Reading etc.

Reading

5 February, 2024
Posted in: Reading etc.

I have turned a corner. A couple of months ago, I packed up three bankers’ boxes of books to give away. This is the first time I have ever given away books. It took a lot out of me but, like everything, it’s easier when you get started. The longest journey starts with a single step etc. But after all this pain, why are my bookshelves still groaning with books? Why are they still tottering in piles on the floor? A mystery.

It’s been absolutely ages since I posted on books I have read, so prepare yourself.

The Coroner’s Daughter by Andrew Hughes

This is set in Dublin at the the start of the 1800s. It’s a detective story involving, yeah, you guessed it, the coroner’s daughter. A friend of mine was driven crazy by the anachronisms but I didn’t mind that and quite enjoyed the locations in Dublin which I know very well. Overall, not too bad but not sure I would read another.

A Menmoir: This Is Not About You by Rosemary McCabe

I bought this because I am a devotee of the podcast “Not Without My Sister” which the author hosts with her sister. It’s about all her past boyfriends. It’s pretty detailed and sad and funny in places and I think she’s a really good writer but overall it’s a bit depressing. It is dedicated “[t]o my mum, who will hate this”. She definitely will.

The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman

The author is the brother of Richard and also the guitarist in Suede. To be fair, my fears that he would not be able to write and that the book was published based on his celebrity alone were unfounded. This is about a theatre troop in Shakespearean times with a fantasy element blended in. A lot of research I am sure. I did not enjoy it; the plot dragged and I was unconvinced by the twist.

The Serial Garden by Joan Aiken

I like Joan Aiken, I like children’s books but this is a book for very young children, say, 6-9 and, if I had my time over it would not be one of the books I brought to read in Argentina last summer. Certainly, as we were all supposed to be sharing books, this cannot be described as one of the better choices. That said, if you have a 6-9 year old on your hands, this is strongly recommended.

Bad times In Buenos Aires by Miranda France

I read this on the flight home from Argentina I think (it’s all a blur). It’s an interesting book from the 1990s (a bit of its time) containing the author’s collected reflections on Argentina. I learned a lot from it and would recommend if you plan to visit BA; otherwise I’m not so sure.

Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin

I remember this being a big hit when it came out. The idea is that the author – an anthropologist by training – looks at the habits of her Park Avenue friends and neighbours from an anthropological perspective. Clever idea but ultimately a bit unconvincing. Funny in parts.

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

I bought three copies of this by accident ( I don’t want to talk about it) and I felt that I had better read one of them. It’s set in Northern Ireland in the 70s at the height of the Troubles and I approached it with very low levels of enthusiasm despite its rave reviews. It is a bit traumatising but it is excellent. Highly recommended. I’ve given away two of my copies all the same, thanks for asking.

Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia by Hadley Freeman

This is written by a journalist and, while I wouldn’t always call that a mark of quality, in my experience these books are pretty easy to read even when the subject matter is difficult, as here. I found this interesting. The author tries to draw from her particular experience of anorexia to some general conclusions. This is an illness relating to control and its her view that the fashion magazines of her day and instagram and tiktok images of today don’t make people anorexic but they don’t help much if you are anorexic. Her mother sounds like a saint. Worth a read, if you’re interested in this kind of thing.

Wavewalker by Suzanne Heywood

I really enjoyed this book about a 6 year old girl (the author) whose parents take her and her 4 year old brother on a round the world sailing trip. It sounds exciting but they end up staying at sea for 10 years and it is actually quite nightmarish. She describes it as “being trapped inside someone else’s dream”.

I was in Enniskerry in North Wicklow and buying some cushion covers made by this very talented woman (recommended if you’re in the market for napkins, cushion covers etc.). I commented to Mr. Waffle that they used to be ludicrously cheap but she had clearly got some advice and now although, still good value, they were no longer the absolute steal that they used to be. A woman tapped me gently on the arm and said, “I’m the artist”. I mean, is this exactly what I would have said had I known she was there? No. Could it have been worse? Yes. Anyhow we got chatting and it turned out that she had been in college with the Wavewalker woman (I bet you were wondering where this was going). She was annoyingly discreet about what Ms. Wavewalker was like but she too had read the book and was amazed that this innocuous seeming fellow student had had quite such a surprising back story. Small world and all that.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

This is about Jesuits in space. It’s terrible. Rosemary McCabe (podcaster and memoirist mentioned above) recommended it. I do not.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

Only alright I thought. I’ve definitely read better by this author. It’s a novel about a family with a farm in the pandemic – those pandemic novels are definitely starting to appear now – and their relationships. The mother tells the children the story of her past as an actress and her relationship at a summer reperatory with an actor who becomes famous.

Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan

I thought this was very good. I picked it up at the 10 day loan section of the local library which is always a bit stressful for me. It’s full of enticing best selling books but I rarely manage to turn them around within the ten day timeline but I didn’t have any difficulty with this one. It’s about what it’s like to be poor and it’s absolutely grim. Despite all the awful things she describes the thing that really brought home to me the neglect she had suffered was that she didn’t start brushing her teeth until she was in her 20s. No one had ever bothered to show her how. Honestly, not a misery lit fan but this is worth a read.

Hags: The Demonisation of Middle Aged Women by Victoria Smith

I tell you what, when you look like me, this is a hard one to ask for in the bookshop. It’s grand, I wouldn’t say that I learned anything particularly startling that I didn’t know before. Still, I liked her analysis of how each generation of young women think they will do better than the generation before because that earlier generation was flawed in some way (too conservative, too angry, whatever you’re having yourself) but this generation it will be different.

Everything’s fine by Cecilia Rabess

A clever romance novel about a black woman and a white man working in finance. A bit forgettable but very enjoyable.

Normal rules don’t apply by Kate Atkinson

I am a huge Kate Atkinson fan but I do not love her short stories. I didn’t love this. Very, very clever and meta but sometimes it just felt like she was getting all the ideas from her extraordinarily creative brain down on paper without any additional material. That said, I did love a couple of the stories and overall it made me think a lot about the writing process.

A Lesson in Malice by Catherine Kirwan

This is a detective story set in Cork. I recognise every inch described in this novel. I loved it. However, not sure about the detective mystery which is, presumably, the draw for non-Cork devotees.

The Long Drop by Denise Minna

This is a really well written story. It’s based on a notorious true story about a Scottish serial killer. I am told that good crime writing often boasts a great sense of place; certainly if you knew Glasgow, you would find this novel fascinating but even if you didn’t (like me) you would still get a sense of what it was like before the slum clearances. Really good but not for the faint of heart.

So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan

This isn’t even a novella, it’s a short story. As always with Claire Keegan’s work, it’s beautifully written, thought provoking and sad.

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie

This was a Christmas read but what a disappointment on that front. Christmas is only mentioned in the most peripheral way. However, grand standard Agatha Christie fare, if that’s what you’re after.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

This took me the guts of nine months to read. It’s an exceptionally famous, widely read book about town planning. It’s always being quoted in the newspapers and even though it’s more than 50 years old, it is still relevant today. It is dense, however, and feels a lot more like work than play but worth reading for the insights.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

This description of Ireland descending into totalitarianism and war won the Booker. I did not love it. I found the language irritating. Innocent nouns could not travel unmolested through the text. Our heroine, for example, “sleeved” her coat and “toed” her shoe. Very distracting and annoying. That said, I did find something compelling in the story of terrible things happening in a familiar setting.

Something in Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Elizabeth Jane Howard is so good. This book is charming and funny and sad and also very well written. It’s about complex upper-middle class family dynamics and , unusually, for her work, all’s well that ends well in some respects though shattering tragedy is the main player which is much more common I have to concede.

The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson

I saw this recommended somewhere. It’s young adult fiction. Witches are real. Only alright I thought. All the same, have I ordered another volume from the library? Yes, I have.

The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith

About 1,000 pages. Much too long. I read it while I was sick in bed and mildly hallucinating. I would not recommend this frame of mind for a book about cults. Still, I really enjoyed it and will dutifully buy the next Cormoran Strike detective novel when it appears.

Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution by Ellen McWilliams

This is a most peculiar book. It’s about the West Cork massacre. Sort of. The author is an academic who is from mid-West Cork, went to college in Cork and then moved to England where she has lived since. It’s about her emotional response to the fact that her neighbours were murdered by other neighbours during the Civil War almost certainly with a strong sectarian element to the killings. She is appalled and she seems to only discover it really in her 20s when she is in England and married to a lovely English man, a Cromwell scholar (she wrestles a lot with this too). The book is only very obliquely about the massacre and, honestly, if you knew nothing about it, you wouldn’t emerge very much better informed after reading this. It’s about her emotional connection to it and I thought it was pretty good if really, really odd. Mr. Waffle found it unreadable. Make of that what you will.

Love & Vermin: A Collection of Cartoons by Will McPhail

Funny cartoons. Here’s one I like.

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue

This is set in Cork during the crash in 2009 and it’s about two friends who live in a small rented house on the north side of the city. I knew every place in Cork they talked about which I really enjoyed (this must be how New Yorkers feel all the time) and it is competently written but yet I did not love it. Fine, readable. Funnliy enough this is another author who like the west Cork woman basically finished her degree in Cork and made her life in England. Even thought the two books could not be more different, I felt there was a similar undertone to both. Maybe a slight preachiness or something I can’t quite put my finger on towards the people who didn’t leave.

