A Rare Foray into the World of Poetry

As regular readers of my blog (if there are any) will know, my literary preference is most definitely for the novel, and other genres are comparatively underrepresented in my reviews.  You will find the odd novella, a smattering of short-story collections, even the occasional non-fiction text if you look long and hard enough.  However, apart from a rather irreverent look at an Ancient Greek classic, poetry has not had a look in on Tony's Reading List, leaving a small, poetically-shaped gap in my online world.

I know that makes no sense - now you know why I'm not big on poetry.

Today though, I am bucking this trend and talking about a book I recently received for review from the good people at Oxford World's Classics (and indeed am still, and for a long time will be, reading), namely Selected Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke.  German poetry?  That's right - and the best thing is that this brand-new book is actually a bilingual edition, with parallel German and English texts on facing pages.  Brilliant :)

Rilke is one of Germany's most famous poets, and the above-mentioned selection is a hefty one, including poems from the whole of his career, from his first published sonnets to the later, meatier epic poetry of The Duinese Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus, and on to his later, shall we say, more interesting work.  German is a language which seems to lend itself well to poetry, the ebb and flow of the words and the formal sounding rhythms creating soothing patterns of language (well, to my ear anyway!).

The shorter poems are often snapshots of images observed by Rilke on his travels throughout Europe, slices of life interpreted through the poet's eyes.  Whether his subjects are flowers, merry-go-rounds, passionate flamenco dancers or dangerous Venetian courtesans, Rilke sketches an incomplete picture, which somehow says more than a complete one ever could.  One of his most famous poems, Der Panther (The Panther), describes the still beauty of the caged animal:

Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht. (p62, l5-8)

Or, if you prefer the English:

The supple, powerful footfall paces softly
in ever-tinier circles, tight-described,
a danced strength, as though about a centre
where a great will stays, stupefied. (p63, l5-8)

Those of you with some knowledge of German will, no doubt, be comparing the two versions above, and it immediately becomes clear that while translation is always a rather inexact science, translating short lyrical poetry is up there with splitting the atom.  To preserve all nuances while adhering to both rhythm and rhyme must, technically speaking, be an absolute nightmare, and the two translators of this version, Susan Ranson and Marielle Sutherland, do a sterling job.  However, the translation will never quite capture the essence of the German.

An example of this is an extract from a poem which I immediately took a liking to, Das Karussel (The Merry-go-round):

Und auf den Löwen reitet weiß ein Junge
und hält sich mit der kleinen heißen Hand,
dieweil der Löwe Zähne zeigt und Zunge

Und dann und wann ein weißer Elefant (p72, l12-15)

Or, in English:

And on the lion rides a boy, quite young,
in white, holding on with sticky hands,
while the lion bares its teeth and tongue.

And now and then a white, white elephant (p73, l12-15)

It's easy to see that the meaning has been altered slightly to fit the rhythm in the first line, from Junge (boy) to 'a boy, quite young', while in the second line mit der kleinen heißen Hand (with the [his] little, hot hand) is changed to 'with sticky hands' - accurate, but perhaps missing the possible connotation of 'eager and excited' which the German contains.  Also, in the final line above, 'now and then' can't compare with the assonance of dann und wann, nor does the repetition of 'white, white' (to catch up on syllables) quite match the simple German weißer.

However, when we come to the longer epic poetry of The Duinese Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus, the translators really come into their own.  The lack of rhyme gives them more freedom to adhere to the meaning and rhythm, and it is here that the non-native speaker (and possibly many native speakers too!) are grateful for any help the translators - and the excellent notes at the back of the volume - are able to give.  When faced with pages of dense imagery, it is easy to tune out to the overall message, and with poetry, unlike with a novel where missing an idea or two dann und wann is not such a big deal, that pretty much defeats the object.


Thankfully, the beautifully spaced print, with the original German on the left-hand page, facing the English on the right, allows you to sneak a peek every so often, dragging you back from the tangential path you thought the poem was pushing you down.  This is a very good thing because when Rilke is musing about angels and the connection between our world and theirs (as he does in The Duinese Elegies), it is very easy to simply slide under the thunder of words and sounds...

I still haven't read this book cover to cover, but that is most definitely not the point.  I will continue to enjoy dipping into its pages, revisiting some of my favourite shorter poems and working my way through the longer fare.  Selected Poems is a must for anyone interested in Rilke, or German poetry in general, but I do feel that there is a need for some German proficiency - otherwise, you will simply be missing the point of the book.  Anyway, I'm off to read another of the elegies and try to work out what is happening now in the plane of existence inhabited by the awesome angels - I may be some time...

