Bring Up the Bodies

Anne Boleyn

Do you ever love a book or admire an author’s writing so much that they become almost impossible to write a review about? Well, I do and to hammer home this difficulty, Hilary Mantel’s second installment in her Cromwell saga; Bring Up the Bodies, has had such a huge amount of press, reviews (mainly positive) and prize after prize that now the hoohah has died down I’m almost loath to add my inconsequential opinion to all the noise. So I’ll keep this short. I promise.

Mantel started off with a superb chunk of storytelling prowess with 2009′s Wolf Hall, giving her a lot to live up to. We now, of course, know that she delivered 500 times over with Bring Up the Bodies, yet reading this literary mammoth pre prize-giving made me ever so slightly nervous it wouldn’t live up to the hype.

Fourth Estate : LF Paperback : 2012 : 407 pages : Picked up by Daddy Relish at the airport. How lovely

Having studied the Tudor dynasty at least twice throughout my school-life and being a die-hard sucker for a bit of David Starkey, it strikes me that up until now, Henry VIII’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell often misses the list of the great and good in British history for us lay folk  He isn’t glamorous, his importance almost entirely lies in a dry, political landscape and he certainly isn’t very pretty, yet Hilary Mantel manages to bring a sagging, grumpy, old (by Tudor standards) lawyer to life. With the greatest panache she lays bare his ruthless nature and makes us, somehow, adore him.

Lucky enough to catch a day in London a few months ago (for work first and foremost mind you!) I snuck an hour out of the day to go and take a look at the Tudor paintings at the National Portrait Gallery. Geeky as it is, I have to admit to being a little starstruck, standing in awe of portraits of people who, after studying them so often throughout my student days and now being whisked deep into their lives in Mantel’s superb novels, really felt like meeting old friends. With a sense of urgency that makes her storytelling so utterly gripping, Mantel takes a leaf out of Hans Holbein’s paintings and sketches out her images in pure technicolor:

‘Sometime before noon, clouds scudded in from the west and rain fell in big scented drops; but the sun re-emerged with a scorching heat, and now the sky is so clear you can see into Heaven and spy on what the saints are doing.’

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Details some may find inconsequential such as Cromwell’s comments on what glaziers a family uses for their windows or his home life in general drag me deeper into the world she has imagined in such a convincing a way that one cannot fail to be impressed by her profound knowledge. She’s certainly earned the respect of the scholars…

Do I want to get into the debate over what is now the infamous Mantel vs Kate Middleton debate? Not really. However, what I will say is that I have listened to her speech, which offers a penetrating and frank view into the forcibly imposed roll of the modern royal woman and yes, may seem a little too frank and penetrating with regards to Kate but is, by and large, a criticism of society’s attitude towards women and mainly, when it boils down to it, an academic lecture on the TUDORS. Shame on you tabloids.

Mantel’s telling of Cromwell’s rise and fall was originally attended as a wonderful duet. Due to the sheer mammoth subject and wealth of things to tell it will now be a happy trilogy… I can’t flippin’ wait.

The Mirror and the Light; the tale of Cromwell’s final demise, is expected to hit the shelves sometime in 2015.

A is for Angelica

It may be logical to assume that the more books a person reads, the less daunting it is to launch yourself into the unknown from time to time. Since you read so much anyway what’s the harm if you stumble across a dud every so often?  I, however, tend to find it all too easy to shimmy on back to old faithful; be that safe authors, genres or even the more predictable publishing houses.

Legend Press : Paperback : 2012 : 234 pages : Kindly sent to me by the publishers

If I am in one of my comfortable ‘ruts’ I do (if I can muster up the energy) deliberately throw myself a potential challenge. Although this approach can sometimes end disastrously (i.e. my Salman Rushdie experience last year) if I’m lucky I find myself on a glorious adventure with an exciting new author.  Happily for me, A is for Angelica; debut novel by Sheffield author Iain Broome, falls firmly into the latter category.

In a delicious collaboration with indie publisher Legend Press and fellow Northern/Midlands artist Jonathan Wilkinson (striking front cover), Broome, living the dream of many post-grads before him, has managed to create a world that has all the quirk and British charm promised on the compelling blurb … and then some.

