Serendipitous Overload

This is my review of Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper by Alexandra Harris.

I was troubled by the dilettantish nature of this book which seems to lack a clear aim. For the most part, the text flits about like a butterfly, drawn randomly from one alluring flower to the next.

The best aspect is the full colour photographs of 1930s paintings, in particular John Piper’s striking collages of British landscapes. I enjoyed Chapter 1 on artists like John Piper’s flirtation with abstract art, until his fascination with landscape won out . As his French contemporary Hélion observed, abstract art was proving to be a system “cracking at the seams….life budding mysteriously though it”. This would have made an informative chapter in, say, an analysis of abstract art in British painting, but the next chapter changes tack to the early use of concrete in apartment blocks. It soon sets the book’s pattern of being too superficial and lacking in context, for instance, there is no reference to important influences like Le Corbusier, nor to the future wave of brutalist concrete architecture of the 1960s-80s. Instead, Chapter 2 degenerates into scrappy sections on completely different topics, like Victorian pubs, so they are hard to read since they lack a coherent theme.

Thereafter, each chapter stands alone, covering some aspect of English life , mainly from the viewpoint of artists and writers in the 1930s. The wide-ranging topics include views on Victoriana, food, the state of English art in the broadest sense, the weather, village life, landscapes, or the influence of houses on artists, but all covered in a very rambling and disjointed fashion. If you are largely unfamiliar with the references, you are likely to feel overloaded and rather bored. If you have some prior knowledge you may well feel you would like to concentrate more on fewer topics. There is little regard to the social and economic context of this period of dramatic change. The focus is very much on the middle and upper classes living in the countryside or prosperous urban areas.

The chapters cannot even be called essays because they are often broken into shorter sections, further obviating the need for the author to develop a theme properly . For instance, Chapter 10 could have been an intriguing study of the landscape of 1930s Britain as captured by artists for the Shell-Mex advertisements intended to encourage new car-owners to use more petrol. In fact, this aspect is lost in a mass of verbiage with some kind of oblique connection to writing about, sculpting with regard to or drawing landscapes.

I found this book was only readable if I dipped into the odd section of interest. I was left enjoying the illustrations, but very irritated by the unfocused text. I agree with other reviewers who have regretted the lack of an objective and clear-sighted editor.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars


Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper

Modern Orwellian Nightmare

This is my review of Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick.

The title is an ironic take on the brainwashing of North Koreans to think that there is "nothing to envy" in other countries. Based on lengthy conversations with a handful of those who managed to escape to South Korea via China before the border was tightened up, this book provides a very convincing picture of life in the world's "last undiluted bastion of communism". It has defied expectation in surviving into the C21 even though the inefficient systems leave many people malnourished, forced to forage for weeds as food, and reduced to squatting blankly, staring straight ahead "as if they are waiting..for something to change". Behind the artificial showcase of the parts of Pyongyang that foreigners are allowed to see, life seems bleak indeed.

The book begins with the striking observation that viewed from a satellite by night, North Korea is "curiously lacking in light" owing to the inability to pay for electricity.

Making a mockery of communism, we learn how people have been classified as members of the "hostile class" and denied education and work opportunities if they have "tainted blood", which could simply be the result of having a father unlucky enough to have been brought from south of the border as a POW after the Korean War. Again contrary to pure Marxism, the head of state is regarded as an infallible god-like figure: people weep extravagantly at his death out of fear of failure to conform to the expected tide of grief, and perhaps some still believe the idea that he might return to life if they cry hard enough.

We sense the continual risk of being denounced and sent to a prison for some minor offence, which could include failing to keep sufficiently clean the obligatory pictures of Kim Il-Sung or Kim Jong-il, or daring to listen to South Korean television – inspectors come to check you have not removed the paper tape over the tuning buttons, but a long thin sewing needle may serve to twiddle them, such is human ingenuity when persecuted. Then there is the lunacy of a state being unable to provide its people with basic food, but still trying to prevent them from setting up their own private enterprise which will save them from starving. Hopefully things are beginning to change, marked by a recent protest, "Give us food or let us trade!"

The author is good on people's dawning realisation of the extent to which they have been misled, and also on exactly how some people managed to escape to South Korea and the problems of adjustment they have faced there – not least the guilt over punishment of relatives left behind.