Rider on the Storm

After a month spent metaphorically galloping all over Victorian England, you would think that it was time to relax, fill the bathtub with Radox and hot water, slip into some comfortable jim-jams and read something light and fluffy.  Well, no.  Instead, it's back into the saddle (once we've got the little matter of the English Channel out of the way), across France and on into the German-speaking lands of Central Europe - and we'll be heading back a few hundred years in time too.  Off we go, and don't forget to bring your phrase book...

*****

Today, we're off to the North Sea, where the small groups of coastal dwellers live in awe and fear of the watery deeps which occasionally try to reclaim their land.  This is the setting for one of the most famous works in German literature, Theodor Storm's acclaimed novella Der Schimmelreiter.  Translated into English as The Rider on the White Horse (which simply does not have the same ring to it...), this hundred-page story is a tense, taut Teutonic tale with a slight supernatural slant.  Based on a true story Storm read in a newspaper (which is included in the appendix of my version), the novella takes the central premise of the ghostly rider and fills in the back story of its origins.

Hauke Haien is a young man fascinated by the dykes which surround, and protect, his hometown.  He educates himself in mathematics and, through his own studies and a fortuitous marriage, he achieves his aim of becoming the Deichgraf, the overseer of all the town's works on the dykes.  Once established in his role, he decides to pursue his dream of building a new, improved style of dyke to reclaim more land from the sea, and it appears as though his dream will become reality.  However, not everything is perfect in Hauke's cold, bleak homeland.  His cool nature and perfectionism have made him enemies amongst the local farmers; his only child appears to be developing very slowly; and there is also the matter of his new white horse (der Schimmel) - which appeared at the same time an old horse skeleton disappeared...

I don't think I'm giving too much away by saying that you shouldn't expect much of a happy ending here.  Unlike English Victorian authors, their German contemporaries felt themselves under no pressure to marry off the hero happily at the end of the third volume (they also felt no obligation to even let them get that far, the novella seemingly being the work of choice at the time).  Like Hardy and Eliot, Storm paints such a detailed picture of his setting that you can see the sea rolling towards the dykes and breaking on the hard walls, the long, narrow and treacherous path rising between the town and the sea, the distant isolated islands poking out from amongst the waves.  Unlike the pastoral depictions of the aforementioned English writers, the images we perceive are dark, cold and - I'll say it again - bleak.

Another similarity to some of the V-Lit I've read recently is the structure of the book.  Storm takes us from the year of publication, 1888, to the 1830s, then to the 1820s and finally to the early eighteenth-century, via a series of the ever-popular frame narratives.  Firstly, the narrator recalls a story a visitor told his grandmother when he was a child fifty years ago.  Then we enter the visitor's story and end up in an old inn (after this visitor has had a rather unpleasant encounter).  Finally, the visitor is entertained by an old man at the inn with the story which makes up the bulk of the novella.

This Russian-doll approach is similar to the ones employed by the Brontës in both The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and, especially, Wuthering Heights, and the setting of the main part of the tale in the distant past also allows Storm to introduce supernatural elements which would perhaps be less tolerated in a contemporary setting.  While Der Schimmelreiter never descends into a true ghost story, the hints of other-wordly elements at play help to prepare us for the dark ending, a finale which, while not unexpected, is still powerful and gripping.

If there is anything I would criticise about Der Schimmelreiter, it is probably the characterisation.  While, as mentioned, certain elements remind the reader of Eliot and Hardy, the protagonists here are certainly never as three dimensional as their characters.  Hauke Haien receives most of what attention to personality there is, but many of the other characters are merely types, rather than individuals.  This is a slight quibble though, and, of course, this is probably due to the brevity of the book.  If Storm had spread his story out over five hundred pages, then the characterisation would no doubt have been deeper - and probably at the expense of the tension.

And that is the abiding memory the reader takes away from Der Schimmelreiter - the sense of foreboding pervading the story, leading up to the gripping, inevitable end amidst the stormy northern night.  The final few pages, filled with thundering hoofs and lashing rain, are as tense as anything you're likely to read...  There is definitely no happily ever after in Storm's work, but the reader certainly won't be sorry they decided to make the long journey to the German coast.

