The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Hmmmmm....

I don't know if I like the book. You can count the plot points on, like, one hand. Nothing happens. It may make you love mankind but it then succeeds in just making you hate them when greed and selfishness inevitably take over. But I suppose it's a book about failings - Harold's, Maureen's, the people Harold meets along his journey, and failings are hard to warm to. I suppose the point of the story is that it's never too late to admit to failings, to apologise and to rebuild bridges. Except it's too fucking late for David and Queenie isn't it?

I knew David had committed suicide. I thought it may have been an accidental overdose for a while, but the fact that he "wore a lot of black", had "long hair" and was "depressed" guided you to the actual conclusion. Because depressed people always wear a lot of black, have long hair and drinking problems in this kind of book. FFS.

It's wrong to get angry with fictional characters for reacting in ways that real people do, but then I'd get angry with the real people too, so why shouldn't I have the same ire for their fictional counterparts. Everything that happens in this fricking book could be solved or avoided if people just actually had conversations with each other once in a while instead of being so insecure or selfish that they think they're the only person with issues.

Depression is an illness. Maybe if Harold hadn't been so wrapped up in his apparent failings as a son, and Maureen hadn't been so blinded by the apparent perfection of her child, someone might have noticed that David needed help.

Every character, save for Queenie needs a shake and maybe a slap to wake them up. And that's the final punch in the gut. Queenie, the whole purpose for the novel, the goal, the impetus, becomes an afterthought. Another example of man's great failing. Harold reaches Queenie and is then so freaked out by her appearance (which is maybe because she's DYING OF CANCER YOU IDIOT), he feels she's not really there any more and he can't talk to her about all the things he's been thinking he wants to say to her. This kind woman, who brought him sweets and could sing songs backwards, who TOOK THE BLAME FOR HIS DRUNKEN DESTRUCTION, LOST HER JOB AND DISAPPEARED OUT OF HIS LIFE, is met with an "Oh god, doesn't she look terrible. It's so stuffy in here. I can't bear to be around her. I can't bring myself to say the things I wanted to say. It's not really her anymore."

If it's not really her anymore, how does she get a chapter (okay, it's four pages long, we don't want to dwell TOO much on our mortality do we? *rolls eyes*) to herself post visit where she is remembering her father as she dies? Grow some fucking balls Harold. Oh wait, it doesn't matter, you and Maureen are in love again. You got your happy ending. Screw Queenie.

You don't put your weaknesses before someone who is dying. You suck it up and you treat them like a human being until their is no human being left in their body. Queenie deserved an explanation. An apology. All she gets is a rucksack full of shit from souvenir shops.

Actually, in retrospect, it appears I didn't like this book. Harold was never redeemed, he remained selfish and stifled. Maureen was never redeemed, she just realised she still fancied her husband. Rex and Queenie were the only people who showed any humanity during the whole novel. The only thing this book tries to teach is not to take loved ones for granted, and I knew that well enough already thanks.

Have a Nice Lie Down with a Good Book

I had to go into Hospital on Monday - Nothing serious, just an appointment I'd had was brought forward unexpectedly. I've been pretty much bed ridden since due to stitches in various places and lots of bruising. You'd think this is the perfect time to read, but really, it's just the perfect time to sleep. I don't feel I'm giving a book the best of my attention if I'm reading it whilst off my tits on Codeine.

Having said that, I've been getting through The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry quite quickly. It doesn't take a lot of reading, and to be honest, I'm a bit nervous about it being sad so it's quite nice to read with only one eye on the page - just in case something sneaks up and sets your eyes watering.

In case you've managed to avoid the plotline, Harold Fry gets a letter from his old work colleague Queenie (who he's wronged somehow) saying she's dying. He responds with sympathy, but on his way to post the letter realises he can't actually part with it and return to his staid existence with his cold wife. He decides to walk to the next post box. Before he knows it, he's convinced himself to walk to Berwick where Queenie is in a hospice, feeling that if she knows he is on his way, she will stay alive for him. The book charts the people he meets along his journey and reveals more of the thoughts and relationships of Harold, his wife Maureen, and their son David.

