Imperium by Robert Harris

Imperium by Robert Harris, 2006, 2009

This book in many respects seems to have been written with Hollywood already in mind. It is vivid, action-packed, and the episodes often almost beg to be filmed as scenes.

All the characters are carefully drawn and differ convincingly and memorably from one another. In particular, Pompey is the larger-than-life type, so that reading his “scenes” one can feel him as almost physically present. The episode of the pirates – the sudden menace that made it “necessary” to grant Pompey extra powers to deal with them, which he then did with literally incredible rapidity – was strongly reminiscent of Tony Blair and Saddam Hussein’s WMDs in 2003.

Robert Harris has clearly done a lot of research. He refers to this briefly at the end of this book, and in more detail at the end of the third book in the series, Dictator. His chosen approach is to present, and to some extent fictionalise, Cicero’s life and the events that ended the Roman Republic, as a modern-day political thriller. The book is easy and compelling reading. This means that people who have no idea about and perhaps minimal interest in history as a subject (including some of us, who weren’t sure whether the book was set in the fifth century BC, fifth century AD, or somewhere in between), can read about it and acquire a fair picture of what went on.

This approach, of course, has its problems. Anachronisms are not altogether absent: references to a “drawing-room”, and others.

There is also the risk of being carried away by enjoyment of the story and suspending critical judgement.

Another problem is that some of the episodes that Harris does invent are totally unbelievable from start to finish – especially where he has Tiro (Cicero’s private secretary) taking copious notes of a top-secret meeting of Cicero’s enemies while hiding in a hole behind a tapestry.

The choice of Tiro as first-person narrator seemed in some ways rather laboured, in that it involves inventing more or less likely reasons why he was present at all the episodes he describes, and how it is that he remembers them or has all his notes of them. N.B. notes were normally made by scratching on wax tablets – not a method that really lent itself to extensive long-term preservation, particularly not through the various exiles and escapes that Tiro experienced in his life.

There are some wonderful quotations. “If it’s gratitude you want, get a dog.” “The ability to listen to bores requires stamina…” “Gossip is a trade…” “There can never have been anyone quite so worldly in their pursuit of unworldliness as Titus Pomponius Atticus.” “Since when has idiocy been a bar to advancement in politics?” “The trouble with Lucius is that he thinks politics is a fight for justice. Politics is a profession.”

What the book brings home is the sheer brutality of the ancient world, which it is not, unfortunately, impossible to parallel in today’s world. Worst of all of these, in many ways, was Verres’ hideous underground prison in Sicily. All of Verres’ crimes as discovered and detailed by Cicero are fact.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

     The book is a “journey” book – Harold discovers more and more about himself as he walks from Devon to Berwick-on-Tweed, and the reader gradually finds out about the secrets in his life. It is certainly formulaic, but still very fresh. A good read, absorbing and lively: people who would not have chosen to read it themselves were surprised to find how they enjoyed it. One, in her 20s, was surprised to find herself relating to someone more than forty years older than herself. Some found Harold painfully awkward, and annoyingly so – he could not even take the step of buying proper walking-shoes. Some readers asked if this was realistic or unbelievably exaggerated, but one said she knows someone who is in fact exactly like that. As for buying walking-shoes, it underlines the fact that people have familiar, comfortable things that they will always refuse to change for something new even if it would be much better.

     Harold and Maureen both lacked the capacity for self-reflection. They actually loved each other but had no idea how to express their love, let alone develop it, and as a result each felt unloved by the other. Their love was embryonic. Interestingly enough, at the very end of the book they revert to, and replay, their first meeting; their love appears to be adolescent again, unmatured, almost reduced to the mere “chemistry” of their first attraction. But before this they have gone through the explanations and confessions that they needed to make to each other.

     Obviously, Harold’s disastrous non-relationship with his appalling parents was the reason why he could not manage his relationship with Maureen – or David. After his mother had left, his father had introduced a succession of “aunts” into the house. Then “his father had presented him with an overcoat on his sixteenth birthday and shown him the door.” (p. 158), which was why he had never even had a proper education.

**SPOILER ALERT**     David’s suicide was his attempt to destroy not only himself, but both his parents too. He was manipulative, playing each parent off against the other; he was more intelligent than either of them, but this only made him despise them. This left him deeply unhappy and led him to ruin himself with drink and drugs. Yet Harold loved David just as much as Maureen did and, twenty years on, still agonises over his loss.

      Harold blames himself for David’s suicide, and for the apparent failure of his marriage with Maureen, and for Queenie’s departure from the brewery. He is tormented by these things but, perhaps surprisingly, his self-blame does not produce bitterness in him.

