'Lady Anna' by Anthony Trollope (Review)

Jane Austen taught us that it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife - but what about a single woman about to come into a good fortune?  And what should be done if that single woman is planning to give her fortune to a man whose social status really doesn't warrant it?  Hmm, some tough questions there.  I think I'll need some help with this one, preferably from an expert on the delicate questions of nineteenth-century courtship...

*****
Anthony Trollope's Lady Anna is (for Trollope, at least) a remarkably focused novel.  We begin with the plight of Josephine Murray, or Countess Lovel as she would prefer to be known.  Having married an Earl, she believes she has achieved her life's goals - until, that is, he laughingly informs her that he was already married to an Italian woman at the time of the wedding...  If the Earl is telling the truth, then the Countess would lose her title, and her daughter, Lady Anna, would no longer inherit anything.

We move on a couple of decades, and the wicked Earl has passed away, leaving lawyers to decide the truth of the matter.  With the question of the Italian marriage fading into the background, matters soon concern themselves with the contest between the two women and Anna's cousin, the new Earl.  It's a conflict that would easily be resolved if a marriage could be arranged between the two cousins - the problem, however, is that Anna's heart has already been given away elsewhere...

This is typical Trollope in many ways.  The first two chapters are all scene setting, discussing the events of twenty years and making sure the reader has a firm grasp of the nature of the court case to come.  However, once the writer has made sure everyone's up to speed, off we go at a gallop for five-hundred pages of melodrama.  Early in the novel, the Countess exclaims:

"Was it to come to her at last?  Could it be that now, now at once, people throughout the world would call her the Countess Lovel, and would own her daughter to be the Lady Anna, - till she also should become a countess?"
pp.72/3 (Oxford World's Classics, 2008)

Call me a cynic, but I doubt it's going to happen on page seventy-three...

However, unlike Orley Farm, for example, Lady Anna places little importance on the court case, an anti-climax which disappoints the eager spectators who crowd into the court room.  Instead, the emphasis shifts to the battle for Anna's hand and heart.  Having grown up in straitened circumstances, it's only natural that Anna should have become attached to her childhood companion, Daniel Thwaite, and it will take a lot of persuasion to convince her to abandon a man who has loved her through thick and thin, merely to please her mother.

This is where Trollope comes into his own, gently unveiling the delights of the English upper classes, allowing both Anna and the reader to be seduced by the comforts of a sedate existence in the country, servants waiting to fulfil your every command and money as an abstract concept which is always somewhere if you need it.  You sense that the original readership would most definitely have been on the side of the gentry, particularly as Frederic, the handsome young Earl who is to marry Anna, acts so well in refusing to contest the case against the mother and daughter (a case which would make him fabulously wealthy).

This natural bias would also have been strengthened by the early appearances of the Earl's rival.  Thwaite is a radical, and while his father (who was the Countess' only supporter in earlier times) thinks it inevitable that the blue-bloods still rule the world, the son is much stronger in his desire to change the social order:

"The world is not ripe yet, Daniel."
"No; - the world is not ripe."
"There must be earls and countesses."
"I see no must in it.  There are earls and countesses as there used to be mastodons and other senseless, over-grown brutes roaming miserable and hungry through the undrained woods, - cold, comfortless, unwieldy things, which have perished in the general progress.  The big things have all to give way to the intellect of those which are more finely made." (p.39)

Definitely not views which will endear him to the Victorian moral classes ;)

However, as the novel draws on, even his opponents, the family and lawyers who oppose his interests, acknowledge that he is a good man (if not a gentleman), although they would prefer him to take some money and run.  Surprisingly, one of his biggest supporters turns out to be the chief lawyer for the Lovel family, Sir William Patterson, a man whose actions ultimately influence the outcome of the whole state of affairs, as the knight is one of those rare lawyers who seem to have the best interests of all concerned at heart - even when some believe that he's not really doing his job:

"The cause itself was no doubt peculiar, - unlike any other cause with which Mr. Flick had become acquainted in his experience; there was no saying at the present moment who had opposed interests, and who combined interests in the case; but still etiquette is etiquette, and Mr. Flick was aware that such a house as that of Messrs. Norton and Flick should not be irregular.  Nevertheless he sent for Daniel Thwaite." (p.222)

Flick should have no worries - in a Trollope novel, everything (usually) ends up for the best :)

Initially, I was a little concerned with the narrow focus of Lady Anna, thinking that the court case might become a little dull.  However, Trollope knows full well what he's doing, and the legal aspects soon fade into the background so that he can concentrate on what he really wants to discuss, which is the right of a woman to dispose of her own heart as she sees fit.  The legal obstacles soon melt away, leaving Anna to fight a moral battle against her overbearing mother and well-intentioned friends, all of whom believe it wrong for a young woman of her rank and fortune to marry below her station.

The mother is particularly harsh (reminding me of some of the strict mothers I've encountered in Korean fiction this year), resorting to psychological warfare in an attempt to bend her daughter to her will, and refusing to see her for long chunks of the story.  Unlike, say, Sir William, this lady is not for turning:

"Her daughter was all that she had to bind her to the world around her.  But she declared to herself again and again that it would be better that her daughter should die than live and be married to the tailor.  It was a case in which persecution even to the very gate of the grave would be wise and warrantable, - if by such persecution this odious monstrous marriage might be avoided." (p.228)

The Countess is playing a rather high-stakes game here, one in which, even if she wins, she's bound to suffer losses...

While Lady Anna starts a little slowly, and looks for a time as if it might be a little ho-hum, it actually turns into a ripping read, one in which the outcome isn't clear until the last fifty pages or so, and where the interest lies not only in what happens but why and how.  Trollope is limited by the conventions of the time (and the inevitable Victorian self-censorship), but he still does a good job in outlining the hypocrisy of the nobility and the intense pressure felt by young women who were seen to not be doing their duty.  The book might not quite live up to some of Trollope's best work (no matter what he might claim in his Autobiography), but it's certainly worth a few hours of your time - I'm certainly happy to have experienced another of the big man's efforts :)

'The Beautiful Team' by Garry Jenkins (Review)

Everyone has a favourite World Cup, usually from their youth, and mine (as I said last week) was Italia '90.  However, people of a certain (ahem) vintage have a different opinion, and most experts agree - when it comes to World Cups, you really can't beat Mexico 1970.  Why?  Well, that's because it saw the emergence of a team that many consider to be the best ever...

*****
The Beautiful Team is writer Garry Jenkins' attempt to relive those heady days in Mexico by tracking down the eleven superhumans who played in the final in Mexico City's imposing Azteca Stadium.  From Felix the (crazy) cat between the posts to Gerson imposing order at the back, all the way to the lightning-fast Jairzinho on the wing.  Oh, and there's one more man up front that I'm sure most of you will have heard of ;)

Jenkins has some issues tracking everyone down (and finding the time and money to arrange the interviews isn't easy either), but when he does get to talk to the players, the story of one glorious month unfolds.  While the focus is on the footballing side of events, there is more to the story though.  Jenkins also has a look at what came next for the players - and the country.  As I've said before, sport and politics are rarely completely separate...

