I Capture The Castle ~ by Dodie Smith

'I Capture The Castle', by Dodie Smith, is a wonderful book narrated by a seventeen year old girl living in an old, ruined castle, called Godsend, with her beautiful sister, younger brother, glamorous step-mother, author father and love-sick admirer.
It is set in rural England, in the county of Suffolk, in the mid-1930s, before war destroyed everything for a second time.  But the England described in this book seems more like that of an ealier time, owing to the elegant poverty the family find themselves in, the Midsummer rituals and the glorious castle moat!

Cassandra Mortmain, the narrator, begins the story sitting on the edge of a draining board, with her feet in the sink.  From the first instant we simply adore her.  She has her dog's blanket and a tea-cosy beneath her for comfort, delighting in the warm glow from the kitchen range.   This story is her journal, written in three different notebooks, each one more expensive than the rest, the first one being the cheap six penny copybook, and each increase corresponding to a rise in the family's good fortunes.  Indeed, the family's poverty is shocking, with basics like jam and eggs being celebrated as delicacies.  These young women are in dire straits and will do next to anything to better their circumstances, with Rose, the eldest sister, warning the others that she plans to walk the streets for money, although, Cassandra reminds her, there probably wouldn't be much business in that line in rural Suffolk!

And the whole idea of marrying for money becomes a central theme of the novel when, just like in Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice', two young gentlemen of means arrive in the neighbourhood.  Just before this happens, Cassandra actually says how she would love to live in a Jane Austen novel, but then declares that she would rather live in a Bronte one.  Which novel is preferable, an Austen one with a touch of Bronte, or a Bronte one with a touch of Austen, Cassandra wonders?  She finally decides that a mixture of both would be the ideal and this is exactly what we are given in this novel.

On the one hand we are presented with the Jane-Bingley, Elizabeth-Darcy conundrum, while at the same time, living in the castle is a young man who has been brought up almost as a family member, but who is actually like a servant to the family, being the orphaned son of the old house-keeper.  He loves Cassandra deeply, although she sees him too much like a brother to allow any physical intimacy - well at first anyway.  Doesn't this storyline sound familiar?  Yes, it mirrors that of Cathy and Heathcliff in Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights'.  How delightful to have both of my favourite plots co-existing in the same text.  For this alone Smith's novel is worth reading.  And she carries it off beautifully.  It is the atmosphere of young, frantic, love, that links these two novels and that she captures so perfectly here.  


The whole novel is dripping in the newness of first love at seventeen; the dizzy heights of it, the utter anguish and the crushing conviction that life will never be the same again - good or bad - because of love.  If you have forgotten how being in love at seventeen feels, then Dodie Smith's book will provide welcome reminder.

Of course the name of our heroine is also a nod to Austen, Cassandra being the name of Jane's only sister and confidante.  That being so, then perhaps her sister represents the typical English beauty - the English Rose, who so enchants the young Americans.  Maybe then, the family surname, Mortmain, relates to the ruineous situation that the family find themselves in, mort being latin for dead. Or perhaps it refers to how paralysed their father is, suffering from chronic writer's block, the artist in him being dead to the world which forces his daughters to sell everything they own to survive.

 Perhaps it was with a smile that Smith named her American millionare family 'Cotton', which suggests comfort and freshness, while at the same time hinting at new money, perhaps gained from industry and American enterprise.  In this way, the British way of life is pitted against the American, like so many previous novels, such as 'The Shuttle', by Francis Hodgeson Burnett or 'Portait of a Lady' by Henry James.  It is interesting to note that Smith wrote the novel while she was homesick for England and living in California, which very much explains the romantic depiction of Suffolk and the celebration of modernity of America, with its new gadgets, its energy and vitality.  It is interesting to consider how the co-dependency of these neighbours would be mirrored in a few years time when Britain would rely on the United States for these very same attributes, in the Second World War.  So on one level, I think Smith is considering how these two great nations, although being very different and independent, each need and rely on the other, culturally, economically and even politically.

Dodie Smith's style of writing is enchantingly funny and very observant.  She captures funny moments that we can all relate to, much like a comedian can.  For example, she says of her sister's old dressing gown; 'She has been wearing it so long, I don't think she sees it anymore...if she were to put it away for a month and then look at it she would get a shock.' How true that is!  Being a first person narrative, the novel is full of such honest witty observations.  Funny situations too litter this book, like when Cassandra bathes in the bath tub recently used for dying clothes and ends up with green arms ; or when Rose is mistaken for a bear when she wears her great grandmothers old furs out in public and is chased by half the village.  In this way, the book reminds me of the Nancy Mitford novels, 'Love in a Cold Climate' and 'In The Pursuit of Love', having the same blend of elegant-poverty, high-romance, and light humour, and embarrassingly eccentric families.

One original thing that I found when reading this book is the insight I gained into the whole idea of marrying for money.  The girls are so desperate, they are without clothes, food and the barest of essentials, that they make the sensible decision to use whatever means possible to pull themselves out of poverty.  It seems very improbable, but by the time the Cotton boys come along, we too are egging the girls on and are happy for Rose to sacrifice herself to either of the men, even when one looks like the devil with his little goatie.  I think this novel is more Jane Austen that Jane Austen novel!  Indeed, in 'Pride and Prejudice,' only a minor character, Charlotte Lucas, marries for money. Neither Lizzy nor Jane suffer that fate, although Elizabeth suffers a near miss with Mr Collins.

In this book, Dodie Smith goes so far as to demonstrate the awful poverty that untrained, women of a certain class experienced because they are not fit for employment, only for matrimony, and as such they were in some ways worse off than women in the lower classes, as they could not even earn a living.  This is the serious theme of the novel, but one that, luckily, works itself out in the end.

I cannot finish without mentioning the many animals that appear in the book.  Heloise is Cassandra's beloved white pitbull terrier, who follows and protects her wherever she goes.  Smith's love of animals is evident from how she depicts them as almost human in their expressions and behaviour.  It is easy to imagine how she went on to write the hugely successful children's story, '101 Dalmatians', later so famously animated by Disney, for which she is most widely remembered today.  However, there is much more to Dodie Smith than that, so do yourself a favour and read this delightfully, funny book, and wallow in every page, sitting on the edge of a draining board, feet soaking in the sink or not!

By Michelle Burrowes

Wired Love - A romance of dots and dashes ~ by Ella Cheever Thayer

'Wired Love- A Romance of Dots and Dashes', by Ella Cheever Thayer  (1849-1925),  is an enchanting book about a love affair between two telegraphers in America, code names 'N' and 'C'.  The couple fall victim to the dangers that internet chat-room users are faced with today: they begin to fall for the stranger on the other end of the line without knowing what they look like, who they are, or anything much about them.  For the first few chapters, 'N', known as Nattie, has no idea if the grapher on the end of the line is a man or a woman.  She leads a double life - her 'online' life and her humdrum normal life.  She has her real, 'visible' friends, and this increasingly special  'invisible' friend.  More and more the 'invisible' variety takes precedence.  How many of us can relate to that?  The amazing thing is that the story was written in 1879.  

It is clear that Cheever Thayer is a huge Dickens fan; her characters are cartoon-like in their depiction and comic too.  Like the Pocket family in 'Great Expectations', who are continuously described as tumbling and falling, so too is the love-sick Quimby, as he tumbles and falls, over logs, cushions, fire buckets etc. He is something akin to Stan Laurel and you cannot help but warm to him and respect his good taste as he is so enamoured with our witty heroine.  The novelist actually refers to two Dickens novels during the story as a nod of respect the great English writer who had died just nine years before this book was written.

