Fangirl

On Tuesday night I went to Kentish Town (in the pouring rain and got soaked) and met my friend Pat in the Pineapple. She subtly pointed out Suggs from Madness sitting at the next table, which was quite giggle-worthy. Apparently it's his local!

China Miéville was doing a reading from The City & The City and beforehand Pat had a long chat with him and got him to doodle her an octopus which was pretty cool. I was all goofy and ridiculous as usual, although not as much as last time I met him. If I was a cartoon, I would've had hearts in my eyes.

The reading was fantastic - less than 20 people in the room, very casual, then a kind of 'Q&A' which was more of a conversation, really. I was too shy to say anything but lots of people asked questions and China answered them well and with wit and alacrity. He's so dreamy...

I wish I could've bought a copy of The City & The City but didn't have any money for it... oh, I can't wait to read it! Plus I've already got a signed copy of Iron Council so I guess that will have to do. And now, I have the above photo!!! All thanks to Pat, to whom I am eternally indebted.

My favourite China quotes of the night:

"There's a China Miéville fan community on LiveJournal??" (after Pat and I told how we met)

"Dude, if I wanted to say something about Israel, I would just say it! I wouldn't have to smuggle it in through a crime novel."

♥

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life.”

At just 14, a hopeful and happy girl, Susie Salmon is raped, murdered and dismembered by a psychopathic neighbor. She ascends to heaven, or rather, her heaven, where she watches her family and friends struggle to cope with their loss; and constantly tries to push into the gaps she left in their lives.

This book was a massive bestseller, which often seems to mean that it is complete tripe (viz: the Da Vinci Code), but in the case of The Lovely Bones it deserves all the praise it gets. It’s harrowing and beautiful in equal measure. Sebold explores the concept of an afterlife with all the imagination and tenderness that comes from not having experienced it: it’s a very human, very real exploration in which the afterlife is strongly tied to the physical world, and the dead can ‘watch’ the goings-on of their loved ones (and, as in Susie’s case, their killers) and conjure up material comforts for themselves in their realm.

Susie keeps an eye on her killer, who isn’t captured, and watches as her family is torn apart by her murder and the consequent grief and guilt and madness. I found the book to be mostly devastating, and only a little cathartic – but the catharsis owes entirely to the excellent balance of Sebold’s writing and her ability to shine a spotlight through bleak emotional fog; to guide the reader through their own grief and to their own acceptance and understanding. Sebold is a rape victim herself and as such it is astounding that she can write about these things with clarity, emotion, and a certain sense of clinical detachment. She depicts the character of Susie’s killer in a very human, very realistic and therefore very chilling way. Your instinct is to class someone like that as a monster – the last thing you want to do is understand them or relate to them. And yet Sebold explores that side of death, too: understanding.

I love the title of this novel, which evokes that beautiful morbidity that underlines every word. The Lovely Bones is not light-hearted, but it is full of heart. It will make you think, and possibly even reassess your spiritual beliefs. And of course, have tissues at the ready.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

In the late 1950s, an ageing ‘real English’ butler decides to take a motoring tour of the English countryside. Stevens, as he is known, provides a sprawling, train-of-thought style narrative, wherein at first he talks simply about his menial day to day life; but as his journey unfolds, so too do the stories of his life.

The entire picture of Stevens is evoked mainly through his ridiculously English way of speaking (using lots of ‘rather’s, ‘indeed’s, and plenty of over-polite beating about the bush). His voice is strong and the rest of his demeanor just follows naturally from it. Stevens’ thoughts are sometimes hilarious, sometimes pitiful and sometimes philosophical – but never boring. He is so reserved and uptight, in fact, that it is sometimes difficult to tell if he is simply avoiding talking about his feelings or does not recognize them in himself. Stevens is preoccupied with the discovery of a true definition of the word ‘dignity’, and through this obsession comes to justify his decisions and actions in his life. But will he, or does he ever understand and accept his emotions?