The Last Chronicle of V-Lit

July is over, and so is my Rereading July project.  Over the past month, I managed to reread seven wonderful books, all plucked from my V-Lit collection, and to finish off my reviews, I have one last little post to entertain you with - one last trip through time and space, if you please :)

*****

Can You Forgive Her?, by Anthony Trollope, is the first of the six books known as The Palliser Novels, and it's a good book in its own right.  It tells the tale of Alice Vavasor, a young woman who breaks off her engagement to the worthy John Grey because she feels that she is unsuited to the kind of life he is planning to lead, a secluded, leisurely life on his country estate (which sounds wonderful to me).  After making this decision, she begins to gravitate back towards a former love, her cousin George, whom she decided not to marry earlier in her life because of his terrible behaviour towards her.  As Alice moves closer towards throwing her lot in with her impulsive (and possibly psychopathic) cousin, Trollope ask the reader a couple of questions: will Alice regret her decision, and, more importantly, can you, the reader, forgive her?

Funnily enough though, as well designed as this side of the story is, I really couldn't care about Alice (or John Grey) at all because the main order of the day is our first lengthy introduction to one of Trollope's favourite characters, Plantagenet Palliser, and his bubbly wife, Lady Glencora.  Palliser previously appeared in a bit role in The Small House at Allington, but here he takes centre stage as the character who will occupy the writer's mind for the next decade or two.  In fact, Palliser is the character who best represents Trollope's own opinions and beliefs - the epitome of the English gentleman -, and his relationship with his wife is a masterful, realistic depiction of love and companionship.

Rather than taking us up to the wedding day and then leaving the loving couple to live happily ever after, Trollope has married off a young heiress, against her wishes, to a good, but unloving, politician - and then stirred in a little unresolved tension with an old flame.  Over the next five books, we will see how, from an unpromising beginning, the relationship will blossom and grow into a true love match, despite the many bumps along the way (especially in this book...).

I've read this story several times, but I still wolfed it down, devouring the 800 pages (of admittedly large type) in just four days.  I simply love this kind of Victorian novel, where multiple plot strands are teased out over hundreds of pages (and, in the original format, over years - Can You Forgive Her? was originally published in twenty monthly parts...).  You know what is likely to happen - that is if Trollope doesn't actually tell you himself -, but the destination is relatively unimportant; it's the journey that matters.  And when that journey involves the wonderful Pallisers, the terrible George Vavasor and a cameo appearance from the writer himself (in the guise of a heavyweight literary fellow gamely following the hunt over the English countryside), it's a very good journey indeed.

And, as I suspected on starting this wonderful book, I think I have just committed myself to reading the rest of the series over the rest of 2011.  Life's hard sometimes :)

*****

My final book for the month, Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, is a slightly different novel to my usual Victorian reads.  It's a mystery, set in the Victorian era, and one of many 'sensational' novels of the time.  However, despite being lumped in with a multitude of other crowd-pleasing novels, Collins' work is a quality piece of writing with a groundbreaking style.

The Woman in White is told in a series of narratives by the person most closely involved with the events of the time, almost as if the course of a crime was being described in a court of law.  Our first narrator, young drawing teacher Walter Hartright, is walking home one night after paying a visit to his family.  He is walking along a deserted road in the darkness, thinking about the work he is shortly to do in the north of England...  when suddenly, from nowhere, a woman dressed all in white appears in the street.  Although his first meeting with the woman is fleeting, this chance encounter is to alter the course of his life, setting him on a journey where he will meet the love of his life - and some rather dastardly villains...

The style adopted by the writer allows him to build up the story from several different angles, and also permits him to poke a little fun at his characters' expense.  While the parts played by the major characters are played with a straight bat, some of the minor roles are definitely described tongue in cheek.  The part told by the housekeeper is full of "I'm not racist, but..." jibes at the foreign occupants of the house, while the section narrated by the self-absorbed, self-declared invalid Frederick Fairlie begins:

"It is the grand misfortune of my life that nobody will let me alone." Wordsworth Editions, p.266

a statement immediately indicating that this is a character who will struggle to gain our full sympathy ;)

Anyone who has read the book will know though that the most impressive character is that of the inimitable Count Fosco, a villain of the highest order, but with the most impeccable manners.  Belonging less in a Victorian novel than in a James Bond film, the mysterious Italian emigré, a magnificently intelligent, courteous (and corpulent) mountain of a man, plays with his pet mice and birds, bursts out into impromptu arias and effortlessly plots a monstrous crime without breaking into a sweat - all assisted by his sinister, devoted wife.

What sounds like overexaggerated melodrama is raised above this by the book's format; Fosco is described by several of the narrators, each fleshing the Count out in a slightly different way, all (willingly or unwillingly) admitting the power of his persona.  In this way, Fosco becomes larger than life, a seemingly unstoppable genius, which makes the danger Hartright and his friends find themselves in seem palpable to the reader.

