A Busy Day for Birds

I think it goes without saying that for most avid readers, myself including, reading to and collecting books for your children simply comes as a natural, joyful extension of parenting and that, rather than being a chore you do for fear of them growing up without a soul, you actually enjoy and throw yourself (and your silly voices) wholeheartedly into.

There does, however, frequently arise the situation where you are simply too jaded to pull out your best performance and it is in this scenario where the finest children’ books are discovered, the books that need no embellishment from tired parents since they really do speak for themselves.

Standing on the firm foundations of her wonderful Maisy back catalogue, Lucy Cousins is always a safe bet and A Busy Day for Birds is no exception. Brightly coloured, striking illustrations of every bird you ever thought of keeps your child hooked, with the addition of some lovely entertaining sound effects and an opportunity for them to leap around and copy the hopping/flapping/swooping if they’re that way inclined.

Animals are a no-brainer when it comes to children’s books but I particularly love this one for focusing on birds, who often get overlooked (apart from all the ducks and chickens) when it comes to toddlers’ books and toys. There are so many of them after all, how wonderful to try and teach them the difference between just a few – with any luck laying the groundwork for some more serious, Packham-style interest in the world around them when they get a little older.

And, if all of this action and rhyming fun wasn’t quite enough and this is the only book you have to hand for bedtime, we end with a lovely owl to calm things down. Thankyou, yet again, Lucy Cousins.

When I Hit You

Regardless of your bookish tastes, when a novel carries a title like this it slaps you around the face, hard. Whether this slap will then make you sit up and listen and have a read is another matter. I had personally been orbiting this Womens Prize  nominee for a while but, after a few little nudges in the right direction from various fellow bloggers, decided to take the plunge on a topic which is decidedly not (don’t judge me, I like my nicey nice escapism) my cup of tea. Problematically it took me almost three weeks to finish, purely through life getting in the way. Since this is a novel that begs to be read in, at most, a couple of sittings, this really wasn’t ideal. As a result I’m left wondering whether I really gave it a fair chance…

Our unnamed narrator is an outwardly ordinary, independent young woman; a writer, student and political novice who falls for a university lecturer and Marxist revolutionary who, initially attractive with his sharp intellect and ideological passions, once in the bubble of the marital home proves himself to be an angry, paranoid and violent man. She is all of us. She is not impoverished, friendless, uneducated or any of the stereotypes we may associate with victims of domestic abuse, associations that are deeply flawed when placed under scrutiny. The few words of her new local dialect she knows serve to isolate her in her new domestic role, a role where her cooking becomes a desperate tool to appease the man who eventually cuts off her contact with the outside world – mobile phone, social media accounts – beats her with her laptop cable (amongst other implements) and, eventually, amongst the horrific psychological abuse, rapes her.

I really don’t know what my expectations were of this book, was I, not being one to ordinarily go out of my comfort zone, looking for something to affect me more than it did? For such a hard-hitting topic and a book with some truly harrowing scenes (the graphic imagining of what the rapes are doing to her body sticks particularly in the mind) I was left feeling somewhat distant from the narrator… isolated. Is this intentional or does it highlight some lack of empathy or experience in me? I expected to be blown away, I wanted to be blown away  but was instead left feeling rather flat. A feeling made all the more guilty by the fact that the novel is based on the author’s own personal experience.

Regardless of my own feelings and lack of engagement, this book is nevertheless incredibly important. Important because we experience this horror from the point of view of a woman we can relate to, who has, thankfully, not been silenced. A woman who was asked, bafflingly, by an audience at a feminist publishing house (no less), how she allowed her husband to abuse her. As much as we might condemn such an outwardly ignorant attitude, this novel forces us to confront our own ignorance and assumptions about the victims of domestic violence. With the what ifs and why didn’t shes crowding our mind despite ourselves, we are made to realise that this could, frighteningly, be one of us, and so much more easily than we might think.