Up Late by Nick Laird

I am not at all a big reader of contemporary poetry but this was recommended to me. It’s a collection of poetry and the centre piece is a long poem about the poet’s father’s death. I thought it was all pretty good and readable – not always a feature of modern poetry in my experience. Herself told me she was at a conference where the cosmopolitan moderator said something like “Of course none of us are religious but…” and he was interrupted by Nick Laird who was on the panel and said he went to service every Sunday. I really enjoyed this story and there is something very Northern Ireland about this which I enjoyed also. It made me feel that it might be worth giving his poetry a try. It was.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

This was short listed for the Booker but didn’t win. Somebody described it to me as the shortlisted Irish book Irish people think should have won the Booker. Now, it’s 650 pages which is at least 300 pages too long in my view. It’s, like the Caroline O’Donoghue book, set in the post-2008 crash. It’s about a family in an unnamed midlands town. The father has the local car dealership which is going under as the crash hits it unmercifully.

The book is told from the point of view of each of the characters in rotation: 18 year old girl, 13 year old boy, father and mother. In my view the 13 year old boy has by far the most successful parts of the book. I really enjoyed “Skippy Dies” by this author, and now I know why, it’s all about teenage boys. I didn’t think the other characters were at all as successful. For reasons best known to the author, the mother Imelda uses no punctuation. She’s supposed to be poor and poorly educated, I suppose, but that did not work for me. I mean, overall very readable and the author is a good writer but ultimately I did not love it and I absolutely hated the ending. Let me put it this way, the author is not interested in redemption for his characters.

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

I hugely enjoyed this. I thought the characters were hilarious and the writing was excellent. I found the ending slightly unsatisfactory but overall it was one of the best books I have read in ages. It’s about a white girl who steals her dead Asian friend’s manuscript and what happens next. Great descriptions of social media pile ons. No one emerges unscathed and by the end you find yourself wondering whether every single person in the story is self-centred, selfish and, honestly, appalling. Truly recommended.

January Round Up

29 January, 2024
Posted in: Cork, Daniel, Family, Ireland, Michael, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Reading etc., Siblings

Herself went back to England. Alas alack. We will not see her until Easter at the earliest. She is a bit preoccupied about her post-college employment/study plans and fears that she may have to move back home. She’s appalled. I’m delighted but I feel that one of the many irons she has in the fire will mean that her worst fears will not be realised.

Here she is the day she got back to college dutifully preparing not to remove her nose from the grindstone for many months.

I went to Cork and had a January Christmas dinner with my siblings. Honestly, not as satisfactory as an actual Christmas dinner but not too bad. We went to the River Lee hotel which used to be Jury’s where we went for post communion and confirmation lunches but has now gone upmarket. It was grand. Busy. A bit pricey for what it was, I thought.

I went for a walk in the Lee Fields (very unusually not underwater) with my sister and her partner.

I totally lost track of time meaning that I had to cycle to the station at epic speeds weaving through Sunday strollers like a middle aged man in lycra trying to set a new personal best time. I made it with minutes to spare. It took a lot out of me.

Michael had his play. It wasn’t too bad and he was on stage a lot. But whatever way you slice it, Hamlet is a long, long play and I was exhausted by the time it was over. Obviously worse for Michael but he got to be on stage which I think he rather enjoyed. A couple of his friends turned up with a sign saying we love gravedigger number 2 and I was charmed.

Over the holidays, while Mr. Waffle and I were at work and Michael was at endless Hamlet rehearsals, Daniel stepped up to the plate and cooked dinner a number of times. It was absolutely delicious. These talents did not come from me. He also has a new haircut. The young people; would you be up to them etc.? He has also been concussed by the GAA – the bane of my life. He’s recovering but it’s taking the best part of a week. First his tooth, now his head. He’s mostly been exhausted for days and days but he went back to college today and is feeling a bit perkier after doing some theoretical physics.

We had some friends around to dinner which was great but also exhausting. Timing meant that we were supposed to have Mr. Waffle’s aunt (home from Australia) and the cousins over for dinner the following night but happily the aunt cancelled – I mean sorry not to see her and sorry she was not feeling up to it but pleased not to be doing a second large catering event on the trot. I skipped out to my Sunday afternoon bookclub with, well, a skip in my step.

Speaking of book clubs, my Monday night book club has had a change in its operating model for the first time in 25 years; there are 12 of us and this year we all got to pick a book a month for the next year; two people were happy not to suggest and so December is still open – honestly, possibly a relief. Normally it’s a bit of chat on the night and a consensus. I felt very much the weight of responsibility in picking my one book for the year. Herself says that it is unfair on me as under the old system, due to my domineering ways, I got to pick way more than one book a year. The jury is currently out for obvious reasons but the 2024 selection does look quite worthy. That said, very much enjoying “Yellowface”. You may guess which was my suggestion.

