The President's Hat - Antoine Laurain

Ah!  a French author!  Don't turn away.... for if you have anything against foreign authors, you may miss a trick.  This short novel (208 pages) just tells you the story of a hat.  Not exciting? Not romantic?  Not breathtaking?  Well..... that's right, but let's have a closer look.

Francois Mitterrand, president of France in the 1980s, out for supper at a Paris restaurant with two colleagues one night, leaves his hat behind in error.  Daniel Mercier had been sitting at the next table, not quite a guest at the table, but near enough to follow the conversation and to realise that when Mitterrand leaves, the hat stays.  It seems that fate has dealt a good hand to Daniel, for when he puts the hat on his head he feels different, and it's not long before he begins to act in an entirely different way.

The hat will not stay with Daniel, it has several more heads to sit on, but every wearer appreciates that it changes their life in some way.  Sometimes it's a huge change, sometimes just something that needed a little nudge.  It's a wonderful little novel, tells you a lot about human nature in all it's guises, including human failings,  I loved all the characters once they had got the hat on, my especial favourite was the lovely Peirre Aslan, perfume "nose" who had lost his skill after a long period of depression.

I think you might enjoy this, it's a little different, and good because of that. Certainly it's a marmite book.  I had a look at the reviews on Amazon, and the majority are 5 star.  But there are a few 1 star, and one of those is short and succinct.  It just says "Rubbish" - bit strong, eh?  and certainly not true, even if it's a book to make you smile rather than get the goosebumps going! 

Mothers Day; Fathers Day; Grandparents Day; yada yada yada

I added yada yada yada instead of etc. etc. etc. because I found that today, 14 September, was Grandparents Day in the US.   It made me think about commercialism versus families, and I came to the conclusion that we have travelled a long way (or been coerced into travelling a long way) from Mothering Sunday.  I still remember that when I was little, Mothering Sunday was the day you took a little posy of flowers to church to have them blessed, and then you passed them on to your mother as a sort of thank you for her being there.  I have later memories as a teen of buying her a card and a small present instead of the flowers.  But it was always Mothering Sunday.

Now with a lot of the Christian world becoming secular,  people no longer go to church except for weddings, funerals and christenings (and perhaps on Christmas Eve).  Nothing wrong with that, you may have a faith, you may doubt your faith, you may have no faith.  Entirely your choice I believe.

But horrors!  Somewhere along the way, card manufacturers took the place of the church, and some!!!  A card for everything, a card for every special day.  I am sure there was no Fathers Day when I was small - there was certainly no Grandparents Day. 

And soon we will turn full circle - for with postal activity getting less and less, and the fact that you can send a picture of yourself waving hello to the chosen one on their "day" via your phone, we will soon not be buying those cards......  Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice might say!

The Snake Pit - Mary Jane Ward

     "Long ago they lowered insane persons into snake pits; they thought that an experience that might drive a sane person out of his wits might send an insane person back into sanity"

Let me introduce you to Virginia Cunningham, patient at a New York State mental institution in the 1940s.  Following a complete breakdown, she is at the stage where she remembers some things - like her husband Robert's name, her own first name, and the fact that the food is awful, but "the bread is good" (that last statement having become part the vocabulary between my sister and myself when things are not so good anywhere, cafe, bank, housekeeping, life in general etc.).

Very much like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the regime described for those suffering from mental illness was unlike the way it is dealt with today (thank goodness).  It was written in 1946, so a few years before Cuckoo's Nest.  It was the time of electric shock treatment; ice cold baths; complete wraps in wet sheets and tied down for the night; the wearing of the same "uniform" every day with only a shower twice a week and lucky if there was soap; the total lack of privacy and in the place that Virginia  describes, the time when the nursing staff were sometimes as odd, eccentric and indeed, using her own word,  as crazy as she was.

This is a short and intense novel.  The copy I read was only 192 pages, and every page worried me for Virginia's sake, for it was clear that at the beginning she hardly knew who she was, let alone where she was.  And all the way through, as she gets transferred backwards and forwards between different wards, meeting people who might be friends; people who cannot be trusted and therefore can never be friends; and every so often, mention of a doctor of some kind;  I worried that another setback would mean she would not be leaving soon.

My own parents both worked in a mental hospital (as it was referred to in the UK then) in the 1950s and 60s.  I heard many stories that as an adult would have horrified me, but as a child it was all part of what happened where they worked.  At that time there were still women who had been locked up in their teens for becoming pregnant - not from ordinary working families, but from upper classes who didn't want the scandal.  Some of those became totally institutionalised and would never have coped with the real world.  Mental health begins to be better understood at around that time.  We certainly don't lower people into snake pits, and whilst we still don't understand everything, we can help more with all kinds of mental illness now in the new century than only 50-60 years ago.

This is a book I urge you to find and read if you can.  If for no other reason than to give you some idea what it is like to be mentally ill (in any way).  It is a glimpse into a nightmare - I cannot imagine how she must have felt.  But feel it she did, because although a novel, this is based on the experiences of the author who did have a total breakdown in the 1940s. 

Fire Colour One - Jenny Valentine

 
Meet Iris, teen firestarter, with a greedy mother and a stepfather whose big film part is just the next audition away.  Iris lives in California, where her mother runs up credit card bills, wears Lebutin shoes, and drinks.  All the time.  Suddenly they are leaving their apartment and heading back to England, where Iris's real father - the one who didn't love her and never wanted her lies dying.

She doesn't want to like Ernest, her father, but somehow he seems much nicer than the man her mother is always describing.  She gets to spend some time with him, in the family house full of 20th century art (which is why her mother came back).  As they talk, she gets to hear her father's side of the story.  It doesn't make her like her mother any more than she did, but it makes her think again about the lies people tell.  So is her father lying as well?

