Bloody Sarah Waters.
I’m in the middle of rewriting an old manuscript of mine set on the Somme in World War One – about a woman ambulance driver.
Now I’ve just stupidly read Waters’ The Night Watch, which is in part about a woman ambulance driver in London during the Blitz and it’s done my head in.
Mind you, I’m very glad I read it. I was putting it off for fear it wouldn’t be as brilliant as Fingersmith, and it is indeed very different but equally compelling.
I’ve read a few unkind or at least unsure reviews but, by God, the woman’s a chameleon. Fingersmith is a perfect rendering of the sensational Victorian novels – think Wilkie Collins or perhaps Mrs Henry Wood – as well as the erotica of the era. (I was less convinced by Tipping the Velvet, which felt too predictably like Rubyfruit Jungle in costume.)
Now she has switched eras and perfectly captured the feel, sombre mood and even the syntax of the novels written by women during or about the War. One feels almost as if it’s a novel by Elizabeth Jane Howard or Elizabeth Taylor, except of course there’s that modern courage about issues of sexuality and politics that Howard in particular never quite summoned (understandably – if only Howard’s Sid had run into Waters’ Kay, life might have been rather different for the Cazalets).
Waters has chosen to unravel a narrative backwards from 1947 to 1941. I heard her speak here a few months ago, and she explained that she wanted to reveal her characters gradually, just as you find out about people when you first meet. But even though their pasts, and specific events, are made quite clear during the narrative I was still profoundly shocked at the climax. Not by the fact of the event, but as a result of her precise prose.
The Night Watch will stay with me for some time.
I started reading Kevin Baker’s Paradise Alley straight away, to take my mind off it, but now I’m stuck in the Potato Famine and it’s too horrible to read late at night. I might have to flee to Jane Austen or something calming.

The books are the best of me. When people ask me why I write I tell them it’s what I’m for. It really is as simple as that.
~ Jeanette Winterson

There’s a lovely interview with illustrator Robert Ingpen in The Guardian, about his love of reading and illustrating the classics of children’s literature. He’s working his way through them slowly, one by one, (he’ll meet Helen Oxenbury somewhere in the middle, no doubt – perhaps at The Secret Garden) providing gorgeous interpretations for a new generation of readers. And old readers for that matter – I have a precious signed copy of his Treasure Island:

When blind Pew knocks on Admiral Benbow’s door in Treasure Island it’s ‘the most scary sound in literature,’ he says. ‘It comes as a sound to you by the skill of the writing and the vision of the man. You hear the sound and, if you hear that sound when you’re nine years old and you’ve read it yourself, you’ll read forever’.

I detest… anything over-cooked, over-herbed, over-sauced, over elaborate. Nothing can go very far wrong at table as long as there is honest bread, butter, olive oil, a generous spirit, lively appetites and attention to what we are eating.
~ Sybille Bedford

I don’t know about you, but I hold my breath when I walk into a great library. An old library. They seem like sacred spaces. Breathless, soundless, musky spaces. Pages turn, people rub their eyes, pencils scratch.
I remember the first time I visited London I was too scared – really, petrified – to go near the British Museum Reading Room (as it was then). It seemed a world apart, as if, had I walked in, I should be asked to leave immediately. I probably would have been, too.
I feel that same sense even now, when hesitating on the steps of some hallowed hall somewhere in the world. I never feel like that about cathedrals or cemeteries. Sometimes I simply can’t go in, or it takes a few stern words to myself to get me through the door.
My mother rang a few months ago to say she’d finally gone to have a peek at the renovated State Library of Victoria, and that she’d forgiven Jeff Kennett everything, because he’d funded the building restoration.
(“Settle down,” I said. “Well, maybe not everything,” she agreed.) But it does look spectacular.
Even there, under that familiar dome, I can’t actually quite believe I’m allowed in; that I can take down a volume of Captain Cook’s journals from the shelf (a facsimile edition, of course) and rest it on those fine mahogany desks and turn pages like a person to the manner born.
It’s not surprising, I suppose. Even apart from the old Port Melbourne girl within who tugs at my sleeve and says, “Our kind’s not allowed in there”, those great Victorian domed spaces still emanate a sense of seclusion – and exclusion.
In the British Museum Reading Room, you had to get a Reader’s Pass. Say, for example, you happened to be Lenin or Marx, Dickens or George Bernard Shaw, or perhaps Virginia Woolf: you applied for a pass and if approved (they all scraped through, although Lenin used a pseudonym) you could use the Reading Room to your heart’s content.
You still have to get a pass, but now you can order one online.
And for those who find it difficult to breathe at such high altitudes, you can also peek into the world’s great library rooms online, here. Heavy breathing. It’s purely bookish porn, glorious stuff.

