Postcards from Asia

A read-along. Part I/Volume I

A while back, after reading The Moonstone (or was it The Woman in White?) by Wilkie Collins I discovered a list of ten Victorian novels on its back cover and decided to read all ten of them. Haunted castles, beautiful heroines, courageous heroes and villainous relatives, suspense and murder, mystery and love, I can never have enough of them. (I have a sneaky suspicion I’ve used a similar phrase before.) This is the list and the crossed titles are the ones read so far.

1. Lady Audley’s Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
2. Paul Clifford, by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
3. Jack Sheppard, by William Harrison Ainsworth
4. The String of Pearls, by Anonymous (?)
5. The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
6. The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
7. The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe
8. A Sicilian Romance, by Ann Radcliffe
9. The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole
10. The Monk, by Matthew Gregory Lewis

Vishy is joining me again for our second read-along and this time, to make it more interesting (that means spoilers will be present), we decided to come up with a list of questions (5 or 10 or any number in between) to ask each other in the hope of tackling more specific rather than general issues of the novel. The book is divided into 4 Volumes and this weekend we’ll talk about Volume 1.

This is the second book by Ann Radcliffe that I’m reading and is a whooping 875 pages long and that’s a BIG book with a rather small print, which is not a great combination, but since this was the only edition I could find – and it took me a while to find it! – I shouldn’t complain.

Volume I opens with beautiful descriptions of nature as seen in the year 1584 in Gascony, France, where the family of Monsieur St Aubert lives in a chateau surrounded by idyllic grounds.
Monsieur St Aubert, his wife, and daughter Emily spend their days in a splendid solitude in the middle of the countryside. They walk, go for picnics, read and sing and generally enjoy a tranquil life. Theirs is a perfect little family and Emily is as happy, obedient and beautiful a daughter as anyone would wish to have. Following the death of Madame St Aubert, Emily and her father set on a journey in the course of which they get acquainted with a Mr. Valancourt, a young man “who’s never been to Paris” and who falls in love with Emily. During their journey, Emily’s father dies, not before entrusting her to go to a secret place in his study and burn the papers she finds there, without reading them. This Emily tries to do, not before she gets a glimpse of the writing and she also finds a miniature portrait of an unknown beautiful woman she remembers seeing her father weep over not long before his death.

Following the death of her father, Emily goes to live with Madame Cheron, his father’s sister, a shallow, capricious woman who sees her niece as an obligation left her by her deceased brother and only thinks of ways of using her to better her position in society. That is why she first rejects, then accepts Valancourt when he asks for permission to see Emily – she even consents to their marriage only to change her mind later when she herself gets married to Montoni, an Italian aristocrat, moody and with a suspicious past. To be honest, I thought they made a perfect match. The alliance, however, doesn’t benefit Emily in any way, as she is forced to leave her home and follow her aunt and her new husband to Italy.

Volume 1 ends with the separation of the lovers, tears flow, promises are made and melancholy and despair give way to happiness and wedding plans.

I confess being somewhat impatient with so many descriptive passages which even though they serve the purpose of introducing the reader to the time and space of the age the action takes place, it was at times too much. But then I’m not overly fond of lengthy descriptions in any book. For this reason, I went through Volume 1 at full speed, looking for mystery and why not, maybe a ghost or two. One thing I particularly liked was the poetry, especially the verses at the beginning of each chapter, like this one:

“I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul.”
(Note to self: get reacquainted with Shakespeare’s work. It’s been too long.)

I found the mystery but not the ghosts (yet!) and I’ve also put together a few questions for Vishy, for our little discussion.

1. How do you feel about the language, do thither, thou and similar words add to the beauty of the narrative or are they annoying words that give you a headache?

2. In Chapter III, in the following lines:
‘O how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which nature to her vot’ry yields!, what do you think vot’ry means?

3. Who is the mysterious woman in the miniature portrait that St Aubert cries over?

4. Who is the author of the verses Emily found in the fishing house, the musician playing the lute and the one who took the bracelet? Are they even the same person?

