Talking to the Dead, A Girl is a Half Formed Thing and High Fidelity

After enjoying Helen Dunmore's "A Spell of Winter" and four of her previous books, I searched for another of her novels and found "Talking to the Dead". For such a short book, I found the first half a bit of a struggle. Of course the writing is as good as ever, but there was not much of a story. But things change after halfway, and I sped through the remaining pages in a couple of days.

The story is situated in the Sussex countryside in a long, long very hot summer. It reminded me of the last six weeks, only saved by the fact is was September and not July. The characters, as ever, are very well drawn. The narrator, Nina, is not wholly sympathetic, although I felt we could have done with more of her back story as an adult and not just as a child. But Dunmore wants to concentrate on her relationship with her sister both when they were young and in the present at Isabel's cottage. Here there was always a sense of impending disaster, given that family tragedy seems to want to be repeated.

Started. Again. Stars how many? Head aches, cannot decide. Have another sip. That tea is hot. Start again.

It's no wonder that Eimear McBride's first novel A Girl is a Half Formed Thing was turned down by every publisher for nearly a decade, and was only eventually picked up by a small independent concern in Norwich. The book is an experiment in what one reviewer called "a new form of prose which deploys a spartan lexicon in fragmentary vernacular syncopations to represent the form of thought at the point before it becomes articulate speech". (See above). This should have been explained on the cover instead of the tame warning about being for an adventuress reader.

It does take some getting into. In fact I found the best way to read it was to almost say the words out loud. It is the closest thing to poetry (which, by the way, I mainly struggle to comprehend) with all the concentration that this entails. I felt it was like a cacophony of words, the odd half formed sentence thrown in to move the story on. And this is not a pleasant story. It is the rant of an Irish girl suffering from the distress of an older brother with a brain tumour, and an overbearing and abusive mother. We don't get the names of the characters. I (the girl), you (her brother), she (mother) uncle, aunt etc.

Her fall into degrading relationships is partly her own making, this is a girl you would want to avoid at all costs. When she goes away to college, I hoped that she would find some kind of redemption. No such luck. So why did I decide to read it? It has won great acclaim, awards and universal positive critical reviews. Did I enjoy it? Not really. Will I forget it? Never.

Nick Hornby is one of my favourite authors so I have no idea why I have never read his first novel having read the other five (not including his latest that is not yet out in paperback). "High Fidelity" feels a lot more laddish than his later books. But it still an excellent peep into the life and loves of a single thirty five year old. It is witty and sharp as ever and the author pulls no punches in sending up Rob our narrator. 

This is sometimes an uncomfortable read for us men who still make lists as if they were still sixteen. This novel may eventually be held up as one of the best to describe the early nineties when there were still shops where you could buy vinyl records. Rob owns the shop and his relationship with his two employees Barry and Dick is hilarious but sad. And when it comes to his girlfriends, Rob is in a different league. We first think "I should be so lucky" but then after a pause, "Maybe not". 

I liked the ending which leaves us dreaming that everyone will be fine, even maybe Barry. 

A Career in Construction - Part 18

It's been a while since Part 17, but now the nights are drawing in, it's time to get back to this memoir. Where was I? John Marshall had just replaced Tony Whale to become boss number six on 2nd June 1982. There was one contract that was to dominate the affairs of the Division over the next year and that was the Holiday Inn, Croydon.

One of the ways we must have undercut all the other contractors who tendered for this contract was to omit the use of a tower crane. I believe our budget relied on the odd visit of a mobile crane. As it turned out, we needed a permanent tower crane and this put an immediate strain on our costs. The problems on site described in Part 17 continued to grow, not helped by the client's two resident Clerk of Works whose job seemed to be to find fault with everything we did. The delay to the contract got worse. In the end it became impossible to gain Practical Completion. The COW's were making out there were too many faults with the building and it eventually all went legal. The company lost a fortune.

If I remember rightly, Mike Ellis had been promoted to Divisional Contracts Manager by Tony Whale and in the early months of John Marshall's regime, the three of us seemed to be in harmony in running the Division. We had won more contracts and these were mainly successful. But my times of ups and downs were not over. John Marshall decided he needed a more experienced surveyor at the top. In January 1983 he brought in Joe Scroxton, an ex president of The Institute of Quantity Surveyors. He was in his late fifties and seemed out of place from the start. We never  knew what he did. He didn't really come out of his office and I continued in my role as before.