The Beautiful Team is an interesting look at a group of footballing legends redeeming their country's pride and creating history in the process.  After the disaster of their 1966 title defence in England, Brazil drew up detailed plans to return to the top.  For perhaps the first time in football, a team adhered to their training and diet with military precision, giving them a physical edge they had lacked four years earlier.  These were still very different times though - a couple of the players couldn't get by without their half-time cigarettes...

The Brazilians are all great characters, and very generous with their time.  We get to meet Gerson, the general, a commanding, colourful presence on the pitch - and off:

"In the flesh Gerson is part papagaio, part pega, a magpie.  Gold jewellery drips off him - a chunky chain hangs around his neck, two equally weighty bracelets around his wrist.  Throughout he seems intense, watchful and wary.  He has long since given up the battle with baldness.  His polished head accentuates the nobility you noticed even back in Mexico.  You look at Gerson and suspect he probably commanded Roman legions in a previous life."
p.7 (Pocket Books, 1999)

Jenkins certainly doesn't shy away from letting his descriptive muse free ;)  We also meet such characters as Felix, the mad goalkeeper desperate to counter views that anyone could have stood between the Brazilian sticks, and Tostao, the intellectual who returned to a medical career after becoming disillusioned with the game.

Of course, the star of stars was Pele (at the time of the book, he was Special Minister for Sport), a man who exudes charisma and is adored worldwide (one of my favourite parts of the book is an anecdote of Pele being sent off in a match outside Brazil, where the crowd rioted so much that he was brought back on - and the ref was escorted from the stadium by the police instead...).  In his office in Brasilia, politicians queue up to visit him, starstruck supplicants desperate for a photo with the great man - an example of politics and sport...

And the sport was also used for politics...  As much as the book is about the team, it's also about Brazil, a country with many issues (as the protests surrounding the current World Cup show...):

"When Le Corbusier came here in the 1930s he mapped out a community with half a dozen towers.  Six decades on there are more skyscrapers than there is sky.  If the economist Schumacher was right and small is beautiful, then Sao Paulo is the third least beautiful city on earth.  I do not ever want to see the first or second." (p.79)

Ugly cities aren't the biggest issue though.  After a military coup, one government focus is using the team for propaganda purposes, which involved getting the original coach fired, and attempting to influence team selection.  It seems there was a dark side to the wonderful triumph...

The Beautiful Team is a great read for football fans, but in comparison with All Played Out, it's simply out of its league.  Davies' writing gradually increases the tension, creating a narrative that stands up to any work of fiction, but Jenkins constantly repeats himself, ignoring a wider narrative in favour of individual interviews.  In addition, while Davies is analytical and insightful, weaving tournament, society, media and players into one absorbing story, Jenkins is more repetitive and doesn't really do much more than say what actually happened.  I'm not sure if Jenkins ever read All Played Out, but he could have picked up a few tips if he had.

Still, it's certainly worth a read, particularly for the insights from the players themselves.  It's fascinating to hear them talk about the importance of the England game in the group stage and the struggle to find the best team for the later stages, the team that would become greats of the game.  The truth is that the performance of the 1970 Brazil team is the stuff of legends - all later teams are mere shadows of Pele and co.  Perhaps it was inevitable that it was Brazil that produced these legends:

"The world is full of countries in which football is enmeshed in passion, power and politics.  Nowhere else, it is nice to think, is it so inextricably linked to the concept of freedom." (p.143)

Ah, Brazil...

'All Played Out' by Pete Davies (Review)

As the observant among you may have noticed, there's a little football tournament on at the moment down in Brazil, and (understandably) I've been slightly preoccupied recently.  For many teenagers all over the world, Brazil 2014 will turn out to be the tournament that all others will be measured against.  For me, however, my formative footballing experiences happened a good generation ago - and today's book tells everyone exactly how it went...

*****
Pete Davies' All Played Out (recently rereleased - and filmed - as One Night in Turin) is the story of Italia '90, the most memorable World Cup of my younger years.  As many of you may know, one of the better performers in the competition was England, and Davies takes the reader on a ride with the team, starting with the qualifiers, moving onto the first, stuttering steps in Sardinia during the group stage, before getting lost in the euphoria of England's success in the knock-out stage.

While the focus is on the football, what makes All Played Out so good is the way in which Davies sets the team's progress against background concerns.  Each game is sandwiched by interviews with the team, comments on the chaotic organisation of the Italian hosts and the constant tussle with the hyper-critical press.  However, the overriding theme of the book is that of a country which has lost its way - in the era of the hooligan, England, to the outsider, certainly appears all played out...

From the very first paragraph, touching on the wonderful opening game of the competition, the memories came flooding back.  It's the start of a story about the beautiful game, and of the importance of the national team to the country, as the then England manager confirms:

"The national team is the flagship of that - but it's more than that, the dimensions of it are frightening.  When you become the national manager, you realise how important it is to the country, because people are patriotic about it.  And winning does mean such a lot."
p.84 (Mandarin, 1991)

That being the case, can the England team do the country proud and improve the country's mood?

As anyway who remembers those times will recall, it was certainly needed.  1990 was a time when football was at its nadir in England, what with the clubs still being banned from European competitions after the events of Heysels, and the stadium tragedy at Hillsborough the previous year.  Much of the focus pre-tournament was on the notorious hooligans and their constant running battles with the police:

"These, it seemed, were the new horror days of a nation that was all played out, a nation of riot and yobbery, a nation whose football was oafish and whose fans were louts, a nation with a ridiculous government, an economy in a tailspin, food you daren't eat and weather you daren't go out in... England, England, whatever the hell happened to England?" (p.6)

And, twenty-four years on...  It was little surprise when England were exiled to Sardinia for the group stages, only being allowed into Italy 'proper' once the knock-out stage had begun.

Sadly, the football was just as dire as the behaviour off the pitch, and another running theme of the book is the need to change a failing system - or, to put it in footballing terms, to 4-4-2 or to 3-5-2.  In many interviews with the manager, the late Sir Bobby Robson, Davies tries to understand the thinking behind his stubborn defence of his tactics (and the violently sudden about-face during the tournament).  Robson is a man from another generation, and it shows in the way he views the World Cup, with war metaphors never far from his description of England's (ahem) 'campaign'.

