeena has nursed Mattie and Ethan after the accident and the three have had to learn to live with each other, all of them being prisoners of their circumstances.

Wharton's language is rich and poetic in contrast to the austerity of the characters' lives. Scraps of beauty are found indoors in a red ribbon or a glass dish and outdoors in the blues and grays of the landscape and the special atmosphere of deep and unrelenting snow. The story is taut and well-crafted (the introduction explains her planning of the novel), and she is masterful in characterisation and evoking emotional responses - pity, trepidation, despair.

Instructions for a Heatwave completed

Gretta's husband, Robert, goes out to buy a newspaper one day and doesn't return. Her three grown up children arrive to try to get to the bottom of their father's disappearance, but Gretta has faith that Robert will turn up in due course.

The novel takes place in England in the extended heatwave of 1976 and author Maggie O'Farrell contends that extremely hot weather doesn't so much change people as intensify their personal characteristics. It's also a convenient year in which to place the action - where generations are quite alien to each other and communications technology is not yet well developed.

The early part of the novel focuses on Gretta's grown up family's lives - Michael Francis, Monica and Aoife's - all are going through crises and have secrets or have recently had a secret found out. They are at loggerheads with each other, with their partners and with their mother. None of the characters is particularly likeable and there is clearly something clinically wrong with Aoife that should have been picked up by her family - even in the seventies. Their stories are ponderous and this slows the novel till about halfway through.

The action picks up pace when the siblings find a paper trail that leads to Ireland, from where Gretta and Robert originated. It transpires that Gretta has secrets of her own. They all decamp to Connemara (where Gretta conveniently has a cottage) and gradually the barriers between them start to break down.

The denouement - the reason for the disappearance - is quite original if a bit convoluted. Gretta's Irish Catholic background is a source of amusing anecdotes throughout, if you like that sort of thing (I thought it was rather unsubtle) and the ending was quite optimistic, even though the fate of every character wasn't fully resolved. The novel would have benefited from tighter editing; too much of the first half seemed like padding.

Edited - this was a kindle ROOT.

Great Job, Donna.

Great stars, thanks Connie! :)

Wallace, Bruce and the War of Independence completed

A short illustrated book of Scottish history from 1249 to 1372, written for children and history dummies (mea culpa). Written by Antony Kamm and illustrated by Jennifer Campbell.

I needed some context before I start on John Prebble's Highland Trilogy and this was ideal for filling in some blanks (of which there were many) and separating fact from fiction.

For someone whose Scottish history knowledge has been gleaned from the movie Braveheart and two series of Outlander it was disappointing to learn that Wallace and Bruce were not purely heroes but could be as brutal as any enemy.

On the other hand I enjoyed learning of their warfare tactics and in particular the victory at Bannockburn in 1314 where Bruce's army was greatly outnumbered but succeeded because of clever strategy (and, ok, Edward II's men were probably exhausted from having marched north for several days).

I liked the fact that one of Wallace's battles took place just yards from where I used to work in Glasgow city centre and one of Bruce's battles took place at Loudoun Hill, a volcanic plug, just a few miles away from our home (and a favourite walk of our family). These connections bring history alive.

I also really appreciated the inclusion of a genealogical family tree of the Scottish throne (1124-1390) and simple line-drawn maps showing the locations of battles and the layout of the respective military camps. An excellent little potted history in 60 pages. Bring on the Highland Trilogy now.

>133 floremolla: That sounds like a very good potted history. Most of my Wallace/Bruce knowledge comes from Nigel Tranter's Robert the Bruce trilogy. A shorter book would be useful when I need a refresher.

Will be interested to hear what you think of the Highland Trilogy. Historical fiction is ticking a lot of boxes for me these days, for whatever reason.

>134 rabbitprincess: If all history was presented so simply, I'd be an expert! The Highland Trilogy is non-fiction which is why I'm a bit daunted - I've started Glencoe twice and it makes my eyes feel strangely heavy...