The only aspect of the book which troubled me was the embroidery of memories to create dialogues and inner thoughts which must be in part fictionalised. The basic details are too fascinating for this to be necessary. The American journalese also grates at times, and an index would have been useful but overall this is a very readable book on an important theme.

It left me ashamed of my comfortable life, and much more sympathetic towards economic migrants, with respect for their resilience.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea

“The Quality of Mercy” by Barry Unsworth – Quality not strained

This is my review of The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth.

Although it can stand alone, this excellent historical novel is a sequel to the Booker Prize Winner, “Sacred Hunger” which it is advisable to read first.

Set mainly in the London of 1767 and a Durham coastal mining village, there are four main plot strands which gradually interweave. The intense and somewhat humourless banker Erasmus Kemp is bent on bringing to trial in London the mutineers who made off with his father’s ship, thus reducing him to financial ruin and suicide. Frederick Ashton, a wealthy man who finds the cause of anti-slavery gives meaning to his life, is equally determined to get the sailors acquitted on the grounds that they were driven to violence by revulsion over the practice of throwing sick slaves overboard to maximise insurance claims. Sullivan, an Irish fiddler press-ganged onto the ill-fated ship has managed to escape from gaol before the trial, and resolves to travel north to Durham to fulfil a pledge to explain to the family of a dead friend how he came to die after the mutiny. This family are the Bordens, headed by James who can barely repress his frustration over being forced to work underground, scarcely seeing the sunlight, and who dreams of buying a sheltered plot in the dene, a beautiful wooded ravine near the village. These main characters together with Frederick’s spirited sister Jane, and James’s son Michael are all developed very fully: Unsworth’s striking observations on human nature are what make the book exceptional.

This well-paced and skilfully plotted novel with close attention to period detail provides a vivid insight into life during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, when coalmines tended to have long galleries rather than deep shafts. Men swung down the shaft on ropes, with children on the their knees. Boys as young as seven worked for hours opening trapdoors to ventilate the mines, progressing to pulling heavy wooden containers loaded with coal. Partly through some lively discussions and absorbing court scenes, the importance of another form of exploitation, black slavery linked to the sugar trade, in the growth of prosperity of England at the time is also made very clear. Then there is the acceptance of the class structure in which rich and poor were breeds apart, although there were signs of change as the merchant class began to narrow the gap with the aristocrats, who took their wealth too much for granted, and a few workers could advance through ability and good fortune. It is hard to avoid uncomfortable parallels between the casual acceptance of injustice then and now, when we assume that we are more democratic and enlightened.

The story is also realistic in being a blend of good and harsh fortune. This is demonstrated most clearly in the alternating luck of Sullivan, who comes by money one minute (perhaps dishonestly) only to be robbed the next, or is locked up in the workhouse but then transported free to the next county which is his final destination. Overall, often through chance or fate, some characters come to a sad end while others flourish. Unsworth does not deal in sentimental happy endings for all those for whom he has aroused your sympathy, but neither is he ever bleak or depressing, just moving and thought-provoking.

As a writer in his eighties, Unsworth’s wisdom shines through – the results of a lifetime of reflection. The no doubt deliberately slightly oldfashioned, flowing and literary style, fits well with the period covered, although the dialect of the Durham miners also rings true, perhaps because Unsworth was born there.

To leave the last word to the illiterate Sullivan,

“It is the power of imaginin’ that makes a man stand out, an’ it is rarer than you might think, it is similar to the power of music.”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars


The Quality of Mercy
 

Riveting 30 Hours

This is my review of The Killing – Series 1 and 2 [DVD].

These thirty hours of riveting film cover two exciting, pacy thrillers, with each episode ending on a cliffhanger which lures you straight on the next one.

It is easy to grasp the appeal of detective Sarah Lund, obsessively focused on solving the puzzle of brutal murders at the cost of her personal life, and wonderfully liberated in true Scandinavian style from any concerns about her appearance, or need to use any feminine wiles to achieve her ends. In typical small touches of humour, she knocks cartons of coffee over her colleague's desk, or misinterprets her mother's horror as she thoughtlessly waves around graphic photos of murder victims during one of the phone calls that always seem too urgent to be left to a more suitable time.