We also get access to the players, and with the book not coming out until after the tournament, the men in the middle were surprisingly candid in their views about the team and the country.  There are several great in-depth interviews with stars like Chris Waddle, John Barnes and Gary Lineker in which they voice their frustration about the way in which they are forced to play.  Of course, the football fans amongst us will know that there was a happy ending :)

Of course, off the pitch, thing are slightly different.  Davies spends a lot of time talking about the England followers, and the conclusion he comes to is that the fans are simply a reflection of the country; expecting ill-educated, boorish young men, most fuelled by alcohol, to act as if they were sitting at Wimbledon's centre court is slightly unrealistic.  It's English society which has created the issue, and the hooligans are merely the public face of the country's failings.  However, Davies also discovers that the hype doesn't always match up to reality:

"Because people behaved, people paid, and they were welcome to come back.  But this, of course, is one headline you'll never read:
ENGLAND FANS BEHAVE." (p.194)

And this is where we come to the first villains of the book, the English press.  With legions of reporters sent to the country, there's a need to find content, even if that involves making up stories - or urging hooligans to throw bricks through windows.  Once the indignation has been dialled up to eleven, it's then time for the politicians to get involved (as was the case when Margaret Thatcher wanted to withdraw the team from the competition...).

Of course, as fascinating as the background is, it's ultimately all about the football, and if the press are the minor villains, it's Argentina, and Maradona in particular, who are the ultimate supervillains.  From their initial catastrophe against Cameroon, the ugly Argies march on and on, upsetting fans, players and knee-caps aplenty.  With a supporting cast of efficient Germans, flawed Brazilians and nervous Italians, it all makes for one hell of a show ;)

All Played Out is simply a great football book, particularly for those who remember the summer of 1990, and it's one I highly recommend.  I'll just finish this post by sharing a little story with you all, one of my experiences of the tournament.  As a fifteen-year-old Ireland fan, this was a great competition to watch, except for when it came to the second-round penalty shoot-out against Rumania/Romania.  As it was about to begin, there was a knock on the door, and our rent collector, a proud Irishman, asked politely if he could just come in and watch the shootout.  After eight goals and one save, David O'Leary stepped up and slotted home the winning penalty - and the rent collector, my Dad and I danced and cheered all around the living room...

What memories will be made at Brazil 2014, I wonder?

'Romola' by George Eliot (Review)

After spending some time in Renaissance Italy in Bound in Venice, I was eager to read more about the era, so I trudged off to my shelves to see what I could uncover.  Very quickly, I stumbled upon the perfect book, one I'd been meaning to reread for some time.  After a spell in Venice then, it's time to head off to Florence - in the company of a rather accomplished tour guide...

*****
Romola was George Eliot's first attempt at fiction outside her home country (perhaps even her home county).  The reader is transported to Florence in 1492, where the death of Lorenzo de' Medici, the de facto ruler of the city, has initiated a period of uncertainty.  A power vacuum has appeared in the city, and it's a time of unrest, with rival groups vying for supremacy and the charismatic preacher Savonarola waiting in the wings.  Enter Tito Melema, a Greek-Italian survivor of a shipwreck, educated and good-looking, but down on his luck - a state of affairs which won't last long.

The stranger is taken in by some friendly locals, eventually gravitating to Nello's barber shop, a gathering place for intellectuals, and it's here that he receives an introduction to blind scholar Bardo Bardi and his beautiful daughter, Romola.  Melema is handsome, intelligent and cunning, and this is his time; in the confusion of the new world order, power, wealth, fame and love are his for the taking.  But is the fair-faced newcomer as good as he seems?

"Ay, Nello," said the painter, speaking with abrupt pauses; "and if thy tongue can leave off its everlasting chirping long enough for thy understanding to consider the the matter, thou mayst see that thou hast just shown the reason why the face of Messere will suit my traitor.  A perfect traitor should have a face which vice can write no marks on - lips that will lie with a dimpled smile - eyes of such agate-like brightness and depth that no infamy can dull them - cheeks that will rise from a murder and not look haggard."
p.46 (Everyman, 1999)

As the story progresses, we see that there's truth in the painter's view of traitors and fair faces, and we begin to discern hints of what's really beneath the smiles and curls...

Romola is a great vision of the distant past, a picture of renaissance Florence and a superb story of a man who wants it all.  Eliot shows us a visitor who, arriving at the right time (and not having any uncomfortable beliefs or scruples to get in the way), is able to ingratiate himself with various Florentine factions, succeeding in becoming one of the most useful and powerful men in the city.  The (anti)hero of the novel is a man with fatal flaws which threaten to undo him, the writer at pains to show us that then, just as now, beauty was often only skin deep.  Despite having been born in Italy, there is enough of the Greek in Tito to justify a tragedy ;)

This is because Tito is fatally flawed.  While he is outwardly strong and honest, on the inside he is weak, doubting and lazy - and not quite brazen enough to ignore the trouble he has brought upon himself:

"Tito foresaw that it would be impossible for him to escape being drawn into the circle; he must smile and retort, and look perfectly at his ease.  Well! it was but the ordeal of swallowing bread and cheese pills after all.  The man who let the mere anticipation of discovery choke him was simply a man of weak nerves." (p.168)

Despite the bold words, he is not always able to swallow the pills with a smile.  The chain armour he is eventually scared into wearing becomes a physical manifestation of his constant mental fears.

As Tito falls in our estimation, his role diminishes, leaving the way open for the rise of Romola, both in character and importance.  Beautiful and good, she ever so gradually begins to suspect her husband's shortcomings:

"But all the while inwardly her imagination was busy trying to see how Tito could be as good as she had thought he was, and yet find it impossible to sacrifice those pleasures of society which were necessarily more vivid to a bright creature like him than to the common run of men." (p.249)

Romola despises Tito once his true character is revealed; unlike her husband, she prefers helping the sick and poor, whoever they may be, to scheming for wealth and power.  At times, she even ends up helping Tito's enemies...

One of the major themes of Romola is the difficulty of doing the right thing when the wrong thing is so much easier (and much more lucrative), and Eliot frequently returns to her main message of the way in which we justify our bad deeds to ourselves.  She lingers on Tito's decisions to ignore signs that his adopted father, Baldassare Calvo, may not be dead after all, but it's never judgemental - Tito's actions are considered carefully as an ethical dilemma.  It's all very cleverly done, with constant arguments on one side or the other forcing the reader to examine Tito's behaviour (and wonder if we would have acted differently...).

The tragedy is played out against a superbly researched background, and the language, too, evokes the era.  We feel ourselves back in Renaissance Florence, witnessing the fall of the Medicis, and the rise (and subsequent fall) of the ambitious and enigmatic Savonarola.  From within the walls of the city state,  we are witness to the interference of the Pope and the 'visit' of the French army, along with a host of real-life characters (including Niccolò Machiavelli...) - there's even mention of Aldo Manuzio, AKA Aldus Manutius, the master publisher encountered in Bound in Venice!