     Harold’s and Maureen’s lives are extremely small, extremely narrow, but also extraordinary. “... a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had done so for a long time” (p.180).

The amount of detail is satisfying and not over-done. Especially, of course, the descriptions of the sky, the plants, that Harold gets more and more involved in as he walks.

     Then comes the existential question: if Maureen has lived Harold’s life for him for most of their marriage, “Then who am I?” By getting away from her, he found out. He had not had any early relationships in order to be able to work out his own self.

     It is through some of the different people Harold meets and talks to that Harold – and the reader – discover more and more about Queenie’s cancer. **SPOILER ALERT** This prepares to some extent for Harold’s actual arrival and seeing Queenie, but it is still a shock, and the reader has to ask why it has to be such a horrible one – her tongue cut out, half her throat gone, and her face ballooned with a tumour?

     Harold is non-judgemental throughout: he helped the people who confided in him by being honest and not opinionated. He has an unexpressed well of compassion within, and suffers with people’s sufferings. “... he knew that in meeting her, and listening, he was carrying another weight in his heart and he wasn’t sure how much more of that he could take” (p. 148).

     His compassion grows as he walks on: “He had learned that it was the smallness of people that filled him with wonder and tenderness, and the loneliness of that too. The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other” (p. 180).
     The journey is a pilgrimage in many senses, and Harold learns the meaning of freedom of spirit, firstly in his need to be in the open, and then in his realisation that he has to get rid of all the things he is carrying with him, all the props that he has been relying on. In the end, significantly, he loses his precious compass.

     The question of religious faith runs through the book, and is never resolved, although the nuns praying for Queenie do point to the affirmative at the end of the book. “If we can’t be open, Maureen thought, if we can’t accept what we don’t know, then there really is no hope.”

A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer

A Civil Contract

 by Georgette Heyer, first published 1961

All of Heyer’s Regency novels are simple escapism; this one is certainly that, but at the same time it gives readers a lot to think about. The theme could be stated quite simply as “Romantic love versus matrimonial love”.

Adam Deveril, an officer in Wellington’s army, in love with the beautiful and aristocratic Julia Oversley, has just succeeded to his father’s title of Viscount Lynton, and finds himself overwhelmed by his late father’s massive debts. In order to provide for his family and save Fontley, the family home, he marries the plebeian Jenny Chawleigh, daughter of a very wealthy banker. The book follows their first year of married life, up until the Battle of Waterloo (18th June 1815).

As in all Heyer’s books, the research is impeccable. From Adam’s colonel in the 52nd Regiment, to the exact day and time when the news of Waterloo reached London, from the behaviour of the Prince Regent to the fashions of the day in hats and dresses, the details are reliable and accurate.

The other very enjoyable feature that this book shares with other Heyer novels is the excellent writing. Not a single sentence jars; plenty of them are memorable. In A Civil Contract, perhaps more than in any of her other books, Heyer sets herself to give a very complete picture of the main characters in the book.

Adam is a gentleman through and through: his character traits are loyalty, chivalry, honesty, a sense of humour, and strength of character (he holds out in support of Wellington against surrounding friends who are Whigs). Fastidious, even finicky, reserved, he retires behind “an impenetrable barrier” when displeased or upset. He is deeply attached to Fontley; he loved soldiering, but turns out to be a farmer at heart. He loathes accepting gifts – either from Lord Oversley or from Mr Chawleigh.

He feels a romantic love for Julia; over the course of the book he develops a solid matrimonial love for Jenny. Having taken the decision to marry her, he commits himself fully to his marriage. Right from the start, as soon as they were married, “He did pity her, and forgot his own aching heart in the need to reassure her.” Later on, Julia suggests that since they both still love each other, they could have an affair: he rejects the suggestion out of a sense of honour, and loyalty and compassion for Jenny. We witness his feelings develop from his reply to Julia’s question “ ‘Can you be happy?’ A tiny headshake answered her”, through “he had grown to be fond of (Jenny) — so fond, he realized, that if, by the wave of a wand he could cause her to disappear he would not wave it”, to “ ‘I do love you, Jenny,’ he said gently. ‘Very much indeed — and I couldn’t do without you’.” By the end of the book he has recognised what Julia’s father, and Adam’s friend Brough, had seen clearly from the start: that Julia and he would have been very badly suited.