I'm with you on the historical fiction - there have been some good tv series where I've enjoyed the story and learnt a bit of history so I'm looking out for books with the same vibe. Let me know if you come across any!

>135 floremolla: Wow, a trilogy of non-fiction books! A series of non-fiction seems more intimidating than a series of fiction for some reason.

Recent historical fiction I've enjoyed has included works by Nigel Tranter, Dorothy Dunnett, Edith Pargeter and Winston Graham. I've felt the most knowledgeable after reading Tranter, and the Dunnett has made me want to read more broadly about Mary Queen of Scots (hence my mum's copy of Antonia Fraser's biography sitting on my shelves). Not sure how much I've learned/retained from the Pargeter (Brothers of Gwynedd) and Graham, but they make good stories.

I also learned quite a lot from Sharon Kay Penman's books about the Plantagenets. Looking forward to reading her Welsh trilogy and her stand-alone about Richard III.

>136 rabbitprincess: thanks! I'll browse these authors and put some on my wish list :)

You're going great guns with your reading! Hope at least some of it has been in the sitooterie! :)

>138 Jackie_K: thanks, Jackie. I'm not sure how the reading pace will pan out over the year but I seem to be fitting it in ok just now. The sitooterie is not being used as much as I'd like - roll on summer!

Wow you are doing great w/ your ROOTing *and* with your reviewing!!
Hope you find some good sitooterie time :)

Now I really have to ask: What is a sitooterie?

>141 connie53: it's a made up word, Connie - it's Scots making fun of ourselves trying to be posh - my sitooterie is actually a shed with a patio in front of it! (there's a picture in my profile gallery)

"Sitooterie. This word is a Scots colloquial term, though not a common one in print. It means a place to sit out in, a summerhouse or gazebo, from 'sit' plus 'oot' (a Scots pronunciation of 'out') plus the noun ending –'erie' of French origin that's familiar from words like menagerie and rotisserie"

One thing I just love about living in Scotland is all the made up and dialect words - they are so descriptive, and often very funny. They all sound ridiculous when I try to say them, with my English accent.

>143 Jackie_K: you're right, they're very descriptive and often difficult to pronounce which can be hilarious - I always think of Mrs Doubtfire when I imagine a cod Scots accent :)

>144 This-n-That: thanks Lisa - unusually for me I'm currently reading a non-fiction ROOT and I'm struggling to get into it :(

Bleak House was easy in comparison, mainly due to the audiobook getting me past the first chapters and into the story - then I got hooked!

>142 floremolla: Thanks, I thought it might be something like that. Going to your gallery now to see what it looks like.

>142 floremolla: love the description and love your sitooterie! :)

>146 connie53: It really is a lovely spot for summer reading.

Vanity Fair paperback and audiobook completed

William Makepeace Thackeray's satire on English society of the early 1800s takes its name from a town in Pilgrim's Progress which represents the sin of man's attachment to worldly things. Thackeray's Vanity Fair is a novel of the cut and thrust of wealth and social mobility.

The novel's narrator reveals initially that Vanity Fair is a 'puppet play' (therefore the characters are representative rather than 'real') and also that he heard these stories as gossip, however, he also avers at various points that all of the stories are true. The reader can take from that what they will.

The serpentine storyline charts, in a very tongue in cheek way, the rise and fall in society of the novel's key characters - pretty, but dull and naive Amelia, and pretty, ruthlessly-ambitious but fascinating Rebecca.

They are thoroughly portrayed over 800+ pages and represent the opposite extremes of female human nature. Genteel Amelia goes through life in an unassertive way expecting to live the life of people of her class. Rebecca, of dubious heritage, must use all her wiles and talents to climb the social ladder. Their paths meet and diverge often on their journeys towards their destinies.

The characterisation in general was excellently entertaining. A myriad of characters provided lots of scope for humorous observation. Unfortunately my volume of Vanity Fair did not include Thackeray's own illustrations but his descriptions were so vivid they weren't necessary.

