Cutting for Stone ~ Abraham Verghese

This book would better be titled  'Cutting for Sand', because that is the texture that I am reminded of a day after having finished this book.  There is a grittiness to this novel, a novel that I should have, in theory, loved.  The story is a compelling one: an Ethiopian surgeon is searching for answers about his parents; a British surgeon and an Indian nun.  To add spice to the story, the narrator, Marion Stone is one of a set of conjoined twins, abruptly separated at birth in an attempt to save their lives.  Shiva, the narrator's twin brother, grows up to be nothing like his identical sibling, although they maintain an intense relationship and share many experiences.   Strangely enough, this book has a number of similarities with 'The Twin' by Gerbrand Bakker, which I recently read and reviewed, including, very oddly, a bit about killing a sack puppies with a car!  As you would expect, connections, the choices that we make and the things that make us individuals are central themes in both texts. 


And here is the beginning of my difficulty with this book.  At thirteen, the boys become fixated with sex but act upon their desires in different ways.  What I had a problem with was the way in which women were throwing themselves at these young boys, who, although they were tall and lean, were, after all, just boys.  Why would women in their thirties do this?  It seems hardly believable.  I think it was because the author needed to have Marion's life messed-up good and early, so that he could find redemption later on and still be young enough to enjoy it.


One thing I did like was the 'missing' motif that ran through the book.  Indeed 'Missing' could have been the book's title: each character is missing something, a part of themselves, a parent, a loved one... but mostly a parent.  Verghese describes a fragmented society with broken people desperately trying to make themselves and others whole.   As a result, the adults spend all their time trying to find what is lost.  The narrator tells us, at the start of the book, his theory about doctors: they are all trying to heal their own sickness, to make themselves whole again.  This is a very interesting idea, and so every character has some 'lack' that they are struggling with.  Hema, the twins foster mother, is career-driven, until, after a near death experience, she discovers a powerful maternal instinct.  Thomas stone, the twin's father, lost a beloved mother when he was a child and is an emotional recluse as a result.  It is not lost on the reader that the hospital in Ethiopia, where all of the main characters work and live, is called 'Missing', a mispronunciation of 'Mission' which is a very fitting moniker for this motley crew of lost and broken.  

“I will not cut for stone,” the Hippocratic oath states,  “even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.”  It seems that the cryptic title of the book, although poetic in its own sense, refers to the act of surgery, in terms of 'cutting' out a kidney or gallbladder 'stone'.  Also, the writer is punning on the name of the main character's family name: Stone.  This is fitting because, ultimately, this is a book about medicine and the life of a surgeon.  I felt like I had gone through a medical degree by the end of this novel.  Every page is full of medical Latinate terminology and consulted the dictionary regularly.  Still, I do not think that this diminished the book's appeal  in any way, but added to it.  It is obvious that the author is himself a surgeon and his passion for his work is undeniable. 

I also enjoyed the way the world of Ethiopia was described, through  the senses.  It reminded me of 'Purple Hibiscus' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, with it sights, tastes and smells of exotic Africa.  I felt as if I was breathing the high-altitude air of the mountain city of Addis Abeba, and really felt close to its clever and beautiful people.  Surely that is the true measure of a good book, whether or not it takes you on a journey, and that is something that Verghese easily has accomplished.  As an Ethiopian, living in America, we can sense the love of his native country, despite the poverty and violence there.  We follow the narrator as he travels to New York, straight from a war zone, and it is shocking to see the difference between the developed and developing worlds, and very disturbing too.  

Thematicallt, this  is a book about men and their relationships with women; how they adore their mothers, fall in love, and how they deal with sex.  Central to the plot is how people can be haunted by their relationships with their mothers.  The most heart-breaking image in the story is of four year old Marion Stone, sitting on his mother's chair, wrapped in her cardigan, in the operating room where he was born, and his mother died, calling to her to come for him.  'When are you coming mother?', he quietly asks.  The mother-son relationship is at the heart of this book and all other relationships with women dwindle in comparison.  The women in this book suffer greatly and it was one thing I had difficulty with.  So many of them are brutalised and mutilated, but none more than Sister Mary Joseph Praise as she gives birth to her sons.  I wonder why Verghese treated this angelic, beautiful character in this way?  I am sure he wished to create a martyr out of her, but the violent nature of her demise was too extreme in my view and quiet out of the middle ages in its barbarity.   And so you understand why this book reminds me of the texture of sand: it can be pleasing to touch, but it just lingers on, annoyingly, between your toes, and in your teeth, spoiling any initial pleasure.  With his depiction and destruction of women in this text, Verghese took 'Cutting for Stone' too far at times and crushed it to the consistency of sand.  I recommend this book but add a proviso: not for the squeamish or those that cannot abide the sight of blood.  

By Michelle Burrowes

Irish Superstitions and Lore ~ Kim Lenaghan

This is a very little book about Irish folklore and superstitions and should be all the better loved for that.  It is stuffed to the brim with ill omens and curses that could come in very handy if there was an annoying neighbour you wanted rid of, or a rich man you wanted as a husband, but you first needed to get rid of his persistent wife. Indeed, this pocket-sized book is a very useful for many reasons.
For example, did you realise that it is very unlucky to do any of the following: kill a robin redbreast; have a woman cut a boy's hair or first see a full moon, especially if through glass.  You can see the logic in some suspicions, but I wonder about the reasoning behind a woman not cutting a boy's hair: surely it was invented by a man who was scarred for life by memories of his mother's poor hairdressing skills?
Similarly, the warning about the full moon makes me smile: does 'glass' here refer to the bottom of an empty glass of Guinness I wonder?  I suppose, for the sake of sobriety, there were many such 'bad omens' concocted, particularly after a wild weekend of drinking and debauchery.  I imagine so. 
There are some good omens too in the book.  For example: it is very lucky for a hen and her chicks to stray into your house, or to meet a white lamb in the early morning with the sunlight on its face  There! Such encouragement for the man who gets himself out of the house and off to work early.  There is logic to the superstitions after all.  
But my favourite piece of lore is the way to predict 'Mr Right', which involved gathering snails at dawn on May Day and placing them on a dish of flour, and watching them spell the name of the man you should marry.  I imagine the smiles and giggles the accompanied this particular 'game' and wonder how many marriages followed as a result. 


This is an enjoyable book for those of us who are interested history and enjoy reading about the the folk traditions of the past.  One can only imagine the source of such superstitions, whether they be logic, sense or pure honest malice.  Still, it is easy to understand, going by this treasure trove of folk-myths, why the luck of the Irish is so renowned the world over and why, poet Patrick Kavanagh wrote:
'For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.' 
(from Canal Bank Walk, 1958).

