Books

A Divided Nation

This is my review of The Man on Devil’s Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France by Ruth Harris.

It is hard to identify a modern event which has had as much impact on society as the trials and imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus on what we now believe to be a trumped up espionage charge of relative insignificance. Having read recently Piers Paul Read's very detailed yet clear and moving account of this, from the arrest of Dreyfus in 1894 to his pardon and reinstatement in the army in 1906, I turned to Ruth Harris for a wider analysis of Dreyfusards versus anti-Dreyfusards.

In the promising introduction, Harris emphasises how families were divided by the Dreyfus affair, with people on both sides often holding contradictory and conflicting views about everything except the innocence or guilt of the man at the heart of it all, or at least his right to a retrial or declaration of innocence. The author presents "two Frances" fighting "for the nation's soul": on one hand, the Dreyfusards, mainly republicans, Protestants, or socialists, upholding Truth and Justice in their demands for a retrial versus the anti-Dreyfusards, often Catholic, anti-semitic, with monarchist sympathies, champions of Tradition and Honour, either convinced of the guilt of Dreyfus or prepared to sacrifice him rather than overthrow the ruling of a military court when they were concerned to support and build up the army after the humiliation of defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

I do not mind that only brief sections of this book are devoted to Dreyfus himself. I admire the author's depth of research and evident deep knowledge, and perhaps, with 137 pages of notes and bibliography, this is not intended for a general reader. Much as I wanted to get absorbed, I found the reading of this excessively hard going. There is a surfeit of detail in an indigestible form, made worse by a fragmentation of information e.g. on the anti-Dreyfusard Maurice Barrès, and the inclusion of specialist terms with inadequate explanation for a non-expert e.g. page 137 (paperback version) references to revolutionary Blanquists and revanchists from the Ligue de la patrie française. In short, there is a failure to distinguish clear, major points from a morass of over-condensed detail on too many characters and attitudes.

I would like to find another book on this of period of French history, but was forced to the disappointed conclusion that it was not worth the expenditure of time to plough through this, referring to other sources for clarification on the way.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

The Man on Devil’s Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France

A good way to start

This is my review of TALK RUSSIAN (BOOK & CDS) NEW EDITION by Georgina Martin,Svetlana Furlong.

This course follows a standard format which I have already used for Italian. It is an attractive and accessible format, and I have not found a better way of starting a language quite cheaply, although I have a few complaints. If you have the discipline to work hard at the exercises, moving on to avoid getting bogged down but repeating them until the knowledge is embedded, you can learn a good deal from this book.

Bearing in mind the difficulty for an English speaker of learning the Russian alphabet, the approach used here is probably as good as any: showing the alphabet in full, but highlighting a few letters to learn at a time, starting with the easiest. It was probably a sensible decision to focus on the printed form of Russian and invite students to jot down the meanings of word in English, but I would have liked a lesson devoted to writing in Russian.

Again, the complexities of grammar are probably skirted round quite well at this basic stage e.g. saying that some words like "open" and "closed" must agree with the words they describe, and showing whether words are masculine, feminine or neuter.

I was a bit irritated by the need to keep flipping to the back to check the answers to exercises. I suppose this forces the student to make a real effort to answer without cheating, and it would probably add to the production cost to integrate answers clearly into the questions and tasks.

My main criticism is that I would like every Russian word or phrase in the booklet to be recorded for practice on the CD e.g. on page 52, a list of facilities in a town centre like supermarket or chemist is left for you to work out, possibly using the index, which is fine, but the words are not spoken for you to hear. Cutting out the repetitive jingle would give more space on the CD for this!

Also, some of the conversations are quite fast, which is good practice, but I would like a greater number of them to provide more opportunities to develop competence e.g. more examples of different types of drink you might order, more chance to practise numbers which I find quite hard, more opportunities to listen and talk about the things you may really need like directions, use of public transport, situations in hotels and restaurants.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

TALK RUSSIAN (BOOK & CDS) NEW EDITION

When least is most

This is my review of Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald.

At first, “Offshore” seems like a farcical soap opera involving an eccentric little community of barge-dwellers on the Thames near Blackheath Bridge in the early 1960s. Penelope Fitzgerald’s own experience of living on a houseboat which sank gives her vivid descriptions of changing tides, varying qualities of mud, and parts of boats an authentic air. When “amiable young” Maurice realises that self-appointed leader Richard calls all residents by the names of their boats, he quickly gives “Dondeschiepolschuygen IV” his own name. This quirky bit of humour along with some much more subtle, wry examples soon had me hooked along with the author’s gift for conveying implicitly a great deal about her characters’ situations and personalities. I also enjoyed her launches into unexpected little scenes, as when the child Tilly leaps between abandoned objects precariously stranded in the river mud at low tide to prise out examples of beautiful antique tiles which she and her sister can sell to buy Cliff Richards records at the local Woolworths.