So it was a shock when on the 21st October we learnt that John Marshall was leaving to join Mowlem to run their Management Contracting Division ( and later to become their Managing Director). Roger Coombes, a Civil Engineer from one of the company's other regions, took over on 31st October and became boss number seven. John was to be around for at least another month. So he was around when the next big event occurred.

At the end of November, the company decided that it needed to cut costs, particularly in overheads. The directors convened a meeting to decide which members of staff would be made redundant. Apparently when it came to decide between Joe Scroxton and me, it was put to a vote. I heard that John Marshall voted to keep his pal Joe, but was outvoted by among others a director called Alan Burt who I had known from my early days with the company. So Joe was gone and I was to form a great working relationship with Roger Coombes. But predictably this was not to last.

It was only four months later, the beginning of April 1984 that an even bigger reorganisation took place. Gone were the Divisions of Henry Boot Building. The Civil Engineering Divison was amalgamated with the Building division and then split north and south. So Henry Boot Southern Division had an automatic head with Roger Coombes (a Civil Engineer) but two ex Divisonal Quantity Surveyors. The one in charge of all Civils (Ian Simpson) was based in the south and was chosen as the new Southern Divisional QS. I think I was relegated to Managing Surveyor. But as ever, my day to day role didn't change, except I reported to Ian and not Roger.

I can remember it was me who joined Roger on the train to Devon to look at a job at St Mellion Golf Club in Devon who wanted some new lodges built. And I still headed the surveying team at the first site meeting on the huge new shopping complex in Ipswich. But I have only vague recollections of the live contracts at that time: Battersea, Oasis Baths, St Katherine's Dock, Northampton, Thames Water at Sunbury, Winfield House? Notting Hill, IBM, Andover?, Caxton Street, Camberley. I was more involved with Final Accounts (including all the three phases of White City that were very successful - I even found a congratulatory memo from the managing Director) and the Croydon claim, where the forecast loss more than wiped out all the profits from all the other contracts).

But things were never the same. Mike Ellis had left some time ago so when he invited me to join his new company, I had no hesitation in saying yes. I had thoroughly enjoyed my seven years back at Henry Boot despite all the ups and downs. In some ways they were the best years of my working life, particularly in terms of the contracts we undertook. I was very lucky to have joined a fledgling organisation and been given the opportunity to grow my career with an expanding Division.  I did have seven bosses in seven years, but this gave me an insight into different styles of management.

But it was time to find pastures new. I handed over the reins to my deputy, Derek Haynes and said goodbye to the surveying team that I had built at a lovely leaving do on 31st October 1984. The very next day I joined Farrans and that is another story.

The Angry Brigade at The Oxford Playhouse

A brand new play that only opened at The Theatre Royal, Plymouth (venue for The Pirates of Penzance that we saw all those years ago) in September. The Angry Brigade is by James Graham who came to prominence with his play This House that was a huge success at The National Theatre.

The Angry Brigade was responsible for a number of bombings (only one slight injury) in the 1970's and the play is based on the true story of four of their number who were caught and jailed for their part in this anarchy. The first half called "The Branch" is located at the Scotland Yard headquarters of the group tracking down the Brigade. The second half is in the squat where the four members plot their attacks, or rather just talk and talk about why they are doing it.

In fact the second half seems more coherent and entertaining than the first. The police are purposefully shown as painfully stuck with the rigid workings of their organisation. The awkward staccato action and rapid scene changes make rather uncomfortable viewing. Whereas the second act flows with the interaction and sometimes argumentative dialogue between the characters.

All the parts are played by just four actors. That was fine for the four police officers, but when they interview other characters, we could have done with different people. Again, that doesn't matter in the second act as we only see the four and who soon transform themselves into their new personas. Here they really come into their own and the acting is first class. It was good to see Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films) doing well in a grown up role.

The direction by James Grieve (Artistic Director of production company Paines Plough) is OK. You can see how he tries to show how different the two acts are theatrically, but it cannot stop this being a little too contrived.

The play itself has received excellent critical reviews so it was a shame I was only one of a light sprinkling of members of the audience, I guess the theatre was only a quarter full. It deserved better.