Of course, there's a little too much research at times, and Romola isn't the easiest of books to get into.  The narrator is looking back at times which seem fairly primitive, and the viewpoint is almost clinically detached, giving the book the air more of a scientific study than a novel.  Also, as mentioned in Leonée Ormond's introduction, the character of Romola is especially problematic.  She's far too modern and anachronistic in the way she thinks and acts (and has the freedom to think and act); just as is to be the case in Felix Holt, the main character here is the least life-like element of a realistic historical recreation.

Romola is one of the least-read, and least-popular, of Eliot's novels.  However, it's still an excellent book, and of course, despite the title, it's Tito who is the star of the show.  While the writer warns us about him frequently, part of you still wants him to succeed in his endeavours, even after we have glimpsed some of the ugly truths lurking beneath the handsome exterior.  It's true what they say though - politics is a very dangerous game...

...especially in Renaissance Florence ;)

'The American Senator' by Anthony Trollope (Review)

With all the Trollope novels I've read, it's hard to imagine a year without a few, but 2013 had only seen one up to now (The Way We Live Now).  Well, until today, that is.  This review is looking at one of the Oxford World's Classics I won in a competition a while back, another two-volume monster from the master of the Victorian potboiler.  The difference is though that this one has an American touch...
 
*****
The American Senator starts off in a small village in England.  It's the perfect scene for a Trollope novel, with the usual ingredients of fox-hunting, strife and romance in abundance.  Into the village comes Elias Gotobed, an American senator who wants to find out all about British life (mainly so that he can ridicule it...), and Dillsborough seems as good a place as any for the job.

A second outsider is also on the way to the village though, the intriguing Lady Arabella Trefoil.  She is engaged to marry John Morton, a local landowner who works for the foreign office, and is travelling to the provinces to see her fiancé's family seat before the marriage.  Morton is a good catch, but not quite good enough for the ambitious Arabella.  Lord Rufford, a local neighbour, is richer - and so Arabella decides to set her sights higher...

It all makes for a (stereo)typical Trollope novel, with a controversy involving a court case and a poisoned fox to hang his story on, and there's even the obligatory soppy romance.  We have the perfect, ladylike heroine (Mary Masters) and her deserving gentleman (Reginald Morton) taking five-hundred-odd pages to get to their inevitable happiness in a relationship which is predictable to the extreme, Trollope by numbers.  There's also a slow and impenetrable start to the book, and it all takes a good while to get going.

These usual elements are merely the background to the main stories though.  Gotobed, an American abroad, is a creation who allows Victorian readers to see the peculiarities of their society (and there are many) through foreign eyes:

"I shall be delighted to see any institution of this great country," said Mr. Gotobed, "however much opposed it may be to my opinion either of utility or rational recreation."
p.53 (Oxford World's Classics, 2008)

The good senator won't take a backward step and leaves many a feather ruffled in his honest quest to work out exactly why Englishmen talk and act as they do.  This all culminates in the public talk he gives in London - which is rather a rather heated affair...

In truth, the novel is all about Arabella though, another of Trollope's great characters.  She's a woman who hunts her husband (one of Trollope's pet hates), and she's very good at her game.  Tempted by Rufford's riches, she nevertheless tries to keep Morton hanging, just in case things go wrong in her new affair.  It's a delicate game she plays, but she has a lot of experience...

She's also very good at it, as she should be seeing as it's her life's 'work'.  However, like any worker who's been hard at it for years, there's no room for any enjoyment in her days:

"Business to her had for many years been business, and her business had been so very hard that she had never allowed lighter things to interfere with it." (p.216)

Sadly though, Arabella isn't getting any younger, and she's sick of all the intrigues and subterfuge:

"I'll tell you what it is, mamma.  I've been at it till I'm nearly broken down.  I must settle somewhere;-or else die;-or else run away.  I can't stand this any longer, and I won't.  Talk of work,-men's work!  What man ever has to work as I do?" (p.85)

This is it then, all or nothing.  Arabella is going to get herself a man, whether he's rich and landed or not...

Trollope paints a nuanced portrait of his anti-heroine, or at least as nuanced as his Victorian morals will allow.  Yes, Arabella is bad, but not all bad.  She has doubts about her way of life, and she knows she is mistreating John Morton - indeed, several incidents in their stormy relationship show that she has retained some sense of character.  In a book padded out with the usual stock personages, the lady is easily the strongest and most well-rounded character.

Overall, The American Senator, while interesting, is not one of Trollope's best.  Like The Prime Minister, for example, it's a case of one overarching novel with several ill-fitting plots crammed together.  Gotobed, despite the scholarly claims of the introduction, never really fits into the story, even if his observations are acute at times.  I would have loved to see a shorter novel focused on him, one which fleshes him out a little more (he's a bit one dimensional at times here).  In the few pages allocated to him in this book, he gets a little lost...

Still, a Trollope novel is always a comfort, and Arabella makes it all worthwhile in the end.  Like all the best seductive 'heroines', she steals the show, and you secretly hope she gets away with it.  For all the soppy heroines and big-chinned heroes, it's nice to have someone who does exactly what she wants - and Mr. T knows that as much as we do ;)

'Multiples' by Adam Thirlwell (Ed.) (Review)

I first heard about today's book a good while back when McSweeney's Quarterly Concern devoted a whole edition to its game of literary Chinese Whispers.  Having been tempted to give it a go back then, I was very pleased to hear that it would be appearing elsewhere in book form - and it's now even reached Australia...

*****
Multiples, edited by Adam Thirlwell (review copy courtesy of Australian distributor Allen & Unwin), is a book centred on a simple, yet potentially dangerous, idea.  An original text is taken, translated into a second language, then translated into another language, then... you get the idea.  There are eleven strands to the book, and most of the original stories eventually end up in six different, mutated versions.  As you can imagine, the end product rarely bears much of a resemblance to the original...

The cover proclaims that the book consists of "12 stories in 18 languages by 61 authors", and if you think I'm going to review all of them, you've got another think coming.  While not all of the efforts were stellar, there were several which had me noting the writer's name down for future reference (and a couple which had me adding names to my Sheldon-Cooperesque list of mortal enemies).  The best way to look at this though is probably to take a couple of examples from the strands.

One of the shorter pieces was 'Geluk', originally written by Dutch author A.L. Snijders, and Lydia Davis' (presumably) faithful translation ('Luck') was followed by Yannick Haenel's French version, 'Chance' - one which was a lot smoother and may have betrayed the style of the original a little.  Of course, as Haenel says in his endnotes:

"And no doubt I wanted, when translating this heartbreaking text in which a young man and a young woman do not manage to fall in love, to re-establish the love that - I'm sure of it - exists between them.  I make them live together when, it seems, everything keeps them apart.  I swear that I didn't do this deliberately.  I really believed what I wrote, while I was writing it.  You see, I'm not an anarchist, a little antichrist, and above all, whether I like it or not, I am French."
p.94 (Portobello Books, 2013)

You see, it's not his fault he changed the story - his blood made him do it ;)

I was quite happy to accept Haenel's tongue-in-cheek excuses, but the next step wasn't quite as palatable.  Heidi Julavits ('Chance') back-translated Haenel's version into English, but as her French wasn't amazing she decided to use a dictionary guess the words she didn't know...  Which meant that Peter Stamm's typically elegant version ('Zufall') used, and built upon, some of the ludicrous errors Julavits incorporated (including moving the music lessons detailed in the story from the attic to the garden!).