What sets the series apart is the gradual revelation of the main characters' personalities, and the development of their relationships. The best example of this for me was grieving of the couple who lose their teenage daughter in Series 1, as they move very convincingly through the various stages of stunned disbelief, anger and desire for revenge, sometimes blaming each other to the point of estrangement.

In both series, the murders soon develop a political angle. The political shenanigans are hugely entertaining in their own right. If Danish politics can be portrayed as so corrupt and devious, what hope for the rest of us?

My main reservations, which do not seem widely shared, are that Series 2, with "only" ten episodes is too condensed, which can make it hard to keep track of all the plot twists and leaves too little time for the in depth emotional development we see in Series 1. Perhaps the producers needed to take more account of the needs of viewers trying to read subtitles alongside observing every fine detail.

Although I admire the level of depth that leaves everyone damaged in some way by events and some questions unanswered, I think there are too many flaws – such as why a trained assassin would shoot someone several times in the torso, rather than once in the head? (Need to avoid spoilers precludes other better examples).

The nagging loose ends may be the "downside" of the author writing one step ahead of the filming, the plus side being the vitality and spontaneity of many scenes. Also, of course, the slight sense of "let down" at the end of Series 2 may be withdrawal symptoms after all that excitement. At least there is Series 3 to anticipate!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

The Killing – Series 1 and 2 [DVD]

And then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out

This is my review of Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi.

This novel demonstrates why my previous policy of avoiding novels translated into English is a mistake. In the same way, to assume that such a short, very readable novel must be lightweight is another error.

Impeccably translated from Italian, this subtly humorous story with a growing underlying sense of menace captures Lisbon in the summer heat of 1938, as Portugal slides into fascist dictatorship on the coattails of its aggressive neighbour, Spain, under the influence of Franco.

Punctuated with the refrain, "Pereira maintains", this is the testimony of a journalist employed in a sinecure to produce the new weekly cultural page for a small newspaper, "The Lisboa". Sunk into a dull routine, overweight and unhealthy, Pereira's life revolves around eating "omelettes aux fines herbes", drinking sugary lemonade at the Cafe Orchidea, and communing with a photograph of his dead wife.

Since he is a humane man with principles, he is gradually forced out of his ostrichlike state by the examples of repression which become increasingly hard to ignore. A carter is murdered by the police for being a socialist, but staff on "The Lisboa" are too scared to report the story in the boss's absence: information on the real state of affairs has to be gleaned from listening to the BBC or obtaining a foreign newspaper. An attractive woman whom Pereira meets on a train confides that she is planning emigration to the US, because she is Jewish. The office telephone system is altered without warning so that all calls come through the nosy female caretaker, clearly a police spy. Yet the main trigger for what a sympathetic doctor calls the "rise of a new ruling ego" in Pereira is the youthful political idealism of a young couple he meets by chance and drifts into helping, with fateful consequences.

Tightly plotted, despite its misleadingly gentle rhythm, the book builds up to a dramatic and effective climax. Perhaps the "last straw" that drives Pereira to take a stand is the extension of censorship and bigotry even to his little page, where he finds himself no longer free to publish his translations of foreign authors, after a piece by Alphonse Daudet is seen by the philistines in power as anti the Germans who are propping up the corrupt Portuguese regime.

This is one of the few novels I would like to retain and reread again, to enjoy all the allusions and observations which you may miss on a first reading in the pressing need to know what happens.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

Pereira Maintains

Les émotifs anonymes – Romantics Anonymous

This is my review of Les émotifs anonymes (FR IMPORT).

Titled “Romantics Anonymous” in English, this short film introduces us to Jean-René, the chronically shy owner of a failing chocolate factory who pays regular visits to a shrink in an attempt to overcome his inability to relate to others. He hires Angélique, a hypersensitive young woman, as a totally unsuitable sales rep, not realising that she possesses a rare talent for making irresistible chocolates which can save his business. Unable to cope with personal recognition and being the centre of attention, she has managed to pass herself off as a mere go-between ferrying what have become widely celebrated chocolates made by an imaginary elusive “hermit” to a confectioner who is “in” on her secret but whose death has forced her to seek another job.

In this short, lightweight comedy, much of the humour revolves around Jean-René trying to fulfil basic tasks to develop his social skills: steeling himself to touch people, or to take Angelique out for a meal. We realise why he brings a suitcase to the restaurant and hides it in the gents: he needs to rush off every few minutes to change his shirt, as he is “burning up” over the stress of the meeting.