(Link viaLeaf Salon)

Oh come on.
What’s Pluto ever done to deserve being knocked off the planetary charts?
It wasn’t hurting anyone, just quietly circling, minding its own business, not getting in Neptune’s way. A slightly eccentric orbit can hardly be grounds for dismissal, surely, even in Australia.
How can it possibly harm anyone else, to let the poor old thing keep believing it’s a planet?
I blame Xena.
Pluto’s always been my favourite. We small, round outsiders have to stick up for each other.

I’ve had enough of reading kids’ books for the moment. I’m going to attempt to be grown up for a while, if I can remember how.
I’ve launched into Sarah Waters’ Night Watch. A wise and trusted friend read it recently – I asked her how she found it and her only reply was: “There are lots of commas”. I thought that was very funny until I started reading. There are lots of commas. And if I notice them, there must be millions, because, as you know, I’m a comma placer from way back.
That same wise and trusted friend is off to Malta tomorrow, laden with detailed instructions from me about where to eat rabbit stew. I’m so deeply jealous. Tears threaten.
I blasted my way through Jeannette Winterson’s Tanglewreck on Saturday. It’s a time travel novel for young readers (her first for kids and I hope not her last). She can be hilarious at times. Even when explaining elements of quantum physics to unscientific minds like mine. It’s a lovely romp, hugely enjoyable and interesting adventure – I wished His Dark Materials had a few more jokes in it, now I come to think of it. But don’t tell Mr Pullman I said that. There are parallels between the two, but few similarities, which is really quite appropriate for novels about time/universe slips.
I’ve also finally got my hands on a rather tattered copy of Ella Maillart’s Forbidden Journey – her version of the infamous trip through China and Central Asia with Peter Fleming in 1935.
It’s infamous in part because in his book about the trip from Beijing to Kashmir, News From Tartary (which I also have), he pretends Ella isn’t there. It’s ages since I read the Fleming so I’m looking forward to reading them side by side. My favourite Fleming line is:
I have travelled fairly widely in ‘Communist’ Russia (where they supplied me with the inverted commas).
And yes, in case you’re wondering, he was the less wealthy less famous older brother of Ian.

Apologies if the blog is flickering before your eyes. I’m sick of the sight of it and playing with background colours. I’m also sick of the sight of those 216 bloody websafe colours, though, so I keep changing my mind. I’ve abandoned websafe now. Such a renegade.
Still, a change is apparently as good as a holiday.
I’ve never really held with that. I’d rather be in Morocco.
Been on a short story blitz this week. Last week I was pondering the sad state of my mind, and wondering why I never have any ideas for short fiction. This week I’ve written two pieces, with another on the way.
No idea what I’ll do with them, but that’s beside the point.

According to The Daily News (via As If):

The Wilsona School District Board [in California] has approved new library book-selection guidelines in the wake of trustees’ controversial decision to remove 23 books including the latest Harry Potter from a list recommended for a school library.
Books now cannot depict drinking alcohol, smoking, drugs, sex, including “negative sexuality,” implied or explicit nudity, cursing, violent crime or weapons, gambling, foul humour and “dark content.”
“In selected instances, an occasional inappropriate word may be deleted with white-out rather than rejecting the entire book,” the policy said.

White-out.
How appropriate.
And while next month in NZ we celebrate National Book Month, if you’re in the US you get to enjoy Banned Books Week from September 23.
Sponsored by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE), the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores, Banned Books Week is also endorsed by the Centre for the Books of the Library of Congress.
“Booksellers who celebrate Banned Books Week tell us that it is one of their favorite promotions,” says the ABFFE. I guess you’ve gotta laugh.
Bring on some of that foul humour and dark content.

When I step into this library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it.
~ Madame Marie de Sevigne (woman of letters – many, many letters)