Since starting this blog post at lunchtime, I've read most of the book in one sitting in the bath as I was so uncomfortable and itchy, so I can't really say what I thought was going to happen as it would seem disingenuous, even though I was bang on about his son. I guess I'll just finish the last 30 pages and review it properly tomorrow!

The Butler Did It

He didn't. Just in case you were wondering.

Finally managed to finish Death in The Stocks today, during my sit in the phlebotomist's waiting room. My heart feels heavy for the guys in that plane my Grandad was watching - not because this was the final book they read (it's not that bad) - but just that they never finished it. It's a sobering thought. Any book you're reading could be the last book you read, and you might never find out what happened (of course, this has a higher chance of happening if you're reading said book whilst piloting a fighter plane in war time, I guess) and if it's a Whodunnit, well, then you'll never find out who did.

It's a sad and humanising though. Like seeing people's socks or old folk eating on their own.

Death In The Stocks turned out to be exactly what you'd expect if you've ever read any of the more "talky" Golden Age of Crime books. It definitely leans more towards Margery Allingham than Agatha Christie, and it gains "points" in my book, as it were, for having a tiny pool of suspects. However, from that pool of 8 or so (and that's stretching it as there are only ever really five serious suspects) I still managed to pick the wrong one.

In fairness, you are led by Inspector Hannasyde. At the end when he states that he never suspected the person who was revealed to be the murderer, you realise that you have never been pointed in their direction either. That's not to say that they aren't a plausible suspect, or that they were ever given a watertight alibi, but just that they never enter your mind as anything other than that kind of omnipresent cliched character that they are. I think I was having an off day. I normally get it down to two possibilities but I'd given up trying to guess by the end of this book. If I'd listened to my previous opinions, I probably would have worked it out, but my reading of this book has been so piecemeal that it's been hard to follow the plot, let alone work out what happened - and that's no reflection on Heyer (whom I love), it's just how busy and all around the houses I've been these past few weeks.

I promise to treat The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry with more respect.

After being shipped to a different store branch today, in a patch of downtime I notice, after having a nose around the tills, that Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, a short story originally published in the New Yorker in 1948, has been published in a Penguin Classics pamphlet style (following in the footsteps of Albert Camus' "The Sea Close By" and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings") for only 99p.

I love Shirley Jackson. I would probably class We Have Always Lived in the Castle as one of my favourite books. I love her horrific subversion of golden curled, root beer drinking cornfed America. The Lottery is perhaps her most famous short story and if you don't want to splash out on or commit to the Penguin Classic "The Lottery and Other Stories" (although, you really should), then this pocket sized gem is a perfect introduction to the dark mind of Jackson.

Radio Silence

I've not posted in a few days as I've been out and about in that there London, watching bike races (kind of work related I guess), attending the boyfriend's "book launch" (definitely work related for him), and drinking a lot with friends (definitely not work related, in fact very naughty and not to be advised.)

I've also not been reading as much as I need to do for this blog, but that's because I haven't yet found a way to make reading sociable, and I literally haven't had a minute to myself. There have been a couple of chapters of Georgette Heyer snatched here and there, in the bath, on the Tube.

Death In The Stocks is proving to be classic Golden Era fare. Posh people who talk very quickly are joking with the police about how guilty they look, whilst placing bets on whether their siblings could have carried out the murder. There are sensible dowdy girls in love with their male best friends who are completely obsessing over that character that only seems to exist in the 1920's/1930's - the conniving blonde bombshell, who is totally and utterly direct and honest about everything she wants (and that everything is a huge engagement ring and access to the boyfriend's inheritance) and how devoid of feeling she is, and yet whom everyone loves.