5. Should Emily have accepted Valancourt’s idea of running away to get married?

You can read Vishy’s review here.

Until next weekend, when we’ll talk about Volume II in which things start to get interesting. And I leave you, dear visitor, with a question: do you like Gothic stories or does the idea of ghosts and haunted castles makes you move along to the next book in a hurry?

For weeks the idea of making a shelf – a place to keep my scattered books – seemed like a daunting task. And yet, it was done, slowly, a few hours every day, over the space of a week – the wood cut into precise (well, almost precise) parts, rubbed with sandpaper until it felt smooth to the touch, holes drilled into it to hold the metal screws, the smell of burned wood strong and delicious, a scent I have started to love. And then when it was ready, the books took their places, ready to sleep the sleep of the undisturbed until a hand will pull them out of that rest and leaf through for favorite passages or maybe for a new read.

Stepping back to look at it, I was reminded of that wonderful concept Zafón has incorporated in his three books that are part of a series: The Angel’s Game, The Shadow of the Wind, and his latest, The Prisoner of Heaven. If you’ve read any of them you might guess what I’m about to say: “The Cemetery of Forgotten Books”, a magical place that Zafón describes as a secret place filled with many books, a place known to a very few. A place where one (but not just anyone) can go and choose a book to save from oblivion, a book that they are responsible for as long as they live. While my new shelf certainly could not be called a cemetery – I’d rather think of it as a “sanctuary for books” – it did bring back to mind Zafón’s words. And his three novels have their own place in it.

The Prisoner of Heaven is divided into five parts, and the story goes back and forth in time. In this new volume of the series, the reader is brought back to the characters they first met in The Shadow of the Wind – the Sempere family, more precisely the father and his son, Daniel, who is now married and has a son of his own. The Sempere family owns a bookstore and the business is not doing so well. One night a mysterious man comes in and buys the most expensive book on display and inscribes it to Fermín de Torres, a friend of the Sempere family who also works in the bookstore. From then on, things start to get complicated. And with his usual flair for drama, Zafón starts building yet another mystery in which the past comes back, secrets are revealed and in turn beget more secrets. We find out more about David Martín, the main character in The Angel’s Game, and his connection to the Sempere family. Fermín’s grim past is revealed and also the ramifications of a promise he made a long time ago and his effort to build a new life by marrying Bernarda, the woman he loves.

I confess to having been a bit lost in the story – I’ve read the first two books in the series a few years ago and some details that I felt were crucial where lost. Even though a passage at the beginning of the novel says the books in the series are “self-contained” and can be read in any order, I felt like something was missing. That being said, I did enjoy the third installment; in spite of the book being peppered with clichés and the flamboyancy of the writing, I felt myself entertained and curious enough to turn every page, anxious to see what happens next. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much, it reminds me of the sensationalist Victorian novels where every new chapter meant tragedy and tears and possibly even death. This book has its share of all three.
The end is a promise for more drama and tragedy. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series. Until then, I leave you with a question: if you could go to “The Cemetery of Forgotten Books”, which book would you save?

*Read in July 2012

Some days ago, I got back my copy of The Poisonwood Bible and opened it at the beginning to see if the book started like I remembered, with a woman walking in the jungle. It did. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the books we love the most leave such an imprint on our memory. I wish I could remember them all but I know that is not possible.

***

Part 3, Chapters 19 – 31

Chapter 19 of Prodigal Summer brought me back to Deanna’s story. Something was happening to her, a sort of lethargy that made her forget things, a heightened awareness of the life moving around her in the forest, a tiredness that made her sleepy in the daytime and sleepless at night. Living with Eddie had changed her but it was a chapter in her life that would end soon. In the end, after Eddie was gone and the changes in her body could not be ignored anymore, it was time to make a decision. There was a new life to consider.