.   By Michelle Burrowes

'The World of Downton Abbey' ~ by Jessica Fellowes

There is something about Sunday nights that makes me long for a proper period drama.  If, like me, you were enthralled by the epic drama 'Downton Abbey, and are still suffering withdrawal symptoms, then I think I have found something that might help you.
The niece of the talented Julian Fellowes has written a beautiful book to accompany the series that was so cleverly created in the style of 'Gosford Park', the movie that won him his Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay back in 2002.  While Julian Fellowes writes the book's foreword, this is not a book about the making of the series, although there are some photos showing camera crew etc.  This, on the other hand, is brimming with information about the Edwardian period.  With clippings from contemporary magazines and sketches of the time, we can see how the show's costume designer Susannah Buxton, dressed the three sisters, their mother and aunt to suit the period.  It is so delightful to learn that Lady Mary actually wore a dress that had been worn by Lucy Honeychurch in the film, 'A Room with a View' and that some of Sybil's dresses were actually vintage.
We also learn a little more about life below stairs and are given entire lists of duties for servants, the likes of Mrs Patmore, William and Mr Carson, for example.  The piece entitled, 'A Day in the Life of Daisy', is certainly an eye opener, lasting from half past four in the morning, until about 10 o'clock at night.
There is an interesting section on running a big house and estate like Downton, with delights such as detailed descriptions of the interior decoration of various rooms in the house, and the rules of inheritance for such estates, which has been the source of so much drama in this period piece.  One of the most interesting sections of the book was the one which dealt with Highclere Castle, the real Downton Abbey, where the dramatisation is set.  We learn that it has many things in common with the fictional Downton, in that the estate was saved by the fortune's of an American Heiress, and was even used as a military hospital during the First World War.
There is an entire chapter in the book dedicated to Romance, and each of love story is touched upon, but let's face it, it is the story about Mary and Matthew that has us enthralled.  Let me quote from the book, and you can make up your own mind about what the future might hold in store for our young lovers:

 'When Mary and Matthew Crawley finally kiss, it seems that their complex relationship has at last found a resolution.  In that moment they certainly intend to be together.  However, the complications of their situation, from the expectations of their families to the issue of class... mean that the conclusion to their story is, as yet, far from being reached.'
Now, what is that supposed to mean??  Of course they will live in happiness ever after Mr Fellowes... or you will have me and thousands of other Downton fans to answer to!

So, for those who would like to know a little bit more about the characters in the book and the type of life that they lived, this beautifully produced, sumptuous book is the perfect thing for that Sunday evening feeling, until the real thing returns to our screens in the autumn.

By Michelle Burrowes

Life's Rich Pageant: a journey through the poetry of Adrienne Rich.

When a poet begins writing critically acclaimed poems at the tender age of twenty, and keeps to her craft writing continually for a lifetime, there is vast collection of poems left behind to ponder and enjoy.  Adrienne Rich, poet and essayist, died earlier this week, and although she was eighty-two years old, I was still shocked by her passing.  It seems we assume the great artists amongst us, who are so clever and insightful, can somehow cheat death.
Of all the poet's I have studied, Rich is the most mercurial.  Indeed, she seems to be the Scarlet Pimpernel of the poet world, a title I think she would have enjoyed, being so elusive and ever changing in her style of writing and themes.  It seems that just as we feel we can glimpse her between the lines, or in a phrase, she disappears again and is gone.  It is not for nothing that the theme of identity and the motif of masks recur in her work.
And so I have come to journey back into the past, to consider some of the poems of Adrienne Rich, that in themselves, trace the journey of a lifetime, from young novice to acclaimed and respected poet. 

One cannot consider the work of Adrienne Rich without considering power and gender.  These are the themes that she is most commonly associated with.  Yet, even here, the elusive Rich is not so easily pinned-down,as she considers gender inequality from many angles.

In one of her earliest poems, 'Aunt Jennifer's Tigers', we are presented with the image of a woman so subservient to the will of her husband that the very wedding band that symbolises their marriage, is like a dead weight to which she is tethered:
'The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.'
It is interesting that the woman of the poem's title is busy embroidering 'a screen', which in itself is an object that one often conceals and disguises.  Yet, the subject of the tapestry reveals the ardent spirit of Aunt Jennifer: she embroiders fearless tigers, who 'do not fear the men', but prance 'proud and unafraid'.  It seems Aunt Jennifer has a secret life.  Here is the act of rebellion that is so surprising in this very traditionally-structured poem.  Rich seems to be commenting of the power of art and the artist, to challenge the status quo in society.  In her small way, Aunt Jennifer is attacking the very power structures of society which suppress her: the right of a husband to control and dominate his wife.  
Aunt Jennifer seems like a woman from a bygone age, most probably because of the antiquated act of embroidering a screen. Yet, the anti-marriage theme of this poem suggests its modern provenance and gives us just a hint of Rich's feelings about the inequitable distribution of power in society in general and between men and women in particular.
In 'Living In Sin', Rich takes away the wedding band, and considers the relationship between a modern, liberated couple living together without the obligation of legal marriage-contracts.  The poems deal with the startling realisation by the woman in the poem, that love has a practical side and that living with a man, involves taking on various duties that society expects a woman to undertake; such as the dusting, the cooking and the 'home-making'.  Even when no marriage occurs, there seems to be an unspoken assumption that the female in the relationship will act as domestic, and see that 'there is no dust upon the furniture of love'.
The woman in this poem is not a natural home-maker, letting 'the coffee pot boil over', serving cheese and wine for supper instead of a proper meal, and 'finding a towel to dust the table-top'.  She does not seem to have the tools for the job.  Yet even she is 'jeered by minor demons' in her head and urged to keep cleaning, to be a good 'house-wife' and do what is expected of her.
And here is the central idea in this poem: society seems to have pre-programmed her behaviour, expectations and way of thinking.   Simply 'living' with a man automatically dictates that the female is subservient to the male and the inequality of the relationship is engrained deeply in society and, even more worryingly, in our own heads.  Rich seems to be a woman who has deep concerns about gender inequality and the reader wonders how happy she was as the wife of a successful academic, the mother of three boys.

Although she does not wear her heart on her sleeve so much as, say, Sylvia Plath, it is possible to read between the lines and know that Rich is trying to make sense of the world she is living in.  Where Plath is all emotion and sensibility, Rich is more analytical and militant.  She is prepared to remove feeling, forget about sentiment and nostalgic romance, and to focus on the facts.  
By 1961, Rich had come to a decision.  In her poem 'The Roofwalker' she asks the vital question: 'Was it worth it to lay... a roof I can't live under?'  It is as if the girl from 'Living in Sin' has come to a final decision too.  She may be about to 'break (her) neck', but she has to do it anyway.  The key image in this poem is that of men building houses, silhouetted against the sky.  But these are unfinished houses, places not fit for human habitation.  They walk dangerously along the rooftops and Rich feels akin to these men: 'I feel like them up there: exposed...I am naked, ignorant, a naked man fleeing across the roofs'.  Here, in a telling choice of words, Rich wishes she were a man, something other than a woman.  Yet, I do not think that is is her femaleness that she wants to get rid of, but the social expectations that come along with being a woman.  She says, 'even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do.'  She can no longer live as a woman in the way that society wants her to.  Regardless that she may get hurt, may break her head and fall, this is something that the speaker must do: she must escape, she must flee.
I cannot help but smile to think that the speaker is in some way connected to Aunt Jennifer, and the young woman in 'Living in Sin', and rejoice that Rich's poetic voice can now declare that she has had enough and is leaving 'a roof I can't live under'.  As such, 'The Roofwalker' is a vital poem in understanding the working of Rich's mind.  In it we can capture a glimpse of the poet as she moves into a new phase of her writing and her life.
  