February: Yellowface
March: The Saint of Lost Things
April: The Bee Sting
May: Demon Copperhead
June: The Vulnerables
July & August: Life in the Balance and A Place of Greater Safety
September: Harlem Shuffle
October: Enlightenment
November: A Tale of Love and Darkness

As part of my new year’s resolution , Mr. Waffle and I have been to the cinema twice this month. We saw “Poor Things” (really still not the better of it) and “The Holdovers” (quite sweet but would have been definitely a better viewing experience in the run up to Christmas rather than after it). More scintillating cinema reviews as we get them.

In tooth related news, my electric toothbrush disappeared for 24 hours and I carried out extensive inquiries, even texting my cleaner. It turned out to be on the stairs hidden by a banister. It was on the stairs because I had put it there to go back upstairs after its little adventure at the charging station which, for reasons I will not bore you with, is downstairs (see I do hold some things back). Oh great was the rejoicing among my children whom I am constantly upbraiding for their inability to see things sitting on the steps waiting to go upstairs.

And, in further tooth related news, my dentist has decreed that I need another crown. This is my third in as many years. What is it about my 50s? Are my teeth all going to crumble and fall out of my mouth having worked perfectly for all these years? Apparently yes. And today as I sat at my desk eating a sandwich, my temporary crown (installed following a, frankly unpleasant, session in the dentist’s chair) fell out. Back to the dentist this evening. Reinstalling was fine really but I look forward to the moment at the end of February when my permanent crown is installed. Sigh.

This weekend, we went to a Burns night supper with our friends. We went for the first time in 2020 and little though I knew it then, it was to be our last big night out before the pandemic. It was weird to be back but in a good way. I felt like a veteran this time and was ready for the “Address to a Haggis“. We had such a nice evening – I do hope we make the cut again!

I went to IMMA for the first time in ages on Saturday. I am always a bit ambivalent about modern art and indeed I found the RDS audiovisual winners in general not to my taste. However, there is also an exhibition called “self-determination” about the new nation states (including Ireland) that were established in the wake of WWI and that was really fascinating. It runs until April so if you’re local, you have plenty of time to go and see it. If that doesn’t float your boat, you can also inspect nightmare bunny (may not be the name chosen by the artist) who is outside the main entrance.

I went for a walk with friends in the park and despite the fact that rain threatened, it did not rain and we had our walk, a scone after and a chance to inspect the millions of deer with which the park is overrun.

At mass last Sunday we had to fill in a survey about which mass time suits us best; the beginning of the end for some masses I’d say. It’s inevitable with all the priests getting so old. Next weekend is our new post-Covid bank holiday weekend in celebration of St Bridget whose feast day is on February 1 so the priest referred to her and quoted the opening lines of that lovely poem “Anois teacht an Earraigh“. This made me think of my mother whose birthday was on February 1 and who always quoted that poem at this time of year. She always really enjoyed celebrating her birthday and it makes me really happy that it now has a bank holiday devoted to it which she would really have liked. But somehow, as the priest said the poem, I found myself just feeling sad and missing her. That’s the way it goes, I guess.

Aaargh

1 January, 2024
Posted in: Reading etc.

And the new year begins with technical problems. Why does the (long, long) post I published yesterday keep disappearing? Who knows, who can say, anyone for the last few choc ices there*?

*Niche, for Christy Moore fans only.

Revolutionary Heroes as Crisps

10 October, 2023
Posted in: Family, Reading etc.

Recently someone painted a junction box with a mash-up tribute to revolutionary hero Michael Collins and the tasty snack known as the chickatee. The artist had written Mickatee on the box over the picture of Collins done in the radioactive yellow associated with the snack. People went bananas (insert your own snack joke here).

My loving family found this very inspiring and came up with a range of crisp/revolution related puns including: “No man can Lay the boundary to a nation” and “We serve neither King nor Kettle“. Sadly I’ve forgotten the rest. Please feel free to share your own revolution/crisp related content in the comments.

Reading

17 July, 2023
Posted in: Reading etc.

More of it.

Serpentine by Philip Pullman

A bit slight. Witches, Lyra, a small companion volume to the “His Dark Materials” world.

Courtiers by Valentine Low

I did enjoy this. It’s about the civil service of the British monarchy except they’re not civil servants but courtiers. Interesting.

The Toxic Travel Guide by Frankie McNamara

This was a Christmas present from one of my children. A hit with the young people, I imagine and I have to hand it to the youthful author, he has covered every county in Ireland. It didn’t really make me laugh except once when referring to some less than wonderful part of Ireland, the author merely said, “No.”

The End and Other Beginnings by Veronica Roth

This is a terrible sci-fi short story collection. Cannot recommend.