Jenny’s character includes common sense, generosity, and strength of character. She is well-educated and intelligent; loving, forthright, blunt, understanding, and perceptive. We discover that she has been secretly in love with Adam ever since she first met him the year before. She is “unromantic”; “a round, rosy face remarkable only for its determination”. “The trend of her mind was practical; she entered into married life in a business-like way; and almost immediately presented the appearance of a wife of several years’ standing. She quickly discovered, and never forgot, his particular fads”. She sets herself to make Adam comfortable by creating a welcoming, well-cared-for home and being constantly even-tempered and undemanding – though being pregnant, and unwell, causes a considerable change in her behaviour!

The other really remarkable character is Jenny’s father, Mr Chawleigh. He is rough, generous, vulgar, too old to learn, sharp, decent, honest, and bullying. He is ambitious for Jenny to enter high society, but not for himself: he recognises that he would only appear ridiculous among “the nobs”. Adam says to Jenny at one stage, “I think there can be no more generous persons alive than you and your father.” Adam and Mr Chawleigh have several clashes, but in the end, recognising how totally different they are, they each learn to respect and even admire the other. Adam reflects about Chawleigh that “He did not know that the things he said were unpardonable, or that self-control in moments of stress was incumbent on him. He had fought his way up in the world with no other weapons than his hard head and his ruthless will. He was brutal but generous, overbearing yet curiously humble, and he gave way to his emotions with the ease of a child.”

Eleni by Nicholas Gage

Eleni (first published 1983)

Nicholas Gage

This book is really two stories combined: the life and death of Eleni Gatzoyiannis, a Greek peasant woman, and the quest of her son Nicholas for truth and justice thirty years later.

Eleni was tortured, condemned to death and killed by the Greek Communist rebels who were occupying and controlling her mountain village.

In writing the book, Nicholas identifies with his mother and brings her life as vividly before us as if the book had been written by Eleni herself. His account of her life and character is detailed and convincing.

It is a tough book to read, and hard to recommend, as one suffers a lot in reading it. But one also learns an enormous amount. In the first place, about Greece in the mid-twentieth century. Secondly, about Communism, an idealism which, because it is totalitarian, necessarily includes the torture and murder of anyone who does not cooperate whole-heartedly – and, indeed, of plenty who do.

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

 

We chose this as a bit of light relief after Anna Karenina. It is extremely funny – everyone laughed out loud at one stage or another, very embarrassing for those bookclubbers who were reading it on the Tube! Several of us had read it before, at least two as a “school book”. The second time round it was obviously different, because of having an adult perspective and capacity; we found we appreciated the descriptions, which we had been barely conscious of before, probably having rushed over them to get to the “action”.

The descriptions, whether of people, animals or scenery, are incredibly lush and in fact OTT. Durrell makes use of the most startling comparisons all the time – “a hermit crab of massive proportions, wearing an anemone on his shell, like a bonnet with a pink flower on it.” He has his own special anthropomorphism for animals and can read the expressions on the most unlikely reptile and insect faces: he describes the expressions on a tortoise’s face as variously “pleading”, “of bemused good humour”, “thoughtful”; a mantis’s as “scornful” and even a gecko’s as “what he fondly imagined to be a look of blood-curdling ferocity” and “an expression of smug happiness”. People-plus-dogs are especially notable – e.g. Mrs Durrell and Dodo.

The descriptions are too rich to rush through: they need to be enjoyed at a leisurely pace. There is no plot, so it is a good book to take up and put down, and enjoy without any urgency to find out what happens in the end.

The characters are as remarkable as the animals. Spiro the Greek taxi-driver who adopted the family, reminding some of the famous Meerkats in the (2013) comparethemarket adverts; Gerald’s succession of tutors; Lugaretzia the home help; and of course the various members of the Durrell family themselves. They are like caricatures of the English eccentric – people expected the English to be eccentric, and the Durrells had no hesitation in living up to expectations. They were too eccentric to be true, overdrawn, with a chaotic lifestyle – there are simply no boxes to fit their types into.

Kralefsky’s mother who explained how her flowers talked to each other was simply another delightfully eccentric character – but a week before the book club meeting in which we discussed the book, an amazingly timely article appeared in the Metro in which scientists maintain that plants do in fact communicate with each other. An abbreviated version is available at

http://metro.co.uk/2013/05/07/plants-dont-need-heir-just-a-good-chat-together-3714395/

The reader does wonder what the family lived on; as the author was between 8 and 12 at the period he narrates, he had a child’s uninterest. One would be tempted to think that they were simply and comfortably rich enough to be able to live as they chose, but there are a few references to overdrafts and bank managers that suggest this was not the case, even allowing for the fact that in the early 1930s on a Greek island, food and other necessities, even the “villas” that they lived in, must have been comparatively cheap.

 It was interesting to contrast Durrell’s picture of a family and life with Roma Tearne’s in Brixton Beach. They might be living on two different planets.