Once Jeffrey Eugenides had given the story its third lease of life in English ('Happenstance'), it was over to Sjón to tie things up in Icelandic ('Atvik').  Sadly, I wasn't able to make much of this one, except to note that it was about a third of the length of the original.  Happily, the great man cleared this up for us in the notes - you see, he allowed his son to memorise Eugenides' version and then had him recite it back three weeks later.  And into the book it went...

Hopefully, the above description gives you the idea.  Each time the stories go through another pair of hands, something happens to them.  Sometimes the changes are minimal, occasionally the style changes radically, and in some versions the story is radically altered.  Danilo Kiš' story 'Cipele' ('Shoes') survives several interpretations virtually unscathed, but when Camille de Toledo gets hold of it, it is transformed into a tale of a writer's struggle to the death with Google Translate (and a most interesting one it is too!).  While John Banville's subsequent rendering is a beautifully elegant piece of writing, I'm not quite sure how he managed to return to something close to the original after de Toledo's effort...

Of course, these digressions are what makes Multiples worth reading; if the job had been carried out by professional translators, with larger foreign-language vocabularies and smaller egos, the end result would probably have been more accurate, but not half as entertaining.  I'm not sure many readers would have stuck around for six fairly similar renderings of a short story, especially when half of them are in a foreign language...

Having said that though, Thirlwell cleverly acknowledges that many readers will not be that proficient in foreign languages themselves, and every second story in each strand is in English.  I suppose that's just the way the world is...  English is also privileged in another way - the stories written in foreign languages actually use a slightly smaller font (possibly as the publisher isn't expecting those stories to be read as much...).

As you would expect, I gave it my best shot, and while the Icelandic, Urdu, Hebrew and Chinese stories were beyond my reach, I did attempt to read as many of the versions as I could (or thought I could, which is by no means the same thing!).  Luckily, thanks mainly to the predominance of Romance and Germanic languages, I was able to at least struggle through all but seven of the interpretations.  I'm not saying it was easy though ;)

There's one more point to be made about Multiples though, and it's one which may surprise you.  The original stories come from a variety of languages and include some by very well-known writers (e.g. Enrique Vila-Matas, László Krasznahorkai, Franz Kafka, Kenji Miyazawa), but... they don't actually appear in the book in the original form.  When I first realised this, I was a little confused (not to mention disappointed), but the further I got into the book, the more I thought that this was a shrewd decision.  You see, it seems rather apt that the reader gets to see copies of copies of an original whose existence we have to take on trust, which all makes for an elaborate construction based on a hollow centre - very deconstructionist ;)

I'm not sure this will be everyone's cup of tea (and you'll certainly enjoy it more if you have at least some background in languages), but Multiples is a fascinating look at what happens when writers are let loose on a task which really belongs in the hands of trained professionals.  While some of the authors do their best to stay on task, often doing a respectable job, many are unable to resist the temptation to adorn the texts with their own style.  Perhaps the final word, addressing this point, should go to Dave Eggers, in what is the whole of his comments on translating his Kafka piece:

"I took some liberties." (p.159)

'The Way We Live Now' by Anthony Trollope (Review)

It is a sign of how prolific Anthony Trollope was that he has been my most-read author for the past three years, and yet I have barely made a dent in his collected works.  Despite all the unread novels I have to get through though, I tend to go back to my old favourites when I feel like some comfort reading, and today's choice is one of his best.  There is something unique about this book though - it is the only one I have read and not reviewed on the blog...

...consider this oversight corrected ;)

*****
The Way We Live Now is another shelf-groaner, coming in at 762 pages in my edition, but well over 800 in others.  It was originally published in twenty monthly parts of five chapters each in 1874/5, and it is actually set over six months in 1873.  It is truly a novel of its time...

As usual, most of the action takes place in London, with occasional visits to the countryside.  The main character is Augustus Melmotte, 'the Great Financier', a man of dubious provenance and even more dubious morals. While in earlier Trollope novels such a character would struggle to make it over the threshold of Barchester Cathedral, these are different times.  Melmotte may not be a gentleman, but he is (or appears to be) very rich, with a daughter ripe for the wooing:

"There was considerable doubt whether Marie was the daughter of that Jewish-looking woman.  Enquiries had been made, but not successfully, as to the date of the Melmotte marriage.  There was an idea abroad that Melmotte had got his first money with his wife, and had gotten it not very long ago.  Then other people said that Marie was not his daughter at all.  Altogether the mystery was rather pleasant as the money was certain.  Of the certainty of money in daily use there could be no doubt."
p.29 (Wordsworth Editions, 2001)

As young noblemen fall over themselves to court young Marie, their fathers attempt to attach themselves to the great man in the hope of profiting from his fortune.  Within a season, Melmotte is the biggest man in the city (possibly the empire), even hosting a banquet for the visiting Emperor of China.  But what goes up...

The Way We Live Now is Trollope's concerned look at the state of affairs in England at the time.  The gentry were beginning to struggle for money, and the idea of young heirs prostituting themselves for money was a common one - the men provided the blood and rank, their wives provided beauty and money, even if their grandfathers had made it in trade.  However, the fairly recent idea of speculation meant that bigger sums were on the table - even if the money was not always as safe as it might be.  The landed gentry see what they want to see and allow themselves to be blinded by the dream of unlimited wealth, at times with disastrous consequences.

We follow a degenerate example of this class, Sir Felix Carbury, a young man with many vices and little to recommend him but his appearance and his title.  He is the antithesis of Melmotte, a cowardly rake who cannot pluck up the courage to risk all on happiness with Marie (who prefers him among her many suitors).  Instead, he wastes his fortune on drinking, flirtations with lower-class women and cards at the club (where even his friends think little of him).

Although Felix loses large amounts in his gambling, this turns out to be nothing, for it is in Melmotte's offices in the city that real gambling is done.  The modern alchemy of creating money from nothing is a far headier (and riskier) activity than loo or three-handed whist.  Despite the obvious drawbacks, Carbury and his set of bored young noblemen begin to see the attraction of gambling on a larger scale than they had ever imagined possible...