Lockwood and Company The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

Lockwood and Company The Whispering Skill by Jonathan Stroud

Lockwood and Company The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud

Lockwood and Company The Creeping Shadow by Jonathan Stroud

Lockwood and Company The Hollow Grave by Jonathan Stroud

I watched the Lockwood and Company series on Netflix which was excellent and was intrigued so got out the books from the library. They are really good. Very well-written and engaging. I loved them. They are for children, obviously, but I do think that if this kind of thing (teenage ghost hunters) appeals to you, you could do a lot worse. It’s been a while since I’ve read something so well-written for this age group.

Ghosts of the Shadow Market by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson, Kelly Link and Robin Wasserman

This is an appalling set of short stories set in the Shadowhunter universe (look at me, Shadowhunter universe). I do not know when I have read something as poorly written. Avoid.

Florida by Lauren Groff

Somebody recommended this author to me in the comments. These are exceptionally well-written short stories. Sad, intriguing, beautiful. But quite a hard read. Recommended but you would want to be in the whole of your health.

The Disappearance of Josef Mengele by Olivier Guez

This book was originally written in French but I read it in English. I don’t normally go for books in translation but I thought this was a pretty good rendition. The author has taken the known facts about Mengele’s life and supplemented them a bit with his imagination in places. I found it interesting though very grim in places. Interestingly, if the author is to be believed, by the 60s, Mossad were much more interested in the security of the Israeli state in the Middle East than tracking down former Nazis in South America.

Bournville by Jonathan Coe

A triumphant return to form as the reviewers say. I did not enjoy “Mr Wilder and Me” but I really enjoyed this which sees our author safely back in Birmingham in a story that covers interlinked family lives in the period from World War II right up to the pandemic. I loved it.

Love Novel by Ivana Sajko

This is translated from the original Croatian. Only 100 pages. Thank God. It’s about a tormented relationship. I was tormented. I did not enjoy it. More full stops needed.

Calypso by David Sedaris

David Sedaris is reliably hilarious. You will never go wrong with a book of his essays. Lots about family here.

The Home Scar by Kathleen MacMahon

This was a book club book. Our member who likes the hardest books said to me nervously, “It’s a bit literary, Anne, give it a chance.” This naturally made me approach it with considerable caution. Nevertheless, I liked it. It’s a good story about two siblings who go back to Connemara to retrace their steps on a memorable summer holiday with their mother. It’s really well done and beautifully written. I have, however, a prejudice which I find it difficult to get rid of. Dublin people tend to go to other parts of the country for their holidays – Kerry, Cork, Donegal, Connemara – buy second homes there and act like they own the place. I find this extremely irritating. I do not at all object to people from other parts of the country buying holiday homes in scenic locations (take, for example, everyone in Cork city who has a house in west Cork – not a problem), so this is just pure anti-Dublin prejudice. To be fair to the author, she does seem to be aware that not all of the locals are necessarily enthralled by the hordes of Dubliners descending on their towns. There is something there though, in the author’s own voice, that implies some kind of ownership, I can’t put my finger on what but I found it annoying. This is, however, a personal issue and overall, I recommend.

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

What a delight of a book. I have read almost everything Curtis Sittenfeld has written and I believe she is a truly gifted writer but, if I have a criticism, it’s that her books can be a bit grim occasionally. I waited nervously for something awful to happen to these characters. Nothing awful happened and it was wonderful even though set largely in the pandemic. A lovely, lovely read.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

This is a retelling of David Copperfield in a modern setting. It is set in the prescription drugs crisis in Appalachia. A really impressive achievement. Perhaps even better if you are at all familiar with David Copperfield which I am not (I’m getting it out of the library on foot of this). It definitely stands up on its own.

The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt

This is a weird, short book that I saw recommended in the paper. It’s about a girl who is taught to do everything right and what happens when her parents disappear. More fable than fiction, entertaining all the same.

The Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie

“Home Fire” by this author was an absolute revelation to me. I thought it was amazing. This book about two girls who are school friends in Pakistan and end up living in Britain is not as good but quite good in its own way.

Pretty Bitches edited by Lizzie Skurnick

A series of essays about words which can be used to put women down. Depressing. I was astonished to discover the rules around declaring race in Virginia.

The Guru, the Bagman and the Sceptic by Seamus O’Mahony

I think I’ve read all of this man’s books. He’s a retired doctor from Cork and a good writer, I find. This, however, is not him at his best. He really dislikes Freudian psychoanalysis and, on the basis of this book, it’s very hard to blame him but the book reads like it could have done with a bit more prepping or editing and it’s quite confusing in places. Great footnotes though and some jaw dropping revelations.

Tornado of Life by Jay Baruch

A thoughtful ER consultant writes about doctoring, including through Covid. I thought I would enjoy this but I only found it alright. He was just too nice and sincere or something, it didn’t land for me.