I'm not really one for crime novels, but The Woman in White is far more than just a detective story - it is a fascinating account of the lengths people will go to to get money, and a superb character sketch of a criminal mastermind.  Whether you are a fan of this genre or not, it's well worth the effort.

*****
So alas, Rereading July has come to an end.  Over the past month, dear reader, I have travelled far and wide through Victorian England: over hill and dale; through the bucolic Wessex landscape and up to the pleasant farm lands of the Midlands; up to a wild and wintry Yorkshire and across the Pennines to industrial Manchester; down to the great capital, the centre (at the time) of the civilised world and back up to the far-flung desolate north-west.  This is my country; at least, this is the country I visit in my imagination.  The more Victorian literature I read, the fuller my image of the England of the past becomes, and the more I want to know.  I'll be back very soon.

BBAW is Here Again!

 It's that time of year again - the Book Blogger Appreciation Week is here!  It's a week of getting to know new (and old!) friends, and there are also prizes and awards galore.  You should register to take part, and this also allows you to nominate people for various awards...

...which is where this post is going ;)

I have decided that it would be quite nice to have a go again, so I am planning to try to be nominated in two categories - Best Written Book Blog and Best Classics Book Blog.  However, I can't nominate myself - only a registered BBAW participant can nominate me (I think - I'm still a little confused!).  Anyway, below I have left a few links to some of my favourite posts over the past year.  Feel free to browse through my work, and nominate me if you see fit.  Thanks in advance, and I hope you have fun anyway!!!
 
Kusamakura by Natsume Soseki

He Knew he Was Right by Anthony Trollope

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

Great Expectations & Emma

Trollope's Autobiography

The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe

Silence by Shusaku Endo

Portrait of the Mother as Young Woman by F.C. Delius

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall & North and South

July 2011 Wrap-Up - Rereading July

July, of course, was my month for rereading, titled (somewhat predictably) Rereading July (although, as you may have noticed, it rather turned into Rereading Victorian Classics July...).  Alas, while the reading went very well, the blogging - for various reasons - simply crashed and burned.  Sigh :(  Still, on with the show!

*****
Total Books Read: 7
Year-to-date: 74

New: 0
Rereads: 7

From the Shelves: 7

From the Library: 0

On the Kindle: 0

Novels: 7

Novellas:0
Short Stories: 0

Non-English Language: 0

In Original Language: 0

Books read in July were:
1) Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (1874)
2) Adam Bede by George Eliot (1859)
3) Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
4) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848)
5) North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (1855)
6) Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope (1865)
7) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1859)

Murakami Challenge: 0 (2/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 0 (13/12)

Victorian Literature Challenge: 7 (20/15)
Japanese Literature Challenge 5: 0 (2/1)

Tony's Recommendation for July is: George Eliot's Adam Bede

Well, it's hard to pick a winner when all the competitors are old friends, but George Eliot's excellent tale of pastoral tragedy has always been a favourite of mine.  Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd is another which stands up to constant rereading, and (as those of you who are regular readers no doubt know) I'm also a big fan of the works of big bad Tony Trollope, my last-minute decision to reread Can You Forgive Her? almost certainly leading me to commit to rereading all of the Palliser novels over the rest of 2011.  Honourable mentions go to, well, all of them really - that's the great thing about rereading your favourite books!  Do try it some time :)

Welcome to the North

Well, you may (or may not) be surprised to hear that my return from 19th-Century England didn't last too long; to be precise, about as long as it took me to eat my dinner and pick up the next chapter in my Victorian odyssey.  So, without further ado, here are Tony's further adventures in the world of V-Lit :)

*****

With barely a pause for sustenance, I dashed straight from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights to the slightly less melodramatic, but equally wonderful, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, written by her sister Anne.  It is (like Wuthering Heights) a story within a story, a recount within a recount, as Gilbert Markham, a jovial middle-aged man, writes to his brother-in-law about events which happened earlier in his life.  He writes a letter in which he describes his encounters with a woman called Helen Graham, a widow who appeared one day in his village with her son in tow.  As Gilbert gets closer to the prickly Ms. Graham, he gradually becomes aware that she harbours a secret - and eventually we, the readers, are told it.

Markham's narrative is interrupted by Helen's diary, in which she relates exactly what happened in her married life to cause her to move to the relative obscurity of this northern village.  Once we are privy to her secret, Markham takes over again to tell us how the story ends.  Grim up north?  Not half as grim as it was down south, if Helen's marriage is anything to go by...