Back on her farm, Lusa had started to realize that after she had lost a husband she had gained a family, his family – Cole’s brothers and sisters and nephews who at first were cautious in their interactions with her but as time went by found themselves appreciating her. Getting close to Crys, her young niece, was not easy, but as Lusa started to teach her about bugs and trees and plants, she started to feel connected to this wild child who ran around dressed like a boy and spoke with a weird accent she sometimes struggled to understand. Lusa, just like Deanna, loves nature. Cutting and selling the trees on her property could bring her lots of money but, like she explained to Crys, it would only put in motion a chain reaction that would affect the life of all the creatures living in that area. You cut a tree, many more years will need to pass before a new one can grow to maturity in its place, you kill the bugs in an area, you take away some bird’s food. There are consequences to every action, some of them more far reaching and devastating than others.

The dynamic of Garnett and Nannie’s interactions had started to change, as well. To his surprise, Garnett even found himself feeling protective of the woman he used to dread talking to. As both of them learned to let down their guard and share experiences and memories, they found that it just might be possible to become friends, and maybe even more. There are things to look forward to now – for Nannie, the arrival of Deanna, a woman she raised together with her own daughter, and the promise of life she brings with her. For Garnett, it is the re-opening of a chapter he thought closed long ago: his nephew and niece will come to visit – grandchildren he never had anything to do with until now that Lusa has discovered that her sister-in-law’s children have a grandfather they’ve never met. And so life springs again, with hope where it once was only memory.

The book ends in a perfect circle, bringing into focus again one of the paragraphs from the beginning. It’s a beautiful ending, and even though none of the stories are fully closed, there is hope for better things to come. It left me wanting to know more about the lives of the people in the story. I wish I knew what happened to Deanna and how she adapted to the life away from the solitude of the forest. I wish I knew who Eddie was and if they ever met again. I wish I knew if Lusa found love again and if she was happy. And I wish I could have seen how the friendship between Nannie and Garnett continued to grow and if, perhaps, it grew into something more.

There are many beautiful passages in this last part and this is the one I liked the most:

“Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.”

I enjoyed this book a lot. I’ve learned things about bugs and plants and I was reminded of what would happen if they disappeared and that prey and predator play an important role in keeping the balance of life, especially in a forest. Kingsolver describes with an infinite tenderness and sadness the small and great tragedies that make up life and the feeling of guilt and sorrow when we find out that we can’t interfere with nature but must leave it to follow its course. Human emotions find their echo in nature: a storm matches an inner turmoil, a lazy sunny day mirrors contentment and the end of summer marks the end of a solitary period of time. I also liked the beautiful poem Prothalamium, at the beginning of the book.
I look forward to reading more books by Barbara Kingsolver. I have Pigs in Heaven on my TBR list and hopefully I will read it soon. This is one writer I will add to the list of my favorite authors.

***

This is the last part of the three week read-along I did with Vishy. Many thanks to him for agreeing to share this wonderful experience with me. You can read his review here.

Some weeks ago I saw a nest in one of the plants in the yard. The nest was small enough to fit in one hand, and in it, two eggs slightly bigger than my thumbnail. I first noticed it when I saw the bird, more precisely the white around her eyes which made a contrast in the shadow of the plant. Days later, when I looked at the nest again, I saw two chicks, bald and skinny, moving restlessly inside.
It occurred to me at that time that I should take some pictures, but I finally got around to doing it when the third round of chicks had hatched. Well, almost. I took this picture more than a week ago, and after a few days there was one chick who opened her beak soundlessly, then let its head drop on the egg in front if it, as if falling instantly asleep. That got me thinking about Deanna, one of the characters in the book, and how she tried to take care of the little bird family who lived in the eaves of her cabin. Eddie had told her that if someone scared mama bird away at night she won’t come back to the nest because she can’t see in the dark (apparently, most birds can’t), and the hatchlings would die of exposure during the night. That made me wonder why, when I went to check up this morning, the nest was empty. Did I scare mama bird away or were my three dogs responsible with their disappearance? One mystery I’m afraid I won’t find the answer to.

