This is just fantastic. July’s short stories are so imaginative in the way she blends mundane realism with the bizarrely surreal. It feels like a modern, shabby, seedy version of magic realism.
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The Last Day of a Condemned Man — Victor Hugo
Notes purportedly written by a condemned man during the day before his scheduled execution. Hugo wrote this as a protest against the death penalty at a time when the guillotine was in enthusiastic use by the French authorities. It works well by humanising the doomed prisoner, though I feel it cheats a little by never detailing the crime that put him on death row in the first place. Still a powerful read.
Billy Bird — Emma Neale
This is a wonderful story of a quirky boy and his family as they go through some funny, tragic, interesting times. The premise is that Billy turns into a bird, or believes he does. But there is a lot more happening around that, and it all makes sense in the end.
Continue readingMy Secret Life In Hut Six
This book reveals what it was really like for ordinary people caught up in the extraordinary world of Bletchley Park, the World War 2 British military code-breaking centre. There are quite a few books about this — My Secret Life In Hut Six is unusual because it doesn’t focus on the main personalities. It’s the story of one of the rank and file workers, written by her grandson. At the time, she had only a vague notion of the context and importance of the work being done, but since the reader (hey, that’s me!) does know this, everything takes on much more meaning. The writing is plain but gives a good sense of what it must have been like for this clever young woman from the provinces to be caught up in something much bigger than she could have known. It’s a new take on a fascinating place and period.
Wellbeing Economics — Dalziel & Saunders
This short but thought-provoking book describes a way that New Zealand’s economy could be reorganised to focus on the wellbeing of all its citizens, defined as
The ability to lead the kinds of lives that they value and have reason to value.
There’s a lot of NZ-specific information, but the ideas are universally applicable. The approach is a bit different from the ideas put forth by the usual suspects across the political spectrum. Paul Dalziel and Caroline Saunders believe a market economy is essential, but recognise that it must be managed to allow the markets to deliver their maximum benefit. Even the most free markets are still heavily regulated, most obviously by contract and property law, and this helps us see that regulation is not antithetical to free markets — it is essential.
As for the Big Government versus Small Government debate, Dalziel and Saunders argue that government should be big enough. Government’s job is to do the things that citizens cannot do individually or collectively, and to help them add value to the things they choose to do. But the onus is on citizens to initiate this process and to use this support for their own individual and communal wellbeing. This is a shift from the old welfare state to what Dalziel and Saunders call the wellbeing state.
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Thorndon — Kirsty Gunn
A meditation on belonging, place, family and more. Kirsty Gunn did what Katherine Mansfield never did: she returned from the UK to live for a time in her home town of Wellington, New Zealand. She stayed in a cottage in Thorndon, the suburb where Mansfield grew up, on a scholarship to work on her “Katherine Mansfield project”. This book is the result.
The style of Thorndon feels more like Mansfield than Gunn, in my limited experience of both writers. It feels as if Gunn, a Mansfield scholar, was deeply affected by being steeped in Mansfield’s formative environment. Even more so given that it was also Gunn’s.
This review is about books, BWB Texts, Katherine Mansfield, Kirsty Gunn, New Zealand. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment
Accidence Will Happen — Oliver Kamm
In this book, Oliver Kamm attempts to explode a few myths about English usage, and set out sensible guidelines for literate writing. He gives interesting historical background notes and examples for many of his points, so the book is useful and well worth reading. But even though he chides “sticklers” for their insistence on idiosyncratic rules, his own rules and suggestions are themselves quirky and inconsistent. This makes the book a bit frustrating to read. It’s fun if you enjoy arguing with books though.
Kamm is generally very liberal in his views of language: he thinks that language should be allowed to change through usage, and that arbitrary and obsolete rules shouldn’t impede this. He’s right, of course. But he goes both too far and not far enough: he want to throw out some rules that are useful and make the language more usable; yet he wants to keep some obscure rules that make no sense despite his attempts to justify them. I found myself shaking my head and tsking so much that I was moved to pick up a pen and note my disagreement (and, in some cases, my agreement). Here are some examples.
Prizes — Janet Frame
Life is hell, but at least there are prizes.
This is a wonderful compilation of short stories spanning Frame’s career. There is a lot of variety here: the common thread is that they are mostly set in New Zealand in the second half of last century. There are surreal magical realist pieces, impressionistic slice-of-life pieces, and coming-of-age stories. My favourites are the ones written from a child’s point of view: we all used to be children, but she actually remembers what it was like and expresses it in a way that makes me remember too.
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The Big Music — Kirsty Gunn
An old man kidnaps his housekeeper’s granddaughter and takes her for a walk in the hills. He needs to write her into a piece of music he is composing. This is the start of this novel, and as it continues we learn more about the history of his family, which has lived for many generations in a remote house in the Scottish highlands. The house and family have become famous in the world of classical bagpipe music, the “big music” of the title.
I have never seen a book put together like this one before. It’s presented as a documentary, with the story built up from fragments of letters, recordings and papers found during the author’s research into the family and house. Supporting the story are many many footnotes, including frequent cross-references to other parts of the story and to the numerous appendices including plans of the house, maps of the area, family history, proceedings of musical societies, academic papers and more. At first I found the footnotes intrusive and fussy, but eventually I realised that this was all an essential part of the book.
This review is about books, Kirsty Gunn, New Zealand, novels, Scotland. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment
The Garden Party — Katherine Mansfield
Beautiful short stories from the expat New Zealander, set in Europe and NZ last century. They drew me in so much that while reading it on the bus, I missed my stop. Twice.
The stories are about unremarkable people, but in each one I felt that I could really get under the skin of the characters. The writing isn’t at all flashy, but it’s still somehow very immersive. Even the shorter stories feel quite substantial. This is definitely worth reading and rereading. But preferably not on public transport.
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