And does Rich break her neck?  Well, perhaps not, but she certainly suffers greatly, if the 1969 poem 'Our Whole Life' is anything to go by.  The poem is so full of pain that it is palpable: 'it hurts... burning... a cloud of pain... no words for this...'  Rich expresses her agony through the horrific image of a man on fire: 'The Algerian... burning'.  It is interesting that she again opts to write of her pain in male terms, describing it as a man.  Is it a random choice?  I think not.  The irony is that while she is railing against the power that men have over women in society, her central characters are often male: the uncle who speaks in the drawing room, the roof walker, the Algerian man on fire.  Perhaps Rich felt that she was akin to these men or that, as a poet, her imagination was not and should not be limited to any particular gender.  At least there, in her mind, she could be any gender she liked.
However, by the time Rich came to write 'Trying to Talk with A Man', in 1971, she was separated from her husband and then widowed.  Freed from her unhappy role as wife, Rich speaks with a liberated, clear female voice.  In this poem the speaker has comes out into the desert to break up with her male partner.  They have been together a long time and have collected a lifetime of memories: 'whole LP collections, films... Jewish cookies... love letters... suicide notes, afternoons on the riverbank pretending...'.
But for the speaker, the loudest thing of all is the 'silence' that they have brought with them.  It seems that he does much of the talking, but to her it 'feels like power' and his eyes 'reflect lights that spell out: Exit'. The origin of the Exit sign is ambiguous here:  she could see it in his eyes, or his eyes could be reflecting back what is in her eyes.  Either way, it is the end of their relationship and again I think of the unhappy non-bride in 'Living in Sin', and consider, with some relief, that they have finally decided to part ways.
And this leads me to reflect, how little love features in this collection of Rich's poems, selected for the Leaving Certificate Syllabus.  Nowhere do we feel that she is loved or loves in return.  This lack of emotional connection with the characters in her poems prevents us from grieving at the break up in 'Trying to Talk with A Man' as we feel that little has been lost and there is even less to regret.  Perhaps this is due to the analytical way that the poet goes about dissecting her relationships.  Of course, Rich was capable of writing very beautiful love poems and in 1976 when she began a relationship with writer Michelle Cliff, she wrote a whole collection of love poems celebrating lesbian love.  In one very sensuous, evocative verse she wrote:  
"Whatever happens with us, your body

will haunt mine – tender, delicate

your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond

of the fiddlehead fern in forests

just washed by sun."

Prior to that, in 1972, Rich wrote her famed poem, 'Diving in to the Wreck', in which she describes the experience of going deep-sea diving.  Here, Rich uses metaphor to describe the experience of going beyond gender, beyond the norms dictated by society, literature and culture, to a world where words like 'male' and 'female' no longer hold any sway:
' I am she: I am he ... the mermaid... the merman...We are, I am, you are... the one who find our way...'.
Rich tries to erase all gender difference and creates a landscape where androgyny is possible.  Her clever use of myth here, which she usually finds so loaded with gender inequality, enables us to enter an imaginative space, alive with mermaids and mermen.  It is a small step from this, to imagine a world devoid of gender and all the preconceptions that that entails.  The thing of genius in this poem, for me, is the use of the element of water itself.  It acts as some kind of vortex, where time stands still and is warped into some new dimension.  The image of 'the mermaid whose dark hair streams back', captures the slowed-down tempo of life beneath the water.  Here, 'you breath differently... I have to learn... to turn my body without force in the deep...'.  Rich creates a different world, beyond what we all know, beyond gender.  This is a complete antidote to 'Trying to Talk with a Man', where the landscape is an arid, dry desert, with its 'deformed cliffs'. The only source of water being the 'underground water' that the speaker sometimes feels.  


Both of these poems compliment each other so well because they use their strange landscapes to mirror the poet's theme of gender and power; one showing how relationships can dry you up and suck all the life blood out of you; the other showing how wonderful and refreshingly free the world would be without gender differentiation.  Of course, Rich later concluded that androgyny was not the solution to the age long problems of gender inequality.  For why should women have to give up their femaleness just to have access to power?  Surely we had enough of that with Margaret Thatcher.  But that is what we expect from Adrienne Rich, who was not afraid to contradict earlier statements and was constantly revising and changing her opinions and points of view.    


It seems extra-poignant that a poet who has travelled so far in terms of her poetic style and themes, should finally have come to the end of her journey, in life, as well as in poetry.  And so we go back to the beginning, to 'Aunt Jennifer's Tigers' and take solace in the fact that, like the tigers on the tapestry screen, for Adrienne Rich, her poetry will be her eternal legacy and 'will go on prancing, unafraid'.

By Michelle Burrowes

The Twin ~ Gerbrand Bakker

The great enigma of this book is the twin of the title.  We never get to meet Henk in any real sense: he dies before the story begins and what we learn about him is all second hand and unashamedly  biased.  For Helmer, the book's narrator, he was his other half - his twin brother with whom he shared everything: his thoughts and fears; his violent father; his warm childhood bed and his home in rural Holland.  A fatal car crash ripes the twins apart and the book depicts a family in mourning following the death of a loved-one.  It begins some twenty years after Henrk's death, but Helmer and his father are in a world where time stands still; each one aching for the missing person in their lives and mad as hell about it.
The father, old Mr Van Wonderan, is an elderly farmer and relies on his remainling son, Helmer, to see to his every need.  But that is just it, Helmer does not see to his needs, but instead in a horrible power-play, he delights in neglecting his aged parent at every possible opportunity.  When Mr Van Wonderan says he is thirsty, Helmer says that he gets thirsty too, and leaves his father longing for a drink for hours.  This is how Helmer repays his father for ill-treating  him as a boy and for forcing him to give-up his dreams of a different life.  Helmer longs to travel and to explore, but he is weighed-down by responsibilities of the farm and by his anger and grief at the loss of his twin brother.
It is only when a strange young boy, also called Helmer, comes to stay on the farm, that things begin to change.  Suddenly Helmer is brought face to face with someone who needs him; someone who forces Helmer to realise that life is not to be wasted; that he loved his brother, lost that love, but must move on. The change is presipitated by a near death experience after an accident on the farm and when Helmer is given the kiss of life by young Henk.  With this 'kiss', he is 'reborn' and begins to slowly come back to life.

