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| Heidi by Johanna Spyri |
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Having grown up as one of six children, sharing a room - and in very lean times a bed - with my sisters, this one had fairly obvious appeal. Her parents conveniently disposed of, Spyri sticks our heroine in the care of her resentful and ambitious Aunt Dete, and the book opens with the aunt then getting shot of Heidi by installing her at the remote shack of her hermit grandfather. The town-folk gossip (a hermit loves an audience), Heidi makes a friend of Peter the goatherd, and wins over the old man. That no-account Dete returns, whisks Heidi off once more, this time depositing her with a family in Frankfurt as a companion to their daughter Klara, who is wheel-chair bound (another strange childhood fantasy of mine).
This is a story suffused with pathos, set pieces and stock characters: Heidi’s crushing homesickness leading to illness, Klara’s disability, the poor blind grandmother, the mean Frau Rottenmeier, miracle cures and family reunions. I loved this story at nine, and watching the series on PBS bolstered my attachment. What I didn’t comprehend then, but realised on reading the book to my daughter recently, was just how beautifully constructed and layered this story is. There is a multiplicity of binary oppositions: town and country, sickness and health, young and old, hope and hopelessness, God and godlessness. The dichotomy of men and women is complicated by cross-gender behaviour where men are gossipy and women are seen carrying out the bulk of the work. Indeed, Heidi casts herself quite literally as the breadwinner for Peter’s family. Where Aunt Dete comes across as selfish, and Frau Rottenmeier as mean, one must consider the significance of their position as unmarried women in the mid-19th century. Ultimately this ‘problem’ of what ought to be done with unattached women is the key feature of the book, for the story reaches a resolution when Heidi’s own future becomes secured. |
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| The Invention of the Crusades by Christopher Tyerman. |
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Tyerman’s book is not just about the Crusades, it is about history. The author shines a light on the way the Crusades were considered by those medieval people who participated, by reflecting upon the subsequent generations who tried to comprehend them. Could there have been any Crusades in the 12th century given that the term itself did not exist until the 17th century? What was it these people understood they were participating in at the time and why did it attract this name? Rightly or wrongly nomenclature is part of history, and a huge feature of Crusading history in particular. Consider how deeply loaded is the word ‘crusade’ – and all the back-pedalling Bush had to do when he invoked it.
Recently someone said to me that history ‘is nothing, just a load of pictures, maps and dates.’ He was a mathematician (and he dares to throw stones!). History is a narrative subject. A historian finds her subject just as a fiction writer does. One marvels at the workings of the creative imagination, evidenced by the many good fictions out there; so too should one marvel at the process of turning over stones and sifting through the sand, the ‘tracks’ that history has left behind.
If one is lucky enough, history has left behind pictures and maps and dates. Then one could take all that data and make something like Mark Kurlansky’s Cod – 1,000 years, six continents, and one fish responsible for wars, revolution, exploration. There’s some maths for you! |
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| Jane Austen – all of it! |
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| Don’t force me to choose, I’ll take the bullet. It’s operatic writing: the interiors and exteriors, the clothes, the sizing up and taking down, the deeply and exquisitely flawed characters. I love them, I love them all. None of this Bridget Jones malarkey even comes close. This is the real deal. I go through phases where I read them one after another and I come over all girlie, pretty-oh-so-pretty and fiddle-dee-dee, and bursting with yesteryear female contrivances. These books make me a better person, not just trying to walk the line between Eleanor and Marianne, just not swearing so much. While under Miss Austen’s spell I go about being monstrously vexed rather than fucked off. This truly is improving literature. |
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| What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt |
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| Oh, she’s good, so good. Doppelgangers abound, the ephemerality of people, places, ideas; the relative nature of love and relationships. Perspective is key, the unshakability of the memory of what might have been glimpsed in the corner of one’s eye. The unsettled nature and fluidity of memory is transferred to the reader: I am convinced that somewhere in my past I did attend an exhibition of the work of one of these characters, or it was a show I missed, or one I will see one day. This book was not just read, something happened to me and it is imprinted upon me, leaving the ghost of a memory. What I Loved spans years, lives, loves, and careers. The characters are intelligent and intense, and deeply human, making them as available to tragedy as any of us. Husvedt’s writing is painterly but rooted in realism and the male voice of her main character is utterly convincing. I will say no more other than read it. |
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| I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith |
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This one sat upon my bookshelf gathering dust for years. I have no idea how it even got there, but I passed it over, preferring other books until it literally fell into my hands when the shelf collapsed. What a fool I was! This is the book I wished I’d read at 15. The humour and high drama of domestic life are certainly captivating and undoubtedly I’d have imitated some aspect of each of the women. ‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink’ is how Cassandra begins her journal. The young narrator, the vicissitudes of her family and the castle she lives in, are utterly beguiling. ‘Consciously naïve’ is how she overhears herself described, a somewhat unfair assessment which serves to make her only too conscious, though no less naïve. The success of her father’s one book brought them from London to the Suffolk castle, and gave them a step mother, Topaz, a glamorous ageing model who communes with the moon in the nude. The father’s writer’s block makes the family dependent upon their lodger, the ever-devoted Stephen, long after the good furniture has been either sold or used as firewood. They also pin their hopes upon a good marriage for Cassandra’s sister, the beautiful and not-at-all naïve Rose. The fading fortunes of the family contrast with the rising stock of the newly arrived Americans who have inherited the castle and allow the family to continue there on a long lease. Though the contrast in this post-war novel obviously extends to England and America generally, the story never becomes lost. Because the book is written in journal form we are bound to Cassandra’s point of view and are therefore rendered as ‘consciously naïve’ as she; people are eccentric rather than dangerously desperate and poverty might be cheerfully waited out while the family makes do and mends by guttering candlelight. Money and beauty are held in high esteem, but love and perseverance triumph. Cassandra’s optimism is infectious and I look forward to passing this on to my daughter in the hope she too will be captured long enough to hang on to a bit of her own conscious naïvety. |
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