The narrator's dry wit was central to my enjoyment of the novel - his sly asides targeted the characters, the reader, the wiles of women, the stupidity of men and institutions, dysfunctional families, deluded aristocrats, etc. These asides could have seemed hackneyed two centuries later but were very droll, and just as apt today.

A very enjoyable novel but, as is all too common in older classics, any character who wasn't white - even if they were 'in society' - was racially abused by the narrator and other characters in an offhand way, with people's ethnicity weighed up against their financial wealth, only to determine that their social 'worth' could never equal that of a white person. Presumably this would reflect the social mores of the day and the readership for which this novel was originally serialised.

While I'm giving five stars for the quality of the novel I very much regret this aspect.

Glencoe completed

The late John Prebble was a writer and historian and this narrative history, based on his examination of documentary evidence, displays his skills in both in this account of the years leading up to, and after, the Massacre of Glencoe, on 13 February 1692.

The early chapters set the scene of day to day life among the Highland clans of Scotland against a background of machinations by Scots nobility, the Scottish and English Parliaments and ultimately the monarchy.

For centuries the Gaels had been led by their own nobility - the Lord of the Isles - and were not subject to lowland monarchy. In 1493 the MacDonald Lords forfeited this title under King James IV of Scotland. In daily life the clans ignored this change of administration and carried on as before. To survive the harsh climate and landscape of the Highlands they would steal cattle from other clans. Stealing food escalated to stealing anything of value and thus clan chiefs built up their own empires - always aware they were targets for the next clan. But old rivalries could be put aside when it suited them and picked up again just as quickly and when their monarch bade them to raise an army they would do so happily for they were enthusiastic fighters, and quite reckless of their own lives.

In 1688 the religiously tolerant Catholic monarch, King James II of England (and VII of Scotland), was ousted by his own Parliament - the birth of a son to his second wife would have assured a Catholic dynasty which the pro-Protestant parliament could not countenance. The Dutchman King William and his Queen, Mary (James' daughter by his first wife and a Protestant) were offered the throne instead, with the intention of subjugating Catholicism altogether throughout England and Scotland (which at that time were independent countries but united by 'personal union' under one monarch).

William of Orange arrived in England with an army and forced James briefly into exile where the latter planned his retaliation. William duly took the throne but by several accounts found his responsibility for England and Scotland an inconvenience when his focus was on the European continent and the much more important issue of war against France, where his regiments were suffering massive losses.

James returned in due course, raising armies in Scotland in an endeavour to win back the throne. Many Highland clans joined him in the Jacobite uprising of 1689. The uprising failed. With William firmly established on the throne, Scots nobility were quick to try to find favour in his court. Sir John Dalrymple, the Master of Stair, was appointed Secretary of State for Scotland jointly with George, the Earl of Melville (but later unseated him in his greed for power).

Sir John Campbell, Earl of Breadalbane, was also quick to submit to King William and offered to 'treat' (negotiate) with the Highland clans to break their support for James and bring them under control of the crown - and use their numbers to replace William's depleted armies in France (despite Scotland's history of being allies of that country). An amnesty was declared whereby chieftains could obtain pardon for their Jacobite activities by swearing an oath of allegiance to William.

The MacDonalds of Glencoe's clan chief Alasdair MacIain held off signing until just before the deadline, awaiting the sanction of the exiled James. Nine days before the deadline, word reached him that James would not oppose the clans pledging allegiance to William, for his rebellion was done. Riding to Fort William on the last day of 1691 MacIain was told by its governor Colonel John Hill, that he was not authorised to take his oath and sent him on to Sir Colin Campbell, Sheriff of Argyll, at Inveraray, with a note confirming MacIain had agreed to take the oath before the deadline. On the way however he was arrested and detained. Arriving at Inveraray two days late he found the Sheriff away on leave. On the latter's return he took the oath from MacIain.

Word of MacIain's failure to take the oath before the deadline was passed up the hierarchy to the monarch whose response was that the clan was to be 'extirpated' as an example to all. This edict was passed down the line from the Master of Stair to the Earl of Breadalbane, to Hill and ultimately to Sir John Campbell of Glenlyon, Captain of the Earl of Argyll's Regiment, who took a company of troops to Glencoe and decreed:

"You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the MacDonalds of Glencoe, and to put all to the sword under seventy".