The humour in this novel is touching and farcical at times, in the way of P.G. Woodhouse, and I found this to be one of the most charming aspects of the book.  Charming is the perfect word for it as you fall in love with the characters and delight in the myriad of misunderstanding that makes this novel so highly cinematic.

Indeed, it would make a wonderful play and an even better movie.  As such it would have been a perfect role for a young Jimmy Stewart and reminds me greatly of 'The Shop Around the Corner', which was recently re-made and updated as 'You Got Mail', starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.  If you like either of those films, then you will love this book.  It is full of witty, sparkling dialogue, plenty of puns and word play, especially when they chat on 'the wire', and could easily be adapted into a modern tale about find love on the World Wide Web.

It is so interesting to note the freedom that these Victorian Americans, and women especially, were allowed.  It seems a million miles away from the sheltered, chaperoned existence of the Brontes and George Elliot.  It is no surprise to learn then, that Cheever Thayer was a suffragette and wrote plays on the subject.  Here is a section from the book that I found very interesting, given the early date of its origin, and how pertinent the words are even in today's world:

'... She had growled at herself all the way because she was not smart enough to get on in the world, even so far as to be to stay at home in such weather.  For storms of nature, like storms of life, are hardest to a woman, trammelled as she is in the one by long skirts, that will drag you in the mud, and clothes that every gust of wind catches, and in the other by prejudices and impediments of every kind, that the world, in consideration, doubtless, for her so-called "weakness", throws in her way'.

Such words of frustration echo Bronte's novel written some thirty years previously, but would not have been out of place if there were said by Jane Eyre herself!  So while the book has a light, romantic tone, there is substance there all the same and you do not need to dig very deep to find it.

But what is most memorable about this book is the voice of the author; this vibrant, clever, witty woman, who had worked in a telegraph office herself, and had spoken in morse code on the wires, and, perhaps, had experienced some of the funny situations that she describes so deftly in the book.

A regular reader will finish this short book in a day, and what a pleasant, romance-filled day of smiles that will be!

By Michelle Burrowes  

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The Paris Wife ~ Paula McLain

Rage, rage and more rage... for Hemingway, his wife and me. 
'The Paris Wife', by Paula McLain, is like a slow growing hurricane: its passion builds and builds until you find yourself being carried away by its characters and finally deposited a long distance from where you originally started, feeling battered and bruised.
It is a story of the courtship and marriage of Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway, the acclaimed novelist and self-proclaimed hero of modern American literature.  It follows the life cycle of a love affair, from the heady first days, to the post-mortems and as such should come with a health warning.  Let the broken-hearted everywhere beware!  We are taken down the road of break-up and recrimination and while Mrs Hemingway, the narrator, may not feel anything close to hatred for her ex-husband, the reader certainly does.  Like her, I fell in love with Hemingway in those early chapters and even ordered myself some copies of his novels to enjoy, but by the book's end, I found myself cursing the man.  Like I said - this book is all about rage, the good sort and the bad.  


The book also made me long for Paris, its cafes and art galleries, its classic architecture and damp rain.  It made me yearn, too, for a writer's life and giving myself totally to a work of art, at the expense of health, wealth and everything else.  But who can live like that?  Ernest Hemingway certainly could and did.   The candle burned at both ends for this writer, giving a dazzling light that attracted its own set of fireflies and moths.  Yet, people cannot live like that for long, burning up everything and everyone in their path; old lovers and friends, family and patrons.  

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It is no mystery why 'The Paris Wife'  by Paula McLain is so popular with book clubs the world over for it leaves the reader with more questions than answers.  One of the main questions is, should someone be excused bad manners and cruelty just because they are an artist?   If so, then is meanness and infidelity only allowable if the artist is an extremely talented artist, or is every artist, be they Noble Prize winning or derivative and full of hot air, allowed such moral poetic-licence?  It makes me wonder about the true legacy of a person - which should be most celebrated, that you were a good writer, or that you were a good person?  After reading this book, I have to admit that Ernest Hemingway, despite being a gifted author, was a selfish, self-obsessed, childish man, whose ego knew no bounds, and who clearly had a problem with women.   By the end of it, I wanted to reach into the pages, grab him by the neck and strangle the man, but that is one pleasure, thus far, denied to an eager reader.  (You see... more rage!)



 The way Mclain tells it, Hemingway was almost a victim of a preconceived ambush - that Pauline Pfeiffer effectively waylaid the author and he was helpless to stop it happening.   It reminds me of some of the other first wives of successful artists: Cynthia Lennon, especially, comes to mind, a young wife and mother, abandoned very publicly by her husband and then by his entire entourage.  And what about Ann Hathaway, William Shakespeare's wife, who, like Hadley was also some years senior to her husband, and was abandoned by him in Stratford while he searched for fame and fortune in the playhouses of London.  Even the great romantic, Charles Dickens was not immune, leaving his once beloved wife, Catherine Hogarth, after she bore him ten children, for an 18 year old actress, Ellen Ternan.  


Why is it that so many of our greatest artists seem to outgrow the women they loved before they were famous?  Don't we see the same scenario playing itself out repeatedly in the lives of Hollywood celebrities?  In some of these cases there is not much artistic talent to speak of, but considerable fame and attention.  And so I conclude that it is the ego of the artist, and not their level of brilliance, that makes marital success, or mere monogamy, so elusive.

Even James Joyce, the writer who seemed to understand so intimately the working of a woman's mind, managed to be unfaithful to his mistress and muse, Nora Barnacle.  Their marriage 25 years later seemed to make no difference to their relationship and affairs with other women continued.

But this is not saying much of McLain's book itself.  It is a great piece of historical fiction, written as Hadley Richardson's memoir.  She makes an endearing narrator, although we occasionally see life from Hemingway's perspective and hear private conversations that Hadley would not have been privy to.   McLain brings their story to life as she imagines the conversations and situations that the couple found themselves in.  It seems that the essence of the Hemingways' relationship has entered into the very fibre of this text: their passionate, hunger for life; exhausting, exhilarating and extra-ordinary.  The text is light and the dialogue full of witty, American slang that was so popular in the 1920s.  Hemingway comes across as larger than life, his smile once described as spreading from his face and reaching every part of his body.  


The interesting thing is that Hadley writes her memoir in the same style as her husband; with pure, unadorned language.  Similarly, their world, like Hemingway's prose, is simple and clear, no frills, no unnecessary clutter.  Their home in Paris is scantily furnished and bare. They eat simply, sausage and potatoes being a favourite dish, and even their clothes resemble those of plain, working folk: baggy trousers and cotton shirts.  As their surroundings become more sophisticated, and they mix with the rich and beautiful, so too do their lives.  Finally, everything becomes so complicated, it is unbearable and, as Yeats said, 'The centre cannot hold'.

It is clear that McLain is a published poet as the novel is full of visual symbolism. When Hadley is at her lowest, feeling trapped and confined, beside her is a canary bird, caught in its cage.  There are other references to caged birds in the novel too.  If Hadley is represented by a caged bird, then Ernest is best symbolised by the charging bull that he loved so well; a huge physical presence, passionate, raging, wild.  At one point in the novel, the entire male entourage begin to adopt bull-like personae, squaring up to one another and challenging their friends to fight over a particularly beautiful girl.  The entire scenario would be laughable were it not for the pain it causes the women in the group. Yet, one of my favourite symbols in the text is the moment when Hadley finally realises that her marriage is over, and she watches the walls of their son's sandcastle crumbling into the sea.  This tiny cinematic detail captures the tragedy of divorce so beautifully, when a home is wrecked irreparably and all security for the family unit is lost.