The question was also raised of what children today, brought up on Harry Potter, could make of this book. Some felt that children have sufficiently elastic imaginations to be able to appreciate it, however far it is from their own experience. Others, however, thought that as children today don’t go out at all and are totally computer-oriented and have no desire to explore and discover the real world, they would be unable to grasp or appreciate it. For children in the 1950s when the book was written, through to the 1980s,  the picture of life on Corfu was a dream come true. One bookclubber offered to send it to her 11-year-old American niece to find out her reaction.

Finally, we discovered from Wikipedia that the story as told in the book is not strictly accurate - Larrie, Gerald's eldest brother, was actually married and living in another villa with his wife at this time, while the book represents him as part of the family circle; and other points.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Those who had read this book before found that it was more interesting on second reading, and in a way they got more out of it. Especially about the “second story”, Levin and Kitty, since the first time round one naturally focused more on Anna Karenina herself.

Tolstoy wrote the book as a serial. One of the reasons he wrote it was to send a new message to readers, about the relationship between work and education. It is a family story – all the main characters are connected. But between them they represent the whole range of levels of Russian nineteenth-century society. The Shterbatskys – the peasants – Nicholas Levin and Marya Nikolaevna.

Bookclubbers were surprised to find how easy the book was to read, compared with nineteenth-century literature in English. We had read different translations, but no-one had any difficulty in reading it and everyone had found it a compelling read. The chapters are very short, and the language and sentences are clear. The ideas are not necessarily so straightforward or easy to catch. In practically every chapter, there are phrases, sentences and episodes that are loaded with significance – anyone who had a copy of their own and who was in the habit of highlighting meaningful passages, would soon have virtually the whole book covered in yellow stripes.

One of the most fascinating things about the book is the picture it provides of the Russian world of the nineteenth century. It was a world in which money meant everything (as indeed it does in today’s world), whether at the peasants’ level or at that of the upper classes. What was noticeable was the sheer unreality of the lives lived by the nobility. There is a very strongly-marked contrast between the society men who went from soirée to theatre to club (yes, the men’s purposelessness is what strikes one most; I suppose we find it easier to accept the idea of upper-class women leading such a meaningless existence?) and the peasants, with their simple happiness and their farniente, the ability to persevere in hard, gruelling work while taking every opportunity that came along of doing nothing. The peasants are shown as leading happy, even carefree lives. They live on the land and have strong families, companionship, and folk traditions. However, they have neither education nor culture, so their level of happiness is limited and narrow.

The question of religious faith runs through the whole book – it is a question, a problem. It is evident in Karenin, a cold fish who has never really thought about how he ought to treat his wife, or whether their relationship could be different. He has been living an artificial life made up of official duties and official responsibilities, but with no real human relationships and no actual friends at all. He undergoes a religious experience when Anna seems to be dying after giving birth, while still in his house, to Vronsky’s daughter. Karenin finds that he can humble himself, and forgive her and even Vronsky, totally, in a Christ-like way. However, this conversion, real though it is, does not last. Karenin ends up being fascinated by the Christian-Scientist-type teachings of Countess Lydia Ivanovna, even though he realises, deep down, that this new version of Christianity is false and shallow.

Levin himself, who seems to be an autobiographical character for Tolstoy, wrestles much more deeply with his faith, as he does with everything in the intellectual realm. To begin with he tries to make sense of the Russian social set-up as it is at that time, and to rationalise and improve the agricultural work done by the peasants – recently liberated from serfdom. He is foiled by the peasants themselves, who are one and all convinced that any change or innovation must necessarily be bad, and, if proposed by a landowner, must be a trick to get something out of them. Levin is a man of integrity and natural humility, and continues questioning, reading, and arguing about the purpose of life and human nature. However, it is noticeable that again and again, he tries to engage people in discussion about these things unsuccessfully, even when he is sure they have very interesting viewpoints to contribute; and when he argues, he never manages to convince anyone of his point of view.

Levin goes to confession to a Russian Orthodox priest before his wedding, as Church rules require. And, with characteristic honesty (unlike Oblonsky), he says frankly that he doubts the existence of God. The priest is not scandalized, but really does help him to look towards faith instead of away from it. When Kitty has a difficult labour, Levin finds himself praying with real faith, but experiences it more as a feeling that doesn’t last (there is an obvious parallel here with Karenin). However, he keeps on trying to find his way to faith in order to make sense of his life, and human existence. In the end he realises that in all his philosophising, reading and arguing, he has been “seeking food in toy shops and tool shops” – determinedly looking for spiritual sustenance in all the wrong places – and that he really does have a faith on which he can construct his life.