***

Part 2, Chapters 9 – 18

Chapter 9 starts with Garnett and a little of his family history – how he worked along the years for his dream of restoring the American chestnut to its native soil, and of course, his everlasting feud with Nannie, his next door neighbor. He is stubborn and old-fashioned and she is outspoken and leads her life the way she wants to and their opinions collide every time they meet. Until one day when she helps him and he starts changing his mind.

In the meantime, Lusa is thinking of ways to keep her farm and making money without having to plant tobacco, like it was done before she came to live there. With the help of her relatives she slowly starts to build a life and a future for her farm.

Deanna continues to live in the forest with Eddie, and their relationship seems to grow each day, in the little cabin isolated like a cocoon in the forest. Apart from a boy who comes up to bring her provisions once a month, they are undisturbed and live like some sort of Adam and Eve, forgotten by the world, free to roam the forest and talk about its creatures. There’s an encounter with a snake, a glimpse of a coyote den, more facts about moths and plants. But just like Deanna wants to protect all creatures in the forest, she knows Eddie is a hunter. The tension between them builds slowly and there are hints of what might happen in the future.

Characters’ lives start to merge, when Deanna tells Eddie about Nannie and Lusa is told that Garrett can help with the business idea she wants to implement on her farm. Relationships between Lusa and her husband’s family start to coalesce into something more substantial, when one of her sisters-in-law becomes sick and Lusa offers to take care of her children.

This time I felt more involved in the life of the characters. The author introduces each event so gradually there’s never any feeling of rush while at the same time giving so much detail as to make one fully captivated by the story. I had a feeling of dread reading about Deanna – soon, there’ll be trouble in paradise, I thought, while Lusa’s story brought hope and Garnett and Nannie inserted just the right amount of humor to give the book a perfect balance.

Come by next week for the last post in this read-along…but until then, head over to Vishy’s blog to find out his thoughts on this part of the book.

One of the places I visited during my trip to Chiang Mai last year was a bookstore in the small town of Pai. Set in a wooden Thai house and filled with books to the brim, this particular bookstore was one of the highlights of my trip. While I was browsing through the books, old and new, my friend Kate brought over Prodigal Summer and said that since I liked The Poisonwood Bible so much, I should give this one a try.

A few months later I asked Vishy if he’d like to join me for a read-along of this book and he agreed, so we decided to do a blog post after the first 8 chapters, and continue with a new installment every weekend until we finish the book. There are some minor spoilers in the story but I’ll try not to give away too much.

***
Part 1, Chapters 1-8

The beginning of the story brought back to mind The Poisonwood Bible. If I’m not mistaken (unfortunately, I don’t have the book anymore), that book began with a description of a woman walking in a jungle – this one begins with a woman walking in a forest. Deanna, a forest ranger, and Eddie, occupation unknown (at least for now), meet for the first time under the canopy of trees. We learn quite a few things about her but he remains a mystery, coming and going on a whim.
Then there is Lusa, a city girl married to a country boy and living on a farm, reading whenever she gets the chance – mostly books about moths. The descriptive passages made me look up some of the names mentioned in the book – and what a surprise to see a picture of a Luna Moth, as beautiful and gracious as a ballet dancer during a performance!

Deanna didn’t expect she would fall in love with a stranger, not after choosing a solitary life, and certainly not this late in life. As for Lusa, giving up on her education and life in the city to become a farmer’s wife made her realize it’s not exactly what she had wanted to do with her life. That is until tragedy gave her a choice.