The structure of the book has the symmetry of a poem too, with images from the beginning of the novel echoing through to the end.  Consider when Hadley and Ernest first kiss, he calls her a coward and bids her to jump off the top of a sand dune and when she does, he takes her in his arms and kisses her passionately.  On the day when she finally snaps, having had enough of his infidelity, he calls her a coward, telling her to dive into the water below.  This time she does not dive in.  There are so many clever, symmetrical echoes in this book, with mirrored stories of fathers lost and women abandoned, that you cannot help but smile.

This is a book to take your time over and enjoy, although your desire to discover how it all ends with have you devouring the pages in the all-or-nothing fashion of the Hemingways.  But be prepared to be shaken by this text, by the questions and the doubts it will leave you with, on the nature of love, fidelity and matrimony, and the eternal differences between the male and female of the species.

By Michelle Burrowes

Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' ~So simple, it's child's play.

Have you ever felt that there is something missing from your life?  Well, I have found what that 'something' is:  The Jane Austen, 'Pride and Prejudice' Baby Board Book!  This is and is not what you are thinking.  No, it is not a book about child-rearing Jane Austen style, although I suspect some Janeite somewhere in the world is working on that project as I type.  But yes, it is a book for babies.
How is that possible?  How can a mere child appreciate the pertinent prose, witty witticisms and clever character creation that we associate with Jane Austen?

  Well the awfully talented artist and author duo, Jennifer Adams and Alison Oliver, have come up with the solution to that very problem....
by making a beautiful book that babies will enjoy, on a very simple level.  And what do little folk like doing... apart from chewing?  Counting!  

Yes - this is a Jane Austen, 'Pride and Prejudice', baby counting book ... I kid you not.  'One English village.... two handsome gentlemen... three big houses...' you get the picture?

Indeed, the pictures are the most appealing thing about this little jewel of a book.  The illustrations are simply adorable, which brings me to my main point.  This is not actually a Jane Austen baby book... but a Jane Austen mummy book.
This book is so deliciously charming, it will make you feel complete, whole and happy with your lot in life.  Failing that, it will give you something nice to look at when you have finished dashing about and finally sit down with your child for some one on one time.
 It will also put a smile on your face as you teach your child how to count:   'Yes, five sisters, one who is very silly, another who is very pretty and one... just like your mummy; who is very, very clever.'  An added bonus is that this is one book purchase that you don't need to feel guilty about - it is educational after all.  

My final word:
Only very clever mummies will buy this book but only very silly mummies will actually let their children play with it... especially for those kiddies who prefer chewing to counting.

By Michelle Burrowes

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Corrag ~by Susan Fletcher

I have just finished reading 'Corrag' by Susan Fletcher and I can honestly say that I have never read a book like it.  Previously published under the title of 'Witch Light', it is a story about a young woman who has witnessed a massacre in the Scottish highlands and to silence her, the authorities have accused her of being a witch.  She tells her life-story to a visiting Irish political activist, Charles Leslie, who is secretly gathering evidence against newly crowned King William of Orange, the person behind the massacres.   At first he is reviled by the tiny witch creature, but slowly he begins to see the young girl beneath the tangled hair and torn garments for what she really is: an honest, frail orphan, who has been victimised all her life for daring to be different.
On one level this book tells the story of just one woman, but on another, it brilliantly describes the fate of hundreds of thousands of outspoken, clever women through the ages.  Corrag comes from generations of 'witches', that is women who led hunted lives and who were executed for being different, having a knowledge of homoeopathy or a child out of wedlock .  The term 'witch' is flung at her as a threat whenever someone takes against her on the flimsiest of pretexts.  The ignorance of people was appalling and I only wonder that even more women were not branded by such a title, given the random nature of it.  The book clearly sets out to illustrate the horrors experienced by so many women in the past and to tell their story.  Indeed Corrag herself calls on Charles Leslie, and indeed to the reader too, to remember the dead and their stories, as a way of keeping their memories alive.  Susan Fletcher certainly has achieved that goal in this novel.  

She uses a number of interesting narrative devices to seduce the reader.  For example, clever use of first person narrative ensures that we develop an intimate relationship with the main characters. The story is told in a collection of monologues: Corrag's dialogue consists of a one-sided conversation with Charles Leslie, and his dialogue consists of a collection of letters that he writes home to his beloved wife Jane.  It is a very simple yet ingenious way of learning what two different characters are feeling without slipping into third person narrative.  Most of the time we are listening to Corrag tell her tale, with letters from Charles adding some variety and filling in the gaps.  Interestingly, at the end of the book, this technique is reversed momentarily and it is Charles Leslie who speaks in a one-sided conversation and it is Corrag who writes a letter.  The impact of this surprise is to add drama to the text and to suggest an element of freedom for the characters.

Yet, while we are inside Corrag's head, our hearts pound wildly, as she fights-off drunken redcoats or sits in her cell awaiting execution.  We are with her when she struggles to live by the oath she gave to her mother, never to love a man.  She feels guilt when she begins to love the old mare who saves her life countless times and is the only true friend she has ever known.  But it is when she sees the face of Alistair Macdonald that her fate is sealed and her passionate, secret love for him cannot be quelled.  We are there, listening to every word that she speaks to Charles Leslie, the man who lost a daughter back in Ireland and begins to see in this tiny girl, resemblances of his wife and lost child.  In a way, Charles becomes a surrogate father to Corrag, but to give specific examples as to why that is, would spoil the ending.


There is great poetry in this novel, as the author uses the senses to describe every new place, character and object.  Fletcher describes a wild, untamed Scottish landscape, where prose and poetry merge and co-exist.  The reader is bombarded with a myriad of sensual description, in a way that reminds me of the great Romantic poets.  Every sense is seduced, as the scenes come to life on the page.  The synaesthetic imagery propels us back to 1692 and screams so loudly that we too feel the need to lift our skirts and flee.  As one might expect, in a tale about a girl living out of doors, there is mud, heather and moss, but there is also moonlight, mists and waterfalls.  Corrag dwells in a world without kings and religion, because she has learned that she is not like everyone else and she does not fit in to that traditional world.  Her world is the natural world, where she is ruled by her basic instincts of kindness, honesty and truth.  As such, she has a wisdom that endears her to some, but cause others to fear her.


The classical elements, earth, water, fire and air, are all central to the novel.  Corrag is so in tune with her surroundings that she is never happier than when growing her herbs in the brown earth, or standing naked amid silvery mists of water and air.  She was born in wintertime and so is a child of the snow.  So many of the important events in the story occur while snow is falling, which is in stark contrast to the burned houses during the Glencoe massacre and, of course, the execution fire that awaits Corrag.  Fletcher carefully balances all the classical elements in the text to emphasis the only 'witchcraft' or laws that Corrag adheres to, which are the laws of nature.  Corrag belongs to the physical earth and knows its ways.  With a mother who was cruelly taken from her too soon, she relies on the predictability of Mother Earth, its seasons and cycles, for emotional sustenance and protection.

But apart from the clever language, poetry and narrative voice, this book is an excellent read.  I urge you to read it and try it for yourself.  It is a book like no other, and believe me, Corrag is one character worth knowing.  But you must let her come close and whisper in your ear, her strange yet beautiful tale, of water, earth, fire and air.  Then, when next you say 'witch', you will think of the home in the highlands, between the gap in the rocks, where the girl with the moths in her hair bathes in moonlight and yearns for snow.