Vronsky and Anna are the main characters of the “first story” in the book, as Levin and Kitty are of the “second story”. Vronsky’s philosophy of life, which seems to be characteristic of his class and generation, was merely a set of hard and fast rules for getting on in society. Practically every time he is mentioned, his “even white teeth” also feature. The most extensive and detailed episode involving him is the horse race where he literally rides his horse to death in an unsuccessful attempt to win; he destroys Anna as he had destroyed the horse. There is an astonishing passage when he and Anna first become lovers, where Tolstoy describes Vronsky’s attitude towards Anna in terms of the attitude of a murderer towards his dead victim. The last time Vronsky comes into the book, on his way to find death at the battlefront, he is suffering from a severe ache in all his teeth.

Anna is, of course, a much more interesting character, and we come much closer to her than we ever do to Vronsky. What ruins her life is firstly her inability to love her husband, and secondly, her pathological jealousy. Neither of these is entirely her fault, but she never had any help in tackling these problems. Nowadays she is generally seen as a tragic heroine. It is easy to see how this view can do a lot of harm: a woman who is not entirely happy in her marriage for some reason, reads Anna Karenina and thinks, “Ohh how romantic – just like me – I’m just like her…” and looks for a way of escape, instead of looking to see where the problem lies (including in her own behaviour) and trying to solve it and put her marriage on a better footing.

There are masses of other characters in the book, all of whom are compellingly realistic even though they are relatively “minor parts”.

It is a fascinating book to read from all sorts of different angles. At the level of sociology, it is worth comparing with books about other societies – most obviously, of course, Dickens, Gaskell, and other nineteenth-century English writers who describe the whole range of society; and writers of similar scope in other countries.

Sacred Tears by Rod Grigson

Sacred Tears by Rod Grigson

(Authorhouse, 2013)

Having the opportunity of reading a draft of a book that has not yet been published means you are conscious of reading in two different ways – firstly, as a draft, weighing it up and seeing what is good and what could be improved; and secondly, as a book, in terms of plot, characters, style, etc. You realize what hard work it is to write a whole book! Just to do all that writing, and keep all the different elements of the plot in one’s head at the same time!

Descriptions

The descriptions are really striking and in many ways better than the action. Especially the food – the tea, the roti, etc. The author would certainly also make a good restaurant critic!

Characters

All the characters spoke in exactly the same way. Nadim, Samir, David…, all have the same voice. The women in particular, Priyani, Danika, and the others, are all exactly the same, there is nothing to tell them apart. Yet they are supposed to be from different backgrounds and cultures. Also, when they meet, they just make friends, carry on as if they’ve known and trusted each other all their lives, and that’s the end of the story. Very unrealistic indeed. Plus David and Priyani falling in love, Samir and Danika… both couples made for each other, all settled in no time, no kind of development.

Publishing

Most of us came to the conclusion that the book is so long, and gives such vivid pictures of some episodes, that it would actually make a good film – in fact a better film than book, in many ways.

Plot

Good story. Completely convincing (unlike The Olive Grove or The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society) – this is someone who really does seem to have experienced what he is writing about first hand, both David’s life in Sri Lanka and Sami’s guerrilla fighting in Beirut and Sri Lanka. From the problems and the way they tackle them, right down to Asilin’s coconut-scraper (which almost all of us picked on for special note!).

Style

A lot of the book reads very well, but many other parts of it are very badly written. It needs a thorough re-write (sorry!) for punctuation and grammar, which is often poor (particularly the absence of commas), and, even more importantly, for the very amateur-sounding explanatory sentences and clauses right the way through. Not the fact that sentences are almost always short and simple, or the frequency of one-sentence paragraphs, in the actual narrative: those are the way this kind of book should be written, because they convey the protagonists’ level of thought effectively. The parts that need re-writing are the sort of sentence that occurs on virtually every page, that suddenly bring the movement of the narrative to a grinding halt – to take one example completely at random:

David looked across at the Colonel waiting for permission to speak. The Colonel nodded his head signalling David to begin. (p. 349)

This revising should be done not by the author, but by someone who has professional experience in writing, editing and proof-reading. It would be really worth it – though it would cost a fair amount of money.

Detail

The wealth of detail is brilliant, but this too slows up the whole story. It seems to move so slowly that most if not all readers soon started speed-reading or skimming through the book, rather than reading every page properly.

Title

None of us could explain the title of the book. The only part it seemed to be relevant to was the massacre at the Temple.