 It is also young Henk who asks him. 'what was it like to have a twin?'  This is a turning point for Helmer, who has never spoken of his deep feelings for his brother to anyone. He breaks down in tears saying: 'It's the most beautiful thing in the world...When we touched each other we touched ourselves.  Feeling someone else's heartbeat and feeling it's your own, you can't get any closer than that.'

While this book deals specifically about being a twin, it also deals with the feelings of loneliness that we all feel, as we move through life, loose loved-ones and try to find our own place in the world.  And while all this sounds very depressing, it is true to say that there is much that is compelling and life-affirming about this beautiful book.

There is a quietness about it that is perfectly in keeping with the landscape of Holland.  The dykes, low-lying ground and windmills are wonderfully described; the simplistic language of the text perfectly suiting the sparse physical landscape.  This is an introspective novel, where the narrator bears his soul to the world.  This creates a very personal tale, yet it is a universal one too.  It deals with every emotion associated with sudden death; loss rejection, abandonment and the anger of being left behind.

Yet, on one level, the twin of the title is a metaphor for the 'other' that we all search for in life, the thing that will fulfill us and make us feel complete.  And this is ultimately what 'The Twin' is about: becoming whole.  At different stages in the book various people become the twin for Helmer.  At one point it is his mother; his ally when he tries to go to college; then it is Jaap, the farmhand-friend, who teaches him how to swim and makes him feel whole again.  At one point, young Helmer also becomes a surrogate twin, bringing him the physical closeness that he missed so much when his brother died.  Each character, to varying degrees enables Helmer to face up to his fears and helps him to find happiness in being alone. The irony is, of course, that when he was surround by his family and friends, he felt most lonely, but as they all left and he was actually on his own, specifically at the very end of the book, he did not feel lonely any more: 'I stay sitting calmly.  I am alone'.  Of course, Helmer is not actually alone.  He is surrounded by people who care about him, but it is only when he lets go of his grief, that he can let love in.

I urge you to read this book.  It is a simple story, told as much through imagery as anything else, and so reminds me in many ways of a thought-provoking poem.  In a book where death can come in the form of an humble egg ( a thing usually associated with the beginning of life) and where omens are foretold by the presence of a black hooded-crow, you cannot help but be enthralled.  This novel may be about twins, but you will have to go a long way to find another one like it, believe me.  Now go read it!

Bunnies At Bedtime

Children's fiction has long been fascinated  with the soft, adorable, long-eared, mammal: the  bunny-rabbit. In 1893 Beatrix Potter wrote the colourful 'Tale of Peter Rabbit', about the mischievous little bunny who was apt to get into trouble and was made to pay dearly for his escapades.  Although Peter winds up safely back home with his mother after his adventures, he is made to suffer horrible anxieties as he hides from the menacing farmer, who is tracking him down.   As it says, poor Peter was 'out of breath and trembling with fright'.  Poor Peter comes within a hair's breadth of the cooking pot.  It seems that Victorian children were made of sterner stuff than the modern day variety.  It would take a braver mother than I to read such a tale to a toddler at bedtime, so perhaps the Victorian mothers were of a different kind too!

Of course, the twentieth century also had its own celebrated rabbit, but this time he was a toy bunny, although he did not end up that way.  'The Velveteen Rabbit - or How Toys Become Real', by Margery Williams, was published in 1922, and tells of the toy rabbit who longs to be a real rabbit.  This bitter-sweet tale rends the heart in two, as the toy rabbit is stolen from the nameless, generic 'Boy' who is suffering from a fever.  This toy rabbit was capable of thinking and feeling, and misses the Boy dreadfully.  But worse still, he is meant for the fire, to be burnt, like all the other germ-ridden objects from the nursery.  What an horrific tale for a young child to hear!  It seems in 1922, between the two World Wars, children and their parents could face such tragedy before bedtime, and still manage to settle down to sleep.  As the title suggests, this book details the metamorphoses of a toy, who transforms from play-thing to real life creature, the very thing that every child, since time immemorial, has always wanted.

The present century has not been without its fair share of rabbit stories either, but one that I particularly love is the 2006 children's book: 'That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown', by Cression Cowell.  Here the child is as much part of the story as the rabbit, for it is the little girl, Emily, who has the power to bring Stanley, her old, stuffed, pink rabbit, to life.  Just like in 'The Velveteen Rabbit', the toy is stolen, this time by a naughty, spoilt queen, and it is Emily who comes to the rescue.  She gives some honest advice to the queen telling her to 'play with (her new teddy-bear) all day.  Sleep with him at night.  Hold him very tight and be sure to have lots of adventures.  Then maybe one day you will wake up with a real toy of your OWN'.

Here we see the child declaring what it takes to bring a toy to life; love and a little imagination.  It is no longer the sole preserve of the author, as with Peter Rabbit, or some magic fairy, as with the Velveteen Rabbit; to bring a toy to life.  It is made possible by empowered children everywhere believing in themselves and their ability to imagine.  Now doesn't that sound like a very twenty-first century way of doing things?

One Book is Never Enough ~ The true confessions of a bookaholic!

Never one to deny that I am a fool for a good book cover, I freely admit that I was seduced into buying yet further copies of my three, all time favourite books, simply because I could not resist the lavish, cloth binding.  The good people at Penguin certainly know how to market their products. I must have at least seven copies of 'Pride and Prejudice' already - one from when I studied it in school, another from college; one from my mother's set of classic novels, one from a miniature set of Austen's works, one that I use for teaching, a vintage one from the 1930s and one that is actually a dramatisation and may not strictly count.  I am sure there are others, but you get my drift: I cannot stop buying this book, especially if the cover is to die for.

Then we come to the dilemma - how can I buy this new, beautiful, Penguin clothbound edition, without buying 'Wuthering Heights' to compliment it?  It would be sacrilege, like snubbing Emily Bronte?   And what is any proper Bronte collection without Charlotte's 'Jane Eyre'?  You see my difficulty.  And hey presto, you find yourself smuggling books into the house, and you suddenly have half a shelf-full of new books and you hope that your husband doesn't notice.

But, oh aren't they lovely??  Of course, Father's Day must be coming soon, and isn't Dickens's 'Great Expectations' a favourite of my husband's and it is only fair, after all, that he get to have his books on the bookshelf too... Perhaps I need to order some more books for the collection, but this time by male authors... in the interest of gender balance of course.  And suddenly I understand just how all the enormous libraries across the globe have come into being.  For it is a truth, universally acknowledged... that one book is never enough!