The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks

I enjoyed this. The author, obviously, needs no introduction. He knows a lot about film making and I liked his insights. The writing is grand and the story trots along at a good clip. I was sorry that the one truly awful character exited so early as I quite enjoyed him. I have to say that the film that it described sounds terrible.

Marzahn Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp

Another book in translation. Am I crazy? It was short and won the IMPAC prize. I was tempted. Very glad that I was. This is a series of lovely stories – a bit autobiographical – about a chiropodist who lives in East Berlin. Life affirming, as they say, and a lovely picture of a community. Also, you will have a new found respect for chiropodists when you’re finished.

Becky by Sarah May

This is clever. A re-telling of Vanity Fair where the titular heroine is a 90s tabloid journalist. Really well done, I would recommend. Though needs more Brussels.

English Pastoral by James Rebanks

This is the same man who wrote “A Shepherd’s Life” which I enjoyed very much. He is a wonderful writer. I feel in his writing the distance from the farm in England which is much less of a feature here. Although, I suppose, it will get that way. My cousin farms the land that my grandfather bought in the 1940s. It’s a big farm in a good part of the country for farming. Three generations have got a good living from that farm. My cousin is unmarried. I was surprised, talking to him recently, to hear that he has got out of diary farming and now only does beef. It’s a family farm and he has no wife and children of his own and it’s impossible to get workers for the farm. He was run ragged trying to keep it going as a dairy farm and when he lost half his herd to TB, he thought it might be time for a change. He has nephews and nieces (including three nephews who are growing up on a farm up the country, his sister having married a farmer also). “Do you think any of them would be interested in taking over the farm?” I asked. “God, no,” he said, “they’d run a mile.” It’s funny, when I was growing up, a family farm was a sinecure and now it almost seems like a millstone. In England they seem to be a bit ahead of us. It seems to be really, really hard to make a living from farming. The author lays the blame squarely on the shoulders of cheap food prices. I think he’s right but that is a very, very hard sell.

He has done amazing, interesting things on his own farm which help to promote biodiversity and that is fascinating but, as he says himself, it does make the farm less productive. He is not in the business of judging his neighbours for their farming practices and he does appreciate that people have to make a living. And, honestly, it seems that he isn’t. I hesitate to say this because he loves his farm and what he is doing seems completely right but he has to do other work to keep things going and the farm is close to a hobby. So I don’t see how these approaches can work for full time farmers. He makes a very compelling argument that cheap food is literally costing the earth but that’s a hard ship to turn. In an unlikely turn of events on foot of reading this book, I now find myself mildly curious to read the recommendations of our Citizens’ Assembly report on biodiversity loss which came out in April to very little interest from me. We’ll see whether I manage to sustain my interest levels.

One thing that I did find a bit surprising is that he made no mention of the EU. My friend’s mother is from Dublin and she married a man from the west of Ireland and moved to a small rural town in the 1960s for love and worked there as a GP. She says that everyone lived on credit and money only flowed on mart days when people had money to pay their bills. When Ireland joined the EU farmers had money for the first time from CAP payments and it revolutionised the town. Surely Brexit is having a negative effect on smaller farmers in England. I would have been really curious about his views on the impact of Brexit on his farm but he didn’t mention it in any way at all. I see from a very dull article in today’s paper that the CAP Strategic Plan 2023-2027 includes “two heavily funded environmental measures [which herald] a new era in addressing biodiversity issues.” We’ll see.

Anyhow, this is a thoughtful, interesting book. The author really hopes one of his four children will take over the farm but I don’t see how they will be able to afford to unless things change radically.

Reading

16 July, 2023
Posted in: Reading etc.

La Grande Illusion: Journal Secret du Brexit by Michel Barnier

I started reading this when it came out a couple of years ago and only finished it very recently. God, it nearly killed me. Despite a genuine interest in the subject matter and great admiration for how Barnier managed to keep the EU 27 together (honestly, there is a man who has worked with every politician in Europe and who used that contact book) and deal with the UK, this is a really, really boring book. It’s like an excellent briefing note or textbook. There is almost no gossip or personal detail. Even Covid barely gets a mention.

Barnier is wearily aghast by the rotating cast of characters the UK sent to negotiate. He is unfailingly polite though one does get the sense that he does not like David Frost. But the only person who really seems to get on his nerves is Martin Selmayr, Juncker’s right hand man. He seems to have been busy attempting to shaft Barnier and Barnier was roused to genuine ire. That’s it really. There was the (pretty limited) thrill of seeing people I knew from the Commission years ago now elevated to stratospheric heights including one woman who went out with a good friend of mine for a while. I asked him whether it was the same person and he confirmed that it was. She was not a native English speaker and at their unhappy breakup apparently her final words to him were, “Thanks for improving my English anyway”. Well, she’s using it to good effect now.