Goodnight Gorilla

When I first had a thought to do reviews for books aimed at babies/young children, I felt like it would be more interesting and helpful to focus on more recently published works. Works we never had as kids and that deserve a bit of attention rather than the solid classics.

Despite that, tripping down memory lane with some of these amazing books has just been so much fun; legitimate, childish fun I can have without embarrassment since I am, after all, reading to my little boy. As it turns out, the pull of nostalgia is far too strong, as will be the need to write a little something about my all-time favourites as we go along.

Horrifyingly, in this case I had never actually heard of Peggy Rathman’s Goodnight, Gorilla growing up. I say horrifyingly; this is an American book and I was a little old when it was published in the 90s but still. After buying it on the advice of some book list I’d seen somewhere I was initially, and very naively as it turns out, disappointed by the fact that there are barely any words in this colourful board book.

Our zookeeper; ‘Joe’, takes time of an evening to say goodnight to all of the animals under his care, starting with a rather cheeky miniature gorilla who steals his keys and, as Joe makes his way around the zoo, releases the other animals one by one until they all follow him home to bed.

In what is, for my little man, the most sidesplittingly hilarious page in the book, Joe’s  long-suffering (I reckon) wife discovers all the animals in her bedroom and patiently leads them back home (only to be followed home again by Gorilla and his little mousey mate.)

This book is wonderful, a true toddlerhood comfort ‘read’ and it is the lack of words that makes it so genius. As well as the illustrations and story needing to be bold and amusing enough to make up for the lack of words, the lack of Mummy or Daddy blithering on actually leaves room for the child to build up their confidence to turn the pages and read for themselves, even to read to you if you’re lucky. For such a deceptively small and simple story, there’s something to spy anew every time you pick it up and the undersized elephant, cheeky monkey, banana-toting mouse and their friends leave plenty of opportunity for animal noises. Winner.

See What I Have Done – Sarah Schmidt

On 4th August 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden, a prosperous bourgeois couple living in the Fall River area of Massachusetts, were bludgeoned to death with a hatchet in their own home. Andrew Borden’s face was so severely destroyed that he was unrecognisable. The culprit? According to the police, the daughter; 32-year-old Lizzie Borden.

This brutal crime and subsequent sensational trial (which ended with Lizzie Borden’s acquittal – women just weren’t capable of such violent crimes after all) is so well-known in America, they even have a song:

Lizzie Borden took an axe,

And gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her father forty-one.

Shudder. (US readers – it isn’t a nursery rhyme or something horrendous is it? Like ‘ring a ring o’ roses??!’):

It is so hard now, with the passage of time and the no doubt questionable and inadequate  investigative techniques of yor, not only to know for certain who actually committed these gruesome murders but to understand the woman who was most likely the culprit. It is for this reason, along with the sheer infamy of these crimes even today (seriously, just have a quick Google there are some absolute diehard ‘fans’/theorists out there) that Sarah Schmidt is a brave woman to take on this crime as her subject, as ripe for retelling as it inevitably is.

This was April’s choice for the Manchester Book Club and I honestly thought we were in for one of those chats where, because everyone loved it, beyond explaining why we loved it there really wouldn’t be much left to say. This wasn’t to be so. To my delight (quite frankly, because I love a good discussion) some found the oppressive, sickening atmosphere that Schmidt so deftly builds up to be a little too much to stomach. I personally thought it was genius, and so cleverly done. This novel is less about the ‘whodunnit’ (covered so many times), ‘howdunnit’ or even necessarily the ‘whodunnit’ (that is kind of left up to the reader) than the hot, sticky, sickening atmosphere of the Borden house in the height of the Massachusetts summer.

Along with the heat, the actual illness of the main characters in the house (bar, ever suspiciously, Lizzie herself) helps to exacerbate the stomach churning feeling. A pot of mutton stew sits on the stove throughout the novel, to be reheated again and again. Watching the family tuck into the meat is disgusting enough in itself… are they making themselves ill? Or have they been poisoned?