Pretty Perfect : The Fault in Our Stars ~ by John Green

I was brought to 'The Fault in Our Stars' by John Green, kicking and screaming basically, but as it was chosen for my Young Adult Book Club March read, I felt I couldn't put it off for much longer.  I was expecting the heartbreak and the tears, this is after all a book about a sixteen year old girl who is living with cancer, but no one told me how funny this book would be.  Indeed one of the book's characters categorically states that there are different ways to tell a sad story, but he chooses to tell it in a funny way.  I suspect this is the voice of author John Green coming through the text, reminding us that in spite of, and on some occasions because of, all the sadness in the world, there is always room for humour.
The male characters especially, namely Isaac and Augustus, are so witty and charming that you cannot help but smile. And here is the genius of this book.  The characters are so wonderfully drawn, that you can tell that author Green has spent a lot of time around young cancer patients.  Apparently he was a chaplain on a cancer ward just after he graduated college.  He captures the vernacular and natural cadence of teenage speak, so perfectly, that it is difficult to imagine that these characters are indeed fictitious.  The reader is placed inside the head of this teenage narrator and we are convinced that she is real.  The first person narrative makes the language so immediate and personal, that we are hooked into the story from the word go and are rooting for Hazel to beat the cancer statistics and survive, because, as she says herself, 'Cancer sucks.'
In a most unexpected way, this novel is an uplifting, life-affirming tale, not bad considering it is a story about death.  But here I exaggerate; this book would not be half so interesting if it were that simple. It is ultimately a love story, a great love story that celebrates the ability of humans to create a private universe wherever they are, when they are in love; be they hiding in Holland from the Nazis, like Anne Frank, or hanging out in Indianapolis.  It deals with teenagers in love for the first time, learning to love one another and letting themselves be loved in return.
But there is also the story of a familial love and it is so refreshing to read about teenagers who actually love their parents and have healthy relationships with them.  There are some very poignant scenes betweens the teenagers and their families as they navigate the rough waters that surround the world of the cancer patient, or Cancervania, as Hazel calls it.
What is so striking is how normal these kids are.  They want to rebel, to make out, to fake-smoke real cigarettes, to drive a car... they are living with a disease that is part of who they are, but it does not define them.  And this is the beauty of this book: it reminds us how precious life is, how vital every breath we take is, and not in any corny kind of way.  I don't believe I will ever think of a cancer patient, or their family, in the same way again and what better testament do you need from a book?  This is a great book for anyone to read, but I especially think that teenagers will adore it.  I suspect the young adults in my reading group will, well they selected it didn't they and after all, who can resist a great love story.

'The Troubled Man' ~ Henning Mankell

I suppose beginning with the final novel in a book series is not usually recommended, but as this was a book club choice, I really had no option. I had seen the Swedish television adaptation, of Henning Mankell's 'Wallander', which I really enjoyed, so I thought that I could just hop in.  I think my sheer optimism was my first mistake!
The brutal truth is that I didn't really enjoy reading this book, although I can see much to appreciate here.  We have a brooding, melancholic central character in a stark and bleak Swedish landscape.  He deals with the flotsam and jetsam of society, the criminals, the broken, the lost, and each case effects him in a different way.  Although the story is told in the third person, the reader feels like we are inside Wallander's head as he ponders life and death, and re-lives old cases and old love affairs.

In reality, most of the time, he wanders from place to place beating himself up about his broken marriage and his fractious relationship with his daughter.  In this novel, Wallander becomes a grandfather, and so he has another family member to worry and fret about. This ensures that the better-sweet memories he has of being a father is a central theme of this text.
As detective thrillers go, I don't think that Wallander did much detecting; mostly helpful clues in the guise of letters and witnesses turned up out of the blue while other police-officers handed him all the more vital pieces of information.  As for 'thrilling', well I found the book left me more depressed than thrilled, dealing, as it does, with death, old age and saying goodbye to one's youth.  Of course, Wallander's granddaughter does bring new life to the story, but it can hardly outweigh the sheer tonnage of gloom in this book.
One cannot ignore Mankell's highly visual writing style, albeit stark and sparse for the most part. I leave the book feeling as though I have holidayed in Sweden and have enjoyed the odd vodka and glass of wine there myself. Indeed, Wallander spends so much of the novel eating and drinking, that even I was fearful for his ever increasing blood sugar levels.
So, I do not think I will be dashing out to purchase my next Wallander novel, but I can understand why others might want to.  I will be satisfied to join him again on television re-runs, where the faster pace seems to suit this slow-moving detective all the more, in my opinion.

'When All the Others Were Away at Mass', by Seamus Heaney

It is Mothering Sunday and a time for us to reflect on those who have cared and nurtured us through childhood and beyond.  My thoughts on this subject are best captured by Seamus Heaney in his wonderful poem, 'Clearances III' dedicated to his mother, Mary Heaney, who died in 1984.  Here the poet considers the moment when he was left alone in the house with his hard-working mother, preparing the Sunday lunch 'while the others were all away at mass.'  He says, 'I was all hers', but we can tell that what he really means is, that she was all his.  In the silence, their knives dip in and out of the water, the two doing a sort of dance together.  In this small, everyday activity, the boy and the mother come together and share a mutual love.  This is the time that Heaney remembers when he thinks of his now deceased mother, the silent moment that he felt closest to her:

'Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives--
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.'

Heaney gives us such little detail, he leaves so much unsaid, but that is the beauty of the poem: the silences.   Everything you need to know about their relationship is there in these few lines:  she is the provider of food, the giver of life, he the adoring son, coming to aid her.  We wonder why they did not have to get mass.  Had she already been, having gone at the crack of dawn, or was she or he at home sick?  Had she been nursing him back to health?  This might be why, later in the poem as his mother is dying, with some sickness of her own, that he returns to this memory.  While the priest beats out the prayers of the dying, it is the silence of that lost moment that he most recalls, that active, vital mother that he most yearns for.
I love that it is that most Irish of vegetables, the humble potato, that binds this silent Irish boy and his mother so closely together; the 'potato' and the 'water' being so symbolic of domestic Irish life.
So, for those of us who have sons and who know too well the beauty of those quiet moments and the simple joy of doing things together, Heaney's words echo like a truth always known.  So, for all those women everywhere, mothers (sisters, daughters, carers, nurses) who keep the world in hot dinners, clean linen, warm hugs, long conversations, bright smiles, empathetic tears, and future generations... this poem is for you.  Happy Mother's Day!

Clearances III  

Taken from 'In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984' by Seamus Heaney.

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
.....
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives--
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Click here to listen to the poem

Seamus Heaney and Saint Patrick

It's Saint Patrick's Day, a time for nostalgia; when the Irish everywhere dream of home and ache for the Ireland of the past, when things seemed simpler, when we were simpler and when the home fire and those around it were enough to sustain us through the cold, damp Irish days.  And so I come to Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney, famed chronicler of Irish memory, to celebrate his most recent collection of poems, 'Human Chain'.

