A Common Reader . . .

Review: Death and the Author - David Ellis

The Oxford University Press website helpfully gives a list of potential readers of their books and in the case of Death and the Author, the expectation is as follows:

a.  Anyone with a interest in D. H. Lawrence;
b.  anyone interested in exploring what it is like to have a disease for which there is no cure,
c.  the appeal of alternative medicine,
d.  the temptation of suicide for the terminally ill,
e.  the diminishing role of religion in modern life,
f.  the institution of famous last words, or
g.  the consequences of dying intestate

I suspect this covers quite a large proportion of people in one way or another and in my case I tick the boxes on quite a few of those.  Anyway, I came to this book after reading a very favourable review by William Palmer in this month's Literary Review, and I was not disappointed. 

Although this book focuses primarily on D H Lawrence and his experience of tuberculosis, David Ellis uses this platform to explore a wide range of death-related topics.  We learn much about the impact of T.B. on people before strepotmycin conquered the illness once and for all.  Lawrence for example spent most of his adult life in battle with the disease and his last few years were ruined for him by the hacking coughs, the fevers and the accompanying debilitation which turned his nights into a hideous torment. It is only amazing that he was able to continue to work so hard throughout this period, and this was only because when urged to rest, he found his mind relentlessly thinking and planning. 

Review: Coda - Simon Gray

This final volume, Coda, in Simon Gray's diaries will be warmly welcomed by anyone who has followed Gray's progress from The Smoking Diaries to The Last Cigarette, in which he documented his life in characteristic candid and confessional style. 

When Gray died in August 2008, Ian Jack, the then editor of Granta and a close friend of Gray, wrote a moving obituary to him in which he wrote:

Simon started smoking when he was a boy of eight or nine and continued to smoke for more than sixty years, latterly Silk Cut and at his smoking peak at least three packs a day. His ultimate diagnosis and prognosis merely allowed him to carry on with a surer fatalism – no point in stopping now, so far down the motorway past the slip road.

Not that Gray's diaries are all about smoking - far from it.  Gray writes about many topics including his life as a playwright, his holidays in Greece, and his close friendship with Harold Pinter (sadly also deceased late last year).  But the battle with smoking is an underlying theme throughout and is a melancholic warning to anyone who feels that smoking is something to do with personal freedom. 

Review: Casanova - Ian Kelly

I am grateful to Mark Thwaite for publishing an interview with me this morning on his Editor's Corner blog. 

It was only through reading W G Sebald's book Vertigo that I realised that there was more to Casanova than the usual idea of a serial lover and seducer.  This commonly accepted view of Casanova is even immortalised in the Merriam Webster dictionary as "Lover; esp: a man who is a promiscuous and unscrupulous lover".  Sebald on the other hand focused on Casanova's mind during his period of imprisonment in Venice, and intriguingly drew parallels with his own mental condition.  When actor and writer Ian Kelly's book Casanova was published last month, it was serialised on Radio 4's Book of the Week,  and when I heard a couple of episodes while driving in the car, I decided that it would be my next book purchase. 

Ian Kelly has done a magnificent job in writing the biography of this complex figure in a mere 360 pages.  The source material, not least Casanova's own Histoire De Ma Vie must have been vast, let alone the background reading on the history of the times and the innumerable countries that Casanova visited during his travels.  

Casanova was born in Venice to a travelling actress, and was brought up by his grandmother while his mother travelled throughout Europe.  At the age of nine he was sent to live in a boarding house in Padua in an attempt to cure repetitive nose-bleeds, thought to be be caused by the noxious air of the cramped Venetian apartment. 

Casanova

This week, Ian Kelly's Casanova is published and goes straight to my wish list, not least because Casanova is for me unfinished business from W G Sebald's  Vertigo. In the second chapter of his book, "All'estero", Sebald portrays Giacomo Casanova as a victim of Venetian (in)justice, when he was imprisoned among people who were incarcerated for no reason other than that the rulers of the city wanted them removed from society.  The tribunals, before which they appeared, had already decided their fate, which often consisted of indefinite imprisonment, and rather than submit to many wasted years, Casanova managed to escape and travel very far from Venice to escape further terms of imprisonment. 

Sebald's narrator (and let's not make the mistake of reading Sebald's books as autobiography) wakes in his hotel room in Venice on the day after the anniversary of Casanova's escape from his Venetian gaol, with an troubled mind.  "I became enveloped by a sense of utter emptiness and never once left my room.  It seemed to me that one could well end one's life simply through thinking and retreating into one's mind, for, although I had closed the windows and the room was warm, my limbs were growing progressively colder and stiffer  . . I felt as if I had already been interred or laid out for burial".  Just a few pages earlier, Sebald's describes Casanova's escape as breaking out from a "lead-lined crocodile", perhaps echoing on his own feelings in the hotel.  

The review in the The Times gives me the impression that Kelly's book will be a worthwhile read and is has also been selected to be Radio 4's Book of the Week from tomorrow (Monday 24 June 2008) and I shall listen in to get a preview.  I suspect it won't be on my wishlist for long: my cash-back credit card which pays me in Waterstone's vouchers owes me £20 so a visit to Eastbourne seems to be in order when they arrive in the post. 

Review: Unimagined - Imran Ahad

At a time when the only media references to Moslems seem to be negative, it is refreshing to read this amusing account of a Pakistani boy growing up in London and dealing with life as an immigrant. Other readers have suggested that this book bears comparison with Sue Towsend’s Adrian Mole, but this is largely because like Adrian, Asad recounts his journey through adoloscence during which he falls in love with various unattainable girls and suffers the usual episodes of teenage angst. Asad was a serious little boy who struggled to understand why he was “different” to his English-born friends, and he writes touchingly of the sticks and stones that came his way at school and in the neighbourhood he lived in.

Keeping Mum - Brian Thompson

In Keeping Mum Brian Thompson has written a funny and interesting memoir of his wartime childhood. His mother seems to have been an extremely difficult woman and yet Brian somehow survived the experience and is now able to write about his early life without bitterness - quite an achievement.

From his early days, his father had given up on his family, preferring to follow his own course, firstly by joining up to fight in the RAF and then by leading a successful comm ercial life in London. Brian’s mother on the other hand made hardly any attempts to care for her son, disappearing into the nearby city of Cambridge to enjoy herself with American servicemen, and to indulge her passion for dancing. We read of the young Brian waiting by the window in the evening for his mother to return home, then putting himself to bed in the empty house, in terror of ghosts and invading Germans.

Review: Family Romance - John Lanchester

I do not usually read family sagas, but was drawn to Family Romance as I was already a fan of John Lanchester’s novels, particularly the wonderful Debt To Pleasure. I was not disappointed because this book is a wonderful read and draws the reader in to the labyrinthine history of his parents (and grandparent’s) lives.

Lanchester’s task is made easier because his parents had interesting lives, his mother being a Catholic nun until the age of 38, and his father having been brought up former British colonies and taking up a career in international banking.