Anne is the least read of the three Brontës, a fact due both to limited output and sister Charlotte's oversensitive handling of Anne's book after her death.  While The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a wonderful exposé of the inequality of marriage in Victorian England, for many at the time it was simply too close to the bone - hypocrisy often trumped truth back in the 19th Century.

Ironically, in the 20th Century, it was criticised again by feminist theorists, who attacked it for its inherent support of male superiority.  The structure of the novel, with Markham's letter surrounding Helen Graham's diary extracts (which he has included in his letters) is said to perpetuate female submissiveness.  I'm sure Anne Brontë would have been amused to hear that her book was both too radical and too conventional at the same time... Whichever theory you subscribe to, one thing's for sure - this is a very good, and often overlooked, piece of writing.

*****

We'll remain, if you please, in the north of England for our second book today, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South.  This staple of English literature classes follows devout southern belle Margaret Hale as family circumstances conspire to send her off to the smoky skies of Milton-Northern (AKA Manchester), where she encounters the rough but courteous Mr. Thornton.  As our heroine struggles to adapt to the ways of the industrial north, and their slightly confusing language, she and Mr. Thornton (Mr. Darcy with an accent) find that when it comes to behaviour they really do come from different countries.

The title though is slightly misleading; it's not that Thornton comes from the North as such that makes him so exotic (Gilbert Markham, for example is also a Northerner), it's his role as a member of the manufacturing mercantile class which renders him so foreign in Margaret's eyes (and probably in the eyes of many of Gaskell's readers too).  Throughout the novel, our two protagonists are simply unable to understand what the other is doing, let alone thinking, and neither has a real inkling of the respect they inspire in the other.

The last unit in my long-forgotten Master's course was in Intercultural Communication, and it was difficult to overlook the cultural differences dotted throughout the book.  One good example is the two main families' respective drawing rooms, seen through the eyes of the others on a visit.  The Thorntons regard the Hale drawing room as cluttered and unnecessary (and probably a nightmare to clean).  On the return visit, however, Margaret is appalled by the sterility of the Hale drawing room, a place to look at but not to sit in.

Even when Margaret and Thornton do decide to talk to each other, the cultural differences are evident.  Thornton is continually angered by Margaret's refusal to shake his hand, an offer she is unaware she is supposed to make, and their discussions on the conditions of the working class in the north generally deteriorate into point scoring and arguments.  As Margaret's father notes:

"One had need to learn a different language, and measure by a different standard, up here in Milton." (p.149), Wordsworth Classics Edition (1994)

The north really is a different country...

As an anthropological insight, North and South is a wonderful book, and it's not bad as a novel either.  However, the longer the book went on, the less interesting it became, and whatever the introduction in my edition claims, several of the plot strands (especially the one involving her brother's exile from Britain) seemed extremely contrived and convenient.  When the rather rushed and predictable ending arrives, you are left feeling that there was an opportunity missed.  If they had only stayed in the north and continued the story in Milton, the book would have been a lot better for it...

*****
So, is that all for V-Lit this month?  Pfft - as if.  Stay tuned for more antics in 19th-century England...

A Journey Through Rural England

As promised in a previous post, July has been reserved for old friends, and my first three books for the month are all very familiar friends indeed.  Let me take you on a little trip through time and space, from the south of England to the north.  It'll be a slow journey, but, I promise you, it will be well worth it...

*****

Our journey starts off down in Wessex, the ancient English kingdom appropriated by the wonderful Thomas Hardy as the setting for his Victorian novels.  Far From the Madding Crowd is a typically bucolic tale, describing a few years in the life of the young and beautiful Bathsheba Everdene.  This headstrong woman, who has decided to take on the running of her uncle's farm alone after his death, is pursued by three very different men: surly Farmer Boldwood; dashing soldier Frank Troy; and the honest, reliable shepherd Gabriel Oak.  While this early novel has a little more cheer than Hardy's later tragedies, there's still a lot that goes wrong for Bathsheba, and plenty of obstacles to overcome before she can settle down in peace.

I first read this at secondary school - and got an almighty telling-off from my English teacher when I did a surprise test in class on the book without having bothered to read any of it (I think it was the question where I said Bathsheba was a farmer with a beard that gave things away...).  Now, I love this book, with its luscious descriptions of the English countryside and its long, leisurely conversations between locals in ramshackle pubs.  Admittedly, Hardy never uses a short word when he can dig up (or invent) a horribly long and complicated one instead, but this minor fault is far outweighed by his elegant storytelling - which is why, on finishing this novel, I went straight to the Book Depository and ordered three more of his works :)

*****

Now let's (reluctantly) leave Wessex and move northwards, over the undulating southern hills, across the pleasant fields of Warwickshire, and onto the tranquil village of Hayslope in the (fictional) hilly county of Loamshire, for here we will encounter a fine example of the turn-of-the-(19th) century workman, Adam Bede.