The Lizzie Borden story will always be a guessing game. Schmidt paints her as a needy, vulnerable, slightly manic character who we can perfectly place with a hatchet in her hands. But why the mania, why the murder? Mr and Mrs Borden are not the most endearing of characters, particularly Andrew Borden, who Schmidt shows to be both distant and abusive. We can only wonder at what went on behind closed doors. We are also introduced to the creepy uncle ‘John’, in real life the only ‘outsider’ known to be staying in the Borden house around the time of the murders. His relationship with his ‘girls’ is, again, painted as a little off. Is he an abuser? Or, indeed, is he capable of murder himself?

I loved this book and promptly lent it to Mummy Relish (with a warning not to read it when in the house on her own, ironically I found the creepiest bit to be the epilogue where Schmidt describes her own stay in the murder house). The only part that jarred and I felt was thrown in just for the sake of throwing up the question of Lizzie’s guilt was a random character called ‘Billy’, whom John hires to hurt/threaten Andrew Borden (he never gets the chance). There is mystery enough in the Bordens’ sad story without throwing in an extra character, and an unendearing one at that.

This is more than worthy of the Women’s Prize Longlist. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for her for next week’s shortlist!

 

 

Books That Take Place Abroad

Courtesy of That Artsy Reader Girl, I’ll be dipping into books I’ve read that take place abroad (i.e. not the UK) this week. It feels a bit of a cheat really because, when I think about it, I don’t read a great many books set in England in the first place!

For these purposes, therefore, I need to think a little deeper. About those books with the greatest sense of place, that would be devoid of meaning without it.

A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

The first time we went to India my other half and I were determined to read literature to go along with our trip. He read Shantaram (ridiculous, apparently) and I read Rohinton Mistry’s chunk of a novel. It is a phenomenal book, capturing India and its hierarchical society in all its glory. Brilliant, evocative and added a perfect extra layer to the holiday.

Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

I read this classic so many years ago that the details are vague. However, what has easily remained with me is both how much I adored it (maybe time for a reread?) and its deeply evocative sense of place.

The Tiger’s Wife – Téa Obreht

It seems odd I suppose to include a book here that I, controversially given its prize-winning status, didn’t much care for. In reality I found Obreht’s surreal tale to be unnecessarily confusing and meandering. That said, the bleak portrait she paints of an unknown Balkan state, with its icy weather, traditions and folklore has stuck with me ever since.

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

Another one that I read years and years ago but whose images; dusty courtyards, bombed out houses, women gazing through the mesh of their burqa, have seared themselves in my mind. And I haven’t even read The Kite Runner yet. Yey.

Ruby –  Cynthia Bond

As tough as some of the scenes are in this tale of abuse and betrayal in America’s Deep South, the atmosphere and imagery of rural East Texas are undeniably beautiful.

The Orchard of Lost Souls – Nadifa Mohamed

I’ve said it countless times but I really need (still) to read more African literature. Somalia is a real black hole on a map for me, thankfully less so after reading this Mohamed’s thoughtful, complex second novel.

Wild Swans – Jung Chang

This task is so useful for reflecting on books I read years ago. I stared at this one on my auntie’s bookshelves for years before finally picking it up. It is an absolute must read. Epic.

The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt

An entirely different side to America than Ruby, Donna Tartt’s doorstop novel, which I dog-eared to bits, is phenomenal, ranging from a cosy, antique New York to a cold, hard Los Angeles, whose dusty streets and sterile homes magnify the sense of unease and foreboding.

Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

This classic really gets mixed reviews so I felt rather dubious when it was chosen by the book club one month. To my surprise I really loved it and that was helped by the vivid picture Rhys paints of life in nineteenth century Jamaica/Dominica. Hot, oppressive and delirious.

Carmen – Prosper Mérimée

I was so excited to read the novella that inspired Bizet’s famous opera. Mérimée is always good for a short story and Carmen is no exception. It also helps that I lived in wonderful Sevilla for a very short time and have LIVED that famous cigar factory. Yas.