 

‘My life is different now. I don’t go to work. I don’t have an office. I stay at home, hide behind the curtains and make notes. I wait for something to happen.’

Gordon Kingdom lives in Cressington Vale, a perfectly suburban, uncontroversial and terribly middle class street whose various characters waltz through their daily routines and, in the main, lead highly predictable lives. Apart, perhaps, from Benny the boy across the road, who between the hours of 1 and 2am every morning settles down in his bedroom to paint with his eyes closed. We know this because, whilst caring for his seriously ill wife Georgina, Gordon spends his days peeping around his curtains and making detailed notes on his neighbours’ habits. Using his meticulously organised files on people to bring order to a life thrown into complete chaos by his wife’s second stroke, Gordon is a narrator of many colours; sometimes pitiable, often unwittingly amusing as he details the life and times of their aging dog Kipling, lonely bachelor Don Donald and who could forget A, for Angelica. An attractive, foul-mouthed and multi-coloured new friend who inadvertently pushes Gordon’s secretive life in an entirely new direction.

Indie publisher Legend Press are well worth a peep

It is a wonderful thing to invest yourself in a novel without any preconceptions, which, despite our best efforts, inevitably colour our opinions. I found the domesticity and sheer ‘Britishness’ of Broome’s surprisingly dark story to be incredibly comforting (a little like Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand) and I found myself feeling highly protective of Gordon and his little world, where it could be all too easy to criticise his actions. Broome’s suburbia is awash with charming, unique characters and I found his subtlety and balance between the comedic and tragic aspects of the book to be quite astonishing considering the fact that this is, after all, his debut novel. Although I try and avoid making too many grandiose statements…could we perhaps have another Mark Haddon on our hands?

I’m sure there’s a small part of all desperate book bloggers out there who dream of publishing their own novel one day and, most importantly, it being worth the paper it’s printed on. Perhaps that MA in creative writing might be worth the time and money after all?

This book surpassed my expectations and I will be pushing it on the boyfriend immediately. I will also (*touch wood*) be rather smug in five years’ time when Iain Broome is hot property and I will know I was there from the very beginning…

Hard Times

Ahem. Allow me to sprinkle some water on this review-drought by declaring, once again (and rather smugly) that I did read a ‘proper classic’ during my blog break. That is, Hard Times by Charles Dickens; giving a much-needed kick up the backside of my lazy reading habits.

The glorious Vintage edition of ‘Hard Times’. Oh. So pretty.

This was the first, believe it or not, of the pristine novels from my Dickens spending spree last winter to be opened in earnest. My first Dickens novel (apart from A Christmas Carol, which each and every member of the Relish family devoured last year) in over a decade. Why did I choose Hard Times? Well, because Daddy Relish has fallen in love with the burlesque caricatures that are Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby, because Dickens’ ‘Coketown’ was supposedly based on Preston and, well, let’s be honest, it’s the shortest of his novels by a good chunk. *Blush*

Fact, fact, fact; in his proper Utilitarian fashion, is all Thomas Gradgrind concerns himself with. Why live a life of frippery and fancy when you can concentrate on the sheer science of the matter in hand and thus be more efficient, profitable and successful in life? Believing his path to be the only one of any value, Gradgrind brings his own children, Louisa and Tom, and the adopted, willful, circus child Cecilia ‘Sissy’ Jupe up in a drab and loveless environment, to the detriment of all. Alongside Gradgrind we are introduced to the inimitable figure of Josiah Bounderby; the consummate self-made man and ‘Bully of Humility’, apparently dragged right up out of the gutter and, by his own force of will and personality, right into Fortune’s lap. We follow these unlikable men and watch, with the assistance of a supporting cast of enigmatic characters, as their way of life crumbles, in Dickens’ own moralistic fashion.

Rumour has it that Dickens’ social commentary punches through his narrative more so in Hard Times than in any of his other great novels, pitting the likes of Bounderby against the working classes whom he renames the ‘Hands’; the unfortunate Stephen Blackpool and his companion ‘Rachael’ being those among them who are given a voice by the author. We are presented with some huge, Engels-style concerns from the 19th century social commentator however, unlike Gaskell’s Mary Barton (her North and South, dealing with similar themes, was published at the same time as Hard Times) Dickens’ does this with panache; which worked with me and surely must have therefore pierced the psyche of his contemporary reader.