I bought my copy at the book's launch in Dublin, where Heaney delighted us all and moved more than one to tears, with his new verse and stories of how life had changed for him since suffering a stroke.  Somewhat smaller that I remembered him, he kept us captivated by the quiet lilting of his unmistakeable voice.  And what we few heard, who were gathered there in the half-light, was a wisdom, no less vital than the words of a saint or prophet, and as nourishing and soothing as that of a shaman.
The title of this latest collection comes from a poem that celebrates the things that connect people around the world, through our humanity, through the small things and, in this case, the lifting of a bag of grain.  It begins with the image of an aid worker passing out bags of meal  to a hungry mob, while soldiers shoot overhead and then, as in typical Heaney fashion, we are transported back to the Ireland of Heaney's youth, as he recalls the rhythmic swaying motion of lifting and swinging bags of grain onto a lorry.  Yet it is the letting go of the sack, 'that quick unburdening' that he dwells on saying, 'A letting go which will not come again.  Or it will, once.  And for all'.  The specific positioning of the punctuation in these last few lines of the poem dictates the meaning.  Heaney is not only considering his own death, but is reminding us, that, like Everyman, death comes to us all. r.

Another favourite poem of mine from this collection is 'The Butts', primarily because it reminds me so much of my late father.  It tells the story of a young Heaney, pressed up beside the cloth of his father's suit, not in a tender hug, for such a thing was not usual for Irish men of Heaney's father's generation, but as he leans into his father's wardrobe to search for cigarette butts to steal.  He is reminded of the stolen moments in the wardrobe as he cares for his elderly father, bathing and tending him, ' To lift and sponge him... closer than anybody liked...'  The simplicity and immediacy of the language is classic Heaney.  He takes us into the scene, the master story-teller that he is, and we imagine that we are listening to a friend recount the thoughts of the day.  Once again, Heaney is gently forcing us to consider the relationships between parents and children, reminding us that if we all leave home for distant shores, who will look after our old and sick?  It is a dilemma which is the source of much heart ache for those who emigration leaves behind and for those whom it steals away.

And then, Heaney celebrates place, his childhood  home, in Mossbawn. 'In Derry Derry Down', he creates the most beautiful and simplistic image of a world where beauty can be seen in an old bucket full of soaking, ripening fruit:

'The lush

Sunset blush

On a big ripe

Gooseberry'

Heaney reminds us of the joy of the everyday, in the simple things.  An it is this celebration of the small things that gives Heaney his power and relevance for Irish people today.  He is the bard in the corner, softly calling to the people of the house to listen to his words and reflect on what it is to be Irish, to remember a world where things were simpler and to remain true to their Irishness.
So if St Patrick saved Ireland from the snakes and the 'heathens', maybe we can say that Seamus Heaney is in a similar position; perhaps he brings the antidote to all the noise and chaos of modern living, that is distracting us from what is really important in life; our families, our home place; our Irish identities.

 Happy St.Patrick's Day.

.

A tale of Lost and Found - 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Jane Eyre'

This is the story of two books.  One was given to me as a present on my birthday some years ago.  I was thrilled beyond words when I opened the plain paper package to find a copy of 'Jane Eyre', by Charlotte Bronte, dated 1933. On the cover it had a picture of a golden Pegasus flying amongst the stars and I loved it immediately.  'Jane Eyre' is one of my all time favourite books and I couldn't have been happier.  I was told it came from an old book shop in Dublin and it took pride of place on my college book shelf.

Some years later, while visiting Haworth in Yorkshire, the picturesque village where the Bronte family lived and wrote, I took a walk along the cobbled main street and went browsing at a secluded book shop while sheltering from the rain.  Just as I was about to leave, a golden Pegasus caught my eye and it reminded me of something.  It was on the binding of a copy of 'Wuthering Heights', by Emily Bronte.  I quickly exchanged money for this treasure and buried my find at the bottom of my bag to protect it from the rain.  It wasn't until a few days later, when I had returned to Ireland and I was placing the book upon my bookshelf

that I noticed the similarity... my old Dublin copy of 'Jane Eyre' and this new Yorkshire copy of 'Wuthering Heights' were a matching pair!  Both were published in 1933, by Daily Express Publications London, both with a flying golden Pegasus on the front.   It took some seventy years, but I like to think that these tomes were reunited at last, not unlike the heroes and heroines of the books themselves, on my bookshelf, never to be parted again.

The life of Charlotte Bronte - available now on Etsy

One Romantic Deserves Another ~Shelley's Complete Poetical Works ~

Continuing my look at the most prized books on my shelf , I come to my cherished copy of Percy Shelley's Complete Poetical Works, edited by Thomas Hutchinson.  It is a leather-bound hardback copy, published in 1925, by  Oxford University Press, inlaid and edged with gold.  It was a very special birthday present from a boyfriend many years ago and I thought it the most beautiful book I had ever beheld, or held for that matter, being, as it is, such a sensual book to hold it.  The cold leather, the faint musky smell and the beautiful green, red and gold of the inlaid floral design on the cover, makes this a very special book indeed, and very much in keeping with the deeply sensuous, highly evocative matter within.

Of course, it is a book of poetry, written by one of the greatest Romantic poets of all, so to explore the world of verse that it contains is to travel to far and distant lands at the hands of a master.  Interestingly, the book itself has done its own fair share of travelling, passing from owner to owner for almost one hundred years. The original owner was someone called Shelia, for the book has a sweet inscription on the inside cover, dated Christmas 1929: 'To my dear Maureen from her pal Sheila'.  It is so poignant that this book, so beautiful in appearance and decorated with ornate flowers should be passed from one woman to another as a testament to their friendship and should come to be in my keeping some eighty years later.

And while I do think of this book as mine, I never open it without thinking of Sheila and  Maureen, who must have loved and cherished this book just as much as I do. I think about the life the women must have had, living as they did between the Great Wars, at a time when the Irish Republic was still very new and Ireland itself had just gone through a brutal and divisive War of Independence.  For I am certain, owing to the nature of their names, and the phrasing of the inscription, that these were Irish women.  The book's presentation is of such high quality, as is the specialised nature of the subject matter, that I believe the women to have been of the middle classes, who discovered, over afternoon tea, that they shared a love of poetry.
One only wonders where the book was between 1925, when it was published and 1929, when it was given as a Christmas gift: forgotten on some dusty shelf, or wrapped in a box, awaiting a sale.  I have a feeling that the book first belonged to Sheila and was passed on to Maureen, who proclaimed to her friend how much she admired the poet.  Perhaps Sheila did not care for Shelley, or it was a love token from a lost love or husband she no longer cared for.  Or maybe it was Maureen and Sheila who were lovers, and 'pal' is some secret code for their amour which, at the time, could not be spoken of openly.  The romantic nature of the verse would seem to support this, or perhaps I have been reading too many Sherlock Holmes stories.

Either way, I cannot help but wonder what became of these women and their friendship and how this volume came to sit on a shelf in a Dublin second hand book shop at the end of the last century.  The happy and sad thing is, that I will never know, and this is what I like most of all: the mystery of the book remains.  Perhaps every book should come with a log book of owners, like cars do, so that we may know the story of the story-book and love it all the more for that.  Sometimes, it is not just the story within the book that is interesting, but also the story of the book itself.  And as for the old boyfriend who was good enough to send this book my way, well, 'Reader, I married him!'

