April 2007 Archives
Selected from my Library Books To Read pile on the basis that the cover illustration might not be allowed into Iran (I go there for a fortnight at the start of May), The Marsh King's Daughter was a quick read.
Set several centuries earlier than The Lady and the Unicorn, and in the lowlands of East Anglia it tells the story of a headstrong wool merchant's daughter who runs away from the convent to which her stepfather consigns her, and ends up becoming a successful business women, trading in sheep, wool and cloth, travelling around England and to Europe. There's the usual love story accompanying the history, and the Marsh King references are to King John's baggage train being lost in the treacherous quicksands of The Wash in 1216.
I fear that familiarity with Elizabeth Chadwick's novels is at risk of breeding some kind of contempt, which I wouldn't want as I do enjoy them - the books are well written and detailed, with good characters and plot; they're just a bit too similar in the overarching tale of two people overcoming adversity to find love.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Marsh King's Daughter - Elizabeth Chadwick
In The Age of Kali William Dalrymple writes of his encounters - chance meetings and hard won interviews - and his observations of people, places and events across the length and breadth of India and Pakistan - from the Imran Khan in Peshawar to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka - at the close of the 20th century. There are insights into history, religions and politics. A fascinating set of articles
Amazon.co.uk link: The Age of Kali - William Dalrymple
Hot on the heels of William Dalrymple's The Age of Kali, another good read - but of a completely different kind. The Lady and the Unicorn is a historical novel, set in 15th century Paris and Brussels, and tell the imagined story behind the amazing tapestries of the lady and the unicorn that are displayed in the beautiful Musée de Cluny / Musee du Moyenne Age [the Middle Ages] in Paris.
Tracy Chevalier provides insight into the detail included in the tapestries - the significance of the selection of the flora and fauna, and the poses and actions of the ladies and the unicorn - and into how the tapestries were made - from painting the intial images, to the dyes used to colour the wool, to the weaving and finishing. You learn about mediaeval business, society and economics, the power of the guilds and the role of women. The Lady and the Unicorn is a really informative read, lightly yet learnedly done.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier
I decided that I needed a break from reading about Iran and faced with a "to read" shelf dominated by other travel books I turned to this chance purchase from Hereford Paperback Exchange's closing down sale.
A slim novel, with a few too many essential plot-related coincidences in the early chapters, The Cloud Walker takes the Luddite campaigns of the early 19th century British Industrial Revolution and positions them at the centre of a religious belief system, set in a future time when society has turned its back on machinery and invention not once but twice more - both times driven by man's use of the power of machinery to destroy.
Whilst not an alternate history in the strictest sense, the pre industrial setting, the power of the church and the conflict between the desire of established power to preserve the status quo and the human desire to invent, improve and explore makes this novel read more like a work of historical fiction than science fiction - such science as there is looks at the mechanics of building a means to fly with the rudimentary materials available in a mediaeval/early modern-equivalent era.
Oddly, having finished it I am reminded of Fattypuffs and Thinifers ....
Amazon.co.uk link: The Cloud Walker - Edmund Cooper
Another of my pre-trip reads, I'd put this on my Amazon wish list for Christmas, and Rachel had come up trumps. What I'd not anticipated was that the two volumes of Marjane Satrapi's autobiography contained in Persepolis come in black and white comic strip form. That made for a speedy read, but one that had more immediate impact than Neither East Nor West, and one that documented and illustrated the experience of an Iranian girl/woman born the same year as I was with a huge amount of honesty.
In The Story of a Childhood, Marjane Satrapi tells how (pre-)teenage years take her from middle class affluence in Tehran through the Revolution and Iran-Iraq war and the impact they had on her life and that of her family and friends, to life in the West - where adolescent Marjane turns to drink and drugs and ends up living rough on the streets of 1980s Vienna.
In The Story of a Return, we see more of Tehran in the 1990s as Marjane matures from her teens to her twenties, studies art and marries, gets a job as an illustrator and divorces finally leaving Iran in 1994 to study in France. All before she was 25.
Amazon.co.uk link: Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
A timely read, in the month (all being well) I head off on my trip to Iran. Christiane Bird's book provides insight and opinion on modern day Iran as well as detail on history and geography, culture and politics, drawn from the experiences Christiane Bird gained and the people she met as she travelled around Iran in 1998.
Whilst naturally taking a female, western (US) perspective Christiane Bird balances gut reactions with conversations and explanations that result from the opportunity afforded to her as a woman (able to meet and freely discourse with other women) and a westerner. The book does not avoid difficult topics, including religious and personal freedoms, and the inevitable conclusion is that mutual misunderstanding results from preconceived ideas, and that all societies and cultures (and countries) merely reflect the people who create and occupy them, and individuals are more complex and varied than the stereotypes allow.
Amazon.co.uk link: Neither East Nor West: One Woman's Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran - Christiane Bird
I really wanted to finish this novel, but my dogged perserverance was doomed to failure. I've enjoyed other novels by Rose Tremain, notably The Colour, and that combined with the Parisian setting suggested that I'd whizz through this book, but sadly no. After first The Body Farm and then Neither East Nor West leapfrogged their way onto my bedside table, I recognised that I was destined to remain ignorant of the fates of 14 year old Lewis, his translator mother and would-be DIY dab hand dad, and the various members of Russian and African immigrant communities that people The Way I Found Her.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Way I Found Her - Rose Tremain