There was a funny story about when Chirac (before his elevation to President) came to some event Barnier was hosting in Savoie (Barnier’s home turf, he loves Savoie). First question to Chirac from the audience was from an irate woman who upbraided him and said that what he was saying was in contradiction to his actions in Paris and did he think that they were incapable of reading the newspapers in Savoie and knowing what was going on. “Who is that woman?” hissed Chirac to Barnier. “She’s my mother,” said Barnier apologetically. At the very end he tells us that his mother-in-law was a strong woman from North Ossetia. Clearly the forceful older lady was a theme in his life.

Barnier is a big, big fan of Charles de Gaulle. Steve Barclay, third Brexit negotiator, decides in 2019 to serve up to Barnier a bit of CDG wisdom. Barclay’s calling on the EU to be flexible and says “The great political leaders have always respected the need to take risks. And it is General de Gaulle who said, ‘a real statesman is someone who is ready to take risks.'” I’m not quite sure what Barclay was hoping to achieve by this but when he met Barnier in Brussels, Barnier said that he was particularly touched by his reference to the General. So far so good. Then he said that he did not accept the use of the phrase here, the risks were too serious for posturing. The parties were speaking of preserving peace on the island of Ireland and the integrity of the single market. He goes on to say that there are two things that Mr. Barclay should know about the General. Firstly that he implemented the Treaty of Rome when he became President and was very in favour of the common market. And secondly that the General was very fond of Ireland and had personal and family ties to Ireland. So there. I paraphrase.

Twitter is a big feature of the book and a lot of engagement takes place over Twitter and in my view that is, at best, unhelpful. I think the demise of Twitter might be a real help to diplomacy.

Nano Nagle: The Life and the Legacy by Deirdre Raftery with Catriona Delaney and Catherine Nowlan-Roebuck

Herself got me this for Christmas. It was one of those presents where you think, “Thanks?” It took me months to get started and it took me months to finish it when I got going. Mostly this was because this is a pretty academic text. Each chapter is a bit like a scholarly article in itself. The authors did a lot of research and we heard about it. There is a lot of digging around in old convent archives, checking through invoices and the like.

Surprisingly little is known about Nano Nagle’s own life given that she lived in the 18th century, was from a prominent, wealthy Catholic family (which took some doing at the time given the disincentives for wealthy people to remain Catholic) and was the foundress of a religious order. So her life is pretty much disposed of in chapter 1. Here’s a picture of the woman herself from the Crawford gallery. Or an imagined picture anyway as I note that she died before the artist was born.

I had possibly heard previously that Nano Nagle was a cousin of Edmund Burke but it came as a surprise to me all over again. His mother was a Nagle. From our friend Wikipedia “Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland. His mother Mary, née Nagle (c.?1702–1770), was a Roman Catholic who hailed from a County Cork family and a cousin of the Catholic educator Nano Nagle“. I said as much to herself who had texted me that she was reading Burke’s “The Sublime and the Beautiful.” I was naturally anxious to point to his Cork roots from where, clearly, his genius sprang. Response from herself: “Appaz, he’s a colonial tool or something. So stay humble.”

I digress. The book itself was mostly about the 19th and early 20th century expansion of the order and, honestly, the scales fell from my eyes. These women, what they did with nothing: their enterprise, their hardiness, their devotion. They were asked to set up a school on a Friday and they often turned up within the week to set up in deeply unsuitable premises (for living and schooling) and enrolled hundreds of children. There were the nuns who only had a board for a table and two beds and almost nothing else. The combing of the archives indicated that people left lots to the nuns including odd things like a chandelier which can’t have been at all practical. I hadn’t previously realised that nuns’ dowries can’t be spent, in case they leave, but the interest on the dowries can be spent and invest it and spend it they did building convents and schools all over the world. Some crazy bishop brought them to Newfoundland giving no indication of the likely hardship so one can only imagine the surprise in the mother convent in Ireland when they received a letter from one of their sisters there indicating that she would have to end her letter as the ink was freezing in the inkwell.

The order was set up not to take money for educating children and they basically stuck to that. Their focus was on the poor. The Mercy nuns (I am a Convent of Mercy girl) were more willing to take fees although they started out similarly. In fact their foundress, Sister Catherine McCauley, served her novitiate in the Presentation Convent on George’s Hill (something not much covered in my Mercy education). The French orders were seen as a bit of a step above (the Ursulines, the FCJs – where my mother went – and the Sainte Union) but the Irish orders provided education to everyone and went all over the British Empire.

I read an article by Polly Devlin quoting Carmen Callil who apparently said “If you’re convent-educated, you have no self-confidence at all”. Honestly, I have to say, that I feel that’s a bit true for the later 20th century in any event. I cannot in all honesty say that the Mercy nuns instilled in me a great sense of confidence. But I feel now that this is a bit reductive and ignores an astounding legacy.

