February 2007 Archives

I found Paul Theroux's account of his travels along the British coastline rather bit hard going. His achievement is undeniable, all the more so as I suspect to repeat his travels 20 or so years later would be a lot harder - in several chapters you're made very aware that even in the early 80s the days of the coast-serving branch lines of Great Britain were numbered and by now many of them will have passed. And it was interesting to read an American (an anglo-friendly one)'s account of British attitudes to the Falklands War as those events unfolded in the North and South Atlantic.

So what didn't I enjoy? I think it was the flip side of that sense of reading history - knowing that the people and places, the attitudes and environment that Paul Theroux talks about no longer exist, at least not as he describes them. And looking back to 1982 really does feel like reading history, and I was keenly aware of how little of it matched with my own memories as a 12 year growing up in the Birmingham suburbs, about as far from the sea as it's possible to be.

Amazon.co.uk link: The Kingdom by the Sea - Paul Theroux

I picked this up in the second hand bookshop in Hereford, based on Matt Webb's recommendation (in response to a request on Haddock for recommended reads I think). It's taken me a while to get round to reading, but that says more about my inclination to read SciFi than it goes about Ursula LeGuin - I don't think I've found a novel of her's that I have not enjoyed.

And the same goes for The Left Hand of Darkness. Set in a remote planet, colonised by humans many millennia ago, the book tells the tale of Genly Ai, a lone envoy from a coalition of similarly settled planets and his encounters with inhabitants of the planet's two main countries as he seeks to persuade them not only to join the coalition but that he is an "alien" rather than a stooge of the other nation. As Genly Ai discovers there is mutual distrust between the people in power in Karhide and Orgoreyn, and nothing is as it first seems. (Forgive me is I also say that this set up reminded me somewhat of Andre Maurois' Fattypuff and Thinifers....)

The basic story is embellished with descriptions of the planet's arctic environment and the hermaphrodite nature of the native population, and with realistic 'human' touches such as their inability to pronounce the letter "l", turning Genly into Genry. Given that the novel was published in 1969, I was particularly struct by the reflections on man's impact on the environment.

Amazon.co.uk link: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula LeGuin

A beautiful, haunting set of short stories from Tim Winton, featuring the generations of families who live and grow up in the coastal town of Angelus, Western Australia. Although the stories can be read in isolation, this collection is home to a relatively small set of characters whose lives intertwine, intersect and overlap.

It was only towards the end of the book that I realised quite how small the cast was, and how many times we've been shown different stages and key events in the same life. Sometimes from their perspective, sometimes from that of those close to them. Myths, mysteries and misunderstandings abound.

One of those rare books that did actually cause me to go back and start reading from the beginning again, to spot more connections and to understand the complex characters a little better. Definitely a book that I'll come back to, and those are few and far between.

amazon.co.uk link: The Turning - Tim Winton