P.s.  An ageing ribbon bookmarks a page still, as it did when it first came into my possession and I like to imagine that it was Maureen, or Sheila, who left this page marked for their friend's attention and now for mine.  In the spirit of sisterly friendship, I think it says something to all women about empowerment and the truth that hopefully comes to us all in the end, that power lies within us.

                              From Hymn of Apollo
                                 by Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1792–1822

.... All men who do or even imagine ill
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of Night....

And the pure stars in their eternal bowers,
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine,
Are portions of one power, which is mine.

A Book Sonnets from the 19th Century - Available on Etsy

The love letter - the dinosaur of the written word?

We can learn so much about social history by studying the letters of the past.  Historians the world over love to spend hours pouring over them for any clues about the individual habits and customs of their creators.  Yet a letter can reveal the contents of one's heart just as easily as the contents of one's diary.
One of my all time favourite books, is 'Love Letters - an Anthology of Passion', by Michelle Lovric. And what a treat this book is.  It's a lavishly produced epistolary hardback, complete with luxurious illustrations and covered in red and gold lettering.  Inside the reader is presented with printed love letters from scholars and writers down the ages, featuring the likes of Dylan Thomas, Robert Browning and John Keats.

But the really wonderful thing about this book is the way that the publishers have included the actual letters, written in the hand of the original writers, folding out on the page or tucked in tiny envelopes as they originally were.  How delicious to hold Keats's letter to Fanny Brawne in your hand, an exact replica.  Here is where reading becomes a truly sensual experience and, for some reason, the words are all the more poignant for that.  Each page also features small extracts from the letters of other notorieties, as diverse as Ringo Starr and Abraham Lincoln.
There is something so personal about a letter; they contain interesting facts and witty observations and intense bursts of sentiment.  Even if the author has long since departed this world, a letter can bring them before us one more time with a freshness and an immediacy that is startling in its intensity and not to be found anywhere else.
And now, with the advent of the internet, it seems that the letter is becoming the dinosaur of the written form and should be all the more cherished for that. Does anyone take the time to woo their loved ones in such a way any more?  A text, email, or dare I say a tweet, certainly cannot compare to a well crafted letter that reveals the full depth of feeling over several pages.  How many ways are there to say those three little words?  Could you exchange them for something altogether more poetic and sensual?  Surely they have been said already, and possibly by a professional word-smith who can do a much better job than you or I.

And herein lies the crux of the matter: it is the craft of writing love letters that has all but disappeared, and not the appeal of the letters themselves.  They take too long to write perhaps, and the whole rigmarole of selecting the right paper, pen and envelope, never mind the correct stamp, just turns people off.    But when so much pleasure can be produced, at really so little cost, surely it is time to excavate this old dinosaur and bring back the original social medium of the heart.
 

And if you needed any further proof as to the power of this now out-dated medium, let me finish by quoting just one touching letter, from this delightful collection, written by William Pitt, First Lord Chatham to his future wife, Lady Lady Hester Grenville, October 3rd, 1754:

'The tender warmth of your feeling, loving, heart has almost sweetly robbed me of the only superiority I gave myself; that of loving you more than you could love.  If you dispute this superiority, I can, I believe, forgive you.'

The Secret Allure of The Secret Garden

At this time of year I love to dip into some of my favourite illustrated children's books and put them on display on my book shelf.  Nothing lifts the spirit better than Inga Moore's illustrated version of 'The Secret Garden', by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  Just to see it resting there seems to blow the cobwebs of winter away and reminds me that soon the warmth of summer will be here.
This timeless classic celebrates the joy of watching the earth come to life in springtime.  As each tender green shoot gently pushes up out of the soil, the main character, the cold and distant Mary Lennox, comes to life and learns to love.  Orphaned in India by her British parents, Mary has been sent home to Misselthwaite Manor in the wilds of Yorkshire, to live with her mysterious uncle Mr Craven.  He too is still mourning the loss of his beautiful young wife and spends little time in the big, old house.  It is here that Mary discovers the secret, overgrown garden and a secret, under-grown, cousin, Colin Craven, whose weak, twisted body is the visual manifestation of his father's neglect.

The novel is full of wonderful characters, such as the trusty Dickon, and the relentless Mrs Medlock, who all, in their way, succeed in helping the children come to terms with the loss of their parents.  Indeed, there is much sadness in the book, with death hanging like a shadow in the background, but ultimately, there is hope and joy.  The garden, with its vibrant potential for endless possibility delights and charms the children.
 Here they create their private universe, where grown-ups never venture and they can rule the world.  The garden, with its seasonal, never changing patterns adds structure to the lives of these children who have been so spoilt in the past by neglectful parents and compliant servants.  

The garden too allows them to remember who they are in the scheme of things: that they are young, and should be allowed to behave as such; to run, laugh and play without guilt or fear of being chided.  It is from the garden that the children gain the strength to cast off the chains of sickness and death, to move forward and embrace life.
Spring is ringing out from every branch on every page of this book.  And this beautiful, hardback, illustrated edition brings the soft, red, glow of the tiny robin, and the dizzying yellow haze of blooming daffodils, to life before our eyes in the way that only a children's' book can.  So, forget chocolate this Easter: order Inga Moore's illustrated version of 'The Secret Garden' today.  Your inner child will thank you.

'The Hunger Games Trilogy' is genius. Real or not real?

The Hunger Games series, belies the simplicity of the clear, present-tense prose and the immediacy of the first-person narrative that makes the books so addictive.  Yes they are hugely popular and yes, you WILL NOT be able to stop reading them until you have turned the last page, but there is so much going on in these texts than first meets the eye. 
To start with, there is the food motif running through the text.  As such it reminds me somewhat of Dickens, with regular, detailed accounts of meals being prepared, cooked and enjoyed.  Of course, in a world where people are prepared to risk their lives to hunt for their next meal, it is only right that food should be so central to the plot.  However, on a symbolic level, it is no co-incidence that Peeta, one of the central characters, is a baker, and in particularly, a bread-maker.  If bread is the source of life, then that is what Peeta's function in the story is:  he is the one who protects life and ensures that life can continue in District 12 where the main characters, Katniss, Gale, Haymitch and others all live.  


The story is set in some future time on earth, in the country of Panem, which is divided into 12 districts.  The Capitol controls the districts and as a punishment for an earlier rebellion, the districts must send two children to trials by combat, where they fight each other, gladiator style, to the death.  The final surviving contestant is crowned the winner and so brings back much needed supplies and food to their district.
It is pretty barbaric stuff and deterred me from reading the books for some time. However, what people failed to tell me was that this is more a love story than anything else.  It involves a love triangle that is so thoroughly engaging that it makes for compulsive reading.  Will Katniss fall for the boy who bakes the bread or the boy who hunts in the woods? One is completely open and honest, the other silent and brooding.  We feel for Katniss, because, like her, we the reader can hardly choose between the two ourselves.
But Katniss's troubles go way beyond who to love:  she is trying to stay alive,  protect her family and ultimately save society.  As such, this text is about much more than teenagers in love.