Similarly, we see Angélique taking her problems to a support group full of ironical situations, such as when the girl who “can’t say no” proudly tells the others that she has managed to resist a man’s advances, only for it to become sadly apparent that she has destroyed what sounds like a genuine relationship which she should have encouraged.

The incidents are too exaggerated for anyone to take offence over laughing at what is in fact a real problem for many people. Overall, the film is quite well-made, and it is all “wonderfully French” apart from the jarring, glaringly inappropriate English pop music inserted to cover some scenes.

Can Jean-René overcome his gaucheness sufficiently to stop driving Angélique away because she thinks she has “done something wrong”? Can two such emotional people find happiness together? The outcome is not really in doubt. If it all sounds too trivial, you can at least take the opportunity to practise your French comprehension.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars


Les émotifs anonymes (FR IMPORT)

Condensed Cream

This is my review of The Killing: The Complete Season 2 [DVD] [2009].

A latecomer to this series, I soon grasped the appeal of Sarah Lund, obsessively bent on solving the puzzle of brutal murders at the cost of her personal life, and wonderfully liberated in true Scandinavian style from any concerns about her appearance, or need to use feminine wiles to get her way. In typical small touches of humour, she knocks cartons of coffee over her colleague's desk, or misinterprets her mother's horror as she thoughtlessly waves around graphic photos of murder victims during one of the phone calls that always seem too urgent to be left to a more suitable time.

The series continues to stand apart by working on several levels and being more than just an exciting, tense, and pacy thriller. This is partly through the importance attached to developing the complex personalities and realistic, shifting relationships. Here we have the focus on the disturbed soldier Raben, who may have been incarcerated in a mental asylum to prevent his revealing the politically inconvenient facts of an atrocity against civilians in Afghanistan. His attempts to keep in contact with his wife and child, the strains on her in trying to remain true to him and the ambiguous role of her father, also in the military, all make for moving drama.

We have the usual political shenanigans, at times now bordering on farce. If Denmark has so much corruption and duplicity in high places, what hope for the rest of us? There is huge entertainment value in the continually grazing, "I've had enough sweets so I'll eat a pear", ball-bouncing, new Minister Buch, who is cleverer than he looks, but may not be a match for more ruthless operators.

If Series 2 suffers in comparison with its forerunner, it is because, being half the length but if anything more complicated, it is too condensed. This makes it hard to follow some of the labrynthine plot twists delivered very fast in short, rapidly changing scenes. Some of the emotional intensity also gets lost in this quickfire approach. Perhaps the producers needed to take more account of the needs of viewers trying to read subtitles alongside observing every fine detail.

A story in which everyone is damaged in some way by events and some points are left unresolved may be marks of a great drama. But this does not excuse flaws in the plot – such as why a trained assassin would shoot someone several times in the torso, rather than once in the head? (Need to avoid spoilers precludes other better examples).

Perhaps it is too much to expect even "The Killing" to avoid the pitfalls of such a complicated plot with so many red herrings that the viewer is left with too many frustrated, "But why and what about?" questions at the end. This may be the "downside" of the author writing one step ahead of the filming, the plus side being the vitality and spontaneity of many scenes.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

The Killing: The Complete Season 2 [DVD] [2009]

Raw Deal

This is my review of Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos.

This is a good translation from the original Spanish of a well-written novella from the viewpoint of a young Mexican boy. Tochtli, whose father is a drug baron. For obvious reasons, Tochtli lives in a bizarre heavily-guarded world of obscene luxury, and brutal amorality, where his father allows him to see men being tortured, as part of ensuring he grows up to be suitably macho, and Tochtli casually announces that the corpses of those who have fallen foul of his father end up being fed to the lions and tiger kept in cages in the garden. The boy is obsessed with death, body parts and the number of bullets needed to kill people, according to the organ damaged. His corrupted child's perception of the world is darkly tragicomical, his misreading of situations, such as the visits of a prostitute for his father, sometimes amusing, his casual acceptance of violence and lack of "normal" feeling are often shocking although understandable.

This is an imaginative but bleak parody of the predicament of a child, subject to a distorted socialisation, deprived of the company of other children so unable to relate to them, indulged by having his every material whim satisfied, even to the extent of being taken to Liberia to capture a pair of the pygmy hippopotami with which he has become obsessed, bored by the narrow repetition of his daily life. His only real moment of closeness with his father is when the latter says that one day Tochtli will have to kill him to save his honour i.e from gaol, like a samurai in one of the violent films they love to watch.