In continuation of my "whodunnit" guesses, I'm now leaning more towards Giles Carrington - cousin to the two main suspects, and their affable lawyer. He reads like a recurring character, and, as I don't think he is, there has to be some reason he's being this nice.

Matt (the aforementioned boyfriend - mine, not Violet's in Death in the Stocks) is reading The Luminaries, which I've had my eye on for a while now, and thoroughly enjoying it so far so hopefully that means we can incorporate reading into our "spending quality time together"....

 

As I say, Matt and I went to his "book launch" on Monday night in London. I use air quotes here as whilst there is a book, it's a collection of essays of which he is one. The Cycling Anthology is a biannual publication which started off life as a collaboration between writers Lionel Birnie and Ellis Bacon, and was published by Lionel's "Peleton Punlishing". Yellow Jersey Press have taken up publication of Volume 4 and re-released all the previous editions in gorgeous retro covers.

 

 

 

Matt features in Volume 4, having written a chapter on his experience in the Giro d'Italia in 2000 and the agony he endured after crashing early on, and fighting through. I may be biased, but it's well worth a read if you're into cycling, or "kid achieves their dream", or even just into reading about "strength in adversity" type situations. 

 

 





Death in the Stocks

Andrew Vereker has been murdered! And his body left in the stocks on the village green! Antonia is a typical smart talking it girl who's glad to see the (stabbed) back of her interfering half-brother after a stern letter forbidding her from marrying her one true love Rudolph. Antonia's languid brother, and Vereker's probably heir, Kenneth, is ordering Champagne for everyone especially his gold digging girlfriend Violet.


It's business as usual in this Georgette Heyer mystery.


Heyer's characters are the same characters that inhabit any Golden Age novel. Her detective (Hannasyde) is cheerful and pleasant, calming the upper class suspects that the local bobbies only serve to agitate with their slow and ponderous ways. The thing that I feel separates Heyer from, say, Allingham or Marsh, is the dialogue. It's fast paced, and snarky, like reading a Katherine Hepburn film.


51 pages in, and it's impossible to give an opinion on Death in the Stocks. It reads as well as the other two Heyer novels I've read – perhaps slightly better as we have only been introduced to four (what I assume will be) main characters so far. The lack of “death at a dinner party” or “death in a stately home” means the suspects are dribbling in for us to get to know one at a time, rather than being dropped onto our lap in a big bundle to remember names and motives as we go.


Following the “least likely suspect” approach, I'll go out on a limb and say Murgatroyd (the homely live-in woman) did it.

Death in the Stocks - Georgette Heyer

So, after finishing that book that we're going to try and forget about until the film comes out because it upset us too much, I'm now flipping back to 1935 and Georgette Heyer's Death in the Stocks.

Just survived being dropped in the bath

This particular book has always held a fascination to me. My grandad told me a story about when he was in the RAF during the war and he was stationed to watch a British plane that had crashed near him. He basically had to watch the wreckage until the authorities could come and remove the bodies, to stop, as he put it, kids climbing in the cockpit and poking the poor airmen. Now, he spent quite a few hours next to that plane and remembers very vividly that sitting, half read, on the dashboard (do planes have dashboards??) of the mangled cockpit was Death in the Stocks by Georgette Heyer. He always wondered what the book was about and what part the pilot had made it up to. A few years ago I bought him a copy but with his Parkinson's and failing eyes, I'm not sure he's ever read it, but I know he'll never forget that scene, and I'll never forget him telling me.


Georgette Heyer is perhaps best known for her Regency romance books with titles like “The Convenient Marriage” and “The Reluctant Widow” - that one has always made me laugh. Is there usually anything other than a reluctant widow?? Unless you're in Gone Girl, of course.... Ahem. But, Heyer's 12 detective novels all contain a dry wit that is perhaps lacking in the likes of Christie or Allingham. Although her plots are akin to Dame Agatha, her writing feels much more like the dry knowing work of John Dickson Carr. Whilst this could be argued to be due to a lot of her mystery works being helped along by her husband, George Rougier, he only provided plot ideas – characterisation and dialogue remained firmly in Heyer's hands.