From the outset, the author distances herself a little from the barge-dwellers to observe them as “creatures neither of firm land nor water” who “would have liked to be more respectable than they were… but a certain failure to be like other people caused them to sink back with so much else that drifted or was washed up into the mud moorings”. This approach reduces our own sense of involvement with the characters, so we tend to regard them as mere sources of entertainment. By the middle, I started to get a little bored with them and to think, wrongly, that having established her cast, the author was drifting on the ebb tide with little plot in mind. Some details feel a bit false, like the reference to two “family planning shops” close together in the same high street (doesn’t sound right for 1961-2). At six, Tilly, seems far too articulate and knowing, but I later concluded that, with her own highly educated and perhaps somewhat unorthodox and rarified background, Penelope Fitzgerald may indeed have known or even produced children as precocious as this.

As the book worked up to an ending which shocks you with its abruptness, but on reflection seems the most appropriate one possible, I began to see how the threads of the story all prove to have a purpose, link and mesh tightly together. In the process, my sympathy for the characters grew. Like other readers, and unaware from my kindle of the brevity of the book, I made the mistake of reading too fast, rather than savour the striking prose and non sequiturs which hit home if you spend a little time on them.

This book is an acquired taste, but, although it might now seem too dated to do so, I can well understand why it won the Booker Prize in 1979.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

Offshore

Grasshopping

This is my review of The Fateful Year: England 1914 by Mark Bostridge.

Clearly written to tie in with the centenary of the outbreak of World War 1, “The Fateful Year England 1914” reminds me as regards format of Bill Bryson’s “One Summer: America 1927”. The “helicopter” approach may surprise you with all the events that were occurring simultaneously, although the author’s selection is inevitably somewhat arbitrary. Everyone is likely to learn something different from the book: in my case, about the “strike schools” where, influenced by the high level of industrial unrest, pupils protested against dogmatic and repressive school boards or about the slashing of “The Rokeby Venus” along with other works of art by militant suffragettes. The photographs of the period are also interesting.

On the other hand, I found the coverage too fragmented and superficial. The decision to devote an early chapter to a highly publicised murder of the day struck me as a rather crude and unnecessary hook (Bryson does the same), whereas the complex but less exciting topic of resistance to Irish Home Rule was so condensed as to be hard to follow. The chapter “Premonitions” is particularly bitty, in its “catch all” attempt to skate over evidence of increased anti-German feeling, fed by the press and Erskine Childers’ “The Riddle of the Sands”’, Hardy’s anti-war “Channel-Firing” poem, Holst’s composing of “Mars, The Bringer of War” and the aggression of the Vorticists. The seven chapters of Section 3 on the effects of the war in England are the most cohesive and fully developed, but out of kilter with the rest of the format.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

The Fateful Year: England 1914

Satisfying need and greed

This is my review of India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation by Oliver Balch.

Themed under the headings of Enterprise, Aspiration and Change, the ten chapters of interviews with a wide range of Indians can be picked and mixed in any order. With the stated “overarching goal..to gain a flavour of the place… the approach is unapologetically subjective” and anecdotal. In this, the author succeeds, but is it enough? I admire Balch’s enthusiasm and confidence, but found myself crying out for more context and analysis, as I searched for nuggets of information in the often banal padding and attempts to showcase Balch’s budding skills as a journalist.

Some of the least likely chapters are the best, as in “Actor Prepares” where the author tracks down Naval, the wannabee Bollywood director who has broken with tradition by giving up the course financed by his father, without telling him. In the process, Balch describes the urban tragedy of the hideous, jerry-built concrete housing blocks in unfinished suburbs where recent migrants to Mumbai are crammed without the money or knowhow to equip themselves adequately.

After visiting the artificial bubble of a western style shopping mall, which girls can only attend chaperoned or with friends, Bauch interviews the retail millionaire who feels that aspiration levels, even amongst the poor of India, are now too high to halt the growing tide of consumption: “material things are rewards for performance”. Can Gandhi’s opposing philosophy of the importance of inner peace and harmony survive against this? It is interesting to read how the ingenious poor of India are beginning to set about achieving their ends. There is the “microfinance” (controversial in view of the interest rates levied) which enables groups of women in the slums to borrow money for small-scale activities, guaranteeing repayments for each other as necessary. Similarly, in remote villages off the beaten track, it is again women who operate like “Avon ladies” selling small packets and jars of cleaning agents. When asked if she is happy with her purchases, an old lady gives the telling response, “Before, we washed our dishes with ash”.

