Monday 26 September 2016

Film Freak - Christopher Fowler

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Let me introduce you to Christopher Fowler.  This is the second of his memoirs, the first (Paperboy) being about his childhood;  this starting in his late teens/early twenties, is about his love of film, particularly black and white English film and his involvement in the business.  His views on Hollywood are eye opening.  He and his business partner and friend, Jim, were involved in the business for many years and this book is a great read for film buffs and those, like me, who lived in London for the period it covers.  That doesn't mean I know as much as he does about film or about London, but I did enjoy the read.  A lot of laugh out louds, a lot of smiles, a touch of sadness, and right at the end, the solving of a mystery that had haunted me for years and years.

And let me just remind you, readers, that you are far more likely to know Mr Fowler as the author of the Bryant and May detective mysteries, which are fabulous reads - and who could not resist two old detectives who are named after a box of British matches?  Go on, seek them out!!

Wednesday 14 September 2016

Clematis - Madame Julia Correvon, and I want her!


clematis 'Madame Julia Correvon

Meet Madame Julia Correvon - and whilst I don't have her in the garden yet, I think I have found a spot.  We are having hardstanding paviors in our car parking spot, and when all is finished, I have about a foot square of new planting space at the end of an existing border. A very small brick built shed, never used by us, used to stand there, plus an assortment of shrubs which formed a sort of hedge which was only about four foot wide, facing the road.  That space is now big enough to hold the new style wheelie bins, of which we have 2, plus the foodstuff caddy and the box which holds glass.  The hardstanding paviours are laid on smashed up brick (from that little shed) and what I think in the trade is called "chippings".  

So what to put in that foot square of space? Clematis need cool roots, and I think it can send roots down into the bricks to stay cool, whilst having a nice topping of good soil and some pebbles on top.  That spot also does not get full sun until after noon in high summer.  It will grow up (I hope) some fencing which will sit at the back and side of the bins, and will eventually be seen from the road, which is lovely for passers by.  She can also be trained to go the other way behind a winter flowering Vibernum bodnantense "Dawn"and onwards along the fence.
 
The plants in the existing border are mostly red and pink, including the Vibernum.  There's a huge pink  peony which is very hit or miss because if it rains whilst it is starting to blossom it's finished.  But I love it too much to remove it, and in any case, in front of it grows crocosmia/monbretia (change of name and I can't remember which way!) Lucifer, which is a vibrant red.  There is another crocosmia/monbretia too, a lovely pale orange with a yellow eye.  Also in that border is a dark red (towards black at the end of it's bloom) rose, and  another shrub (sorry, name escapes me) which has white flowers in early spring, and black berries around now plus a silver birch on the corner.  And as it turns the corner, the border turns from red to orange and yellow.


Tuesday 13 September 2016

The Good Luck of Right Now - Matthew Quick

Reading Amazon reviews, I can see that this is definitely a Marmite book.  Some readers just don't get it, some don't want to get it and some just plain love it with a lot of views in between!



Bartholomew Neil is a special needs person.  You think?  Well, as each chapter of the book is a letter he's written to Richard Gere (the first few pages will tell you why), and as he is a 40 year old man who has always lived at home with his Mom, and has never had a job maybe that's right.  Or maybe it isn't.  He has spent some years nursing his mother, who has just died from cancer, when he writes his first letter to Richard Gere.  It is not long before people are trying to "help".  His local priest who is also a family friend, is bi-polar and after an event at church he moves in with Bartholomew to look after him.  It's soon clear that Father McNamee actually needs more help than Bartholomew, but at least the two of them can look after each other.  And then there is the social worker who needs to be helped herself and is of no use to Bartholomew - but receives help from him and from Father McNamee.  And then there is the girl at the library who he likes a lot but cannot bring himself to talk to - and her brother Max who he comes across at a therapy session, and who inserts the word "fuck" into every sentence he utters, sometimes more than once.

The title is rather special too.  It is his Mom's mantra.  She always believed that for every person enjoying bad luck, right that minute there was someone enjoying good luck.

So obviously there are some special needs all round and it is for you, the reader to work out who needs what the most.  I have enjoyed two of Matthew Quick's books already - The Silver Linings Playbook and Forgive me, Leonard Peacock and I enjoyed this just as much.  

Sunday 11 September 2016

The Painter - Peter Heller

Jim Stegner has lost a lot.  A daughter, two wives, time spent in prison..... and if he's not very careful he's going to loose a lot more.  And all because of a bully and a little mare.  When Jim comes across Dellwood beating the mare because he cannot get her into a horsebox, a kind of rage creeps up and he gets out of his truck and attacks the man, breaking his nose and drawing blood.  He's made an enemy.  He retrieves the mare and Dellwood and his companions drive off, whilst Jim waits for a friend with a horsebox to come and take the mare to safety.