Rather than attacking the clan, Glenlyon played a ruse on the MacDonalds, claiming that his men were to be billeted in their village pending a move further north. They spent two weeks at the hospitality of the MacDonalds, where breaking bread together was an ancient sign of peace. One morning, before dawn in the middle of a snow storm the massacre began with MacIain slain in his bedroom and his wife stripped naked and thrown into the snow. Thirty eight people perished that day including women and children. Others, forced to flee into the winter mountains in their nightclothes didn't survive the weather. The settlement was destroyed.

No sooner was the massacre over than recriminations began as it became clear MacIain had actually sworn allegiance. The note from Colonel Hill to the Sheriff had been saved and copies were circulated. The fact that the massacre had been an opportunistic slaying became clear as many other clan chiefs who hadn't yet sworn allegiance had not been punished. Everyone in the complex chain of command tried to slither out of the blame and conceal the role of the monarch.

A Commission of Enquiry set up in the Scottish Parliament three years later debated for months in an attempt to pin responsibility on at least one of the chain of command but, as Prebble observes, when findings were presented to William:

"The King did nothing, he punished nobody, and it may be a charity to argue that he could not because he was aware of his own moral responsibility".

In fact, most of the main perpetrators were eventually rewarded with titles and land. The MacDonalds were not even recompensed for their losses.

Glencoe: The Story of the Massacre was a confusing read in the respect that I had no knowledge of the historical context and had to look things up constantly and there were many people of similar name, or several names used for the same person. Writing this review has helped me to understand the context and the sequence of events of the Massacre, the people involved, the injustices that were perpetrated and the failures to hold the guilty to account.

The book includes a map, a family tree-type diagram of the Campbell clan chiefs, a list of the 'principal characters' and a timeline of events. John Prebble's own research led to the discovery of documentation in royal archives that had been thought lost and shed new light on what turned out to be the beginning of centuries of routing of the clans from the Scottish Highlands. Brilliant work.

>149 floremolla: >150 floremolla: I have Vanity Fair on my TBR, but didn't really know what it was about, so thanks for the review which is very helpful! (goodness knows when I'll reach it, but at least when I do I will remember that I've read a review which helped me to not feel put off before I start!). Glencoe (why is the first touchstone to appear To Kill a Mockingbird, I wonder?!) sounds pretty epic! I'm very impressed at you reading this many chunksters already this year - I can only do them in very short chunks indeed (so they last a very long time!).

>151 Jackie_K: I did the audio plus paperback thing with Vanity Fair - I omitted to say that the narrator was excellent, very good range of voices and just the right sardonic tone. Both listening and reading made me laugh aloud.

I thought I'd changed the touchstone for Glencoe but I think LT just does it's own thing with touchstones sometimes. It wasn't so much chunky as really dense with names and passing references to things I knew nothing about. It's a long summary and review but I needed to get it straight in my own mind or I'd've completely wasted my time reading it!

Hope you're getting a break on this sunshiny bank holiday!

>152 floremolla: I think your touchstone was fine, it was when I went to do it for my reply and there appeared TKAM at the side of my message box! Glencoe was about 5th or 6th down the list, behind several others which to the best of my knowledge have no mention of Glencoe anywhere at all!

I'm having a lovely bank holiday, thanks! Sounds like you've got the same sun as us up the road! We spent a couple of hours in a local park this morning, then had a picnic lunch in the garden (well, if you can call a communal drying court a garden - we do what we can!), then this afternoon I did a lot of middle-aged garden stuff - mowing the front lawn (postage stamp sized, so didn't take long!), and cutting back the ivy and hedge (both of which have suddenly become rampant in the last few weeks - I rediscovered a shrub I'd forgotten about, which was completely buried by the hedge). My daughter has been running around 'helping', and finally about half an hour ago conked out, she is fast asleep on the living room floor in what looks like a slightly modified recovery position. Luckily she is one of those children whose daytime naps have minimal impact on her night-time sleeps, so we'll just let her sleep it off!