Five out of Five

By Michelle Burrowes

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The Islandman ~ Tomas O Crohan

Having recently finished reading 'The Island', by Victoria Hislop, about life on a Cretan island, I picked up a copy of 'The Islandman', by Tomas O Crohan.  This is a first hand account of O Crohan's life growing up on The Great Blasket island, off the south-western coast of Ireland.  We in Ireland are probably best familiar with the island because Peig Sayers lived there and the book she wrote about her life on the Blaskets was compulsory reading for every Irish teenager for many years.  As such, it was conservatively the most hated Irish textbook of all time.

Despite this blatant prejudice, I thought I would give Tomas's book a try.  Written in his native Gaelic tongue but translated into English, he begins by describing his first memory, that of being breast fed by his mother... apparently he was about 3 or 4 at the time.   Yes, the women were a hardy bunch on the islands.

Born in 1856, this autobiography spans a whole lifetime, up until 1926, when the final chapter was written.  O Crohan himself died in 1937.  The book is full to the brim with adventure, sadness and countless interesting characters.  More than anything though, it captures on paper a world that is long gone, where people fought against the elements and faced hardship on a daily basis.  Death was a regular occurrence, but people on the Blaskets just had to get on with life and focus on securing the next meal.  Out of his ten children, O Crohan lost eight in very sad circumstances and his wife too passed away quite young, leaving behind a tiny baby.

The women seem to die very early and lead hard, thankless lives, with their days spent cleaning, cooking and slaving after countless children and absent husbands.  If bread was to be had, it was the woman's job to bake it.  Marriages were based upon the ability of a woman to work hard, cook and care for animals.  Lack of space in the family home was another reason to have your eldest daughter married-off and moved-out into an in-laws house.  Love, as we know it today, was not even in the running. O Crohan too found a wife in this way, although he liked her first because of her singing voice.  From his descriptions, there were always people trying to make a match for him where ever he went.  He never describes what she looked like or anything about her as a individual.  Instead, he only tells us how her death meant he had more work to do around the place and was left short-handed.  The author is not very clear on such personal details, but instead tells the tale in broad brush-strokes, giving the reader a sense of life on the island in macro scale.

One of the most memorable stories he recalls was the day the bailiffs came to the island to claim taxes.  The men moved all their animals to a distant part of the island, while the women were left holding the fort, as it were.  As the bailiffs approached, each carrying a gun, the women began showering them with large rocks.  Children scampered about the fields collecting stones for their mothers.  After three attempts and with one man left unconscious owing to his wounds, the bailiffs sailed away and did not return.  Such were the women of The Blaskets.

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As you can imagine, each day was a struggle on the island, but the people there also knew great freedom and joy.  Couples were 'matched' together in marriage and at times there was plenty to eat and drink.  There was much celebration and drinking whenever a pig was sold, and drinks of commiseration too when one was not.  Many a good man was lost to the pleasure that alcohol could bring and O Crohan explains this at the end of the book by saying that they drank so much because of 'the need to have a merry night instead of the misery that we knew only too well before'.

The story also tells of the heartbreak of separation and emigration, as countless young people left the island in search of a better life in America.  What I did not know was that so many returned after a few years only to leave again a few years later.  From such examples we can see the conflict that raged in the lives of the islanders: wanting a better life for themselves, but being so instinctively drawn back to their island home.  I cannot imagine how these people coped with life astride two very different worlds: forsaking the traditions of the Great Blasket for the modernity of Manhattan.

So, if you fancy taking a step back in time, to see how Irish men and women survived on this tiny outpost, called the Great Blasket Island, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, in the middle of the 19th century, then 'The Islandman' is the book for you.  You certainly will never forget it, and let us hope we will never forget the men and women of The Blasket Islands, for we certainly never will look on their like again.

By Michelle Burrowes

The Island ~ Victoria Hislop

This is a story that follows the lives of four generations of women in the same family and their connection with the Greek leper colony that was situated on the Cretan island of Spinalonga up until 1957.  Having just finished the novel I feel I'm an expert on the disease that for so long filled the world with dread and revulsion.  It is simply caused by a bacteria, but, in its turn, caused much devastation to communities and resulted in cruel social fragmentation.  This is one of the main themes of the novel, how leprosy destroyed a family.

Hislop clearly researched her novel well and this was my favourite aspect of the novel.  Somehow, I felt that the characters' lives were just a means to an end and the real star of the novel was the island itself.  Eleni, the first mother in the story, was my favourite character, the school teacher who probably contracted the disease from a pupil.  She and the young boy are sent off to the island together, silently boarding the boat in their shame, hugging each other as they bid farewell to family and friends.
Their incarceration on the island is well documented in the novel and makes for interesting reading.  It is surprising to learn that during World War Two, conditions at the leper colony were better than those enjoyed by the rest of the population.  It seems that even the Nazis were afraid of leprosy!  They had a cinema there, a school, a hospital and a well organised political system, where leaders were democratically elected and fought hard for the legal entitlements of their fellow citizens.  Making any improvement in living conditions or medical care was an uphill battle, but some of the residents of Spinalonga had friends in high places and this ensured that their voices was heard.  The disease had scant regard for social class and many different types of people, from fisherman to wealthy lawyers, found themselves taking the lonely trip out to the island of lepers.  The many layers of historical detail proved to be the most interesting aspect of the novel in my opinion.

Although the plot was quite slow-moving in parts, Eleni's character maintained my interest throughout the first section of the book.  I was desperate for her to survive the disease and heartbroken to leave her story behind and move on to the next generation.  I found the lives of her daughters, Anna and Maria, a little less compelling.  Anna especially was a one-dimensional character with little depth at all.  She was a wayward child, a spoilt, wicked girl who caused mayhem yet supplied a great deal of the drama in the novel.  She of course comes to a bad end, but even that is over-dramatic and actually detracts from the fine premise of the story.  I think Hislop's original idea - to write a story about the island of Spinalonga- is interesting enough, without the addition of Anna!  In fairness though, the loveable characters of Fotini, Maria and Gorgis Patrakis are beautifully depicted and seem alive on the page.  Hislop is clearly at home writing about Greece and its passionate people, culture and way of life.
So, this is an easy, and at times heartbreaking, read; enjoyable if you have an interest in Greek history, or history in general and evocative for those who ever wondered what it was like to be branded 'unclean' and cast out from the world.

By Michelle Burrowes

3 out of 5 stars

The Painted Veil ~ William Somerset Maugham

This is a book to get lost in, not just in the usual way of books, but in a way that is haunting and will have you musing for days and days, long after you have turned the final page.  For nothing is simple when it comes to this novel.  The plot moves from climax to climax as you might expect from a novel that was originally serialised .  But it is the depiction of characters that is most perplexing.  We cannot quite figure out if we like the main characters but are compelled to take this figurative and literal journey with them into the heart of China. Who is the real hero, the true villain?  Some of the time I side with the main female character and at others I feel nothing but chagrin for her.  In this regard, Maugham is a first rate author, he keeps you analysing and reassessing every word and act.

The novel begins in China, 1925, between the wars, when British civil servants and citizens were becoming more and more unwelcome in the Far East.  Shallow, spoilt Kitty Garstin has married Dr Walter Fane, a bacteriologist living in China just so that she can walk down the aisle before her younger sister.  This British couple have little in common.  She does not love her quiet, reserved husband, and barely knows him at all.  His passion for her is superficial, loving her like a doll in an Ibsen play.  The scene is set for an extra-marital affair which duly takes place.

On its discovery, Walter, a great bridge player, makes an unexpected move and volunteers his medical services in the cholera-ridden Mei-tan-fu district.  His wife is given an ultimatum: she must accompany him on this suicidal expedition, or face disgrace and divorce.