While the narrative goes back and forth between the stories of the two women, other characters emerge to add detail to their lives. Garnett Walker is one of them – a retired school teacher, living quietly (or so he hoped) on a farm, spending his days trying to make his dream come true: the restoration of the great American chestnut, a tree that will be resistant to the disease that had killed it in the first place, a tree that would bear his name. His neighbor, Nannie Rawley, is set as his antagonist. Described as an authoritative woman with a non-conformist background, she and Garnett see nature differently and fight amiably on this subject, most of the times through letters. These two characters are connected to Deanna and Lusa in different ways, and as the story progresses is feels like someone is constructing a carefully elaborated web, with almost invisible strands connecting the main protagonists.

Nature plays a big part in the book. References to wildlife – coyotes in particular – but also trees – the disappearance of the American chestnut due to blight, details about the life of moths, all this made it an important character in itself in the telling of the story. I liked the details that connected nature to humans: the Io moth’s wing color which Lusa thinks it reflects the yellow tinges in her hair, even her name, Lusa, which is very similar to the Luna Moth, Deanna’s long hair being compared to a silkworm cocoon, the dead trunk of a big chestnut tree which becomes a “womb”, a safe place for two people to share. The writing is descriptively poetic, rich in detail and color, and charged with eroticism. Sexual attraction, be it human or animal, runs like an undercurrent in the story:

“Lusa sat still and marveled: This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he’s not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.”

“His hands on her bare back, his mouth that drew her in like a nectar guide on a flower – these things of Cole’s she would never have again in her life.”

“In the last full hour of daylight, while lacewings sought solace for their brief lives in the forest’s bright upper air, and the husk of her empty nylon parka lay tangled with his in the mud, their two soft-skinned bodies completed their introductions on the floor of her porch. A breeze shook rain out of new leaves onto their hair, but in their pursuit of eternity they never noticed the chill.”

I look forward to reading the next part for this read-along. So far, my favorite character is Deanna – her solitary life, her love of animals, her past – and I am curious to know more about her and to see what decisions she will make later on in the book. There is, however, one thing that jarred my “reading senses”: her being referred to as a “girl”. I understand that she is tall, lean, has long legs and gorgeous hair, but given her age I think “woman” would have been more appropriate.
I was so impressed by the pictures I saw of the Luna Moth (thank you, Google!) that I decided to try and draw a picture of this beautiful creature. It is but a poor likeness but I felt that my review would not be complete without it. And to my pleasant surprise I also discovered a band called Luna Moth, whose music you can listen to by clicking on this link. Enjoy!

Until next weekend…

After reading Pulse, and this blog post by writer Andrew Blackman, I was curious enough to try and see what The Sense of an Ending was about.

Told from the point of view of the narrator, Anthony (Tony) Webster, the story is about his life. All through to the end I was under the impression of reading a personal journal – from Tony’s childhood all the way through his late years. It’s about those details that get stuck in our heads without us really knowing why, bits of memories floating on the river of life, resurfacing in the most unexpected places and at the most unexpected times. And while they might seem like inoffensive bits and pieces, they are actually part of a big puzzle called life. Tony’s life, to be more precise.

Describing himself as an average person who left life “happen” to him rather than make things happen, Tony is an average guy, with average friends and a somewhat ordinary life. Divorced but on good terms with his ex-wife, father of a daughter who is herself married and has a family, Tony starts thinking about the past, going all the way back to his childhood and through each story offering the reader more details about himself. From his school days – some funny dialogues come up in this section – to his first girlfriend, Veronica, to his happy gang of friends out of which Adrian, the philosopher, plays a central role, Tony starts putting together the pieces of the puzzle. There’s a suicide and a diary that might explain things. Veronica might explain them even better but after their breakup a long time ago, she’s not keen on meeting up again. All she does, apart from making Tony feel like a real dork, is to say “you don’t get it” to the point of becoming obnoxious. Maybe I felt this way because I didn’t get it either and so I found another reason to sympathize with Tony. What is there to get, what’s the mystery she’s not revealing, the information she’s holding back?
The whole book is a journey to the answer. Because, in the end, the writer does allow us that satisfaction. At first I was taken aback, then, thinking back at certain passages in the book, things started to come together. Those details, those bits floating around are not just debris, they are important, and as the memories change from bits to something more substantial, so does Tony’s understanding of the events.
Time has robbed him of the ability to change anything and it has turned him philosophical. After all, what’s left now after he’s almost reached the end of the road, but to examine his actions, his words, and think about what would have happened if he’d done (or hadn’t done) certain things? Would not sending an angry letter have changed things? Is it better to understand life, the futility of it and give up halfway through? Is it better not to expect too much so the disappointment won’t hurt too badly? These are just a few of the questions I was left with after I turned the last page. Imbued with a melancholy that only increases with each page, this book made me think of how we perceive things that happen to us and how we remember bits from our past and especially how those bits are connected to our present. A small but intense book written in an elegant style, worth spending your time and money on.