Ironically Carmen Callil attended a Presentation Convent where Germaine Greer also attended. In the book blurb the latter is quoted:

I’m more like them than I am like my mother. I owe them more in a way because they loved me more and they worked harder on me than my mother did. They really loved us. I realise that now, although I didn’t realise it at the time.

A couple of weeks ago, I was passing George’s Hill, one of the earliest established Presentation Convents where the archives are now kept. It’s in a part of Dublin which remains very deprived. As I cycled along a crocodile of small boys and girls, little working class Dubliners chatting animatedly and holding each other’s hands went into the school two by two. Although I imagine Nano Nagle would have been surprised by the diversity of the group and the tracksuits, it is still recognisably her order doing what she set them up to do more than 300 years ago. How’s that for a charism?

Good present.

Madly Deeply – The Alan Rickman Diaries edited by Alan Taylor

I found these quite disappointing. They got good reviews but they are quite dull. A lot of famous people I went to dinner with which fine, but not fascinating. The bits I found most interesting were where he talked about his own family and the death of his mother. But mostly it’s a pretty boring recitation of where he was and who he’s meeting. I hadn’t quite realised how peripatetic actors’ lives are.

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 1): 1918-38 by Chips Channon edited by Simon Heffer

OK, now, this is 1000 closely written pages and it is only volume 1 of 3 – just so’s you get the picture. This man is a prolific diarist. Weirdly, I was slightly reminded of Alan Rickman’s diaries as there is a lot of name dropping. Honestly, you go through 1918 learning the names of millions of French aristos as he climbs the social greasy pole only to find them completely irrelevant as he heads off to England and ingratiates himself into a new social milieu. For an Irish person, England is more rewarding as the names are all familiar (that’s the English ruling classes for you). He himself is an American. He marries a Guinness heiress. His brother-in-law to be comments that the Guinnesses are the Medicis of our times. Indeed.

I was a bit torn about this book. You can’t read 1,000 pages of someone’s diary entries without beginning to feel some kind of affinity or relationship with them. He is awful but then you are seeing him from the inside and things he would confide to his diary are not necessarily what he would say. Nevertheless, I read it in tandem with the Nano Nagle book and their lives are almost comically opposed.

Still, he is on the inside. He has a ringside seat for the abdication (having just managed to ascend to the tip top of the social scale by having the King for dinner, you can only feel for him as it all tumbles about his ears); he is a major appeaser, loves the Germans and had a fantastic time at the Berlin Olympics where he was a VIP guest. So, not a man without flaws, but a good eye for details and the inside track on everything. If I am feeling strong I may go for volume 2.

Occasionally, it is (unintentionally) very funny. I give you this extract from an entry from December 1936:

I woke from a deep dream in which I had travelled to Paradise, and there most unexpectedly found Wallis Simpson enthroned with the Archangel Gabriel at her side – and, lo! – his face was that of Lord Cromer, and the Archbishop, look as I might, was nowhere to be seen. You see Chips, she greeted me in the nasal drawl that is as attractive as it is irritating, if I couldn’t be Queen of England, I’ve got to be the next best thing, for I’m Queen of heaven?

I found the editor a bit irritating from time to time also. While the footnotes are indispensable and it is clearly a labour of love, there was something about the tone that irritated me. Take these two on Irish matters:

George de Valero (1882-1975), who had changed his name, whether legally or otherwise, to Éamon de Valera by the end of the nineteenth century, was a New York-born Irishman who came to prominence during the 1916 Easter Rising; he avoided execution because of his American birth. He was President of the Executive Council of Ireland from 1932 to 1937, and Leader of Fianna Fail from 1926 to 1959. He was Taoiseach, or Prime Minister, of Ireland three times between 1937 and 1959, and President of Ireland from 1959 to 1973. De Valera used the abdication as a moment to end the Irish Free State and create a republic, removing from the Irish constitution the notion of a ‘King of Ireland’.

Personally, I’ve never heard of George and I thought that “whether legally or otherwise” was a bit snide.

A war of independence in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 was then followed by a civil war in which one Irish faction attempted to wipe out the other. Ireland was poorly equipped economically for independence and these higher taxes were a part of the attempt to make ends meet.

I mean, although admirably pithy, does this not look like it’s slightly glossing over the role of the former colonial masters in all of this?

The Other Guinness Girl A Question of Honor by Emily Hourican

I only read this because it is a fictional re-imagining of the life of Mrs. Honor Channon, Chips’s wife over approximately the same time as volume one of his diaries covers. I cannot recommend. The author, was obviously working from the same source material as I had recently read so there weren’t many surprises. I didn’t really think it worked as a book and, to be honest, Honor seems just as enigmatic at the end as she did in Chips’s diaries and very, very saintly which I consider a bit…unlikely. I mean, she may have been but it doesn’t really convince.