Summer Reading

Summer reading - beloved of newspapers - seems to me only an extension of normal reading. It's only the place that changes, not you, or the type of book. This year I took, somewhat over-ambitiously, about a dozen volumes. I managed 4.

1. Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene

I've only lately begun to read Graham Greene properly, having dabbled with Brighton Rock and The End of the Affair as a teenager. There's something so bittersweetly human about this novel, with its improbable yet entirely believable anecdotes, its global range, and its gradual entropic movement.  Beautifully controlled, yet with a strong strain of anarchic glee. Its main character, Henry Pulling, is pulled out of suburbia into the dangerous, apparently far distant world of his aunt - only to discover that there is more about her, and about what she does, that is close to him than he would ever believe.

2. The Monk by Matthew Lewis

What struck me as I read this bonkers early Gothic novel is the youth of its writer, and of many similar writers. Mary Shelley, William Beckford, and Matthew Lewis were in or barely out of their teens when they wrote these disordered masterpieces. The Monk is set in Spain, where I was staying, and concerns the prideful Ambrosio who, once succumbing to temptation, falls swiftly into lust, black magic, rape and torture. It also contains a homoerotic fallen angel with diamond bangles, a daring escape plot featuring a ghostly nun, and various visions, chasms, brigands and poisons. It challenges the status quo whilst, quite literally, freezing the blood; and there are some characters who speak in a sort of proto-Jane Austen idiom, which adds another level of enjoyment to the whole.




3. The Blue Flower by Penelope FitzGerald

This is a mysterious, light-filled novel about the life of the poet Novalis. Born an aristocrat, he must follow his father's wishes and become a salt mine inspector; yet he falls in love with a (very) young girl "of the middle classes." Everything is thrown into question: what must prevail, love or duty?
Elusive, allusive; the technique of the novel is to present short scenes, vivid and imbued with a quiet urgency. Very few novels have caused me to weep on the last page: this one did, and with only three lines of bare information. Did people in the past live their lives more fully, knowing they would not live that long? Discuss.

4. Devil's Blood by Prentice and Weil

I had been very much looking forward to this sequel to Black Arts, in which our hero, Jack, is still
troubled by his devil sight, and also must learn how to use the key given to him by the god Lud. The Elizabethan setting is as lively and bustling as ever, and is given the added frisson of time travel as Jack is sent hurtling into a deadly plot. The book is dark, pacy and very enjoyable.



Ongoing: I'm still moving slowly through Pepys, taking my time, savouring it like a few morsels of a delicious pie every now and again. I'm also taking a great deal of pleasure in Robert Tombs' The English and their History, having made it now to the Industrial Revolution (though that's only about half way through.) And finally, Norman Davies' Vanished Kingdoms is a dazzling account of how brief and beautiful a political entity can be: I've just finished the entry on Burgundy, a clear and intriguing piece of scholarship if ever there was one.

Books of the Year, Day One: Classics

Merry Christmas to you, and God Bless You, One and All! (Flings away crutches, downs eggnog, kisses unsuitable person under mistletoe, passes out with paper crown over one eye.) Well I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas. Mine was distinctly unbookish (apart from dipping into Samuel Pepys); to rectify the matter I am returning to my books of the year round ups, which I hope will become a tradition as Yuleish as weeping over the Doctor Who special. (What? I didn't do that! Not me, guvn'or.) To start with, here are my Classics of the Year.

1. Vathek by William Beckford 

Published by Oxford Classics, this is insane, terrifying and brilliant, concerning the Caliph Vathek, who meets an ugly stranger; said stranger promises him untold power and the knowledge of the pre-Adamite sultans; meanwhile, his Satanic mother Carathis gloats and commits various atrocities with her mute negresses. It veers from extreme farce (when Vathek shoves, one by one, fifty of the most beautiful of his subjects' children off a cliff) to madness (Koran-quoting dwarfs, anyone?). It's, basically, totally cool. Beckford was 20 when he wrote it, and it's my Classic of the Year for its complete and utter disregard for narrative and, well, anything, but yet managing to be scintillating. The bit where the mute negresses run into the marsh looking for poisonous weeds; the bit where Carathis storms around hell; the bit where people are being tortured for eternity with their hearts set on fire - just go and read it, you won't regret it.