Coming after some of the Palliser novels, The Way We Live Now is a further example of Trollope holding a mirror up to society at a time when new and old values were in conflict.  However, perhaps surprisingly, the old world isn't really portrayed that favourably.  In fact, many of the traditional characters in what was supposed to be a more balanced novel are fairly bland.  Normally, the reader would expect to be cheering on staid Roger Carbury, the reticent Hetta Carbury and Paul Montague, Hetta's chosen beau.  The reality is that in the company of figures like Melmotte and Felix Carbury, the supposed good-guys are as enticing as cardboard.

In a cast of dozens though, Melmotte is (possibly literally) head and shoulders above everyone else.  Trollope has created a monster, a man devoid of human feelings, using everyone and everything in order to satisfy his gargantuan appetite for wealth.  He is uncouth and arrogant with no knowledge of how to conduct himself in polite society, yet people fall over themselves to be in his presence.  All know his true character, but he somehow rises above his background, absolved of the onus of conforming to societal norms by the appearance of wealth.  At one point, a minor character compares him to Napoleon in explaining his appeal and his freedom of action:

"Such a man rises above honesty... as a great general rises above humanity when he sacrifices an army to conquer a nation.  Such greatness is incompatible with small scruples.  A pigmy man is stopped by a little ditch, but a giant stalks over the rivers." p.200

Trollope's views on the subject are never in doubt, but the majority of his characters in The Way We Live Now are sorely tempted by the opportunity to make their fortunes, even if (as the writer frequently points out) those who touch pitch run the risk of being defiled...

...for as powerful as Melmotte appears, he knows better than anyone that his power (and fortune) rests on the most fickle of bases - confidence.  His insistence on brazening things out is based on the knowledge that should he show a moment's weakness, his house of cards will come crashing down around his ears.  As the great man himself bellows:

"Gentlemen who don't know the nature of credit, how strong it is - as the air - to buoy you up; how slight it is - as a mere vapour - when roughly touched, can do an amount of mischief of which they themselves don't in the least understand the extent!" p.308

It is all a matter of faith - but just how long are people willing to trust him?

The Way We Live Now is a Trollope book I come back to time and again, and what makes this a great book is the fact that it will never lose its relevance.  Recent events (such as the Global Financial Crisis...) show that people will always allow themselves to be drawn into idiotic and unethical behaviour when there is any possibility of making a quick buck.  A book of its time?  Definitely - but it still has a lot to say to us today about the way we live now...

The Magical Mystery Tour

A bit of Dickens is good at any time of year, but I agree that the end of the year, as we move towards the holidays, is a great time to settle down with one of his chunky novels.  While Christmas Down Under is a little different to how it is back home (not much chance of snow in Melbourne in December!), reading about winter delights from the Victorian era makes it feel a little more like home ;)

*****
One of my favourite Dickens works is his first novel, The Pickwick Papers.  Like many of his books, it was serialised in a magazine, and it was so successful that readers clamoured to get the next instalment as soon as possible.  In fact, with people making their own Pickwick Club badges, it was something of a craze, the Harry Potter or Twilight of its day - not bad for a twenty-four-old writer...

The hero of the piece is Samuel Pickwick, a retired businessman and founder of the club which bears his name.   Deciding (in the interests of social science) that he would like to observe more of English society, he creates a small sub-group for the purpose, and along with Tracy Tupman (a portly admirer of the fairer sex), Augustus Snodgrass (a self-proclaimed poet) and Nathaniel Winkle (who is reputed to excel in all sporting matters) he sets off to see the delights of life outside London.  As you can imagine, many an adventure lies in store...

The Pickwick Papers starts off as a humorous, sketch-comedy romp through the English countryside, in a style which is reminiscent of various classic works of literature.  The episodic nature reminds the reader of The Canterbury Tales or The Decameron, but it's a certain Spanish novel from which Dickens appears to have taken his inspiration in part.  At times, poor Pickwick can appear very quixotic...

...and what would the noble Don be without his faithful Sancho Panza?  Luckily, Dickens provides us with one a little into the book, and he turns out to be the best character of all.  Sam Weller is a Cockney jack-of-all-trades who is chosen by Pickwick to be his manservant, and from the very start he steals most scenes he is in.  Unsure as to his actual role, the imperturbable Weller is nevertheless very happy that he has landed on his feet:

"Well," said that suddenly-transformed individual, as he took his seat on the outside of the Eatanswill coach next morning; "I wonder whether I'm meant to be a footman, or a groom, or a gamekeeper, or a seedsman.  I looks like a sort of compo of everyone on 'em.  Never mind; there's change of air, plenty to see, and little to do; and all this suits my complaint uncommon; so long life to the Pickwicks, says I!"
p.154 (Wordsworth Editions, 2000)

The surprisingly unworldly Pickwick will have many opportunities to be grateful for the assistance of his faithful offsider before the book is done.

As the novel progresses, the tone becomes a little more serious, and a plot does eventually emerge.  Pickwick, owing to a comical misunderstanding, is sued for breach of promise by a widow who believes he has agreed to marry her, and his refusal to bow to pressure to make the issue go away leads to his enforced stay in a debtor's prison.  By this point, the comical, portly buffoon of the first few chapters has developed into a kindly, virtuous character who has the reader firmly on his side - and when you've also got the cunning Sam Weller in your corner, things are bound to turn out well in the end :)

The Pickwick Papers is interesting reading for fans of Dickens' later work as there are glimpses of later creations in its pages.  The writer's skill in inventing comic characters is already in force, shown in the figure of the conman actor Alfred Jingle (and his servant, the sly Job Trotter) and the obese (and possibly narcoleptic) house boy Joe.  Echoes of later themes are also apparent, with Dicken's obsession with the law (later seen in Bleak House and Little Dorrit) already prominent here.

In the end though, The Pickwick Papers is an entertaining book in its own right, created by a writer who was having fun finding out how to write a novel.  In terms of greatness, it pales beside some of his later works; however, its characters remain among Dickens' most popular.  By the end of the book, we are happy to concur with Sam's opinion of his master:

"And now we're upon it, I'll let you into another secret besides that," said Sam, as he paid for the beer. "I never heerd, mind you, nor read of in story books, nor see in picters, any angel in tights and gaiters - not even in spectacles, as I remember, though that may ha' been done for anythin' I know to the contrairey - but mark my vords, Job Trotter, he's a reg'lar thoroughbred angel for all that, and let me see the man as wenturs to tell me he knows a better vun." pp.597-7

The Law or Justice?

Sad as I was to reach the end of another rereading of Anthony Trollope's Palliser books, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  You see, last year I was lucky enough to win a Twitter competition run by Oxford World's Classics, and the prize was four more of Trollope's novels - and I was able to choose four that I hadn't previously read.  All of which means that there are plenty more Trollope reviews to look forward to in the months to come :)

*****
The one I was most interested in reading was another of Trollope's bulky, two-volume, 800-page epics, Orley Farm.  In his Autobiography, the writer considered this one to be his best novel, and while that may be stretching things a little, it's certainly one of the better ones I've read.  The story revolves around a codicil to a will made twenty years before the main action, an addendum which leaves the titular farm to the baby boy of Sir Joseph Mason's second wife.  The old man's other children suspect that their step-mother has somehow been involved in the forgery of this document, but a court case clears her of any wrong-doing, and Lady Mason is free to claim the property and run it on behalf of baby Lucius until he comes of age.