On page 250, a rare piece of analysis asserts, “India is travelling at multiple speeds as in multiple directions. New India is a story of fits and starts, not linear progression.” And in the conclusion: “India is too diverse, too full of paradoxes, too confident ever to be homogenised” or swallowed up by global capitalism. But is this too simplistic? India is clearly in transition, with the poverty of the majority highlighted in the process: state-funded space research versus stagnant villages and mushrooming slums in filthy, lung-searing, gridlocked cities. Will the sheer scale of the economy create such pressures of pollution and instability that India plays a major part in the destruction of our global civilisation as we know it? “India Rising” never probes as deeply as this.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation

No kinder people and no crueler

This is my review of For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.

Idealistic American Robert Jordan has joined an International Brigade fighting the fascists in 1930s Spain, although this means accepting orders from Russian Communists. He is ordered to destroy a bridge in the mountains, despite the lack of resources and an effective communication system. Can he trust Pablo, the brutal, now disillusioned leader of the republican guerrilla group on whom he must rely?

Although Hemingway was clearly excited by the risk-taking and violence of battle and bullfighting, and there are many tense moments in this novel, you may be disappointed if a pure action thriller is what you have in mind. The density of the prose, with the constant switches of thought, new ideas and unusual modes of expression slow the reader down, even at the moments when the suspense drives you to keep turning the pages.

Drawing on his first-hand experience as a journalist covering the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway was keen to explore it from many angles, such as the incompetence of officers at all levels, or the fact that committing atrocities was not confined to the fascists. The female guerrilla Pilar (who, despite being tough, takes on the cooking), describes in vivid detail how all the men of property in a captured town were assumed to be fascist and forced across the square over a precipice: it is a shock to learn that this was based on real events in the now picturesque tourist centre of Ronda. Hemingway attributes Spanish violence to the fact `this was the only country the reformation never reached…Forgiveness is a Christian idea and Spain has never been a Christian country'.

Hemingway also takes Robert into repetitious stream-of-consciousness reveries over the meaning of life, and how best to spend what may be one's last three days. My idea of Hemingway as the master of the minimalist, pared-down style was shattered by the wearisome detail of many descriptions, from eating a sandwich with onions to constructing a makeshift bed or loading a gun. I grew tired of Robert running his hand through the `wheatfield' of his lover Maria's cropped hair. The frequent references to drinking wine, whisky and absinthe are also a bit repetitive, perhaps reflecting Hemingway's own reputation as a heavy drinker. Sometimes, the great outpouring of words, in particular hyphenated adjectives like `empty-calm' reminds me of Dylan Thomas and is perhaps the product of a creativity loosened by alcohol.

In a dialogue that is often amusing, the speech of the guerrillas is very odd, a stilted style of remarkable sophistication, peppered with `thees' and `thous'. Can you imagine a gypsy saying, `Thou art a veritable phenomenon'? Then there is the exaggerated blasphemy, `I obscenity in the milk of my shame', oaths at times shortened to `Thy mother!'

This is a masterpiece, if a little dated, as in the submissive character of Maria, and despite passages of violence which are hard to stomach. Most poignant of all is the knowledge that all this courage and sacrifice were in vain since the republicans lost.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

For Whom The Bell Tolls

Un Secret by Philippe Grimbert: Therapeutic autobiography outweighs fictional aspect

This is my review of Un secret (Ldp Litterature) by Philippe Grimbert.

Growing up in Paris just after World War 2, a sickly only child imagines having the kind of athletic, successful brother in whom his father could have taken pride. Keen to integrate into French society, to the extent of changing “Grinberg” to “Grimbert”, his Jewish parents ironically conform to an Aryan stereotype of physical beauty and fitness. It is not until his mid-teens that the narrator learns “a secret”, which dramatically alters his perception of his family.

Based on a true story, although you have to research this fact for yourself, it presents a poignant, at times harrowing, situation, perhaps too short on detail for a simple autobiography. Grimbert is creative to the extent of imagining two alternative paths by which his parents met, fell in love and married. He imagines them on one hand living relatively unscathed through the Nazi occupation of France, on the other suffering the ignominy of having to wear yellow stars and seeking escape to the “Zone Libre”. He also chooses to change the identity of the person who reveals the secret to him.

Although I admired the stark brevity of his style, and appreciated the full horror of the family tragedy, some aspects disappointed me. Grimbert does not feel the need to develop the personalities of his parents’ relatives, so they remain a sometimes confusing set of names. The story is based on a large amount of “telling” of events, with little revelation through dialogue or acting out of scenes. In the process, a good deal of potential drama is left untapped.