George Eliot's admirable carpenter is one of the principal figures of her first novel, and throughout its 540 pages, he must learn to use his broad shoulders to support others in their time of need - and to bear the crushing disappointment he encounters in his own affairs.  Adam, a cut above the average English country-dweller (both mentally and physically), is in love with Hetty Sorrel, a beautiful (and empty-headed) young dairymaid.  However, when the heir to the local estates, Arthur Donnithorne, sees the pretty girl, events take an unfortunate and fateful turn (reminiscent of a certain Hardy novel), tainting the lives of all involved.

This novel, which I bought at a second-hand shop while I was living in Japan (and read to death!), has many similarities with Far From the Madding Crowd, and I constantly compare and confuse Adam and Gabriel (in my mind, they both look like an actor I saw in an ITV production of Hardy's novel!).  I'd have to say though that Eliot's story is the better of the two.  It has all of the wonderful depiction of how people in the country really lived, with less of the stark contrast between the language of the story and the philosophising.  Middlemarch is probably a better book, but Adam Bede is definitely my favourite Eliot novel.

*****

Alas, we must keep moving, and the way is becoming less pleasant now.  We pass through the bare, coal-stained hills of Eliot's Stonyshire, skirt the big industrial cities of the north, and venture out onto the wet, wild and windy Yorkshire moors - until we stumble, on completion of our journey, upon a pair of houses isolated on the moors: Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights...

The novel is actually a story within a story (within a story) as a large part of the tale is told third-(and occasionally fourth-) hand by the feisty, and perhaps not all that trustworthy, maidservant Nelly Dean.  Through her long fireside stories to the convalescing tenant of Thrushcross Grange, Mr. Lockwood, we learn about the strange events that unfolded in recent years.  All begins when Hareton Earnshaw, the owner of Wuthering Heights, returns from a trip to Liverpool bearing a rather unwelcome sort of gift - a dirty, dark stray who soon comes to be known by the name of Heathcliff.  While Earnshaw's two children are initially repulsed by the intruder, his daughter, Cathy, quickly becomes the best of friends with Heathcliff, a tie which will endure lifelong... and perhaps beyond.

Emily Brontë's classic story is nothing if not divisive (as recent Twitter conversations have shown!), but I love this book.  Melodramatic?  Definitely.  Exaggerated?  Of course.  Stretching reality of behaviour to its limits?  Without doubt.  That's not the point though.  In the self-centred and slightly deranged Cathy, Brontë created one of the most fascinating heroines of the Victorian age (with the best theme tune too!), and as for Heathcliff... well, any character who bangs his head against a tree until it's covered in blood has to be worth engaging with.

This was probably the first piece of serious literature that I ever read (voluntarily anyway), back in those wonderful days when Penguin brought out their one-pound popular classics and widened general access to the literary greats.  I still remember struggling through the book, all the time trying to work out who Cathy/Catherine/Linton/Hareton actually was.  By the end of the novel, despite this difficulty, I was hooked on reading 'proper' books :)

*****
Alas, we must now turn our backs on the world of fiction; our time here is done.  And so, with our journey at an end, it's time to leave 19th-century England behind and return to the realities of 21st-century Melbourne: a large amount of planning to do for next term, a mountain of bills to pay and two noisy (but lovely) daughters to pay attention to.

Until next time :)

More from Marvellous Melbourne

You may have noticed a lot of Aussie books in my reading list this year, and the responsibility for that can be placed firmly on the shoulders of two places: firstly, Joanne of Booklover Book Reviews, whose Aussie Author Challenge has got me hooked on local literature; and secondly, the fine people of the Casey-Cardinia Library Corporation, whose excellent system enables me to read these wonderful books without having to actually buy them at the extortionate prices charged Down Under.

This post will have mini-reviews of three wonderful books by three great writers, all of them from my adopted home town of Melbourne, and it was actually going to be a celebratory finishing post for the Aussie Author Challenge.  Today's offerings brought me up to thirteen for the year to date (!), but just as I was getting ready to pop the (metaphorical) champagne cork, I noticed the small print.  You see, the twelve required books had to be by a minimum of nine different authors, and my thirteen were the work of just eight...  Back to the drawing board, or, as I like to call it, the library web-site.  In the meantime, enjoy these short reviews anyway :)

*****
The Reasons I Won't Be Coming is a collection of short stories by Elliot Perlman, the author of the wonderful Three Dollars and Seven Types of Ambiguity.  It's an interesting collection of short stories (mostly) set in Melbourne, with a fascinating use of voice and perspective to hook you in to the stories.  They often start very abruptly, some with the protagonist talking to the reader as if in a monologue in a play, eventually widening the scope of events to reveal the full story.