At the point in the book when something wonderful is revealed, I actually stopped reading and clapped my hands.  What a great read for anyone, but particularly for the YA audience this is aimed at.

Jenny Valentine is the author of Finding Violet Park which was also a great short read.

Mrs Mac Suggests: What to read in SEPTEMBER

I was just thinking about depression.  An awful affliction - some of my friends suffer badly.  Then I wondered how many of us dismiss any kind of mental illness because you can't see it?  My parents both worked in a mental hospital (as they used to be called) in the 1950s and 60s, and by osmosis I suppose I found out more about these conditions by listening to my parents' conversations about work.  Anyway, this led me on to something to read in September.....

..... and so I am suggesting that you find a book about mental illness of any kind.


The book that came to my mind is a fiction but based on the real breakdown suffered by the author.  I read this first when I was in my teens, and again in my thirties.... rather old fashioned now (written in the 1940s), and the practices of electric shock treatment and cold water baths are, thank goodness, no longer used.  But that book made me again aware of how mental illness was and still is looked upon, but rather more importantly, how the sufferer feels whilst all this is going on.  The book is still available and is:

The Snake Pit - Mary Jane Ward

Waltzing Through Flaws - Paula Sharp

If you enjoy North American fiction, that isn't about murder or mayhem, but gives you a window onto a parallel world similar, but not the same as Europe, you are like me.  And this book is a glimpse through that window and into the world of the late 1970s, when the  pro-lifers were just beginning to campaign.  I certainly knew nothing about that subject then, although I know a lot more now. So this will give you an idea of how that whole thing took off, and how some people got more tied up in it than perhaps was good for them.

Penny, whose life as an eight/nine year old is described here, has an older fourteen year old sister Mahalia.  Mahalia has met and become enthralled by, a pro-lifer called Isabel, well known in their small town as a church woman who can be relied on to look after children if babysitters are scarce; a woman who always attempts to do the Christian thing and take food to people who are without; who will always tell unmarried mothers to be that abortion is not the only way out.  Heart of gold?  Mmmm - I found her very spooky,  personally, and whilst Mahalia was quickly enthralled, Penny's views were rather like mine.  But she was just someone on the edge of their lives until that Summer when the girls' mother had to admit that she was an alcoholic, and her fiance (she was widowed) and brother were going to take her off for a few weeks to dry out.

Marguerite, the girls' mother, asks Isobel if she will move in whilst the adults are away and take care of the girls.  She agrees, and in a short time Penny's life has changed.  Her sister accompanies Isobel on visits to poor families, she helps distribute anti-abortion literature, and she begins to act like Isobel.  Meanwhile, Penny finds that her mother has been writing regularly, but the letters are withheld as the contents are "not suitable" for the children.

Enough of the story.  Paula Sharp?  Who is she?  What a find!  I had never heard of her before acquiring this excellent read, but would certainly read more if they came across my radar.  She tells a child's story, but not in a childish way, although one that most would recognise.  The book is divided into three sections, each headed by the name of one of the lead characters.  Those sections are divided into chapters and I had no trouble in knowing where I was.  It was a page turner in the way that thrillers are.  A sense of doom lurked somewhere just over the next page, and every time the chattering womens' church group got together, I had to grit my teeth!

A good read.  Worth finding.

My Cleaner - Maggie Gee

This is a book about many things,  but mostly it's about children - how we treat them, how we rear them; and about the clash of cultures, either those of other countries, or indeed, those who are different to you even though they are family.  Vanessa divorced her husband (although she never really let him go - handy for DIY) when her son Justin was small.  But then, of course, she had to work to pay the mortgage and put food on the table.  And she had to write (two fiction, and a series as co-author about Pilates and the like).  This meant that she had to employ a cleaner who was actually fulfilling the dual role of cleaner and Nanny.  She was Mary Tendo.  When Justin was 12, she went back to Uganda and got herself a good job as Linen supervisor in a hotel and got on with her life.
At 22, Justin is obviously suffering from severe depression, not washing, walking about naked, and spending most of his time in bed eating sweets.  Vanessa cannot do anything with him and frankly, she doesn't have time, so when Justin says one day, out of the blue "I want Mary"; it takes a while before she realises what he means.  She can't do anything with him, but his former nanny might be able to.  So she pays for Mary to come back to England to see if she can rouse Justin from his stupor.  She really doesn't understand depression, and as he has an MA he should really pull himself together and get a good job.

So Mary arrives, and the culture clash begins.

Maggie Gee went to Uganda after receiving a commission from the Cheltenham Literary Festival, and then a grant from the Society of Authors helped with further African travel.  At the beginning of the book there is a half page of thanks, well worth reading.  She has given Mary her own voice, and although I have never been to Uganda, and am unlikely to do so, I quickly understood that like every country, it has its own sense of humour, sense of irony, and way of behaving.  I loved Mary, ploughing on regardless because it was important to get Justin better, save the money she was paid by Vanessa for doing so, and get back to Uganda to a nice life  with her lover Charles. There is sadness in everyone's life, Mary has been divorced by her Muslim husband, she has lost her own son, probably.  Vanessa's background is a closed book, for when she left her own village, she left everyone in it behind too.
Mary can be naughty, Vanessa can be spiteful, Jason is a big baby.  But there are reasons for all of this, and as the story progresses, secrets are revealed and questions answered.  Mary's voice is wonderful.  Vanessa wants a good slap, and Jason?  Well..... there is a reason for Jason's depression.  All will be revealed as you read on.