Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns

 

Hello Friend We Missed You by Richard Owain Roberts

 

Shakespeare's Bear by Harry Oxford

In England the works of Shakespeare are considered holy and sacrosanct.  He is probably the most famous writer around. Most people have heard of the plays, if not ever seeing them, and a lot of people can quote from them, even if not knowing the context of the quote or which play it came from. 

When I was at school Shakespeare was a compulsory part of the English language curriculum. You had to do Shakespeare and you had to like it. If you didn't you would probably fail the exam.  Despite this a lot of us really took to him and saw him not just as a playwright but as a good writer and poet. We studied his lines and found a lot of magic in them. We also studied Andrew Marvell another Elizabethan writer. These were great days. There were trips to the cinema, we saw Roman Polanski's Macbeth, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, Henry the Fourth (part one) at the Round House in London, with Timothy Dalton as Henry.

My Mother arranged a family outing to Stratford on Avon and after looking at the Swans and visiting the Theatre (as you do) we wandered round some old bookshops where she bought an old copy of the Sonnets for me as a present. It was blue and strongly bound with gold lettering. I cherished it for a long time before throwing it away before a house move when I wanted to reduce my clutter. I wish I hadn't done this and very much regret it now after her death.

After the trip my Dad gave me a cheap but adequate Complete Works of Shakespeare. It wasn't just for the coffee table; I really did read and enjoy a lot of the plays.  Later at a local jumble sale I found another copy of the Complete Works; on the flyleaf was written From The Vicarage in Mountain Ash. I didn't know where Mountain Ash was but found this quite exotic. Later on in my life I found the location of Mountain Ash in Wales and wrote to the vicarage about the book.  To my surprise I got a reply from the vicar there. He knew nothing about this book but was pleased I had written. Over the passage of time I threw away both these copies; I wish I hadn't. There is a big empty hole of loss.

Recently I amended my mistakes by buying the Oxford Second Edition and I am leisurely and randomly dipping into it. Before each play that I have centred on there is a short analytical introduction and I am surprised that Shakespeare did not originate the plots; he nicked them from other sources. The history plays were a vehicle for propaganda for the Tudor dynasty and generator for public support of Queen Elizabeth 1 who was not totally secure in her place on the throne. There was also a lot of hidden antisemitism which I was not aware of.

In the last ten years or so I have seen a few plays performed on the TV, always the abridged Reader's Digest version; I confess that I find these much easier to sit through and understand by today's standards. I don't have a long span of attention. 

What has this got to do with Shakespeare's Bear? Everything and nothing really.  When I approached the book I did so with all this aforementioned history and baggage. I absolutely hate Disney-like cartoons where animals talk in unnatural-like human terms and  wasn't expecting a lot. But I soon changed my mind. Who is to judge that animals do not feel emotions in the same way that humans do?

The plot is about the adoption of a bear cub called Mummer by Hamnet, son of Shakespeare, and this boy really did live (look it up on Wikipedia), and how the bear was assimilated into the Shakespeare household and his adventures through the years. I saw two strands here: the first being the reality of history, and the second being the artistic licence of the writer Harry Oxford in his manipulation of the plot. The history is based on things that actually happened eg daily routines of life, the effects of plague, the building of theatres, bear baiting, crime, historical characters. Around this the author writes of plausible things that really could have happened.

The third theme that I identified was how the bear, called Mummer, could feel feelings of love, gratitude, joy, sadness and how he formed a positive attachment to Hamnet. The plot discusses the subject of bear baiting and how cruel it was, how the bears hated it so much, their version of their exploitation. There is an interweaving between real history and the fantasy story telling of the author that smoothly melds together. This story is no Disney cartoon and is firmly based in reality.

I very much liked the ending which I am not going to give away here and spoil for you when you read the book.  I liked the way the ending worked on more then one level. Again there was the ending based in adult human reality, and the ending as interpreted by Mummer; another believable blending of reality and fantasy.