*Read in June, 2012

Vampires…it seems like they’re everywhere these days. Stories, movies, it appears that the living cannot have enough of the dead. I have to say that not all vampire movies are great and the same can be said about stories. There were some novels I stumbled upon on my frequent visits to the bookstore, but to be honest the modern vampires just don’t do it for me. Give me a cape wearing gentleman who lives in a castle or a beautiful woman who comes from an ancient family bearing an even more ancient curse and I’ll take them anytime. Those are the stories I like and there are plenty of them in this big anthology. When I say “big”, I mean over a thousand pages, although a little over a hundred of them are filled with names of authors and books of the same genre. An even bigger thank you to Vishy, who sent me this amazing book – it was a lovely surprise for which I am grateful.

There are 86 stories grouped into 13 sections, with each section having a different name. 45 of those stories I have read before, most of them in two anthologies called Fangs and Blood Suckers, but was happy to read them again. The rest were new and they were also a pleasure to read.
Here are some of my favorites:

Good Lady Ducayne, by M.E. Braddon (the author of Lady Audley’s Secret) – an old aristocratic lady is looking for a companion, and a young and poor girl is looking for a job. But while they seem like a perfect match, things get complicated when a young doctor notices an uncanny transformation in the girl’s appearance and realizes there’s something more to the strange affliction which seems to drain her of energy with each passing day. There is however quite a turn to the story which reminds me of that well known line “everything happens for a reason”.

The Old Portrait, by Hume Nisbet
Who would have thought a portrait could hide such evil…certainly not the protagonist of this story whose passion for old fashioned frames gave him a nasty surprise.

The Horror at Chilton Castle, by Joseph Payne Brennan.
A pleasant European summer spent researching one’s roots. An old castle with a mysterious room whose secrets are the stuff of legend. And a descendant of the once great family who lived in it, whose curiosity is about to be satisfied. Mix them all together, throw in a dark and stormy night and a witch and the result is one of the creepiest stories I have ever read. And I loved it! Probably the most horrific story in the whole book, it’s certainly one that I will remember.

Doctor Porthos, by Basil Cooper
Even if one can’t help but notice the Alexandre Dumas reference, there were no musketeers in this story. Instead, it’s about an inheritance that offers the narrator and his wife the chance of an early retirement. But it comes with a price: the couple must live for five years in a secluded place, in an old house lacking modern amenities like say, electricity. After they move in, the wife falls ill and doctor Porthos is ever at her side, trying to help. Suspicions abound, as the cause of the wife’s illness is loss of blood, and the husband suspects the doctor. The ending provides the answer, and it’s shockingly (un)believable.

Count Magnus, by M. R. James
Old papers found by curious people, a traveler looking for a story and a traumatic experience that will eventually be the reward for a man’s curiosity. The events take place on Swedish soil, where the curious traveler had gone in search of new material for a travel book. What he found was mystery, an ugly portrait and something that scared him for the remainder of his life.