I found this little book vastly entertaining, and delighted in reading certain passages aloud in a posh English voice. It is a little sigh of a novel really – quiet, restrained and sensitive but fleshing out such a whole and accurate portrait of a man who has come to a time in his life where he is questioning everything, and looking backwards rather than looking forwards. I am too young to know truly what that feels like, but I can only assume that such a period will grip us all at one stage in our lives. Stevens can’t be sure he’s made the right choices in his life – and neither can any of us, for how would we ever know? But eventually we must all decide what to do with the remains of our days. Live them in grey nostalgic comas? Or make the most of everything we do have…?

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

This tragic and beautiful story centers around Iris Chase, its protagonist, and her younger sister Laura, who, we discover in the novel’s opening line, commits suicide shortly after the end of World War II. Iris, now well into her 80s, recalls the events and relationships of her childhood and youth with Laura, and everything leading up to her death. Iris’ narrative is punctuated by a story within a story – Laura’s novel The Blind Assassin (published post mortem) about a couple and their illicit affair. The couple in the story are referred to simply as ‘he’ and ‘she’, but over the course of the book it becomes clear that their story mirrors closely the real lives of Iris and Laura.

Laura was always an odd child: taking everything literally, deeply religious, curious and innocent. Iris as the eldest was charged with keeping an eye on her after their mother died, and eventually charged with looking after the family when she was married off into new money (and unhappiness) with Richard Griffen, an industrialist and factory-owner in Toronto, where much of the book is set. As things unfold it becomes clear that there is more to Iris than would seem – she is a full of secrets and untold stories.

I am at a loss as to what to write about this book. Atwood’s writing is delectable – her words are gourmet: sweet, tangy, rich, savory, full-bodied and flavorsome. The characters are so deeply-plumbed you feel the reverberations of them long after turning the last page. Iris’ tragedy, Laura’s blind innocence, and Richard’s inner demons are still haunting my mind days after I finished it. It is a devastating story, but at the same time it is devastatingly beautiful. If you’re looking for something to chew over and become deeply involved in, this is it. It will transport you to other worlds and other times, and it will illuminate your inner reality. I simply can’t think of how else to describe it – The Blind Assassin is like eating a 5-star meal in front of an astounding painting, while listening to the most moving piece of music you’ve ever heard.

Gobbledygook by Don Watson

(Subtitle: How sludge and management speak are strangling our public language.)

Don Watson is an Australian writer who is fed up with words like ‘closure’, ‘key strategies’, ‘enhance’ and ‘commitment’ – words he terms ‘weasel words’. Unfortunately they make up most of our current public language – in the media, in politics, and in business. They are words which mean nothing; they are clichés, they are defense systems, they are empty fluff designed to confuse and to be ambiguous, leaving the most ‘wriggle-room’ for the speaker to mean anything at all.

Gobbledygook (also published as Death Sentence) is a sort of book-long essay (or rant) about the decay of public language, how it arose and became this rotten – and how to recognize and reject it. Watson makes the interesting point that this ‘management-speak’ has almost always been used in businesses; this is not exactly news. But he points out that business language is now infiltrating politics, educational institutions, libraries, and all sorts of other public service areas so that one can scarcely walk out the door without encountering a ‘commitment to enhancement of key customer values’, of one sort or another.

It is also interesting to see it in print – to understand wholly that it is TRUE that this language simply clouds our minds. It does not clarify anything, and it does not communicate anything. Watson also points out that language is supposed to change and develop; that is not what he is ranting against. Abbreviations, slang and grammatical laxness are one thing, as long as you are able to communicate your ideas which is why we have language in the first place. Telling someone you are “enhancing key strategies” means pretty much nothing at all, and the listener (or reader)’s eyes will simply glaze over, and their mind will register nothing but an empty clichéd phrase.

I wouldn’t put him up there with Bryson or Fry, but Watson’s writing is clever and sometimes witty, and packed full of brain nutrients. I am really glad I read this and can now try to identify rubbish words and slice them out of MY language. If you want to join the fight against weasel words – http://www.weaselwords.com.au/