Twenty years on, Lucius is an educated, intelligent (if somewhat grumpy) young man, and he has decided to turn his attention to farming his own land.  In the process, he antagonises one of his tenants, a lawyer who married the daughter of the attorney at the centre of the original court case - and a man who subsequently finds a document which casts a different light on the events of the past...

Court cases and mysteries have featured in other Trollope works I've read (Phineas Redux, The Three Clerks and The Eustace Diamonds are some which immediately spring to mind), but Orley Farm is a novel which is more closely concerned with the workings of the law than any other I've read.  Trollope himself talks about 'sensational' literature and compares his work with that of Wilkie Collins, but it is actually Dickens' Bleak House that we are most reminded of.  Like Bleak House, Orley Farm is a doorstopper of a book, peopled with a wide cast of personalities from all walks of life, set partially in London and partially in the provinces.

While Orley Farm is of similar length to Bleak House, it is, of course, the focus on the law and, in particular, the rather loose link between the law and justice, which connects the two novels.  Where Dickens criticised the archaic institutions which led to fortunes being squandered in legal fees, Trollope examines the gladiatorial trial system where winning is more important than finding out what actually happened.  The writer's dreams of barristers working together to uncover the truth sounds somewhat idealistic, but the alternative - trained bloodhounds savaging innocent, honest people in the hope of discrediting them and obscuring the truth - hardly sounds like justice either...

Besides the over-riding theme of law and justice though, what I enjoyed most about Orley Farm was the way in which the characterisation was a little less black-and-white than is often the case.  Lady Mason could easily be compared to Lizzie Eustace (The Eustace Diamonds), but she is a much more complex and nuanced figure than her pretty, young counterpart.  We learn more about her character as the novel progresses, making it just that little bit harder for us to judge her - and to decide if she really is guilty or not.

While there are the usual sweet, blushing maidens and nervous, but manly, suitors, even the romances in Orley Farm are more intriguing than usual.  A stay at a country house sets up two love triangles: sweet Madeleine Stavely is pursued by upstart lawyer Felix Graham and wealthy heir Peregrine Orme; Sophia Furnival, a barrister's daughter, catches the eye of both Augustus Stavely and our young friend Lucius Morris.  While in other Trollope books, both the ladies would be pure and chaste, and the preferred suitor would be obvious from the start, things are not quite so clear here.  All of the young men have their good and bad points, none really standing out, and as for Ms. Furnival - well, I'm not sure she's playing the courting game quite as she's supposed to...

All in all, Orley Farm is definitely one of Trollope's more ambitious books, and it deserves its high reputation.  However, I was left thinking that it could have been that little bit more impressive if Trollope had only been released from the restraints of the Victorian culture and his own conscience.  Despite the attempts at ambiguity, the ending has to be morally correct: the characters must look to God for forgiveness, the good are rewarded, and the nasty are (for the most part) punished.  It's what the people wanted at the time, but today it detracts a little from the more balanced tone that runs through the novel.

Still, it's not for me to pass judgement on Trollope's treatment of his creations; I'm not sure my version would have been any better really.  And this is the real moral of the story.  As easy-going Judge Stavely says:

"...judge not that you be not judged." Volume II, p.122
(Oxford World's Classics, 2008)

As Orley Farm shows, the danger in judging is that you're very apt to make mistakes...

Putting Theory into Practice

I've been blogging for a while now (just over three-and-a-half years to be precise), but I'm afraid I have something to confess - I'm a fraud.  While I pontificate week in, week out on the literary qualities of the books that come under my gaze, the truth is that I have no literary credentials at all, never having studied literature at any level higher than GCSE back in England (and I didn't do very well at that either).  I know, I know, I can see the shocked expressions, and hear the stunned silences, from my end of the computer.  I apologise, truly.

I am trying to rectify this state of affairs though.  A while back, in the course of a chat on Twitter, Violet recommended a book which might be suited to a theoretical novice like me, Peter Barry's Beginning Theory (3rd edition), a text used in undergraduate literature courses and one I might be able to get my head around, despite the dense and confusing content trapped within.  After purchasing the book, I've spent the last few months dipping into it whenever I've had time between my usual fiction fare, and I definitely haven't regretted it - but am I actually any the wiser?

*****
Literary Theory is an attempt to put the art of analysing literary texts on a par with other academic endeavours, putting in place a structure to enable critics to explain how and why they are evaluating texts.  It's not good enough to say that you think a work of literature is good or bad; you need to be able to show why you think this and what methods you have used to come to that conclusion.  It sounds fairly simple so far, but nothing could be further from the truth - as anyone who has ever attempted to come to terms with Post-Stucturalism or Freudian Psychoanalysis will know only too well...

This is where Beginning Theory is such a great book.  Barry takes the reader back to basics, explaining how literary criticism was practised in the past, before guiding them gently through the progressive waves of theories which came to challenge the status quo.  Liberal Humanism, Modernism, Stucturalism, Marxism, Post-Colonialism... all are introduced and carefully explained with practical explanations using authentic literary texts.  The book is designed for a reader who is interested in Literary Theory but has no real prior experience of the subject, and as someone who has been involved in the tertiary sector on both sides of the teacher's desk, I find it a much more helpful text than most I've seen.

As well as going over all the -isms you're bound to have heard of, the third edition of Beginning Theory also takes you through some relatively recent developments in the field.  Most of you will have heard of Queer Theory and Stylistics, but New Aestheticism and Presentism may be less familiar areas of study - and has anyone heard of Cognitive Poetics?  I certainly hadn't...  

One such area that I found interesting was Ecocriticism, a field of study which foregrounds the role of the natural environment in a text, seeing it as an important agent rather than merely the backdrop of the story.  This chapter was especially useful as I read it just after finishing a work which was advertised as a work of Eco-Fiction, allowing me to understand what exactly the blurb was talking about.

And this is the beauty of a text like Beginning Theory - it allows those of us without formal literary training to understand just what it is we like and don't like about the books we read.  There's no need to use all this meta-language in your reviews (unless you're attempting to scare off all your readers), but it certainly allows you to approach your reading in a more focused frame of mind.  Hopefully, this will lead to more coherent analyses of the books you've been reading.

This isn't the first time I've tried to upskill in this area.  Last year, I read (but didn't review) Jonathan Culler's Literary Theory - A Very Short Introduction which, while interesting, was far too cursory for my needs.  I also ploughed through the Open Yale series of lectures for a while but gave up half-way through as it was all a little too dry, especially when approached without the support of other university literary subjects.