That's all it takes for things to go wrong.  No, not right, things had always gone wrong for Jim Stegner, and he is still living the grief that came with some of it.  But he can still paint, and his paintings are rising in value.  Every single one he paints, he can sell.  And now, Dellwood is dead.

I loved the Dog Stars by Heller, a dystopian tale on my all time favourites list.  Although this one is not going on that list, doesn't mean it's a bad read.  Quite the opposite, but it's a different kind of book.  This is about a man desparately trying to overcome grief.  It's a tale of revenge.  It's a thriller.  All those things have been seamlessly put together and turned into a book I couldn't stop reading.  I'd call it a modern Western novel. 

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Monday 5 September 2016

All We Shall Know - Donal Ryan

From the twelfth week of her pregnancy, Melody Shee talks to her computer, recording all the things that got her to where she is currently. How the pregnancy came about first of all, as the child is not the child of her husband. And when she tells her husband, we begin to understand that her marriage had already turned messy, and why. We hear her innermost thoughts about the child, it's father, the best friend she lost along the way and the new friend she has made. It's heartbreaking to realise how she needs to punish herself and those around her. But for what? Did she do something so dreadful in her life that makes her so bitter and frightened and angry now?
From the back cover we have already been told that the father of the baby is Martin Toppy, a seventeen year old Traveller, and Melody is over thirty. She was teaching him to read and write.......
Descriptions of Traveller life may shock if you have no knowledge of their way of life - but those descriptions are necessary to make the reader understand the issues involved. The big surprise is that Donal Ryan is a man. A man, an author who is able to get into the mind of a woman. Colm Toibin can do this too - and it is no surprise that they are both Irish - the people who tell stories so well. I will be looking for more by this author - if he tells his other stories as well as this I need to read them.

[copy of my Amazon Vine review]

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Sunday 4 September 2016

The Grass is Singing - Doris Lessing









I got this book to read as part of a circle book club, and my heart sank.  I had never read any Doris Lessing although she was a particularly prolific author.  But I needed to give my comments and so I sat down to read.  What a revelation!  This, her first book, published in her early thirties, is an exploration into how the mind works when confronted with things it cannot cope with - but whatever it is about, it is the words and how each sentence is put together that gave me joy whilst reading a very dark tale.

Mary is young, single, living in a "girl's club" in a town in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the years before WW1.  She has fun, she works hard.  She's a shorthand typist and personal secretary, a job which she doesn't find difficult, and which gives her money to live on, for nice clothes, for cinema visits, and for generally enjoying life.  She has lots of friends, both female and male, and the weekends are usually taken up with picnics, swimming parties, or sports like the odd round of tennis.  All in all then, a good life until she overhears a conversation about herself by two friends.  Her life is turned around in that moment, and it is not long before she wants to marry.  She meets a shy farmer and within a year, having only met him a couple of times, they are wed and living on a small farm, hours away from the city.  This is her total undoing, and that of her husband Dick too.  Even though the first page tells the end of the story, I found myself wanting everything to work out well for both of them, knowing that it was never going to.

This is the second book in a month that I've read about poor whites in Africa (the other is reviewed in Aug 2016 a non-fiction - The Toe Rags) and with just two books, my understanding of white farmers on the African continent has grown enormously, and given me much food for thought.

Amazon reviewers are mixed in their praise (or not!) so this is a real Marmite book.  But I have to recommend it.  At only 2003 pages it is not a long read.  It's not a cheery read either but it's style is wonderful.  A joy to see a complex sentence that is so well put together  that it makes you want to read the next one.

The title, in case you are interested, comes from The Waste Land by T S Elliot -

 "In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel........"
 

Friday 2 September 2016

When things become a thing




Image result for cotton bolls
I found a funny comment this morning on a favourite blog.  Melissa's blog,  The Inspired Room,  has a show house this morning.  It's in Oregon, USA and amongst the comments that follow the posts someone has asked "when did cotton bolls become a thing?" because the interior designer has used cotton bolls instead of cut flowers in a couple of rooms.

I laughed because everything becomes a thing these days!  Pinterest,  Facebook et al will show you all sorts of things and of course you are free to use the pics and design your own interiors, get a new haircut,  hang some words on the wall, cook something new.  But probably the reason cotton bolls have become a thing is that Joanna Gaines of the TV programme Fixer Upper has them for sale in her Magnolia shop...... how the internet gets you everywhere, doesn't it?

But before you go, these pictures show you cotton in it's raw form.  This is what they look like before they turn into anything!
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Early One Morning - Virginia Baily

I was attracted to this novel purely by the cover (as I suppose this is meant to happen!) and it has very little about the contents on the b...