Episodes

David and Charmaine (Chapter 4). This episode showed a relationship that was totally typical of the difference in attitudes between men and women. “What they had suited David perfectly.” But as soon as Charmaine realised that that was all he wanted, that he was not interested in any kind of commitment, let alone in marrying her, she broke off the relationship and went to Australia. Unlike David, she had seen their relationship as implying, and leading to, genuine commitment. I’m not suggesting any change is needed here, though it could be interesting to bring out the difference between the way David saw Charmaine, and the way he saw Priyani, even if he didn’t reflect on that difference himself.

Father Daniel (or Daniels) and chastity (Chapter 8): “chastity is a choice, there is nothing in God’s law that forbids us to have wives.” But Catholic priests in general, and Jesuits in particular as members of a religious order, take a solemn vow of celibacy. Is Father Daniel/s supposed to have somehow forgotten it, or convinced himself that it doesn’t matter? Has he been set a bad example by other priests and has he not had anyone to put him straight? Is he not in contact with any of his superiors? Something more needs adding here.

The Olive Grove by Deborah Rohan

The Olive Grove – a Palestinian Story, by Deborah Rohan. London: Saqi, 2008.

This book will leave the reader wanting to do some research and find out more about Israel/Palestine, to get a larger picture of the rights and wrongs. It is hard to be sure which parts of the book are historically accurate, and which are fiction; a lot of background knowledge would be needed to be able to sort it out. The book does not actually claim to be history, but a fictionalised account of one family’s story – though my library, interestingly, has it firmly in the “History” section, and large parts of the book are devoted to people explaining Palestine’s situation, and its causes, to one another at length.

To start on a positive note, this book is a good read: the story is engaging and claims one's interest. However, it is not good literature. Some of the incidents, and many of the characters’ reactions, seem stilted and contrived. The prose is patchy at best, often hopelessly awkward, and sometimes the author simply can’t work out the structure of her own sentences, as on p. 97: “He had repeatedly blamed himself for Hagop’s departure on his own need to have tobacco.” Rohan also has the widespread American habit of using the first word that comes to mind, without checking what it really means. E.g. “languish” when she really meant “pause” or simply “lie”: again and again, “Haniya languished in the doorway”, “olives languished on a plate”. Or “donned”: “Raji spotted the soldiers donned in red and white headdresses”. There are plenty of other examples.

It does not convey the reality of Palestinian life and culture, or make the Palestinian character come alive – rather than being a “Palestinian Story”, as its subtitle claims, it’s a family story, and the family is an American one with Palestinian bits added on for decoration. All the characters are drawn as Americans, which comes across as completely out of place – e.g., on p. 66, Hagop the Armenian says to Kamel who is reproaching himself for leaving Hagop to be attacked by two Turks, “Don’t do that to yourself, Kamel. Things happen. You were there for me.” This is a late-twentieth-century American talking, not an early-twentieth-century Armenian. The whole atmosphere of the book is very Western. There is scene after scene of the Moghrabi children playing, which can end up being merely tedious; the author was presumably trying to build up a picture of family life in Palestine, but lacked the skill to do it successfully. A much better picture of another culture is achieved in Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, poorly written though it is.

The action in The Olive Grove is slow and often plodding. Even when Kamel is in prison, there is not much of a feel of what it is like because only the most obvious and superficial, almost clichéd, details are given. Fair enough, the author was re-working what she had been told by Hamzi, and maybe didn’t have very much to go on – but did she try to find out? The reader repeatedly wonders whether Rohan had done any investigation or information-gathering at all – did she have any idea of the real scene in a Palestinian refugee camp? She talks about the stench – but then Hamzi got used to it, and that is all. She doesn’t explain how these destitute people could find money to buy his cigarettes, yet he seems to have supported himself by selling them.

A question about the Moghrabi family which does not seem to be explained in the book is why they were not practising Muslims. The reader also notices that the Moghrabis do not represent the majority of Palestinians, in that they are a rich family, and even in exile in Lebanon, after their money has run out, they are still only relatively poor – they never live in the refugee camp themselves.

The Palestinian people in the book appear too perfect, and the Jewish people and others are demonized.  It could be a good book for softening attitudes towards Islam, but leads one to dislike the Jews intensely – though it does distinguish between (bad) Zionists and “good Jews”, in the person of Rabbi Moussa.

Other “good” characters in the book are the Arab Christians who hid and protected their Jewish or Palestinian neighbours at the risk of their own lives.  Dr White, the American director of Hamzi’s school in Lebanon, championed Hamzi and tried to help his Palestinian pupils react positively instead of going for retaliation and revenge.