When it was Moonlight, by Manly Wade Wellman
The story starts with a verse from The Raven, the well-known poem by Edgar A. Poe. The famous writer, Poe himself, is described as sitting at his table, trying to write a story that will put food on his table. He’s poor, his wife is sick and his story could do with a bit more detail. So out he goes to try and find out about a rumored tale he’s heard of, of a wife buried which came back from the land of the dead – and in doing so he almost went to that land himself. Inspiration comes at the most unexpected moments, and as Poe works towards extricating himself from the nasty situation he got in, there are references to his other works: he mentioned a black cat, a premature burial, and of course, vampires. Beautifully crafted, the story seems even more believable as it incorporates details from the writer’s life. Being a great admirer of Poe’s work, I’d say this is one story worth shining more light on.

Dracula’s Chair, by Peter Tremayne
No haunted castle this time, but an accursed chair that is so much more than a piece of carved wood from another time. For whoever shall sit it in, life will never be the same again. Acting like some sort of time machine, it brings its occupant to a house and place somewhere in the past, and there immobilized, the man who sat down one evening awakes to meet a horrible creature who wants his blood.

Some of the other writers whose stories were put together in this book include Stephen King, Anne Rice, H.P. Lovecraft, Goethe, Bram Stoker, Lisa Tuttle, D.H. Lawrence, Arthur Conan Doyle and Guy de Maupassant. Many of these stories I’ve read before and I liked some better than others. But what I liked the most was having a book with so many great stories in one place, a book that I will certainly go back to some dark and quiet night, because that’s when vampires are at their best.

*Read in April, 2012

Ghost stories, two magical words I can’t resist. Even though I’ve never read anything by Roald Dahl yet except for a quote at a local library – I did watch the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and loved it – I was curious to see what this book had to offer.
There are 14 stories in the book, all of them chosen (none of them written) by Roald Dahl.

I had no idea Edith Wharton wrote ghost stories and was pleasantly surprised to discover I enjoyed her contribution to this collection. Her story, Afterward, is about a couple whose search for the perfect old house with its own ghost brings them to Dorsetshire where they found what they were looking for: an old house without the modern day amenities such as a heating system, running water or electricity, all of which seems to add to the charm and authenticity of the place rather than diminish it. There is a ghost, too, but like one of the characters said, “Oh, there is one, of course, but you’ll never know it”. She was right, and how her words proved to be true makes for a very interesting tale.

The Corner Shop, by Cynthia Asquith, tells the story of a man who makes a pleasant discovery of a little antique shop and upon browsing through its wares, decides to get a wedding gift for a friend. Impressed by the whole atmosphere of the place and delighted by the help he receives from the two lovely young women running the business, the man decides to go back for another visit. Only this time he finds an old man and the cheerfulness is replaced by gloom. After buying a carved figurine, the young man discovers his purchase is worth a small fortune and decides to give some of the money back to the owners of the shop. To his surprise, he finds out an incredible story from the two young women, a story tinged with regret and an old man’s desire to make amends for something that happened in his past. This was a lovely story with a beautiful message.

In the Tube, by E.F. Benson, a conversation between friends turns to a confession which brings about an interesting dilemma. Introducing the story through a rather philosophical approach about life and time, the narrator talks about seeing a man while traveling by tube, a man who disappears only a few moments later, even though the doors of the train are closed. The next day he is introduced to the same person, but the man does not recognize him, in fact he says he’d only arrived into the city that very morning. Things get even stranger as the narrator sees the man again in the underground station that very night committing suicide by jumping in front of the tube. The story ends with a dead man’s request to set things right.

Playmates, by A.M. Burrage, is about a reclusive man called Stephen Everton, who decides to take care of Monica, the young daughter of a poet who died, leaving his child an orphan. Together with some servants and his secretary, accompanied by Monica, Everton moves to an old, isolated house in Suffolk, and there the child is left pretty much to herself, as Everton is busy with his writing. But they are not alone in the house, and as the girl tells Everton about her “imaginary friends”, the man’s reaction changes from incredulity to one of acceptance. What will happen to the pour harmless souls who live in the house after Monica goes away to study? I liked the story because it revealed another facet of Everton’s personality, thus making him appear more human.