This book is not long and is very suitable for children to read, but it also contains things for adults too. I am sure that, like me, you will find it delightful, uplifting and gently emotional.

 

Escaping Firgo by Jason Whittle

 

This short novel, or extended essay is a morality story, a comparison of materialism and spirituality, a critique of the way modern society is too embedded in materialism, and of how actions have consequences. Through the device of planning a bank robbery the protagonist encounters various situations where these two concepts are put into juxtaposition and compared. It culminates in him deciding that the moral, spiritual path is better to follow than the materialistic one.

Written in the first person singular, the author describes the town of Firgo as

purgatory,

a time slip,

an elaborate yet momentary hallucination.

Firgo is the place where he goes to make his comparison. Firgo is a critique of modern society. None of the roads in Firgo lead to somewhere else; they always lead back to Firgo. Everything here goes around in predictable routine in circles; nothing ever changes, nothing is questioned or improved, nothing evolves. There is a feeling of apathy.

We live life here at a different pace here. You'll soon get used to it.

We don't worry about that sort of thing most of the time.

What else is there?

Firgo is inhabited by characters who are defined by their narrow civic roles and how they go no further than that role to see a wider perspective.

...it might do them good to see the world outside , and speak to somebody whose first name isn't The.

The Inn Keeper, The Shopkeeper, The Journalist,The School Teacher,The Postman, The Housewife,The Traffic Warden, The Newsagent (same person as The Shopkeeper?), The Victim, The Little Girl Lost, The Worried Mother, The Absent Father. All these can only think within the parameters of their role and job; they cannot think independently as individuals to make their own decisions, jobsworths. I have seen this literary device of defining unnamed characters by their societal roles in the book “Milkman” by Anna Burns which won the Man Booker Prize in 2018.

Over it all hangs the question of consequence, retribution and karma.

I wouldn't worry about it Sir. Everybody settles up in the end.

You're welcome to stay as long as you like, and I trust you to take care of the bill at whatever time is convenient to you, Sir

Everybody settles up in the end

There are smaller subplots to symbolise the debates that are going on inside the protagonist's mind. A crying lost child, a man being mugged, the Inn Keeper's wife trying to seduce him. In each case he makes a decision based on spiritual morals and not materialistic gain.

The novel ends with protagonist making what he considers the right decision and moving forward into reality again.

I liked this short novel. The brevity meant it never became a burden and was easy to analyse. There were some uses of English I disagreed with: as an editor I would have questioned them with the author, but that's okay, that's his style.  The publisher  Kristell Ink,  is a subsection of Grimbold Books which deals with science fiction and fantasy. The printer was Amazon.

In The Absence of Absalon by Simon Okotie

 

I really did try hard with this book, I really did. I found it totally blocked my intellect with it's detailed microcosmic plot and lack of progression. An author can produce great text but this does not mean they can write a great novel. 

A plot is still very important. A book without a plot can be very boring. Is a novel there just for the gratification and exercise of the author? If the book is published it is an indication that the author wants it be read by others; so it needs to be accessible.  The text of this book was of high quality but was obscured by the Emperor's New Clothes that it was wearing.

I tried so many times to read this book, and now have just given up on it.

The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet

 

This novel is situated in Saint-Louis in France. It is is structured in two parts. The first part is the plot about how the death of Bertrand Barthelme during a car crash affects the lives of the two main protagonists. The first protagonist is Georges Gorski, a senior officer in the St Louis police force who is investigating the crash. The second is Raymond Barthelme, the son of Bertrand Barthelme.

The second part of the structure of the novel is that it is not narrated by the author Graeme Macrae Burnet. This is where the mystery and confusion of the novel starts. The book's Foreword reveals that this story comes from the two manuscripts of a writer called Raymond Brunet, sent following the author's instruction by his solicitor, to the publishers Editions Gaspard-Moreau in 2014 after the death of Marie Brunet, Raymond Brunet's mother. This manuscripts were meant for the attention of the editor George Pires, but he had previously died. Brunet had died in 1992 after committing suicide underneath a train, and the manuscripts were only sent by the solicitor after the death of Marie Brunet.

