The Beautiful Summer (Cesare Pavese):
Pavese (1908-1950) sets
this short novel in Turin in the 1930s, during the rise of Mussolini and
fascism. It tells the story of a sixteen-year-old young woman who is desperate
for a life of adventure. She begins a friendship with an artist’s model (who,
in her early 20s, she sees as someone with style and sophistication) who
introduces her to a new world of bohemian artists and intoxicating freedom. She
starts a desperate love affair with an enigmatic young painter. It’s a story of
lost innocence and you just KNOW that the affair is destined to be short-lived
(in fact, no longer than the course of a summer). In her introduction to the
book, Elizabeth Strout provides this interesting background: “In his real life,
Pavese had trouble with women; he felt the betrayal of them deeply. In this
book, he uses those feelings and gives the portrait of an innocent, on the
verge of discovering the cruelties of love”. Ten years after writing this book,
he committed suicide following a brief affair with an American actress.
The Marches (Rory Stewart): This is a truly wonderful book by
Tory MP Rory Stewart. It’s about
walking along ‘the Marches’ (the frontier that divides Scotland and England).
Two walks feature in the book – one along the length of Hadrian’s Wall, the
other from Stewart’s home in Cumbria to his father’s house in Perthshire on the
Scottish Borders. Stewart and his aged father, Brian, used to undertake lots of
walks together in years gone by. These walks essentially just feature Rory –
with his father ‘ambushing by car’ from time to time. The book was published
2016, a year after his father’s death, aged 93. Despite the privileged nature
of the family (not to mention their political leanings!), their respective
military careers and their shared affection for the Black Watch and all its military
associations (not to mention Brian’s rather bombastic, hectoring, old-fashioned
and interfering nature), I grew to really admire the author. He seems like a
very decent man – highly intelligent, incredibly knowledgeable about history (especially
battle sites), but also passionate and conversant about nature… and with a keen
interest in people (of all classes and backgrounds), social history and
traditions. It’s also a very moving, beguiling and honest book – and frequently
funny and gently self-mocking. Rory clearly sought to speak to his father about
a whole raft of things in his final years… and the book is a fitting tribute to
his father’s extraordinary life (no.2 in the Intelligence Service; proficient
in Chinese, Cantonese, Malay and Hokkien; author; lover of Scottish dancing
etc), but I also got a strong sense of Rory Stewart’s own humanity and commonsense.
The book reminded me (despite trying very hard) of my own frustrated attempts to
have meaningful conversations with my father (and to re-visit special places)
in the final months of his life (he died in 1992). I REALLY enjoyed this book…
and suspect it will be one of my ‘books of the year’. Becoming (Michelle Obama): I took the opportunity to read my lovely friend Gail’s copy of this book while staying at her apartment in Plymouth. It makes fascinating reading about her ‘working-class’(?) childhood and family life in Chicago and her subsequent experiences that saw her getting to Harvard, working as a high-powered corporate lawyer, meeting and marrying Barak Obama and their subsequent lives within the political arena. It’s an honest, bold book (at times a bit too ‘American’ for me but, hey, she IS American and she’s writing about her life in the US!). She clearly feels passionately about encouraging young people (especially black females) to ‘become the best they can become’. In some ways, it paints a very depressing picture of US politics (perhaps not just American politics?) – the sacrifices, the complete dedication required, the fact that you and your family can’t go anywhere without security service personnel in tow (and with them checking your itineraries in advance), living lives completely under a spotlight and the utterly obscene (in my view) financial costs involved. Take this quote from the book, for example: “The cost was huge. (Barack and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who would eventually become a Republican nominee, would each raise over a billion dollars in the end to keep their campaigns competitive)”. She certainly doesn’t hold back in her distain for Donald Trump and all he stands for. The book’s epilogue includes the following words: “I’ve never been a fan of politics, and my experience over the last ten years has done little to change that. I continue to be put off by the nastiness – the tribal segregation of red and blue, this idea that we’re supposed to choose one side and stick to it, unable to listen and compromise, or even to be civil”. My thoughts exactly! An impressive book.
The Silence Of The Girls (Pat Barker): I’ve just joined one of our local StorySmith bookshop’s book group and this is our next book. It’s a powerful, illuminating, sobering ‘take’ on Homer’s Iliad – but from a female perspective. I have to say that my ‘Iliad knowledge’ was somewhat limited, but I was certainly aware that, at its heart, it featured the terrible destruction caused by male aggression. Barker’s novel is brilliant re-telling of the story focussing on the experiences of the women on the periphery of the battles, whose bodies and ‘pretty faces’ are the objects through which men struggle with each other for status. The women grieve for their dead sons, dead fathers, dead husbands and dead protectors. Very early on in the book, I remember feeling shocked and sickened by this stark comment made by one of the women, Briseis (much of the story is told through her eyes and experiences – although apparently Homer only mentions her 10 times in his poem): “And then they turned their attention to us”. Briseis is ‘awarded’ to Achilles, the great Greek fighter, after his army sacks one of Troy’s neighbouring towns – the same Achilles who had killed her husband, her parents and her brothers. I frequently found myself struggling with the ‘accepted fates’ of the raped, enslaved, and widowed women, such as this description: “I lay there, hating him, though of course he wasn’t doing anything he didn’t have a perfect right to do”. Each day, the soldiers battled with their enemy before returning to camp for food, alcohol (to excess) and sex with their slaves (the ‘trophies of war’). Gods are ever present in the story’s background (including Achilles’ mother, who was a sea goddess). Sickening tales of human sacrifices (frequently children) made to the Gods in order to receive their blessing or avoid their wrath. Barker’s message is clearly a feminist one, but a very important one that endeavours to ensure that the ‘defeated’ are not forgotten. I have a feeling this is almost a masterpiece of a book. I look forward to re-reading huge chunks of it before our book group next meets… and hearing what the others think about it.
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