The book raises the whole question of Jewish identity, how it comes to be wrapped up with that particular piece of land – the Promised Land – and the question of anti-Semitism and the results of the Second World War. If the Palestinians are actually Philistines, then their claim to that land goes back even further than the claim of the Jews does – though the Jews’ claim is not based on antiquity so much as a God-given promise. However, the Jews in Israel appear to be Zionists first and worshippers of God only a very poor second, if that. The book does not mention the fact that Jews and Palestinians are, by all accounts, very closely related, but this is a fact that it is important to bear in mind.

Readers who come to this book knowing nothing about the British in Palestine will be shocked at how they behaved, not only on the large scale, but also in the story of Lieutenant Bainbridge and Mahmoud’s and Kamel’s rifle (which ends on pp. 280-1). The picture is of arrogant British supremacy: “I want your property and I am stronger than you, so I’m going to have it.” In dealing with the situation in Palestine after the Second World War, the British clearly did not know what they were dealing with. They were seriously to blame for this, because they should have taken pains to find out since they had assumed responsibility for the country. They made and broke promises to both sides, both the Jews and the Palestinians.

It is also clear that the UN is at least as much to blame for the situation of Israel/Palestine as the British.

The same achingly desperate story of wrongs could be written and told by a Jewish family. Stories of atrocities by Palestinians are part of what every Jewish person knows. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that this book was written in America for Americans, who are used to Israel being “right” because the US supports it (not the other way round). Do we get a slightly more balanced picture in the UK? At least we hear a lot more from the Palestinian side. Neither side (taken as a whole) can ever see that two wrongs don’t make a right. However, Kamel and Hamzi are “enlightened” Palestinians and can see it more clearly than most. Although they don’t often make the international news, there are people on both sides who are working to unite the two communities at the local level, just as there were people doing the same in Northern Ireland throughout the Troubles.

Finally, there is an absolutely amazing episode on pp. 420-431. Fifty years on, Hamzi, with his adult daughter, goes back to Israel-Palestine on a brief visit from America. They go to his former family home and find it is a café, owned by a Palestinian. When he tells the owner, George, who he is,

George’s face grows ashen. He stands up, nods an ‘excuse me’ to Ruba, and leaves the room. Moments later he returns, holding a set of keys. ‘Please, sir, the restaurant is yours.’

‘What? I don’t understand.’

‘If you have returned to your home, after these many years, I will gladly turn over my business to you. I do not wish to prosper from anyone so hurt by the Israeli occupation. My family could not flee. For many years we suffered, but at least we had the good fortune to remain in our country. Now we are allowed to run our own businesses.’ He nods his head again. ‘Consider the restaurant yours.’

Hamzi has to refuse, of course, since he is only being allowed into Israel on a short tourist visa. Did the author (and did Hamzi himself) see that this episode was an astonishing mirror image of the whole miserable question that lies behind the book? After many years of bitter exile, the Jews came back to what had once been their homeland. The present inhabitants, the Palestinians, who had a perfect legal and historical right to the land, could either welcome them as long-lost brothers and hand over the land to them,… or resist them bitterly. The Jews could have treated the Palestinians as friends and neighbours, each side aiming to share generously and equably and treat the other with humanity, fairness, and compassion. But because each side saw the other from the start not as brothers but as enemies – invaders, occupiers – the story of Israel/Palestine has been tragic from the start and continues to be one of hatred and killing, with no real solution imaginable even now.

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

This book produced predictably divided opinions among Woodlands book clubbers. The notion of Death as narrator, and his view of human life, is quite extraordinary. It is very cleverly done, and not overdone.
What is notably missing from the book is any answer to the question of where Death takes the souls once he has taken them from their bodies. He just takes them. No idea of life after death; God is as much of a mystery to Death as to the most ignorant agnostic. And then somehow Death has a conversation with Liesel after her own death, looking back on her life! The author, for all his cleverness, has not really thought things through properly.
Apart from Liesel, Max and Rudy, people were much impressed by Hans Hubermann and, of course, the really surprising transformation of Rosa.

Dr Thorne, by Anthony Trollope

Tuesday 8th May 2012

We discussed Dr Thorne by Anthony Trollope. Two things were highlighted particularly: money and humour.