Not all the stories are a total success (a point Perlman probably knows already, but which I'd like to point out anyway, is that readers are not prone to sympathising with lawyers who have been dumped by their married mistress after getting her pregnant...), and some do take a while to get going.  However, on the whole, they do eventually suck you in and make you think - which is always good in a short story.

One of the most interesting stories is Manslaughter, the story of a trial from start to finish, told through the voices of just about everyone involved - judge, jurors, accused, bailiff, lawyer, widow.  In a matter of a few dozen pages, the writer successfully conveys the complexities of a seemingly open-and-shut case, letting the reader in on what really happens in a high-profile court case and leaving them to make their own judgement as to how fair it all is.

The news on the grapevine is that Mr. Perlman has a new book coming out later this year, and all I can say is that it's about time.  While you're waiting though, why not give this little collection a go?  It's not as if there's any hurry...

*****
A slightly more prolific writer (although not by much) is Helen Garner, author of the notorious Monkey Grip, and The Children's Bach is another tale from a slightly-left-of-centre (in many ways) Melbourne family.  Dexter and Athena's comfortable life is disrupted by a chance encounter at Melbourne airport, where Dexter spots an old friend, the rather icy Elizabeth.  While Elizabeth herself causes few problems, it is the people she brings with her - little sister Vicki and Elizabeth's occasional lover Phillip - who turn the married couple's life upside down.

The Children's Bach is a very slender book, but it is beautifully written, and the central question of casual sex versus comfortable monogamy works well.  Athena is jolted out of a rut by her new acquaintances, and the question is whether this is a welcome break or a wake-up call.  Meanwhile, Dexter has to decide how he will handle Athena's behaviour and balance her (and his) behaviour against his principles.

The book is short, elegant and witty, but while it's a nice read, it's hard to avoid thinking that it's a little underwritten.  I found it hard to engage with the characters over such a short journey, with a lot of gaps where the narrative jumps to the next crisis.  I found myself wondering whether another writer could (and would) have made a longer, more detailed book from this...

*****

...a writer, for example, like the extremely talented Steven Carroll.  Having read, and loved, his wonderful Melbourne Trilogy books earlier this year, I picked up his most recent novel The Lost Life from the library shelves with great anticipation.  It's a very different book in some ways, set in England in 1934 and based around a chance encounter with the famous poet T.S. Eliot.  However, once past the initial set up, The Lost Life slips into the mesmerising style that made Carroll's other novels such successes.

The central figure of the novel is Catherine, a young woman in the centre of the golden summer of her youth, enjoying the first flushes of love with Daniel, a recently graduated university student.  When they accidentally spy on Eliot and his 'special friend' Emily Hale during a walk around the parks of a local stately home, they become unwillingly mixed up in his tangled relationships.  As Catherine gets to know Emily better, she realises that there are parallels between their situations, which the older woman, an accomplished actress who seems to be playing roles rather than acting naturally, is determined to exploit for her own purposes.

Although the phrase Carpe Diem isn't actually mentioned in the book, it's one that instantly springs to mind.  Catherine gradually becomes aware that her love, an awkward affair devoid of any real privacy, may be more fleeting than she imagined.  Unless she takes her opportunity for a brief moment of intimacy, she may end up regretting it for the rest of her life.  Just as Emily Hale has her own, lingering regrets...

Carroll's usual time-jumping style lets us know in advance a lot of information while concealing the important, emotional events.  He also gets inside the characters' heads, describing matters from several viewpoints, emphasising both the similarities and the subtle differences between opinions on the same event.  As you can tell, I think he's great :)

All in all, another well-crafted story from my big discovery of 2011.  And the best bit?  He's also got a new novel due out later this year.  Marvellous Melbourne indeed ;)

Tony's Month of Rereading

The other day, as I was idly flicking scrolling through my reading list (yes, it exists - it's on Excel, and it's growing longer by the day...), I happened to notice that my reading had slipped into a worrying pattern of late, with the last few months showing an alarming lack of books read for the second time (or more).  I decided to investigate this phenomenon further and instigated a thorough audit of my list for rereads - with a disturbing outcome.  Where in 2009 (from 93 books read) 34 books were rereads, and in 2010 (from 91 books) 22 were old friends, the result for the first half of 2011, from an impressive 67 books, was just... 6 :(

While some of you may be starting to wonder what the point of this post is - and others may be applauding my turn towards unfamiliar fiction -, there is a method in my madness.  You see, as I took up my usual, nay habitual, stance in front of my bookcases to muse upon this issue, noticing the many hundred paperbacks arrayed in front of me, a novel, and quite unpleasant, thought occurred to me...