So, I rate it highly not as a piece of fiction but rather as a mixture of autobiography and therapeutic exercise by a man whose experience of psychological trauma in his own family prompted him to become a psychoanalyst as an adult. This story lends itself to study at school to enable teenagers to understand moral dilemmas particularly in Nazi-occupied France

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

More Enid Blyton than Raymond Chandler

This is my review of L’Absence De L’ogre by Dominique Sylvain.

The mysterious death of a rock singer in the Parisian parc Montsouris seems to have some connection with the plan to sell off a convent as luxury apartments. Although his motivation is unclear, suspicion falls on the "absent ogre", a chainsaw-toting gardener and sometime friend of American Ingrid Diesel, with the rather implausible occupations of masseuse and striptease artist. Her attempts to solve the crime are aided by her wine-guzzling retired detective friend Lola Jost, with whom she has worked in earlier novels, but are a constant irritant for Sacha Duguin, the driven detective who finds it hard to delegate, yet is of course irresistibly attracted to the feisty Ingrid. A nostalgic thread runs through all this in the form of extracts from the journal of the wandering C18 botanist who stocked the convent garden, the wonderfully named Louis-Guillaume Giblet de Montfaury.

The author Dominique Sylvain is very popular in France, and I certainly found the book good for improving my knowledge of French idioms, clichés and "argot". I managed to avoid confusion by noting down the names and roles of all the characters as I met them. However, I found the plot quite boring. The book is rambling and corny, with too many stereotypes, too much "telling", too little development of some key characters and several implausible links in the clunky chain of events.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

L’Absence De L’ogre

Myths of our time

This is my review of Camus: “L’Etranger” and “La Chute” (Critical Guides to French Texts) by Rosemarie Jones.

Rosemarie Jones casts an analytical and academic eye over these two famous works to produce a very accessible book that can be scanned quite quickly, although some of the “deeper” passages require closer reading, probably several times to reflect on exactly what Camus was trying to convey in these novels. Even the spare and minimalist “L’Etranger” can be read on several levels, the more complex and satirical “La Chute” even more so.

This slim volume has helped me to understand these two works. I think it would be very useful for exam purposes. My only reservation is that I would have liked a little more of the context in terms of the influence of Camus’s life and thinking.

The price of around £11 seems a bit steep, but I suppose is inevitable for a specialised text book.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars


Camus: “L’Etranger” and “La Chute” (Critical Guides to French Texts)

Not safe in one’s mind

This is my review of The Lie by Helen Dunmore.

For the centenary marking the outbreak of the Great War, Helen Dunmore has developed one of the few remaining neglected themes: the aftermath of the return from the trenches. Bright working class Cornishman Daniel is already an outsider in that he has spent his childhood playing with the children of a local landowner. Too poor to attend grammar school, he is self taught from secretly borrowing books from the wealthy man's library. Outwardly uninjured but destitute, he is allowed to squat on the neglected land of the elderly Mary Paxton. In his rural solitude, Daniel is continually haunted by the presence of his childhood friend Frederick, killed at the Front, and he is prey to the panic attacks and irrational urges to commit acts of violence that inevitably arouse fear and rejection in those ignorant of either traumatic stress disorder or the sheer hell of trench warfare, that is, virtually everyone. What could be an unbearably sad story is transformed by the writer's skill in enabling the reader to feel a strong empathy with Daniel and to understand his attitude to life and the behaviour that deviates from the norms of his society, because of what he has experienced.

For me, this is a near perfect novel in style, structure, pace and meaning. My only slight reservation is that I think Dunmore goes on a bit about the central heating system – I suppose meant to be analogous to underground military tunnels.

Deceptively simple with a strong narrative drive and tight structure, the tale is interwoven skilfully with frequent flashbacks to Daniel's childhood and life as a soldier. I was also very taken by the tragically ludicrous bits of advice for soldiers culled from old army training manuals (I believe) for insertion at the start of each chapter. For instance, measures to prevent the disease of "trench foot" caused by standing in cold water and mud include: "taking every opportunity to have.. the feet dried, well rubbed and dry socks (of which each man should carry a pair) put on".

Despite knowing that I should be taking my time over the author's telling insights and striking descriptions, sparely poetic, of the Cornish landscape, I felt an exorable drive on to the ending, knowing that "the lie" Daniel has told to satisfy the narrow conventions of his society must be exposed: "The man has penance done, and penance more will do". There is of course another lie in the false or confused basis on which so many young men went to die in the first place.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

The Lie