James Harthouse and Tom Gradgrind talk things through. What smart hats!

Although I found there were dips in the narrative from time to time (to be blamed on my low concentration span more than any lapse by the author), considering when this book was published (1854) Dickens’ prose and dialogue is natural, well-considered and witty. We’re dealing with a pro here after all ladies and gentleman.

Dickens’ political stances are clear, yes the condition of the working classes at the time was appalling and no, he didn’t agree with much of what the Utilitarian movement had to say for itself. But does he ram this down your throat? No. We are nudged and persuaded in an ever so gentle fashion through sheer entertainment. Bounderby is a monstrous, capitalist buffoon, supported by his ridiculous employee ‘Mrs Sparsit’, who was so achingly satirical and vivid in my mind that I was desperate for more.

The only really galling character (who unfortunately took up a lot of space on the page) was the honest, hard-working and, by all accounts, hard done by Stephen Blackpool. Allow me to demonstrate:

‘Weel, ma’am,’ said Stephen, making the best of it, with a smile; ‘when I ha’ finished off, I mun quit this part, and try another. Fortnet or misfortnet, a man can but try; there’s nowt to be done wi’out tryin’-cept laying down and dying.’

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‘Thou changest me from bad to good. Thou mak’st me humbly wishfo’ to be more like thee, and fearfo’ to lose thee when life is ower, and a’ the muddle cleared awa’. Thou’rt an Angel;’

p. 83

Eeeek! There are whole pages of this fake ‘Lancashire dialect’, and although I know it’s an attempt at authenticity and no doubt the ‘hands’ of Preston, Manchester, and other Northern mill towns at the time spoke a little bit like this, it struck me as rather patronising and was pretty tiresome to read on the way to work in the morning. And I’m as northern as they come! *Sigh* It also occurred to me that Stephen was the only person to speak in this irritating way in the entire novel. Not even fellow ‘hand’ Rachael went ‘tup Mill’, so, explain to me Mr Dickens, why oh why?!!!!!

Louisa Gradgrind and Sissy Jupe

Phew, rant over. Clearly overall this book rightly deserves its slim space on the classics shelf. It is, like most of Dickens’ novels, a true window into Victorian England, and really rather funny as well. This could also be a miserable book, but the beauty and skill of Dickens’ writing simply doesn’t allow for misery or boredom. (Unless Stephen Blackpool opens his mouth.) All I wanted was a little more Sissy. Cecilia Jupe is often cited as the heart of this novel, the heart to Gradgrind’s chunk of coal who comes to everyone’s rescue in the end. But does she? She is present in a mere fraction of chapters, the majority of them barely to say a few lines and could, I feel, have been much more pivotal to the story. She becomes a presence just in time for the end of the book and it makes me wonder whether Dickens intended for her to be such a major player in the first place and whether the romantics among us have afforded her more importance as time has gone by….hmmm…thought-provoking stuff.

If you appreciate anything deliciously old-fashioned, do pick up Charles Dickens if you haven’t done so already. There’s a reason he’s considered to be one of, if not the, greatest English writer of all time.

Is anybody out there?

Echo echo echo…..

…….oh, hello! If you’re a regular here at Literary Relish and have stuck it out since my faraway house-moving post of the 14th March then thankyou so much for being patient with me and sticking around, if you got bored and disappeared then come back I’m still alive!!! … If you’re a newbie then greetings and welcome to the world of Literary Relish and a long overdue update…

So, in case you hadn’t already had enough excuses – I moved house this month and cooor has it been exhausting! Packing has got to be on my top ten all time list of things I HATE to do. Unpacking anything of any sort (i.e. setting up home, weekly food shop) is highly satisfying but packing up is dull. Apart from the 13 HUGE boxes of books that is!

Oh yes, books. Those things I’m so crazy about and that Literary Relish lives for, contrary to my expectations (thinking – less blog = more reading time) have also been sorely neglected of late. Among the heavy lifting and a nasty bout of tonsilitis how many books did I read? A grand total of three. Three books in an entire month. In fact, make that two, as for the first time in the entire history of the Manchester Book Club, to proudly mark its year anniversary I didn’t even bother to finish our choice, choosing to gift it to a more enthusiastic book group member instead. Shameful.