For me then, Beginning Theory is a great introduction to the field of Literary Theory.  It's still not all that easy to get your head around (and I certainly wouldn't recommend racing through it and then tossing it aside), but if approached sensibly, reading chapters a couple of times at a leisurely pace before moving on, the information will gradually begin to seep into your brain.  What's more, the more time you devote to the book, the more you'll become aware of your own biases - and that's a good thing.  At one point Barry asks the reader whether it is possible to analyse a book using all of the techniques at your disposal, and his answer is a definite 'no'.  If you attempt to do a Marxist-Feminist-Freudian-Post-Structural-Stylistic reading of a text, all you'll end up with is a superficial mish-mash of vague ideas...

...and speaking of my reviews, I do think that reading this book has helped me understand what I'm doing a little better.  I probably tend towards the structuralist idea of wanting to find a bottom line, a super-narrative, in everything I read.  However, I also dabble a little in Post-Colonial, Marxist and (very occasional) Feminist interpretations, with a little linguistic analysis on the side.  Of course, if I read more widely in the area of Literary theory, I'll probably discover that my opinions here are completely wrong ;)

Returning to the book, I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who feels a little underqualified to be talking about literature in public - I certainly feel a lot more confident now in the way I approach my reading.  However, I do feel that I still haven't quite got there.  You see, while I've had a little look at the theory side, I still have little idea about the more practical side, the nuts and bolts of writing.  I only have a very hazy idea of concepts like tropes and leitmotifs, so it might be a good idea to do some more reading on literary criticism.  Time to ask for some more recommendations then...

Notes from a Cold Island

As most of you will know, I'm a keen advocate of literature from all over the world, with my interests jumping around from country to country (although I always come back to Germany and Japan eventually).  My most recent obsession is writing from Iceland; I've read several books from the country already this year, and there are plenty more to come.  Which meant that when I was made aware of the book in the photo, I just had to take a closer look - especially as I wasn't quite sure if I was supposed to read it or wear it...

*****
Sarah Moss' Names for the Sea (review copy received from Granta Books) is a travel book about a year the writer recently spent living in Iceland.  At the end of her first year of university, many moons ago, she travelled around the country with a friend and always intended to pay a second, longer visit.  When an opening came up for a lecturer at the University of Iceland, she decided that it was the perfect opportunity to move her family away for a while - goodbye Canterbury, hello Reykjavik :)

Unfortunately though, her timing could have been a little bit better.  You see, Moss took up her position in Reykjavik in the middle of 2009, right at the heart of the global financial crisis.  Iceland,  previously one of the wealthiest (and smuggest) countries on earth, was faced with a devalued currency and a lot of belt-tightening (meaning that Moss' salary was suddenly worth a lot less than she'd been expecting).  It also happens that during her time abroad, one of Iceland's volcanoes decided to erupt, showering the country with ash and causing havoc with European airspace...

The writer and her family had more important things to worry about though.  While the volatility of both the Kronur and Eyjafjallajökull was unexpected, the culture shock was a much bigger problem.  Moss had to come to terms with a country where people are very suspicious of outsiders, lax in keeping an eye on their children and seemingly unable to indicate at all when driving.  Add to this the fact that the weather keeps you inside for much of the year, and you can see that life in the frozen north is not as idyllic as Moss had hoped.  And then there's the food...

Moss is a novelist, and it shows.  Names for the Sea is well written with excellent pacing, and is story-like at times.  As the book progresses, the reader is taken deeper and deeper into Icelandic society and culture, learning to look beneath the surface at the same time the writer does.  At first glance, there is no sign in Iceland of the Kreppa (the collapse of the Icelandic economy).  In a proud, equal society, happy to be different from the rest of the world, the natives continue with their disposable culture, their love of big cars (and disdain of buses) and a distinct lack of second-hand goods.

A little digging though shows that things are not quite as rosy as they appear.  As Moss gets to know the country, and the people, better, she is able to delve into the invisible cracks in the society.  She learns of a charity depot and sees people receiving food parcels on her visit.  She hears of violence towards women and the true crime statistics, surprising in a country where women have apparently broken through the glass ceiling.  Eventually, she also finds out more about Icesave, the plan to compensate foreign investors for the money the collapsed Icelandic banks took from them - and discovers that not everyone is happy to foot the bill...

Names for the Sea is a great read for anyone interested in Iceland, but there's a lot more to it than that.  The fact that Moss has uprooted her family and dumped them in a foreign environment means that there are additional pressures to the ones we expect to find in travel writing.  As well as coping with a new job, there is also the small matter of placing two young children in schools and playgroups.  In addition to learning a new language (although that is not particularly necessary for English speakers in Iceland), the writer is forced to start from scratch, furnishing a rented apartment with no car, little money and scant knowledge of local shopping customs.  I don't envy her.

However, especially in the first third of the book, I don't particularly sympathise that much either - you see, it may just be me, but I don't think she always comes across too well.  While she can recognise her cultural limitations with a wry smile at times...

"Get over it, I find myself unfairly thinking, able to identify someone else's whingeing where my own complaints are obviously those of a normal person presented with weirdness." p.115 (Granta Books, 2012)

...at others she appears oblivious to how annoying and elitist she sounds.  For example, when packing for a move to Iceland, I certainly wouldn't be opting for:

"...five litres of olive oil, a dozen tins of anchovies and a dozen jars of capers..." p.14

When she then opts to leave the toaster at home, I begin to sense that Ms. Moss and I move in different social strata...

There's more to this than a gourmet unwilling to settle for bland food though.  Her smuggling of food through customs (and the smug way in which she does so) grates, and comments like the following (made about her sons daycare hours)...

"We extend his hours, but not much, not to Icelandic levels, because we still know best." p.69

...indicate someone who, at heart, believes that she is right, and that they (whoever they may be) are wrong.

This passes though, and it's tempting to think that Moss (the writer) has created Moss (the character), a woman whose arrogance is tempered the longer she stays in Iceland.  Certainly, once the claustrophobic winter is over, and there is more opportunity to travel and meet the natives, the style changes.  The book becomes more about the country and the problems it faces than the writer's issues with settling down in an unfamiliar environment.

Overall, Names for the Sea is a very good book, informative, thought-provoking and well written.  It's a shame that Moss was unable to stay for longer than one year, as more time spent in Iceland would probably have led to an even deeper understanding of the natives.  Of course, no matter how long you spend in a country, you're unlikely to uncover all of its secrets (after a decade in Australia, I'm not even close...).  In one of her classes at the university, Moss discusses travel writing with her students, telling them:

"Home... is the paper on which travel writes.  Travel writers are always writing home." p.110

The more I think about Names for the Sea, the more fitting this information becomes.  As much as the book is about its subject, it also says a lot about the writer...