Something of a "one trick pony" in the essential point made, the book can be read too quickly for you to worry that you may have wasted your time.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Down the Rabbit Hole

A Soft-centred Heart of Darkness

This is my review of State of Wonder by Ann Patchett.

The reputation of the award-winning "Bel Canto" inspired me to read this novel.

The theme is promising. Marina, a doctor turned researcher for Vogel, a US pharmaceuticals manufacturer, is sent to Brazil to persuade the eccentric Dr. Svenson to submit details of her progress on what could be an important new fertility drug, based on studies with the remote Lakashi tribe where women seem capable of childbirth well into old age. Marina has also promised to find out more about the death of Anders, the colleague who was sent on the same mission but died of a fever in the jungle.

It is soon clear that this is by design a slow-paced book focused on detailed descriptions of people's feeling and interactions, such as the painful business of telling Karen Anders that her husband has died and been buried somewhere in the depths of the Brazilian rainforest, leaving her with three young children. There is also a strong evocation of place, such as the unbearable heat of Manaus, and the vast, anonymous scale of the rainforest, teeming with unfamiliar and often hostile life, so that Marina realises she has crossed the line away from civilisation not on leaving Manaus, but when penetrating the solid line of undifferentiated trees close-packed along the banks of a remote tributary.

There are a few good scenes, as when Marina, mistaken for a native because of her half-Indian parentage, consents to dance with the locals because it is "somehow less humiliating, less disrespectful" to do this than simply to stand with the other tourists watching them.

However, by Chapter 6 I began to consider giving up, and only motivated myself to read on by analysing the deficiencies in the style: the plywood cast of minor characters, the often stilted dialogue, the wordy descriptions which at times seem either banal or do not quite ring true.

Two-thirds in, the plot picks up with a startling revelation which I failed to anticipate, and then builds up to a satisfying climax which redeems the book, despite a few flaws. In the process, it raises, although does not explore in any depth, some interesting social and ethical issues. Are the researchers exploiting the natives, or rediscovering from them a better way of living, close to nature, accepting fate in the form of the attendant risks from poisonous snakes or lack of access to medicines?

Overall verdict: interesting plot, limited, soft-centred style, inadequate to the task.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

State of Wonder

More of a Shallow Blue Lake

This is my review of The Deep Blue Sea [2011] [DVD].

Although I was expecting a brittle and dated unhappy love affair, this remake of Rattigan's play proves quite moving up to a point. Set around 1950, the film starts with the attempted suicide of Hester Collyer, privileged wife of a high court judge who has sacrificed her reputation and material comforts to live in a dreary flat with Freddie, a former wartime pilot who beneath his charming veneer is finding it hard to adjust to a mundane life in civvy street .

The plot gradually reveals through a series of flashbacks how Hester has been reduced to despair. At first, it is hard to understand how this beautiful young woman could have married such a stiff man as William Collyer, not to mention the fact he is old enough to be her father. Then we wonder how such a cultured woman can be so infatuated with a man like Freddie who, apart from his thoughtless neglect of her, prefers downing pints and singing along in a working class pub to visiting an art gallery with her or listening to classical music. Is it just a question of passion and lust, applied through fate to a man who cannot make her happy in the long-term?

Although acted with great sensitivity by Rachel Weisz, Hester is an odd mixture of sophisticated self-possession and neediness, and comes across at times as just a "poor little rich girl". By contrast, the two men, ably played by Simon Russell Beale and newcomer Tom Hiddleston reveal complex reactions in a way that eventually arouses as much, if not more, sympathy.

The set plays close attention to period detail, although the Barber score at the beginning is too loud and intrusive, as is too often the case with films, and the flashback to people taking refuge in an underground station during the Blitz is too much of a romanticised tableau.

A modern version of the theme of a married woman forming a passionate physical attachment to an "unsuitable" man is covered with more depth and subtlety in "Leaving", the French drama starring Kristin Scott Thomas. "The Deep Blue Sea" left me feeling rather sad, but a little dissatisfied as if Rattigan's drama had not achieved its potential.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

The Deep Blue Sea [2011] [DVD]