And so we come to one of the main themes of this novel: freedom.  In a wild attempt to free herself form her overbearing, condescending mother, Kitty runs thoughtlessly into a loveless marriage.  Then, to free herself from the boredom of married life, she throws herself into a passionate affair with a selfish, serial womaniser.  Next, trapped by the shameful discovery of her adultery, she is forced to face certain death and journey into the centre of the cholera epidemic at Mei-tan-fu.  Her desire for freedom is so intense, her desperation is almost palpable.

In a speech that would not be out of place in 'Jane Eyre', Kitty Fane cries out for her entitlement to freedom, in all its guises:
'Freedom! Not only freedom from a bond that irked, and a companionship which depressed her; freedom, not only from the death which had threatened, but freedom the love that had degraded her; freedom from all spiritual ties, the freedom of a disembodied spirit; and with freedom, courage and a valiant unconcern for whatever was to come'.

As such, this in some ways reads as a modern text, having much to interest students of feminist criticism and a lot to recommend it to women of every generation.  The book ends with a declaration that mother's must teach their daughters not to make the same mistakes as the previous generation and in their turn, they must embrace true, spiritual freedom and not become the playthings of men, selling their freedom in return for material comfort.

Yet, in a very disturbing way, this is also a novel of its time.  In one chapter Kitty describes the appearance Chinese orphans in such a demeaning way that every feeling revolts.  Similarly, a mentally ill child is referred to as 'it' and 'the creature', which only serves to demonstrate the ignorance of the character and society in general in 1925.   One of the nuns points out to Kitty the beauty of all living things and soon Kitty's attitude changes. It is unclear whether Maugham is trying to illustrate the shallowness of his main character through her prejudicial comments, or if he is  actually revealing his own.  Either way, it makes for very uncomfortable reading.

Opposing notions, such as the beautiful and the grotesque, are ever present in this text.  Indeed this is a book about the antithetical nature of human relationships, the fine line between love and hate, passion and anger.  Such basic human emotions are twinned in the hearts of men and women and it doesn't take much to exchange one for the other- or so it is in the world of William Somerset Maugham's imagination.

 'I despise myself' Walter tells his wife.  Dr Fane hates himself for loving Kitty so much and for choosing the wrong wife.  He has come to Mei-tan-fu to kill himself, if she dies it is a bonus.  His passion for her is all consuming and that is his flaw.  Like a character from a Shakespearian tragedy, he loved Kitty to distraction and finally to insanity.  He forces her to face her guilt and to look upon death at very close quarters.  He is essentially mad in love and his madness makes him act in a cruel and calculating way that is so opposed to his usual character.  The possessive passion of Walter Fane has grown so corrupt that he takes his adulterous wife deep into a cholera epidemic, in the hope that one or both of them will die.  He would rather that than watch her leave him.

He little foresees how the trip to Mei-tan-fu will soften his own anger, will allow Kitty to soften too and develop a selfless understanding of other people.   She slowly comes to the realisation that she is a frivolous fool, while Walter is a kind, generous, brilliant doctor who saves hundreds of people and defeats the disease. Once he discovers that she is pregnant, however, he has a change of heart and wants her to leave.  He has a great capacity for love and in Mei-tan-fu it pours out on the wretched poor and sick.  In this way, the passion for his wife is redirected and channelled into something more positive.

In Mei-tan-fu, Kitty comes to see the change in Walter and recognises his greatness.  She misses his affection when it is gone and his tenderness.  'What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loves you?' she asks.  Walter had 'an exquisite kindliness', she admits.  On some level I think she has come to love Walter, but cannot face the reality, feeling, perhaps, that she does that she is not worthy of love - never having known it as a child.  When she learns that Walter loved babies she cannot fail to recognise what a good husband and father he could have been.  Yet, she cannot forget that he took her to Cholera ridden Mei-tan-fu.  She sad truth is she fears him.

The subtle sense of fear and hostility that underlies this novel reminds me of Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', or James's 'Portrait of a Lady'.  Here too the central characters  have to come face to face with their own weakness and her own failings.  Kitty Fane is faced with the suffering and death of countless strangers and is so touched by the experience that it is like the 'dark night of the soul' for her.  She is forced to accept her faults and to realise that she sold herself for so little, not fully knowing the cost she would have to pay.  Hers is a nature that is weak and governed by rudimentary, animalistic passions.  She believes she is capable of self-control, but ultimately learns that she takes pleasure in being the plaything of men.

Like Conrad's novel, this text traces a journey into hell on earth.  There Kitty knows what true terror is. Yet, ironically, both Walter and Kitty find redemption in Mei-tan-fu.  She learns to be selfless, he leans to use his passion for good.  How strange it is that it is in this hellish place that she is touched by a godlike calm and beauty, owing to her contact with the saintlike nuns at the infirmary convent.  These women are the foil for her loveless mother.  Here she finds positive female role models who teach her the merits of selflessness and grace.  They adore Walter more than she ever could and the teach her to appreciate the goodness in the man she has married.  They emphasise the spiritual in the world, and help eradicate the physical obsession that embodied her affair with Charlie Townsend.

This is a  a dark, twisted tale about a couple bent on suicide because they hate each other.  Yet it also about great passion and desire.  The wonder is that Kitty does not see the beauty in her husband, why she does not succumb to the brilliance of his great mind, that so enchants the nuns in the convent, the local Chinese guards and the forgotten little orphans.  But as I said earlier, this is a book to keep you wondering, be it about the book's title, taken from a poem by Shelley, or Walter's famous reference to Oliver Goldsmith's poem, 'The dog it was who died'.  I thoroughly recommend 'The Painted Veil' for those of you who wish to be transported into another time and place, where good and evil walk side by side and sometimes call themselves by other names.

By Michelle Burrowes

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Patrick Kavangh and the Poetry of Place.

In many ways, Patrick Kavanagh is a quintessential Irish man, but it is his obsession with land, and the geography of place, that confirms his Irishness for me.
Consider some of the titles of his most famous poems, like 'Inniskeen Road...' and 'Shancoduff'. It seems that place is vitally important to him, that Kavanagh's imagination is inherently tied to his place of birth.  But isn't this typical of the Irish mentality?  Hasn't our entire economy been brought to its knees over a property crises caused by our national obsession with owning land?   And on a cultural level too so many of our best writers have equally been enthralled with an Irish sense of place - be it in story form, like James Joyce's 'Dubliners', or in verse, like W.B.Yeats's 'Lake Isle of Innisfree'.  Place is indeed at the forefront of our creative imaginations.

Yet, for Kavanagh, it seems especially so.  He finds a certain security in naming the landmarks and pin-pointing the exact locations of his imagined self as he muses on his themes.  Indeed it gives the reader a sense of comfort to know that 'Cassidy's hanging hill' ('A Christmas Childhood') is nearby or that 'A yellow sun reflects in Donaghmoyne', ('The Great Hunger').  It is as if Kavanagh's creative imagination has a built-in G.P.S. system that inspires and helps him to find his bearings.  And we the readers are glad of it too; it gives a solidity to his poetry that is sometimes elusive in that genre.

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One might be of the impression that Kavanagh is essentially a rural poet, associated only with the landscape of his beloved Monaghan.  However his 'Canal' poems put pay to that theory.  He was clearly inspired by the man-made water scheme in Dublin city and found much in that landscape to symbolise his sense of rebirth after his brush with death in 1958.  His poems, 'Canal Bank Walk' and 'Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin', are two poems that are deeply rooted in a sense of place, for it is the location of this little oasis in the midst of Dublin that so captures the poet's imagination.  He describes it as 'an unworn world... of fabulous green... pouring redemption for me'.  ('Canal Bank Walk').  So enraptured is he by its power that he asks, in a very Keatsian way, to be commemorated there when he dies: 'O commemorate me where there is water, Canal water...' (Lines Written on a Seat...').  And the good people of Dublin City Council listened and placed a life-sized statue of Kavanagh, sitting on a canal bank seat, just as he requested, beside the canal where he had been so inspired in life.  How fitting that a poet who was so intrinsically connected to a particular location in the city should be forever represented there in such a physical way.