If I'm only going to read new books, and have no intention of giving them a second go, then what is the point of my buying any books at all?!

A scary thought, and one I dismissed rather rapidly; however, it did make me think that I had been neglecting my old friends in favour of new and shinier ones - all of which brings me to the point of this post (and yes, there is one)...

Welcome to Tony's Reading List's Rereading July :)

That's right - I have decided that for the following month, it's in with the old and out with the new, a hello to familiar friends while new books are ignored, shunned and left to gather dust in the corner.  There are only three rules to Fight Club Rereading July (and you may talk about it to your heart's content):

1) The book must be somewhere on my shelves
2) I must have read it at least once (and possibly several times) before
3) The last reading must have occurred before I began my blog (1/1/09)

After a leisurely perusal of my collection, the following books clamoured to be read:

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto

Die Verwandlung by Franz Kafka

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Adam Bede by George Eliot

One Man's Bible by Gao Xingjian

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Seven Shades of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

The above list comprises a nice collection of old friends, representing a fair cross-section of my reading tastes: some V-Lit, J-Lit, a German-language classic, a smattering of translated fiction and a few good old Aussie novels.  I've already kicked off the fun with Far From The Madding Crowd and am very happy with my choice - in the long, cold Melbourne winter, it's nice to have a bit of comfort reading :)

You are welcome, dear reader, to join me (or not) - here's hoping for a wonderful month of things I've read before...

June 2011 Wrap-Up (and Giveaway Results!)

The end of June already!  Half a year gone, and I'm smashing all previous records (the reading ones that is - definitely not the blogging ones...).  As usual, for your perusal, here is the month of June at a glance...

But wait - at the end of this post (unusually), there will be the results of my F.C. Delius giveaway!  Patience is a virtue :)

*****
Total Books Read: 10
Year-to-date: 67

New: 10
Rereads: 0

From the Shelves: 6

From the Library: 4

On the Kindle: 0

Novels: 7

Novellas: 2
Short Stories: 1

Non-English Language: 4 (2 Japanese, 2 German)

In Original Language: 2 (2 German)

Books read in June were:
1) The Master of Go by Yasunari Kawabata
2) Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre by Goethe
3) Felix Holt: The Radical by George Eliot
4) Silence by Shusaku Endo
5) Sartoris by William Faulkner
6) Bildnis der Mutter als junge Frau by Friedrich Christian Delius
7) The Reasons I Won't Be Coming by Elliot Perlman
8) The Children's Bach by Helen Garner
9) The Lost Life by Steven Carroll
10) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Murakami Challenge: 0 (2/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 3 (13/12)

Victorian Literature Challenge: 1 (13/15)
Japanese literature Challenge 5: 2 (2/1)

Tony's Recommendation for June is: Shusaku Endo's Silence

June was an exceptional month, with a number of high-quality reads.  There was another wonderful novel from Australian writer Steven Carroll, F.C. Delius' wonderful one-sentence book, the first of William Faulkner's novels set in his fictionalised hometown, Yasunari Kawabata's intriguing tale of games within a game, and Goethe's classic Bildungsroman - on which I spent half of May and the first few days of June...

However, even in such a distinguished field, Shusaku Endo's Silence was a stand out.  Very different from any of the J-Lit I'd read previously, this tale of a trial of faith in alien climes is well worth the effort - do try it :)

*****
Well, that's all for... sorry, the giveaway?  Ah, yes - I'd almost forgotten :)

I had around sixty entries for this competition, which is roughly ten times the number of people that usually even read my posts, so I was slightly overwhelmed by the number of e-mails dropping into my inbox.  I was very happy though to see that everyone was happy to comply with my cheeky request for manners ;)

And the winner?  As chosen by a random computer thingy, congratulations to Laura of Devouring Texts - I will be contacting you for a postal address very soon!

But wait - there's more!  Surprisingly, several of you expressed interest in the German-language version, and I have decided to be generous (the Aussie Dollar is doing very well at the moment!) and also award a German copy to one lucky entrant - and that person is Eva {the writer} - herzlichen Glückwunsch!  I'll be e-mailing you too

Thank you for the interest and attention - time for me to slip back into obscurity.  Night all :)