Trollope's novel shows how money counted for absolutely everything in the society he was describing - because Miss Dunstable was extremely rich, she was fêted and courted by the noble families of the country despite her plebeian birth. Once Mary Thorne was known to have inherited Roger Scatcherd's wealth, she was instantly a perfect wife for Frank Gresham, even though she was illegitimate, and she is graciously and even obsequiously received by his mother, the aristocratic Lady Arabella. This is highlighted  all the more by the snobbishness and pretentiousness of Lady A and her high-born connections, who had previously banished Mary from Greshamsbury in case she should "ensnare" Frank.
The humour in the book was enormously appreciated by most, though not all, readers. Trollope pokes gentle fun at himself as author, at us his readers, and most of all at his characters. He convinces you that he really enjoys writing, whether or not that was really the case. Most obvious, of course, are the silly names he invents - the political agents Mr Nearthewinde and Mr Closerstil, the venal publican Mr Reddypalm, the awful Doctor Fillgrave, and more. But Trollope has plenty of much more subtle humourous touches.
The characters are very distinct from one another and very convincing. Even Mary, who in some respects is too good to be true, has plenty of backbone and stands up for herself in speaking with Lady Arabella - perfectly politely and respectfully, but very firmly as well. Frank is a very nice but very spoilt boy at the beginning of the book - on his twenty-first birthday - and in the course of the next two years or so he really grows up, taking command of his own life in a very determined way. Some people's absolute favourite was Miss Dunstable. She is not in any way overwhelmed by all the adulation she receives, is sick and tired of men proposing to her simply because of her wealth, but still manages to be polite and friendly. She is older than Frank, understands him completely and likes him very much, and will not allow him to propose to her as he has been virtually forced by his aunt to do. Miss Dunstable urges him to be true to himself and to Mary Thorne no matter what. And this despite the fact that, as she confesses to Mary much later, she herself finds him very loveable.

The Help, Kathryn Stockett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett (2009)

Sheila introduced the book with an explanation of the situation of segregation laws in the USA, where after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1864, “Jim Crow” laws in the Southern States still regulated racial segregation between black people (“Coloureds”) and white people, until the Civil Rights movements, led and personified by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parkes, resulted in their abolition by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The book is well written on the whole, though sometimes rather laborious. It was a real challenge getting used to the dialect of the Black characters. It made you feel you had got inside the skin of the American black women of the 1960s, with their permanent fear of losing their job, house, and family without any warning. They were only two or three generations on from the slaves. They still had no real freedom – their jobs and housing situations were extremely precarious and they could not vote. Apparently a film is being made of The Help, though some people considered that the time for such a film has really passed – it will not have the same effect as it would have done when its events were still in living memory.

There is a sharp divide between the Black characters in the book, who were all “good” (except Leroy), and the White characters, who were all “bad” (except Skeeter and, in a different way, Celia Foote). The fact is that the whole book focused on just one aspect: black women employed as “home helps” by white women; and in that situation, in the prevailing culture, that was how people acted. Because the set-up was so wrong, it had a bad effect on the white women who were part of it, and conformed to it. We noticed that Stockett could have introduced a “good” white woman in the person of the New York editor, as a white woman not involved in the racial segregation system; but she was Jewish, and so had a different culture of her own (stereotyped to some degree).

The characters are persuasive: full of life, and developing convincingly in the course of the book. Everyone liked Aibileen and Minny; they were strong characters, and the white children Aibileen brought up adored her. They had terrific humour, and good qualities – notably, loyalty to the people they worked for. However, it was felt to some extent that they were also stereotyped, and in that sense a little shallow.

Skeeter was felt, on the whole, to be incredibly naive, in that she risked getting the black women killed by interviewing them and publishing what they said. We discussed what was it that constituted the tipping-point for Aibileen, that made her agree to talk to Skeeter and then persuade the other “helps” to do the same, and realized it was Treelore’s death, plus of course the fact that having no husband or children of her own, she had less to lose than others.

One or two people found Celia Foote, the “poor white”, was their “favourite” character – she was excluded from the white social circle, so not part of the racial-segregation setup, and she didn’t have an ounce of malice in her – she was an “innocent” in every sense of the word. Some people found the relationship between her and her husband Johnny was weird.

Something particularly notable was the way the black women put their hearts into their work of home-making, even though the homes they made were other people’s. Minny was not only a fantastic cook, she was an energetic and effective cleaner, and the handy household tips that Aibileen gave Skeeter, out of her own experience, for her Miss Myrna column are really good.

Everyone agreed that the ending of the book was the worst part of it. Suddenly Minny’s, Aibileen’s and Skeeter’s problems are resolved in a “magic wand” effect, as though the author had got tired of writing and decided to finish it all off in a hurry. The book is overall a good read, but not great literature or world-changing. We talked about where racism “comes from”, whether it is taught or inherited or what. It seems to be ignorance that is inherited, and actual prejudice is taught.

We wound off the evening with a glorious Sri Lankan curry: Ranmali was the artist in charge. Grateful thanks from everyone!

P.S. Interesting footnote, thanks to the Daily Mail>: The real Abilene