What didn’t really hit the spot for me? The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier, which in my highly distracted state of mind was nothing special and did zero to capture my attention and imagination. What did prove successful? Two good old classics. Graham Greene is easy to dip into and almost always writes well-rounded, amusing novels; his Travels with my Aunt was a must after reading Our Man in Havana.  Finally, if I didn’t succeed with anything else literary this month, at least I finally took the opportunity to read my first Dickens in a very long time; Hard Times (much exalted by Daddy Relish). Apart from some terribly irritating Lancashire dialect to plow through at times (more to follow in a full review soon) this much-lauded classic surprised me with its great wit and (what I imagine was) a very realistic portrait of a northern factory town and the types who resided within it at the time.

Mantel’s Fludd arrived today, courtesy of the excellent Oxfam shop in our local market town… something tells me I’m going to enjoy exploring that one….

Most importantly, where do we put all of these books? Great plans are afoot at Relish cottage, including what we hope will become a great wall of impressive, orange-spined literature a la A Penguin a Week or, perhaps, something like Beauty’s fairytale library (perhaps stretching the imagination there a teensy bit…)

Where the books live now…

Where they will live.. (covering up a highly risky choice of paint colour: ‘dancehall green’)

Yet another wall of books downstairs? Only those that make us look well-read make the cut (oo so shallow)

Anyway! Enough of me. What have you all been doing with yourselves whilst I’ve been away from the blogosphere? More reading than me I hope. Has anyone read Under the Skin by Michael Faber. I love Faber but this one is intense and may give me a nightmare or two!

Escape to the Country …

Exciting news is abound in the Relish household… Without any help or persuasion from Kirsty and Phil, the boyfriend and I have decided to eschew our city centre living to move to the wilds of the beautiful British countryside. Hurrah!

This of course means that, over the next month or so, I shall inevitably have no a) time b) energy or c) internet connection to look after Literary Relish in the way I normally may (or may not as the case may be!) With any luck I will be checking in from time to time throughout March to say hi but, until we’re all back up and running, do bear with me…I’ve not gone very far!

See you all soon!

She Rises

Any of you who pop by regularly to say hi will be aware that I am a huge fan of historical fiction, not of the kind that is too trashy mind. Although there needs to be some skirt rustling and bodice-clad bosoms involved, I like my historical fiction gritty, stinking and realistic. After a succession of gooduns (Sarah Waters, Hilary Mantel, etc) She Rises; the captivating début novel by Kate Worsley landed on my doorstep at just the right time…

Bloomsbury : Hardback : 2013 : 421 pages : Kindly sent to me by the publishers

Sinking into a wonderful novel is the pastime of any true escapist and I can’t think of anything better than transporting myself to an entirely different place in an entirely different era. The year is 1740. Louise ‘Lou’ Fletcher lives a relatively serene and sheltered existence as a dairymaid on a farm in the Essex countryside; grafting alongside her weather-worn mother and young sister. Weary of the bustling harbour towns and raging seas that lured both her father and brother away from their family, Louise is content with her lot in life. That is, of course, until she is ‘talent spotted’ by the farm owner’s brother; a great sea-captain after a lady’s maid for his wayward daughter Rebecca. Thus starts a life in the thriving port town of Harwich, taking Lou far away from her corner of comfort and thrusting her into a life fraught with opportunities and emotions she could never have imagined in her wildest dreams…

Luke, on the other hand, is a young man in trouble. Press-ganged by the Royal Navy and en-route to fight a war that isn’t his, the Essex is a terrifying place to be. Billowing sails, rolling decks and cavernous, contaminated holds, this is about the survival of the fittest. With barely any time to pine after the sweetheart he left behind, Luke must transform himself into the filthiest of all tars and fast. His existence couldn’t be further from that of Worsley’s young dairymaid stumbling through life on shore.