Because of the death of the editor Pires, a trainee who subsequently received the manuscripts had put them to one side, not realising that they linked up with a previously published novel of Brunet called The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau. The link was recognised later by another editor at the publishers, who then published a second novel from the manuscripts as The Accident on the A35. Graeme Burnet uses this as a clever structural device to add mystery and intrigue to what otherwise would be a straightforward police mystery novel. The reader sees the novel as being a smaller thing within a larger publishing world.  Nothing was mentioned as to the fate of the second manuscript.

Now the whole novel is seen as a real life description linked in to the memory of Raymond Brunet who is narrating his own experiences through the character of Raymond Barthelme. As the reader we are considering the macrocosm of Graeme Macrae Burnet, the overall author, manipulating the characters of Raymond Brunet, the sub author, and the smaller characters of George Gorski and Raymond Brunet. I find this an extremely intelligent device to add depth and emotion to the novel. Notice the spelling of the real author Burnet and the spelling of the fictitious author Brunet. When I first glanced at my copy of the book I thought that there had been a typographical error at the editing stage, until it was pointed out by my husband that there was a spelling differentiation and that the similarity was intentional. Here the reality and the fiction is blurred.

Macrae Burnet adds to the mystery in the Afterword , writing as himself and discussing Brunet as a real living author, the possibility that the characters were real people, and the publisher of Editions Gaspard-Moreau as a real existing company, evoking a situation where the history behind the novel could really exist. The parameters of fiction and reality become blurred. It becomes great intellectual fun. Macrea Burnet displays his skills as an imaginative author, inventing and skilfully manipulating the tools available to him. He used this method of retrospection with his novel His Bloody Project, short listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2016. This novel exposes the plot as a series of documents read after the events of the novel took place . This method was also used by Margaret Attwood in The Handmaid's Tale where the plot was revealed by a series of tapes where the experiences of the protagonist were recorded and listed to in retrospect. It was also used by Jack London in The Iron Heel where the events of the novel were exposed by documents read after the events of the novel took place.

At first glance it appears that the plot of The Accident on the A35 was to be a police murder mystery, but it doesn't turn out like that. It deals with the every day lives and routines of the characters. There are many references to meal times and the food eaten, the types and frequency of alcohol drunk, the bars visited and what went on in them and descriptions of the inhabitants. There is much reference to the relationships between those inhabitants, the cynicism and manipulation that takes place, the emptiness and blankness of humanity. This blankness is reflected at the end by a less than satisfactory ending that does not conclude properly the questions raised during the exposition of the plot. I was particularly struck by Macrae Burnet's use of double negatives that I noticed happening with frequency. In an ideal world I was going to retrospectively identify and count them all, but I can't be bothered. You can have the fun of looking for them yourself.

In conclusion I was impressed by Graeme Macrea Burnet's skills as a writer and reading this novel has reinforced the high opinion I formed of him when reading His Bloody Project; he has intrigued and inspired me to read The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau.  

Then there is the question of the second unpublished manuscript. No doubt Macrae Burnet will be teasing us as to the outcome of this at a later date with a new novel.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

 

This book is about the optimism and loyalty of humanity that can be found against a terrible background. The plot covers eleven years in the relationship between an alcoholic and her son. There is so much I want to discuss about the plot, but I will not do so as I don't want to spoil it.

The quality of the writing is very high and contrasts with the miserableness of what it describes. The similes and metaphors are breathtaking; the author goes into great detail about everyday events. There is much cynicism in the way he describes things, the names of beers, the sound of a lager tin being opened, drunkenness, abuse, poverty, terrible living conditions, poor architecture, violence.

I could say so much more, but I won't spoil it for you. You will enjoy your own ride through this brilliant book. I highly recommend it and I really hope it wins the Booker Prize this year, it very much so deserves it.