Christmas Meeting, by Rosemary Timperley, is about a 50 years old woman who remembers different Christmases throughout her life, from childhood to adulthood and now, in her late years, her first Christmas alone. Her reverie is interrupted by a young man who bursts into her room by mistake, and the two strike up a conversation. The young man is a writer, the woman finds out, and as the story progresses, it is clear that past and present have broken their boundaries in an astonishing turn of events. A beautiful and enigmatic story which for some reason left me feeling a wave of tenderness for its protagonists.

In The Sweeper, by A. M. Burrage, an old and wealthy lady never turns a beggar from her door. That is unusual, as Miss Ludgate is not a particularly generous person when it comes to other people. There is a story behind this preference which springs from a mistake done in the past and a promise made with a last dying breath.

I liked the variety of the stories – two of them were set at sea, others took place in old houses, another on the street; only one resembled a love story. Even though the name of the book sounds pretty scary, I would rank the stories as “mild” – none of them really made me jump out of bed and turn on all the lights. In fact it’s been a while since a book did that and if you, reader, have a suggestion of a really scary book, I’d love to hear it.

*Read in April, 2012

Coming up: a review of The Vampire Archives, an amazing, delightful, horrific book!

Nuri-el Alfi is a teenage boy living with his father after his mother passes away. On a holiday to the Magda Marina beach in Egypt, Alexandria, he meets and falls in love with Mona, a 26 year old woman who later will marry his father. Then one day his father disappears and an avalanche of questions seems to overwhelm Nuri. Where is his father, who took him, and most importantly, is he still alive?

The action takes place in Egypt, Switzerland and England. The small number of characters make the novel easy to follow – the enigmatic father, whose secretive life style is revealed in small doses but never in its entirety, the furtive glimpses of his first wife, Nuri’s mother, provided here and there around the novel, her unexplained death, and the role of Naima who is not just a housekeeper, all seem to come together towards the end.
A feeling of absence and longing pervades every page, the disappearance of the father transforming the son into an emotionally crippled young man living in the past, trying to cling to the memory of his father by smoking the same cigarettes, wearing the clothes he left behind, looking at photographs. Smells, memories, gestures, become ties that bind Nuri to a brief past he shared with his father and he is reluctant to let them go.

I found the novel somehow disjointed; halfway through the story I got frustrated with the bits and pieces that didn’t fit and others that didn’t make sense – too many questions and so much mystery. Some of those questions got answered in the end – just enough so that I wasn’t left with a total feeling of incompleteness. I was intrigued and I did a little research on the author, only to discover that his own father, who was involved in politics, had been abducted, his whereabouts known only years later.
Hisham Matar is probably the first Libyan author whose work I have read. It is very likely that I never would have picked up this novel on my own, but a book club I recently joined chose this as the book-of-the-month and so I gave it a try. I have mixed feelings about it – the story did not appeal to me, too gloomy and hopeless, but the occasional sparkle of the language made reading it bearable; this one paragraph about Nuri’s mother I particularly liked:

“Her hands, the pale thin fingers that never seemed to match her strength, would be frozen twigs. She would tuck them between my knees or, if I were lying on my back, slide them behind my lower back, the place that is still hers.”

And another one:

“The world had to be sliced into hours to fill, otherwise you could go mad with loneliness.”

My review feels incomplete, more like a jumble of ideas glued together but that’s ok – it took me a while to reach the final page and I had days when a sort of dread was creeping on me, knowing that I had to finish it because I hate giving up on a book, especially one that is not even that long. At just under 250 pages, it should have been a quick read. Alas, it wasn’t. Or maybe I just needed something more cheerful.
And that brought a question to mind: how do you feel about gloomy stories? Do you enjoy these kinds of books or stay away from them? Or perhaps the degree of sadness doesn’t matter as long as the author keeps the story interesting?

*Read in April, 2012

You can also read Athira’s review here