>153 Jackie_K: sounds like a great day for the wee one - a picnic's a picnic! I am middle aged so was also mowing the lawn - and had a word with my neighbour about the hedge-icide he wreaked without asking us as joint owners. I said 'oh hello, I was hoping to have a word with you about the hedge massacre...' but we got on fine - he'll put up some screening to restore my privacy and I've offered him some ground cover plants. All very civilised and I'll definitely sleep better too tonight having got that off my chest. :))

Another couple of great reviews!

By the way -- where do you pull your multi-colored stars from?

>155 avanders: thanks! I got the stars from Connie - they're rather groovy - if you speak nicely to her I'm sure she'll share them with you ;)

I'm not sure how or I'd pass them on direct!

lol perhaps she will ;)
I should have recognized them!

>157 avanders: Yes, you can have them, Ava. If I can find your mail address.
I have send you a PM with the stars, but that doesn't work too good.

A Pale View of Hills non-ROOT completed

In Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel, Etsuko is a middle aged Japanese woman living in England. We learn that her elder daughter, Keiko, born in Japan to a Japanese father, has recently committed suicide. Her younger daughter, Niki, born to a non-Japanese father, has come to stay with her mother for a few days.

Etsuko starts to reminisce about when she was a young wife, expecting her first child, in Nagasaki in the years following WWII when she befriended Sachiko, a somewhat mysterious woman, living in a derelict cottage with her young daughter Mariko. Etsuko relates a series of events and discussions they shared.

Sachiko tells Etsuko various versions of what is happening in her life. One moment her lover Frank is taking her and Mariko to America and the next she is going back to live with her elderly uncle and cousin. Whatever is happening in her life, she always makes it sound as if it's for the best and the reader begins to wonder how truthful she is being and how moral she is.

Etsuko, by contrast, is polite and respectable. They seems unlikely companions but Etsuko is lonely from spending long hours on her own while her husband works. She seems to accept Sachiko's versions of events but expresses concern over her treatment of Mariko, her daughter.

Little Mariko is clearly neglected by her mother and somewhat mentally unbalanced. Sachiko says this was because of things the girl witnessed just after the war, specifically that she saw a woman drowning a baby, and continues to have flash backs about the woman.

Ishiguro very cleverly creates a tension around Mariko - she behaves erratically, often cannot be communicated with and is always running off. There has also been a spate of child murders in the city. Etsuko is often looking for the girl and making sure she is safe - it's easy to imagine she might find something awful.

As Sachiko's lover repeatedly fails to commit she becomes increasingly desperate but determined to leave Nagasaki. She drowns Mariko's kittens because they will be inconvenient when travelling. Mariko watches this reminder of her traumatic experience then runs off wildly - Etsuko follows, worried for her safety.

Etsuko, describing years later the moment she catches up with Mariko and tries to reason with her, suddenly changes possessive pronoun. Instead of talking about what Mariko and Sachiko will do, she talks to the child about what 'we' will do. This jolts the reader as it introduces the possibility/probability that Etsuko and Sachiko are the same person as are Mariko and Keiko the same child.

It becomes clear that the novel is really about being unreliable narrators of our own histories - how we tend to misrepresent what we don't like, or avoid accepting blame. In the difficult years after the war, Sachiko/Etsuko was forced to do things of which she was later ashamed. With Keiko/Mariko dead, there are no witnesses, no one to contradict her story.

It seemed in the end that Etsuko was telling her story to herself rather than to her younger daughter, and so it was to herself she was trying to mitigate guilt for her part in shaping Keiko's disposition and ultimately her suicide.


This was a tense, evocative story but, as it turned out, not necessarily to be taken literally. I enjoyed the descriptions of Etsuko's life in Japan and I liked Ishiguro's deceptively simple style of writing.

>158 connie53: Thank you!! I will respond w/ my email address if I haven't already... my brain is a bit fried still these days ... ;p