I think I've only read two Heyer mysteries before, 'Why Shoot a Butler?' and 'A Blunt Instrument'. I fell in love with the characters of the latter, although I seem to remember both stories seemed to drag to the denouement rather than race there like a Christie novel would. I always seems to come back to Agatha Christie but, in my opinion, the only person who can write a better crime novel than her is Arthur Conan Doyle. It's hard not to compare all the other “Queens of Crime” of the early 20^th century to her.


The blurb for Death in the Stocks reads:


A moonlit night. A sleeping village. And an unaccountable murder.


An English bobby returning from the night patrol finds a corpse in evening dress locked in the stocks on the village green. He identifies the body immediately. Andrew Vereker was not a well-loved man, and narrowing down the suspects is not going to be an easy job. The Vereker family are corrupt and eccentric – and hardly cooperative.


It's another case for the resourceful Superintendent Hannasyde, who sets off on the trail of a killer so cunning that even his powers of detection are tested to their limits.



“Death in the Stocks is that rare and refreshing thing – a clever problem stated, developed and finally solved in terms of character” - The Times

Gone Girl - Official Trailer

David Fincher can do no wrong in my eyes. The Social Network is one of my favourite films, and I prefer his Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to the actual book, so I wait with baited breath for this, trying not to be put off by Richard Butler's Kermit the Frog cover of "She".

Gone Girl Review

Jeeeeezus, what a horrific clusterfuck of a novel.

Gone Girl is well written, well plotted and just utterly utterly horrible. Up there with Wuthering Heights in the “People I would in no way want involved in my life, ever, thank you very much” stakes.


I was right, Go, and to a lesser extent Boney, turn out to be the only characters that weren't caricatures of awfulness. I suppose such psychotic terrifyingly self absorbed nutjobs must exist in the world somewhere (as I say, I've had run ins with slightly smaller scale ones) but still, it's hard reading. <makes 'bonkers' sign with finger, mouths a “wow”>


Seriously though, it's actually a very good book. It reads as quickly as a Dan Brown thriller whilst being actually well written and not dripping with factual errors and anachronisms. The Independent review calls Gone Girl a “wonderfully crafted and excruciating thriller”, and it's right. I actually ache with the righteous anger I've felt throughout the story. Which is a massive compliment to Gillian Flynn.


About half way through the book, you think you know what's happened. Then two thirds of the way through the book, you think you can guess what's going to happen, and you're still hoping there's some slice of justice due, then come the end, you feel violated and spent.


I'll leave it to Pat from Silver Linings Playbook to sum it up.

Thanks Pat.



I am, however, still looking forward to the David Fincher directed movie version of Gone Girl due out later this year. Fincher is the master of uneasy suspense, and Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike are just pretty, annoying and banal enough to carry off Nick and Amy. Neil Patrick Harris fans are probably going to end up pretty pissed though...

Gone Girl

A forum I used to visit regularly saw the word “spoiler” misspelled (I seriously just had to Google how to spell 'misspelled'), to the extent that now, whenever I see the word “spoiler” written down, I still read “spolier” in my head. So, it goes without saying, this blog will be rife with “Spolier Wanrings”. Read about books you've not read at your peril.


I started Gone Girl as, working in the bookshop, I feel I need to read the bestsellers more than I actually do. My passion for collecting pre-war crime fiction has seen my money spent in a different area for the past few years. Bestsellers tend to be read after I've bought them my Mum for birthdays/Christmas, and a few years later, she gives me a Tesco carrier bag full of books to read. This is one of those occasions.