And when considering Kavanagh, and his childlike attachment to place, we cannot fail to mention perhaps his most famous contribution to Irish culture: his lyric to the song, 'On Raglan Road'.  Immortalised by the carousing vocal of Luke Kelly, this song of lost love and opportunity names a street in Dublin where Kavanagh once lived.  The cyclical, repetitive melody of this traditional tune, 'The Dawning of the Day', has an intrinsically melancholic feel that echoes much of the atmosphere of Kavangh's poetry and so it is no mystery as to why he selected this particular air to lyricise.  The poet continues in the verse to add a second location, 'Grafton Street', which is in the heart of Dublin city and is a great hub of social life, close to where young people traditionally gather and where Kavanagh spent many a night drinking 'on the town'.  In a way, the poem could be called 'On Grafton Street', being as it is the more celebrated of the two Dublin streets, where it not for the the lack of euphony in the phrase that is obviously present in the preferred titled.  Still, it is entirely fitting that Kavanagh should be so remembered in the public imagination, for writing a lyric about an actual place, where a real street is immortalised. As such, the song is a true testament to the style of a poet, who was happily obsessed with his Irish identity and the geography, and poetry, of place.

By Michelle Burrowes  

The Making of a Marchioness ~ by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Having recently read and loved 'The Shuttle' by Frances Hodgson Burnett, moving on to 'The Making of a Marchioness' was a natural progression.  This is the story of a pre-Edwardian lady, Emily Fox-Seton, who has fallen on hard times and who is left to live in London on her wits, being as she is, orphaned and penniless.  She has a small annuity, but is reliant on the charity of well-to-do acquaintances, who allow her to visit them. In return, Emily acts as personal assistant, running errands and helping keep house for these lady 'friends'.  The story is Cinderella-esque in genre, as honest, kind and large-eyed Emily dazzles all with her good sense and kindly ways, none more so than the most marriageable bachelor of them all; the Marquis Lord Walderhurst.  Apparently a Marquis ranks in between a duke and an earl, and his wife, or widow, is titled, marchioness.  Indeed, it is the ranking of the various classes in society, that made this book such an interesting read for me. We witness how marriage allowed a woman skip through many levels in society in one fell swoop and how one's whole family was reliant on one's ability to marry the right man.  The 'right' man, in this time period, has nothing to do with Bridget Jones's definition of 'Mr Right', but rather whether or not one's future husband could provide the right credentials to allow you and your future children move in the 'right' circles of society.
We hear of the beautiful Lady Agatha Slade whose family seat in Ireland lies in limbo, as there is not enough money to keep the estate functioning, or enough money to pay the debtors and sell up.  The family's fate resides with their eldest daughter.  She must marry well at the end of this social season, for they cannot afford to send her out in society again, having spent their last penny on her gowns and jewels.  It is heartbreaking to read of her despair and to consider how so many young women have been married-off in this way, without knowing love or without reference to their own feelings in any way.
So, while the 'Making of a Marchioness' may seem just a simple pre-Edwardian rags to riches story, there is much more gritty realism bubbling away just below the surface than you might think.  Indeed, it is the balance between fact and fiction that I found most compelling about this book.
Written in 1901, in the late-Victorian period,  Hodgson Burnett is perfectly placed to give us a first hand account of what life was like for both ladies and their servants before the social changes that came about with the outbreak of World War One. We witness first hand the dire situation facing cash-poor women who were too gentile to get an actual job and too poor to live in decent society.  When Emily begins her ascent up the social ladder, she enlists the services of a ladies maid.  She tells the girl that she will pay her a salary of £35 a year, plus beer!  This novel is full of such factual detail, that tells us much about life at this time in history.  The world of the book seems so alien to us, but we must remember that women did not achieve the right to vote in general elections, until 1928, and while it is irksome to hear how Emily longs to please the men in her life, treating Walderhurst as lord and master, literally, we have to allow that this is a book of its time and move on.
In a similar way, we are uncomfortable reading about the servant from India, who is portrayed as an evil 'witch' character.  We wonder if it is because of her skin-colour that the ayah Ameerah cannot be trusted? However, Emily tells others in the book not to be so narrow-minded when they reveal their racism.   It is interesting to note that some fifteen years later, Hodgson Burnett would return to the world of India, at the start of her novel 'The Secret Garden' and this time the ayahs were shown to be more caring than the child's own mother.
 The character of Mrs Osbourne is equally compelling.  She is an Anglo-Indian girl, born in India of English decent, but who longs for a life in England.  Hers is a loveless marriage, unlucky as she was to have been married-off to a cad and a thoroughly bad man.  Her family sold her to the devil, thinking that she had made a good match.  She is torn between goodness and evil throughout the novel.  She seems to dwell in a limbo world, being neither Indian, nor English, neither good, nor bad.  In this way, she is surely the fore-runner of Mary Lennox, the Indian-born English girl and the central character of 'The Secret Garden'. The angry Anglo-Indian wife, Mrs Osbourne, would later morph into the angry child, Mary Lennox, and both of them would come to make a home in the strangely soothing English countryside. There is no doubt that there was something in the circumstance of the British colonials living in India which captured the imagination of Hodgson Burnett.
The 'Making of a Marchioness' is half of what was originally two books, and the second, follow-up, novel, 'The Methods of Lady Walderhurst' now makes up section two of this novel.  Here we continue Emily's story, an enter into a melodramatic tale, complete with a dark brooding villain, murder plots and strange shadows in the dark.  The mood is verging on the gothic in this section and delightfully so.  Of course, Hodgson Burnett would later perfect her gothic style in 'The Shuttle', a book I urge you to read as soon as may be, but 'The Making of a Marchioness', is a welcome tale to wile away the hours in the golden light of pre-war, pre-Edwardian bliss.

P.S.  Both 'The Making of a Marchioness' and 'The Shuttle' are both available free on Kindle due to lapse of copyright.

By Michelle Burrowes

The Distant Hours ~by Kate Morton

Edith Burchill, the main character in Kate Morton's latest novel, 'The Distant Hours', tells us that when writing a book, an author should only write to please herself; that that is the most important thing.  It is clear that Morton follows her own good advice and this novel is simply decadent in its dreamy, past-caring, pace.  It is true that there are pages and pages of detailed descriptions, which some readers might find too slow-moving, but on balance, I have concluded, that when the language is this scrumptious, what is the point of rushing?

Morton has once again, succeeded in writing a book that takes the reader on a journey into the mysterious world of forgotten stories and burning secrets.  For anyone who loves the books of the Brontes, this will be an enjoyable read for you.  The references to 'Jane Eyre' are manifold as are the similarities.  Here we are presented with a mad man in the attic instead of a mad woman.  Abandoned weddings and children are central to both plots, as is the fire motif that cleverly balances the images of water in Morton's text.  Madness, too, and the plight of inherited mental instability, features greatly in each of these dark, gothic tales.
Indeed, both plots are also greatly influenced by a mishap with letters: a cruel aunt keeps news of a fortune from reaching an impoverished Jane, while a lost post-bag delays vital news from reaching Edith's mother for some 40 years. We are told too that the main character loves 'Jane Eyre' and never travels without it.  It is her favourite book.  It seems that she and author Kate Morton have a lot in common.  

