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Books

The Spare Room by Helen Garner

I had no interest in picking up Helen Garner’s latest novel The Spare Room. Helen has always seemed a little worthy, a little hard core for me.

I based this assessment on what I’d seen of her in the media and some vague memory of her writing something on sexual harassment… I haven’t actually read anything of hers before.

Such is the way opinions are made and held.

The cover didn’t inspire me either. It was hard cover. A quiet, worthy looking design.

However my boss offered me the book and I find it hard to say no, so I said yes and dutifully put it in the pile of books on my bedside table for later.

Later happened.

I picked it up preparing to read the first few pages and put it down again, distracted by the next shiny covered airport novel to catch my attention – within the first page I was hooked.

The Spare Room has been described as exquisite. I agree.

Checking user testimonials or reviews on websites that are authorized dealer of tadalafil 20mg price and other similar product. Nothing deviant or kinky is going to happen behind the walls. cialis for order Often, time with family cheap cialis in canada is something that people do not want to have to experience in their life time. Thus, increasing click description viagra prescription the risk of heart attack or a stroke. It’s been described as blunt, bold and evocative. Yep, I’m right there with you.

It’s the story of a dying woman, Nicola, who goes to stay at her friend Helen’s house in another city to fight her cancer at a dodgy clinic. She doesn’t want to admit defeat. She also remains defiantly cheerful in the face of death – which she in fact, doesn’t face.

It’s the story Helen who takes on her Nicola’s anger, absorbs it. Who is desperately caught between the role of supporting Nicola in her pathetic endless quest for a cure and wanting to shake her and stop the farce… and then of course feels guilty… and angry.

The mirror that shatters in the first pages symbolises the struggle. How can you face death if you can’t see it… and you have to walk pretty carefully if there is broken glass on the floor…

Nicola doesn’t want anyone to reflect her truth, but by denying it, she keeps Helen at arms length.

I really enjoyed the read. Couldn’t put it down.

It’s not a long book – 2-3 hours – but it stays with you.

Interview with Helen Garner

Books

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

4 Comments

This Jane Austen novel has at it’s heart an anti-heroine. Miss Fanny Price is invited to live with her rich uncle, aunt and cousins as an act of charity and is treated perhaps a little unfairly, a little more strictly. Made to feel her inferiority.

She is a prim and proper miss. Timid and shy. Never puts herself forward or stands up for herself. A mouse.

Frankly, I wanted to slap her! She is so wet.

Not like other Austen heroines like Emma and Elisabeth Bennett.

In the end I didn’t really care what happened to her, and maybe Austen didn’t either as she wraps up the story – which drags in parts – with haste.

The version I read had loads of footnotes which irritated me for the most part as they referred to pages at the back of the book. I’d much prefer the notes to be at the bottom of the page – if there at all.

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Austen is pretty sarcastic in this novel… more than I’ve noticed in others… particularly in the first half. She is less scathing, or so it seemed to me, as the novel wore on.

This is not my favourite Jane Austen novel. I like to like my heroines. However it’s still worth the read.

Nabou review

Inklings

Austen.com

Books

Hanna’s Daughers by Margaret Fredriksson

2 Comments

Hanna's DaughtersThis is the first book selected for the Blogger’s Book Club I’ve joined. (if you’re interested in joining just say!)

This book is set in Scandinavia – in Sweden in fact – right on the border of Norway. I haven’t read much Scandinavian fiction before so was interested immediately – also because my friend James is planning a journey to that very part of the world.

It’s the saga of three women – Hanna – who lives at the turn of last century in a remote town near Norway, Joanna – her daughter (who in the present is dying in a nursing home) and Anna the grand-daughter – who is piecing their stories together.

I didn’t think I was going to like this book at all. The opening sequence of Anna stressing out about her mum in a nursing home left me cold. But the story of Hanna kept me turning the pages and then I wanted to finish it.
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The cover reads as if Anna is finding out the history of her forebears but the text doesn’t read like that and it spoils it a bit as you are constantly fighting against the logic of it all. After all it’s not like she can ask her mother anything – she’s not speaking – and Hanna is long gone… Once you let go of that logic it draws you in.

The writing is sparse. It’s hard to tell if that’s a function of the translation. I didn’t mind it but it didn’t feel warm or engaging.

Overall I felt it was an interesting book, but it left me a little cold. A bit like Scandinavia I suspect! Well, in winter anyway…

Books

Wideacre by Philippa Gregory

Wideacre by Philippa GregoryYou are probably more familiar with Philippa Gregory’s later historical novels from the Tudor period: The Other Boleyn Girl etc… I say later because they were written this century although the period they write about is in fact earlier in time than this series which was written earlier, in 1987. Confusing maybe?

Wideacre is set in the late 1700s. A younger daughter born to the Quality in Sussex aches to own the land she farms. Her father – the squire – is her idol and she can’t bear the thought that one day she must marry and leave the farming lands she knows and loves.

This is a bodice ripper to the highest order.

As the review on the cover says: “Beatrice Lacey leaves Scarlett O’Hara in the dust” or words to that effect…
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There are no lengths to which she will not go to stay on Wideacre. And some of the lengths she goes to are long indeed. At some points I audibly groaned and had to put the book down.

She’s surrounded by a pretty wet bunch most of the book who let her get away with it it must be said.

It all gets a bit too much in the end and the ominous spectre of her past seems a little contrived – hey it’s a fictional bodice ripper – what should I expect – nonetheless I enjoyed the escapism and will probably pick up the next two in the trilogy for a gander.

Books

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu GuoI picked up this book in my local bookshop last Sunday. It was a toss up between this one and a Philippa Gregory novel Wild…something…

I loved the way this book started. “Sorry of my English.”

Zhuang is a Chinese language student who arrives in London to attend an English language school in order to get ahead in China.

The book begins in broken English: “Is unbelievable, I arriving London, ‘Heathlow Airport’. Every single name very difficult remembering, because just not ‘London Airport’ simple way like we simple way call ‘Beijing Airport’. Everything very confuse way here…”

Broken but charming, her language is quite poetic: “Immigration officer holding my passport behind his accounter, my heart hanging on high sky.”

Xiaolu Guo’s insights are also really interesting and sometimes funny: “People say ‘I’m going to go to the cinema…’ Why there two go for one sentence? Why not enough to say one go to go?”
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I felt inside her skin as she tried to make sense of the alien Western world and as she comments on the differences learning learning learning about her culture.

Now I suppose the title should have given it away… after all “for lovers” is a pretty big hint, but I was surprised at the amount of sex in this book. It’s not confronting, just… surprising. But it makes sense as part of the novel, for this innocent from China is not only discovering the Western World but also herself, her sexuality.

I really enjoyed this novel. It’s very cleverly written. Zhuang’s English gets better and better throughout the book. And as her language gets better, so does the depth of her insight.

My favourite expression is her description of the English sun while she’s in Portugal: “They got a real sun here in their sky, not like in England. English sun is a fake sun, a literature sun.”

Right on the money!