In the midst of the Blitz in London in 1943, an extraordinary event took place in Bethnal Green, an event so extraordinary that it is not understood completely even to this day. On March 3, 1943, when the air raid warning sirens went off, thousands of people headed, as usual, toward the nearest bomb shelter, the local Tube station, a one-entrance location which could accommodate up to ten thousand people within a few minutes of their arrival. On this night, something unique happened. One hundred seventy-three people died of asphyxia within a minute of their arrival at the station, all suffocated in the crush on the first twenty stairs of the entrance. Not one of the victims had managed to reach the landing at the bottom, only a few feet away, from which another seven stairs down would have guaranteed their safety. Ironically, “not a single bomb had fallen in the city that night.” All these deaths were accidental. A fine novel which deals with major ethical and moral issues within a context which every reader will appreciate and understand, The Report offers a different way of looking at historical events—rationally, but with a kindness toward the participants which protects their integrity and their future lives.
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How long has it been since you have read a novel with a thematic line so unusual and so well explicated that reading the book changed your way of seeing the world? This novel was one such experience for me. Metaphysical, historical, and utterly different from anything I have ever read, Giles Foden’s TURBULENCE kept me (neither a mathematician nor a student of physics) turning the pages, no matter how theoretical and dense the novel sometimes became with its science. Fascinating personal stories are interwoven with the scientific plot, giving the novel immediacy, even for a devout non-scientist. Set in London and Scotland from January through June, 1944, the novel is a study of weather forecasting and all the factors which must be considered in making long-range predictions. Henry Meadows must focus on the idea of turbulence and other complex flows, which move constantly, are difficult to quantify, and have unpredictable effects on other physical measurements as he observes and eventually helps forecast weather patterns over a five-day period for fifty miles of German-occupied French coastline so that an invasion can be planned and a window of opportunity identified for D-Day.
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Posted in 0: 2010 Reviews, England, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Literary, 2007-09, Mystery, Thriller, Noir on Jul 29th, 2010
Annie Fairhurst, the narrator of this clever, black-humored character study, hooks the reader from the opening scene, which opens with Annie sending a van containing all her possessions to a new address, after which she strips off all her clothes and viciously attacks the “bloody sofa” which she has left behind. It is the sofa on which her husband proposed to her more than a decade ago, when she was seventeen and he, thirty-two. When she arrives at her new house, she envisions herself as Jackie Kennedy, “getting out of an aeroplane.” Author Jenn Ashworth takes the concept of irony to new heights in this psychological novel which rivals Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy in its intensity, and it is in her irony that this novel achieves something that McCabe’s novel does not—it is pathetically funny at the same time that it is terrifyingly slow in its revelations of Annie’s past life.
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Filled with dry, ironic humor, Quartet in Autumn is a poignant depiction of the lives of four elderly people, who have worked together for several years. All of them live alone, and none of them have much of a life outside of their repetitive and intellectually deadening jobs. They treat each other only as colleagues and not as friends, both in and out of the office. The two women consider the two men to be merely “part of the furniture,” and the men have no interest in the women beyond their function in the office. As a result, they have never socialized, visited each others’ houses or apartments, shared a lunch hour together, or come to know each other as human beings. When the two women retire, life for all of them changes dramatically. Letty has to move, an unexpected development, and her long-time plans to move to the country with a friend change. Marcia becomes even more of a recluse, refusing to let the social worker assigned by the hospital come into the house. When the men decide to take the “old dears” to lunch several weeks after they retire, the four of them have their first social occasion, with mixed results.
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Posted in 0: 2010 Reviews, Book Club Suggestions, England, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Literary, 2010 reviews, Scotland, Switzerland on Jun 23rd, 2010
In this brutally satiric little novella, the “downstairs” servants of the aristocratic Klopstocks, living in Switzerland, have their lives all planned out for the immediate future. They will not be spending another day with the Klopstocks—at least not a day in which the Klopstocks are alive, and they are breathless with anticipation. Lister, who manages the household, knows that both the Baron and the Baroness will be meeting in the library that evening with Victor Passerat, “Mister Fairlocks,” someone with whom the Baroness is passionately in love but who is himself passionately in love with the Baron. Posting a “Not to Disturb” sign on the door, the triangle of lovers meets, determined to settle their issues, but these can be settled only one way—with gunshots. “The eternal triangle has come full circle,” one servant observes. With vivid and hilariously dark dialogue, the novella becomes as much a riotous farce as it is a comedy of manners, with the roles reversed. Spark keeps the actions and the interactions moving non-stop, her use of irony, suggestion, and gallows humor at their peak, and the one-liners coming fast and furiously.
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Timid Miss Roach, a woman of thirty-nine who is a secretary for a London publisher by day, lives at the Rosamund Tea Room, now a boarding house, in Thames Lockdon during the Blitz in 1943. When Miss Roach meets American lieutenant Dayton Pike, who, with a friend, has recently had dinner at the Rosamund Tea Room, she and he become friendly, and her life changes. “Her” lieutenant enjoys kissing her, taking her to the local bar, providing her with “gin and french,” and even talking about marriage. The arrival of Vicki Kugelmann, a German-born friend, turns her life upside down. Hamilton’s ability to create sympathetic characters, while also conveying sense impressions, moments in time, and unique, visual observations about ordinary life is unparalleled. A wonderfully ironic and gently satiric picture of life in England in 1943.
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Though Jane Austen has always been much read, the current “Jane-mania” has now reached epic proportions. Claire Harman, author of JANE’S FAME, in this readable and scholarly analysis, goes back to Jane Austen’s own time to describe the events leading to her increasing popularity over the past two centuries, ultimately explaining “How Jane Austen Conquered the World.” Writing for the public was still a man’s activity, though occasionally books were published anonymously, “By A Lady,” and Jane Austen spent most of her life writing privately, for family and friends. For twenty years, she wrote and, more importantly, rewrote her six famous novels. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY was finally sold to a publisher in 1811, when Jane was thirty-five, and three other novels soon followed, all written “By A Lady”: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1813), MANSFIELD PARK (1814) and EMMA (1815). Two more novels, NORTHANGER ABBEY and PERSUASION were published posthumously, in 1817. By now, all of her books have been produced as TV mini-series.
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In what many call her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf creates a warm and intimate portrait of a family which resembles her own–her parents, brothers and sisters–and the friends with whom they enjoy their summer vacation on the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides. Woolf’s own large family vacationed there for ten summers at Talland House, which looks out toward the lighthouse. In this novel, written in 1927, thirty years after she and her family vacationed there, Virginia Woolf sensitively recreates everyday life in a house similar to Talland. Here Virginia Woolf creates an impressionistic picture of life in the years before World War I. Taking a modernist approach, she has no primary narrator, instead slipping in and out of the minds of several characters as they think about life and observe life around them, her modified stream-of-consciousness allowing her to create a vibrant, free-flowing atmosphere which she peoples with unique characters who have revealed their innermost thoughts. The overall effect is powerful.
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