Morton herself tells the reader in the introduction that the idea of the story began with three women living in a castle.  Like the witches in Macbeth, these characters have a huge part to play in the story.  Yet this is the story of Edith Burchill, who is researching Milderhurst castle, home of the three Blythe sisters, where her mother was placed during the evacuation of London children during the Second World War.  The plot moves back and forth between the modern day and the early 1940s, as we try to piece together the events in the lives of the castle inmates.
Key to all of this is the father of the three women; Raymond Blythe, the eccentric author who wrote his famous book entitled 'The Mud Man' in the Milderhurst Tower.  And here we find another important theme of the novel; the love of books and how important books can be in a person's life.  Edith has been inspired to follow a life as a publisher because of this children's book, and the lives of all three women are directly altered because of it.  It is the one thing that links all the main characters in the book.  This journey into meta-fiction is one that will please any avid reader immensely.  The book is mostly about the power and joy of books, about what it is to be a writer and  to be gifted with words.  It considers how books and stories can change your life, pull families together and drive them apart.
For some uncanny reason, this is the third book in a row that I have recently read that features a set of twins in the storyline.  This time we are presented with Persephone and Seraphina Blythe; the practical and the artistic twins, much in the same vein as the Jane Austen 'Sense and Sensibility' sisters, Eleanor and Marianne Dashwood.  They are joined by a younger sister, Juniper, whose long-lost love is the great mystery at the heart of this novel. These three characters, along with Edith and her mother, make up a matriarchal cast of characters.  As such this the novel can be viewed as a girl 'buddy novel', with little room left for romantic sub-plots.  Female relationships, especially those between mother and daughter, and between sisters, is at the heart of this novel.  But isn't that what we love in a good read?
This is a great book to sit back and wallow in. Nothing is skimmed over and it is clear, from the detailed descriptions and languid prose-style, that Morton is following her own advice and writing the book that she would like to read.  The delicious thing is that we get to do the same and join her in this scrumptious feast.  If you like to gobble-up books  in a rush, then the slow-thrill of Morton's number-one-best-selling-novel will be simply lost on you.  Literary gorging is not recommended here.  Take your time and enjoy it. And when the stones of Milderhurst tower finally hold forth their secrets, they will find you dawdling around the old castle moat savouring the delight that is the unspoken promise of 'The Distant Hours'.

By Michelle Burrowes

The Heavenly Guide to Book-Clubing with 'The Book Club Bible'

So you have joined a book club and this month it is your turn to select the next text.  What do you choose?  You don't want to pick a book that you have already read, because that goes against the whole point of joining a book club, but you want your book suggestion to be a hit with your friends.  Do you rely on the tastes of the person working in your local book shop, or search on-line for recommendations from book-bloggers like me?  It might be worth a try, but there is an alternative:  'The Book Club Bible', published by Michael O'Mara Books.  
Inside you will find a two-page spread on each novel consisting of a short, non-spoiler synopsis; opinions from a reviewer or 'ordinary' reader; discussion points; focusing on themes, characters and writer's style; background information and suggested companion books.  What could be more simple, or more useful?  
The books are listed alphabetically under the author and they range from classics, such as 'The Scarlett Letter' and 'Catcher in the Rye', to modern texts, like 'The Book Thief' and 'The Lovely Bones'.  Believe me, if you love books, you will want to curl up on a sofa and devour this delicious paperback. 
Alongside the various book suggestions are page-long lists of recommended texts under various headings, such as: 'Top Ten Crime books' and 'Top Ten Quick Reads'.  These are invaluable lists, especially if your reading group selects books based on genre or theme. With over 200 suggestions inside, this handbook is a must for anyone in a book club and for simply anyone who is searching for that perfect book.  
And if this book inspires you to set-up your very own book club, here are some tips to get you started:

1. You don't need to know everyone in your book club.  You could ask four of your friends to join and ask them to each bring a friend.  You will get to know each other soon enough. About eight or nine people is enough.  Any bigger and you run the risk of people breaking up into smaller groups during the discussion and the overall meeting collapses into a free-for-all.
2. Avoid turning your meetings into a cooking competition by establishing a simple routine: the host provides a light cheese and wine supper, although alcohol is not obligatory and can lead to some very passionate debates!  
3. Each member should read the book - make this a must from the outset.  Stimulating conversation depends on it.  If there is one 'rule' that needs to be agreed from the start, this is it!
4. Books should not have been read before - this ensures that members do not get offended if you did not like the book they selected. If nobody knew what the book would be like beforehand, then no one can be blamed for selecting it.
5. Meeting on the last Thursday of the month say, or the first Tuesday, gives the club a regular routine that people can plan their lives around.  
6. Effort should be made to ask each member what they thought of the book at some point during the night.  This will ensure that no one person will dominate the meeting.
7. Make a schedule for the first eight or nine months, depending on the number of members, so that each person knows what month they will be hosting ahead of time.  
8. Call your friends over and get reading!

While book clubs may be seen as being purely in the domain of women, I do know of one male book club where the members meet in a quiet upstairs room at a pub, thereby avoiding all the hassle of hosting, cooking and frantic house-cleaning.  How ingenious.  That way, it becomes all about the book and if I were to ever begin a book club in the future, that is certainly how I would do it.  So what is stopping you?  With these suggestions and 'The Book Club Bible' to get you started, your meetings will surely be blessed!

By Michelle Burrowes

April in Paris~ With Nicholas and Madeline

Perhaps it has something to do with that romantic idea of Paris in the spring, but my most recent children's book-purchases are both set in France.  The first, is called  'Madeline', by Ludwig Bemelmans.  The heroine of the title is a little girl who lives in Paris with eleven other petite filles, under the care of a Miss Clavel.  Although the book describes 'tweleve little girls in two straight lines', Madeline is anything but straight-laced.  She is feisty, determined and inventive.  She laughs at the tigers in the zoo and delights in walks in the rain.  She knows how to terrify the grown-ups and shies away from nothing. What an antidote to the 'princess-perfect' female characters so prevalent in today's media.  

For 'Madeline' is a book of its time.  Published in 1939, it cannot escape our attention that this book is set in Paris, at the outbreak of the Second World War.  There is no mention of the invading Nazis, but it is heart-breaking for the grown-ups reading this book to think that in reality, a child like Madeline, living in Paris, would have suffered much during this period. It is with extra pride then, that author Ludwig Bemelmans must have completed the illustrations that are so central to this book, for almost every one features the famous architecture of Paris; the Eifel Tower, Notre Dame, The Louvre etc.  These images dominate every page, sometimes being accompanied with just a word of two.  The effect of this is to immerse the reader in the golden world of Madeline, for many of the images consist of  a 'butter-yellow' background with highly-stylised charcoal characters, creating a warm, cheerful tone to the book.  

As with so many children's books, there is a distinct absence of parents.  Madeline's papa does send her beautiful flowers when she is in hospital, so she is not technically an orphan, but that is all we learn of him.  Perhaps he is a Resistance fighter?... but we never learn for sure.  In loco parentis is Miss Clavel, a nun, going by her quaint habit, who runs the little boarding school that is covered in vines.  Once again, this is a book of its time as it depicts a world that has almost disappeared out of memory.  Yet, there is something charming about a world where the family has been replaced by a group of school girls, and it allows Madeline, who is the littlest of them all, the freedom to have adventures and gain independence.  So, in Bemelamns' tiny character we see someone with great gumption, indeed she has survived these seventy years, and so was a fine match for the Nazi's after all.  