2. The Iliad by Homer (trans. Stephen Mitchell)

Some thought this new version (see comment below) too colloquial - would Achilles, asked The Economist drily, really say "I don't give a damn about that man?" I think he probably would. Mitchell retained the grandeur of the original, whilst injecting it with some zest and spice - an excellent version for those who haven't yet been introduced to the wonders of Homer.

3. The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope

"The moving toyshop of the heart..." A fabulous little satirical epyllion, ordered yet chaotic, lovely, shocking, sharp and warm all at the same time, it left me longing for a twenty-first century Pope.

4. Eline Vere by Louis Couperus

Printed by the stalwart Pushkin Press, the cover of this beautiful edition shows a woman draped in a kimono, made inert by ennui, as is Eline Vere herself. The Dutch Couperus was revered in his time; his highly realistic novels drip with detail, as gorgeously and tightly rendered as a painting of his countryman's. The riotous characters and scenes in this book seemed to be so close to us in spirit and temperament, so much more so than the aristocrats of War and Peace, or the WASPs of Edith Wharton; there is a naughtiness, an impishness in his prose which I found very touching. Eline Vere herself is a complicated heroine (if one can call her that), and reading this you sometimes feel as if you've overdone it on the cherry brandy, but it's entirely worth it to become wholly immersed in a world both familiar and strange. There is a Dutch film, but if anyone knows if there's one with English subtitles (my Dutch being, er, non-existent), I'd be grateful.

5. Electra by Sophocles, The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus, Philoctetes by Sophocles 

This was the year I returned to Greek tragedy. There is something in the searing purity of Sophocles that cannot be garnered anywhere else; and the cosmic otherworldliness of Aeschylus feels like looking into a clouded mirror, back into the depths of our civilisation from which spring these extraordinary tales. The Philoctetes in particular I have been enjoying, finding in its tale of isolation, friendship and civilisation something that resonates widely, it being perhaps the most 'modern' of Sophocles' plays (containing, as it does, a meta-textual play directed by Odysseus). But lurking behind its resolution lies the future fall of Troy - and in that is the genius of Sophocles. I also highly recommend the version of Philoctetes by Seamus Heaney: The Cure at Troy, which adds an eeriness.

6. Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

Every time I read this I find it more savage. The murder of Mr Prendergast by the lunatic! The deaths of onlookers at the wedding of Paul and Margot! Almost every paragraph is laced with venom and wit, and it never gets any less fresh. I also read The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold again this year, but found it hasn't lasted nearly as much - I think because its "trick" seems so outdated. It's something you need to look at in the context of its time, whereas Decline and Fall stretches its black limbs across the centuries, settling in for good.

7. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

This occupies a special place in my mental furniture, much like an old rockinghorse, having responded warmly to it as a child: its tale of young clairvoyants terrified of being found out for fear of death is both thrilling and poignant. And God I wish I was a mind-reader. It would make writing novels so much easier.

8. How Many Miles to Babylon by Jennifer Johnston

A little-known, and overlooked, novella, about the friendship between an Anglo-Irish aristocrat and a labourer on his lands; they come together in the trenches of the First World War, but their friendship does little but tear them apart as others misconstrue it. Written in sometimes quite oblique prose, it nevertheless manages to sear its imagery onto the brain.

9. Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

The first Fitzgerald I've read - and why don't people read her more? This is a slim book but it contains within it more intelligence, wit, vividness and awareness of humanity than most. It concerns the lives of a group of houseboaters and is often quite nightmarish in its piercing lyricism.


10. A Favourite of the Gods by Sybille Bedford

Published by Daunt Books, this deserves a mention both because Daunts are doing a great job of bringing out neglected books, and also because you can see what a great writer Bedford would become. This novel is very curate's-eggish; the opening chapter is peerless, but the bits in between can be remarkably stilted. However, it is worth persevering with just to see how a writer forms herself.

Pip pip, then, till tomorrow...