The cover of this book may be utterly tantalising and oh so stylish, however, this is happily not a case of all good looks and no substance. She Rises has been a joy to read and is an accomplished first novel. Alternation between the romantic, Pirates of the Caribbean-style smugglers’ town and the tension of a prisoner’s life at sea keeps the story fresh and exciting and the drama unfolding. Viewing this rolling and swaying world from the point of view of two people who start our story as Mr/Miss Ordinary allows us to delight in their extraordinary tales all the more. This is a tale of great danger and sacrifice, intrigue and identity, full of humanity with a few key characters (e.g. Luke’s shipmate Nick) frozen in time in their full gory glory to incite great shock, awe and sympathy from the reader. Lou and Luke live in seemingly entirely separate worlds leading entirely separate lives and the moment when these two narratives, previously co-existing in harmony, collide, it is with a delicacy and skill from the author that allows for maximum shock from the reader…

There will no doubt, due to the style and subject matter of this exciting new novel, be countless comparisons made between Worsley and her mentor Sarah Waters. Indeed the similarities do seem uncanny, particularly having only just read one of Waters’ books myself recently. However, this a standalone adventure story that betrays great imagination, great heart and if this is what they call a début novel, then I am very excited to see what comes next…

She Rises is out on the 14th March 2013

One Last Thing Before I Go (Blog Tour!)

However open-minded I like to think I am, I still feel fairly skeptical when picking up certain types of books, particularly those with very contemporary narratives and modern characters. Don’t get me wrong, my list of real ‘classics’ falls wwaaaahhhaaay short of what it should be … but my taste in literature currently tends to linger either in the past, or in a land far far away from modern Manchester…

Orion Books : Paperback : 2013 : Fiction : 324 pages : Kindly sent to me by the publishers

This is precisely why, when picking up writer and producer Jonathan Tropper’s latest offering and being introduced to characters called ‘Casey’ ‘Denise’ and ‘Drew’, I could feel my alarm bells ringing. However, having now immersed myself in Tropper’s wry world of massive losers and smug winners and being highly entertained throughout, I think it might be about time I revised my attitudes…

Drew Silver is a 44-year-old divorcee. Ex-drummer of one-hit wonder band ‘The Bent Daisies’ living at ‘The Versailles’; ironic party pad for dull and destitute men. With ex-wife Denise marrying a sickeningly nice, extremely rich doctor and daughter Casey contemplating an unplanned pregnancy, things seem just a tad worse than usual…. that is until his heart begins to give up on him entirely…

Do not be fooled, One Last Thing Before I Go isn’t half as depressing or naff as my inadequate synopsis makes it sound.  Corny one-liners and Americanisms brushed to one side, Jonathan Tropper spins a surprisingly good yarn. Becoming easily invested in the lives of lonely, relatively uncharismatic middle-aged men I found myself snorting with laughter at moments of absolute witty brilliance:

‘Cigars are all the rage these days, on both sides of the marital divide…Because of a tossed salad of latent Freudian inadequacy issues, middle-aged men will perform fellatio on a clump of cured leaves and somehow feel more like men because of it, which, if nothing else, is a colossal triumph of marketing. And you would think that, phallic or not, a habit that involves plugging your mouth would be a quieter affair, but you would be wrong.

p. 54

Fluid dialogue and amusing anecdotes make up the comfortable foundations for a far darker tale. Drew Silver’s life is full to the brim with the ‘wrong’ decisions and his behaviour just a tad pathetic at times, which can make for frustrating reading. However, that easy frustration soon morphs into sympathy for a man who, although largely responsible for many of his predicaments, is also an unwitting victim of that unrelenting trial called life. Floating through massive questions of, literally, life and death (that would make this a superb little book group book) Drew Silver rapidly becomes akin to your ne’er-do-well cousin or nephew; needy, a little repetitive but ultimately very very funny and deserving of a break.

Despite some chunks of cheese that made my very-English-self cringe on more than one occasion, One Last Thing Before I Go is good fun and will no doubt strike a chord with many battling through the wilderness of modern life themselves, providing you’re up for the craic that is. Both dark and light in equal measures, Tropper’s ending to Silver’s tale left me wanting more…and what more could we hope for at the end of a good book?

‘Mistakes have been made. It’s hard to know where to start. Things have been a mess for so many years that trying to pin down a starting point is like trying to figure out where your skin starts. All you can ever really know is that it’s wrapped around you, sometimes a little tighter than you’d like.’

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One Last Thing Before I Go is out now.

Visit Girl vs Bookshelf tomorrow to read an interview with Jonathan about writing One Last Thing Before I Go.

Yesterday’s stop is available at Novelicious.com.