As I near the end of Gone Girl (on page 398 now), I find myself powering on through. I need to finish this book. It's not that I'm desperate to find out how it finishes (although I am), I'm just desperate to rid myself of such a mass of psychotic unlikeable characters and desperate to find if they get their comeuppance. Obviously I have the view that it would be very brave of Gillian Flynn to let the bad get away with murder, as it were, and the “good” (although it has to be said there isn't that much good in this book – maybe Nick's sister, Go) suffer because of it, to leave so many things open ended, because life is just shit sometimes and fiction should represent that. But then, the very core of my being wants justice to prevail, because life is just shit sometimes and fiction should be an escape, where the good live happily ever after, and the bad pay for their sins.


To clarify, I don't dislike Nick because he cheated on his wife, I dislike him because he is a shitty egotistical dick who hates women. I don't dislike Amy because she's framing her husband for murder, I dislike her because she's a true blue psychopath who has wreaked havoc by playing God with anybody she feels wronged her throughout her life. Having had a run in with somebody with psychopathic tendencies, this cuts a little close to home, the manipulation, the playing innocent people to get “revenge” on somebody you feel wronged you... And knowing it is one of the hardest things to fight because it's so hazy. Your word against theirs. GRAH. <and relax>


But it's a great book – easy reading (aside from the bubbling vitriolic hatred in the pit of my stomach), and let's face it, anything that makes you feel so strongly about the characters, whether negative or positive, has got to be good right? Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got 68 pages to read so I can get on with the rest of my life.

A little look at what you may be seeing on this blog in the near future

As you may be able to see from these photos, I'm a crime fan. Not a hardboiled-rainy-night-broad-in-a-red-dress-enters-your-office-crime-fan, or a psycho-leaving-entrails-over-a-stricken-city-crime-fan, but more a something-fishy-in-a-stately-home-is-solved-without-bloodshed-crime fan. The problem being that these are the books I read the most. So, with this blog, I'm attempting to alternate. One non-genre novel, followed by one (most likely second hand penguin classic) "golden age of crime" novel. If you're fans of the queens (Christie, Sayers, Marsh, Allingham, Tey, Heyer, Mitchell etc) or the kings (Dickson Carr, Innes, Crispin, er Queen.... et al) then stay tuned.

I'll also, depending on how long I manage to keep this up for, probably avoid the non-fiction and graphic novels as that adds another three bookcases to my challenge! Who knows? Maybe by the time I've finished the fiction shelves, I'll be champing at the bit, desperate to read more and write more, and re-reads of Alan Moore may become necessary fodder.

Gone Girl is on the Side of the Bath

I work in a bookshop, I get staff discount. For somebody who loves books, this is dangerous. Our shelves are full, piles of paperbacks stand on dusty floors, hardbacks wedged between bookcases in the patches of wall where light fixtures won't allow more shelving. It's a booky house. I spend all day surrounded by books, whether working in the bookshop or just sat in my living room - The problem being that in the bookshop I don't have time to read the books, and in the living room, I tend to stare glassy eyed at crime documentaries or Twitter.


I need to read all the books.


I'm also supposed to be a writer. If these were still the days where you used to have to put your profession on your passport, that's what it would say. This writing tends to suffer the same way the reading does. “What's that? Oh, “replace a song lyric with a vegetable” is trending on Twitter? Phew, I don't need to work on that article this afternoon.” And so on.


So, looking at my shelves, I decide – Susan Hill style* – to try and cut down on the distractions of day to day life, and to wade in and read all the books. And why not write about it at the same time? People want to know about books right? No? Do people want to know about me? No? Okay, yes, it's self indulgent, but I need to read more and I need to write more. People can read it if they want to, and if they don't, then at least I'm doing more of the things I need to do more of. Like ending a sentence with a preposition.





*Check out “Howards End is on the Landing”, a lovely cosy look at life in the Hill household as Susan reacquaints herself with her library. This personal task I've set myself isn't set over a specific time frame like her, and I'm not going to necessarily re-read books I've already read (re-reading the complete Agatha Christie, for example, would be a blog in itself!), but it inspires a sense of “I should really do that” in me.