The second French book is 'Nicholas' by René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé. If I tell you that the former is also the author of the 'Asterix The Gaul' books, and that the latter is an illustrator for the New Yorker, then you have some sense of the tone of this book.  Simply put, it is hilarious.  First published in France in 1959, just fourteen years after the end of World War Two, this book is also a book of it's time.  The children seem to spend forever playing out of doors and have little in the way of toys.  They have to make their own amusement, which usually involves getting up to all sorts of mischief, but mainly joining in a great free-for-all and hopping on eachother.  Before the advent of hyper-vigilant parenting, the children are only a moment away from being 'thumped', berated or worse.  But still the old rules of fair play still apply, and that means that you never hit a kid wearing glasses. Of course when he takes off the glasses to give them a wipe, then he is fair game!


The main character is a boy called Nicholas, who narrates the story.  This first person narrative is ingenius, as it allows us to hear first hand how things go pear-shaped for Nicholas. Indeed it is his ability not to say what is really going on that is so endearing.  The reader dwells between the lines, imagining what is actually happening and that is where most of the humour is found.  
One of the funniest stories in the book is about a simple football match after school. One boy begrudgingly offers his coin for the toss-up has to spend the entire game trying to find it when it has been lost in the long grass.  We are not told directly about his aimless wanderings, but see him, appearing in the corner of the scene, eyes bent, searching... for the entire game.  Another boy, Rufus,  the police man's son, is the only boy with a whistle - a perk of the job - He refuses to be referee, that is Cuthbert's job, who is not good at games and is top of the class.  He refuses to share his whistle with Cuthbert.  This causes momentary difficulty, until the boys find a solution:  Cuthbert,the referee, will tell Rufus, to blow the whistle whenever there is a foul.  This causes great confusion and hilarity as you can imagine.  


While Nicholas himself is a delightful comic creation, the book is overflowing with great characters.  Each boy has a 'trait' that identifies him as a character-type: the rich kid, the thug, the brain-box, the hungry-Horace.  This is completely different to 'Madeline' where the other eleven girls are nameless and only the main character gets to have any real adventures.  'Madeline' is also very much a French book, but 'Nicholas' could be set anywhere, the irony being that the latter was the book originally written in French.  Indeed, it owes much to the skilled translation by Anthea Bell, whose understanding of comedy has made it a must for every child's collection.  

And so, I will leave you with a short taste of the world, as Nicholas sees it, taken from the beginning of a story called 'Louise':
'I don't like girls.  They're soppy, they only play at dolls and going shopping and they're always crying.  Well, I suppose I sometimes cry myself. but only for something serious like when the sitting room vase got broken and Dad told me off and it wasn't fair because I didn't do it on purpose and anyway it was an ugly vase and I know dad doesn't like me to play football in the house but it was raining outside...' 
 Sound familiar?  For laughs out load at bedtime - or anytime - get your hands on a copy of the 'Nicholas' books.  I would strongly advise that you read them with your child - you don't want to miss out on the fun.  Both 'Madeline' and 'Nicholas' are the first book of a series, so the pleasure will just go on and on.  Not a bad way to start the year.  Amusez-vous bien!

By Michelle Burrowes

Time travelling and W.B. Yeats: to Infinity and Beyond

The real world that Yeats lived in was often the subject of his poetry.  He did not shy away from discussing personal events in his life and even named names of those he knew and loved,  immortalising them forever in verse.   However, he was not bound to this ‘real world’ for inspiration.   He could be transported to another reality in his poetry, and the act of travelling through time and space is often the very theme which so attracted Yeats.

Yeats uses the tension between the real world in which he lived and the ideal world of his imagination, to create drama in his poetry.  In the poem, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, the speaker describes a real island in Sligo and colours it for us in a  glimmering ‘purple glow’.  He tantalises our senses with details of ‘the lake water -lapping with low-sounds’ and the delicate music of crickets singing.  It’s an ideal world, a paradise of tranquility, where ‘peace comes dropping slow’.  It seems a very real place indeed.  The poet’s opening refrain, and the repetition of the words, ‘go’ and ‘there’, only serve to increase the sense of urgency and arouse the reader’s desire to make the journey to Innisfree too.  



However, the drama comes to a climax when we realise, at the penultimate line, that the speaker is far away from the land of his heart’s desire and is not really seeing the island.  It is an imagined, ideal world.  The contrast could not be more startling when he says, ‘While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavement grey...’  Only now, does it become clear to the reader, that the journey being undertaken by the speaker, is one of the imagination, creating a sense of anti-climax and disappointment.  The use of the colour detail here, or the lack of it,  is in stark contrast to the purple hues of the second stanza.  By juxtaposing the two landscapes in this way, Yeats creates dramatic tension between the real world of the city, where the speaker actually is,  the imagined, ideal, world of Innisfree, where he would like to be.  

‘Sailing to Byzantium’ is another poem whose theme deals with the notion of escape and travel through the world of the imagination.  However, here Yeats creates dramatic tension by contrasting the world of mortal men; the real world, with that of the world of art; the  ideal world of the imagination, primarily through his use of opposing imagery. In this poem, the real world of nature no longer  satisfies the speaker, and instead he seeks solace and immortality in the world of art.  The image of the singing birds of line two and three, ‘at their song’, is maligned by the fact that it is merely singing for ‘those dying generations’, a pointless activity.  In doing so, Yeats highlights the tragic flaw of the real world: everything that lives, must die.  

He describes an old person as ‘ a tattered coat upon a stick’, a brutal image indeed, and his own soul as a thing, ‘sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal’.  This bleak, anti-Christian idea graphically illustrates Yeats’s dislike for the real world at this point in his life.  Instead, he seeks an alternative, ideal world, where immortality is guaranteed.  The ideal, imagined world that the speaker chooses is the world of Grecian art: ‘such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make...’.  


He imagines being re-born as a beautifully crafted, golden automaton, ‘set upon a golden bough to sing’.  This is in stark contrast to the real singing bird of the opening stanza.   These opposing, yet linked, ornithological images serve to highlight the tension in Yeats poetry between the real world in which he lives, and an ideal world that he imagines.

By Michelle Burrowes

Jane Austen and the Curious Case of the Missing Chocolate Bar.

On this Easter Sunday, spare a thought for poor Jane Austen who would not have known the joy of a Cadbury's bar of chocolate, let alone an Easter egg.  It was as far back as 1687 that an English doctor, Sir Hans Sloane, tried a chocolate drink while travelling in Jamaica .  It didn't taste very nice, until he added milk.  That was a turning point in confectionery history.
His drink was initially sold as a medicine - no doubt Mrs Sloane and her daughters could appreciate the calming effect chocolate could have on the female body and convinced their father to bring chocolate to the masses... Well maybe not.  But, thankfully, Cadbury's eventually entered the market with their own special recipe, and established cafes and drinking houses where you could go and have a cup of the dark stuff and a chat.

However, it was not until the mid-1800s that Cadbury's altered their recipe and began making 'eating chocolate'.  So, the Georgians and poor Miss Austen, never got to take a bite of chocolate.  And neither, for that matter, did Elizabeth Bennet or any other of Austen's characters.  I think a little square or two of Cadbury's finest would have settled Mrs Bennet's nerves  no end and even given Lady Catherine something, other than her ailing daughter's marriage-prospects, to mull over.  In a house containing six women, not counting the servants, a little chocolate would have gone a long way towards securing domestic harmony.  Indeed, if chocolate had been readily available in Austen's time, perhaps the entire plot-line of 'Pride and Prejudice' would have been altogether different. So, after all, in a world without proper chocolate, it is Mr Bennet who really deserves our pity this Easter!

By Michelle Burrowes