In fact, Collins is actually considering huge ideas in this book, such as how society can ever trust those in positions of power.  This subversive idea runs through all three texts, but is especially important in the third book, 'The Mockingjay'.  From the start, Katniss has trust issues.  She clearly lives up to her name and is quite cat-like in a number of ways: the green-eyed girl, the solitary hunter who, who is slow to warm to people, is distrustful and likes to travels light.
On one level, the series is looking at what holds societies together.  It seems that a down-trodden people can be united by a story, the story of a boy who secretly loved a girl and promised himself to save and protect her and even to give his life in the process.  But could a story of self-sacrifice and love change the world and bring about a revolution?  It seems that history supports this theory.  One need only look to the bible stories and the life of Jesus to find parallels.  And so the irony is that Collins's post-Christian tale could be read as an essentially a Christian text?  It is just a thought... Or perhaps Collins is just echoing the much-quoted 1960s mantra, that ultimately, 'All you need is Love'.
The author is also toying with the modern fears about the environment and self-insufficiency that are such key-phrases in today's society.  This is taken too far in District 13, where food is rationed on the basis of the amount of calories one expends on any given day, and shoes are inherited from others, regardless of comfort or fit. 

There are elements of the story that are fanciful and quite fantastic.  We are presented with a semi-Cinderella figure, who hails from the mining district, the 'Seam', where people have coal dust deeply embed into the very crevices and wrinkles of their skin.  She is taken from the world of cinders and is transformed into the 'girl on fire', beautified and made-over.  Yet, there is much of the world of Panem that is not so very different from our reality.  A world of inequalities, divided into the haves and have-nots, those who consume more than they produce, countries on the edge of extinction because of starvation... all this rings true for planet Earth now as much as it does in Collins's fictional future version. 
She considers the frivolity of modern living, represented so brilliantly here by the citizens of the Capitol.  Their world is so superficial and cosmetic, that it's citizens no longer resemble real humans: some growing whiskers and green-tinged skin for visual effect.  And, finally, we come to what 'The Huger Games Trilogy' is all about: being human.  Collins considers the ultimate sin against humanity, the denial of one's basic right to protect one's young.  Katniss only finds herself as a tribute in the Games because she is trying to protect her young sister Prim.  Peeta however, once he has been selected in the reaping, decides to play a different game - his own game. In an act of rebellion, he opts not to fight for survival, but to fight for Katniss, to protect her, to be, ultimately, more than a slave, fighting to save his own life, but to be human.  This is Peeta's gift to Katniss. He teaches her what it is to love, to be human. 

Katniss is a product of her world and does not know how to demonstration real affection because she has forgotten to trust her human emotions. She is a victim of the times and it takes a long time for her to reprogramme herself, to learn how to deal with a full array of emotions and to re-humanise herself. 
This must surely be the case in all war zones and Collins is making a clear anti-war statement in this text or is she?  She seems to be saying that it is a natural, basic human right to want to protect your family, your loved ones, nay even your home-place and country when it is under attack.  Yet, she is clearly saying that such actions come at a price and that price is the loss of innocence.  Yet, when it comes to it, Katniss finally realises, submission to the enemy is illogical: the damage is already done, pain is already being inflicted and fear that someone might get hurt is not a reason not to fight.  There are, inevitably, some things that are worth fighting for.  

The three texts in this series are, 'The Hunger Games', 'Catching Fire' and 'Mockingjay'.  They are sold as separate books, but they flow straight into one another and should really be published in one, larger, volume.  Beware! You must purchase them all together to avoid delay/pain/withdrawal.  So, is the Hunger Games Series worth reading?  Well, as Katniss says at the end of 'Mockingjay', 'There are much worse games to play', and you could do much worse than to give some time to these thought-provoking and  entertaining books.  'The Hunger Games Series is genius'. Real or not real?  Real. 

Rest Easy Mr Yeats - The Faeries are Here to Stay

I'll always be grateful to W.B. Yeats for his beautiful faery poems, but there are some who feel they simply resulted in the whole leprechaun-isation of Irish identity and culture.  But I, for one, stand up for small people and take delight in the stories and poems that entice us to dream and imagine another world living alongside our own.

If British culture can celebrate a Tolkien, pint-sized, Hobbit and turn him into a global phenomenon, then why can't we?  It seems that people like' little folk', be they Borrowers, Lilliputians or just regular, garden variety, garden gnomes.
So, while Yeats, Lady Gregory, and the other members of the Irish Literary Revival,  were trying desperately to establish a separate, unique, Irish cultural identity, vastly different and unique from that of the 'British oppressors',' it seems, in the end, that faeries and elves don't just belong to the Irish, but indeed, are beloved the entire world over.

But who are we kidding, Yeats had stylistically  more in common with  Hardy and Wordsworth and the other Major English poets, than ever he had with the old traditional Irish bards who wrote in their native tongue.  Yet, the new, fledgling Irish nation took him to their hearts, faeries and all, and made him an Irish icon.  As any student of poetry can tell you, there is more to Yeats than faeries and none who could so skilfully string a line of poetry together and make the words dance and sing.  Their love of word-smith Willie Yeats goes far deeper than that.
And so, while we await in anticipation for the completion of Peter Jackson's adaptation of Tolkien's classic, 'The Hobbit', we cannot but smile and think with confidence that the 'little people' are here to stay and W.B. Yeats can rest easy in his Sligo bed.

Least We Forget Shakespeare...

It's February 14th and the world has gone mad on cheesy cards, boxed-chocolates and roses, dozens and dozens of red roses.  And while I am quite partial myself to the odd chocolate or two, I have to admit, that nothing says romance to me more than a hardback book of poetry.
For the last number of years, I have forgone the usual St. Valentine's Day gifts in favour of a beautifully presented book of verse and I now possess a whole shelf-full of delights that I dip into throughout the year, when even the last coffee flavoured chocolates have long since been devoured and the reddest of roses have sadly quite faded away.
This year I'll be giving the elegant 'Penguin Clothbound Collection of Shakespeare's Sonnets' to the special person in my life, for there are few poets who have expressed so truthfully and beautifully the act of loving and of being loved, as William Shakespeare has.  There are some moments in life when only the lines of a poem can echo the sentiment in your heart; when only the soul of a poet can express the words that you dare or dare not say.  I, for one, am happy to let Mr Shakespeare help me out on that score.
And so, least Shakeaspeare be forgotten, here is a little reminder as to why the words of the bard are oh so much more preferable as a Valentine's gift, than a box of Cadbury's best.  Happy St Valentine's Day!

Love Sonnet 147
by William Shakespeare.
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as mad men's are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed.
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, 

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.