Barbara Vine aka Ruth Rendell

My cousin Kathy told me to read Barbara Vine, who apparently is not content being just Ruth Rendell ,she has to adopt a pseudonym to write more books. Well there is no shame in having written the Grasshopper, she is a very fine writer. Apparently when Toni Morrison is finished writing a novel she turns to Ruth Rendell ''You marvel at the economy and this choice of words,'' Ms. Morrison said. ''How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?'' .
What can I say? It's a story of a girl who has a tragic accident while climbing electric pylons and her life afterwards. It's filled with dread and menace but immensely readable. She is a very good writer. Thank you Kathy and Toni.

What Fresh Twee Is This?

I have read The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society finally. I was avoiding it since it looked pretty twee and I am here to say---"Yep---it's twee alright." But I actually enjoyed it, at least it's fresh twee, the next epistolary novel that mimics it ---say The Outer Hebrides Book and Gooseberry Trifle Knitting Club ----will be the death of the genre. The island of Guernsey was occupied during World War II by the Germans for five years which was news to me, the stories are affecting, the romance is pleasant. It gives twee a good name.

My Bedside Table

Titanic

I ordered Every Man For Himself from Canada since it was out of print here. It's an fictionalized account of the sinking of the Titanic. It's a little too disjointed and vague in the beginning but after I "wiki-ed" the real story of the Titanic I could fill in the blanks and it got better. Actually a very tragic story with a lot of tragic errors on the part of the designers and builders: insufficient lifeboats, miscommunication etc etc. To further my research I was tempted to watch Titanic again but didn't know if I could bear watching them peer over the bow with Celine Dion wailing in the background so found something called I was a Chambermaid on the Titanic instead, an obscure French film. Not sure about it. Beryl Bainbridge also wrote that wonderful book of the Shackleton expedition The Birthday Boys, she has a way with tragedy.

Kate Grenville

Awhile ago I read Kate Grenville's The Secret River and really liked it. I can't remember who recommended it to me, but it's a story of a convict from London sent to Australia with his wife. They're very poorly equipped to do anything in the open country but they settle on some land and try to build a life for themselves. Some aborigines are settled close by and almost live better than they do. At some point in the book there is a choice made and it allows them to stay on their land but at a price. You're left wondering if the price was worth it. It's a very provocative book, reminded me too of David Malouf's Remembering Babylon, another Australian heart breaker and one of my all time favorites.
The Lieutenant is much more gentle on the heart but still pretty painful. It's the story of a British science prodigy in the 1700's who grows up in his own quiet world, always at a distance from everyone. And because of the times he ends up in Australia as a Lieutenant in the navy establishing a settlement of convicts. He is perched in a makeshift observatory to charts the stars and slowly and shyly connects with the aborigines they are 'co-existing' with. In this book too a choice is made and again there are consequences. Grenville writes very simply and beautifully. There is nothing extra. She seems to be looking at the story of the colonization of Australia over and over again, each time thinking it through with different outcomes for the characters whom you grow to care about. Both are very good books.

Losing Mum and Pup

This is a memoir by Christopher Buckley about losing his parents,Pat and William F. Buckley, both in the same year. I actually liked it, it does a good job of recognising their awfulness but still loving them in spite of it all. So on one hand he was truthful about their narcissism and distance while on the other he acknowledged their good qualities. It manages to be funny and exasperated with them but still very tender. An interesting detail about Buckley was that he was a remote control hog, he had to always be in control and this extended to the remote. People would be over to watch a movie and right when the important plot point would be revealed he would switch to a documentary on another channel. When he died Christopher Buckley placed a few things in his casket with him: his rosary, a jar of peanut butter and the remote. It's only about that one year in their lives but manages to somehow radiate beyond that. It's up there with John Bayley's Elegy for Iris.

One thing he quoted from William Hazlitt that I thought quite useful when confronting death:

"Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death, is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not; this gives us no concern---why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?"