The Big Screen - The Story Of The Movies And What They Did to Us by David Thomson

A very welcome Christmas present that I have been steadily been working my way through. It is a huge analysis of the history of film and I cannot pretend I read every page. Some of the foreign studies are just too much even for a film buff like me. However at the start of PART I: THE SHINING LIGHT AND THE HUDDLED MASSES there are some very interesting passages about early movies. These included silent films like The Birth of a Nation" directed in 1915 by David Wark Griffith, the 1929 Pandora's Box directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and starring Louise Brooks. The part about Hollywood in the 30's is superb.

As I said, the chapters about foreign films didn't interest me that much, although the passages about French directors from the Lumiere brothers Louis and Auguste, through Jean Renoir (La Regle de Jeu) and Luis Bunuel (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) were quite important. But I was totally engrossed by the history of early British film. From Michael Powell to Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean.

When we get to PART II: SUNSET AND CHANGE, I began to lose interest. A somewhat intellectual thesis on post war American film and the advent of television was not what I was looking for.

But PART III's FILM STUDIES was exceptional. We are in the early sixties and the movies that still resonant with me today. The combination of Joseph Losey, Harold Pinter and Dirk Bogarde made The Servant so superior, followed closely by Victim, Accident, and The Night Porter. The book enthuses about a string of British classics: Look Back In Anger, The Entertainer, A Taste Of Honey, The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner, Tom Jones, A Kind Of Loving, Billy Liar, Darling, This Sporting Life, Saturday Night And Sunday Morning and Blow Up. There is a great piece about The Godfather. Thomson describes this as "the outstanding modern American film". But Francis Ford Coppola only won an Oscar for Part II. 

This book is probably the first in depth analysis of the history of the movies that I have read. So it is impossible to compare it with any others. David Thomson has done an extraordinary job with such a huge subject. I guess it will now be a standard text for many school or university courses about film. For me, it was a book to dip into over a few months. In future it will be an invaluable reference when I want to find a particular movie. So it will never be far away.

The Riot Club, A Walk Among The Tombstones and Maps To The Stars

After a good opening, The Riot Club descended into something that would have been far better in the theatre. The play on which the movie is based (Posh) is entirely set in a pub's dining room, and when the film's action moves here, it seems far too claustrophobic for the big screen. Laura Wade has adapted her play for the movie and it seems a little too amateurish for my taste. Again, director Lone Scherfig is limited by the location. After her terrific work in An Education  and One Day, I'm not sure what she could have done better given the script and setting. The same can be said for the acting. However, the film does stir the emotions, if only to hate the nastiness of the story.

I was far more at ease with A Walk Among The Tombstones. A vehicle for Liam Neeson's new persona as an action hero, this time as unlicensed private detective, Screenwriter Scott Frank (a long list of creditable movies to his name) has adapted a Lawrence Block novel and also taken on the directing role. Shot wholly on location in late 1990's Brooklyn, the plot involves murder and kidnap. The violence is used sparingly although the plot is a little predictable. But the location direction and Neeson's presence made this a worthwhile outing.

I hadn't seen a David Cronenberg movie since 2007's Eastern Promises. Maps To The Stars is a very different movie. Apparently, he and screenwriter Bruce Wagner had been developing this original satirical story of Hollywood celebrities for many years. At first this seems to be a very wordy and brutal exploration of LA stardom. It took some getting into. But gradually the Cronenberg we know and love takes over. He ramps up the hallucinatory sideshow and lets it do it's worst. The cast is just fantastic, headed by an Oscar worthy performance from Julianne Moore. But almost as good are the Weiss family. John Cusack in his best performance for years, wife Olivia Williams on the edge and son Evan Bird as the awful child star Benje. And to cap things off, Mia Wasikowska is brilliant as the damaged Agatha.

Tring Book Club - State of Wonder and Offshore

Having really liked Ann Patchett's prizewinning "Bel Canto" a few years ago, I had no hesitation in recommending "State of Wonder" for book club, even though it's location in the Amazon jungle seemed unpromising. What a great story it turned out to be. The first part is pretty good as Dr Marina Singh travels to Brazil to find out what happened to her dead colleague Anders Eckman. From the moment she meets the formidable Dr Annick Swenson in Manaus and accompanies her back to the labs in the jungle, we are in for a treat.

The book does slightly falter in the middle, but very soon things happen really fast. The best feature of the book for me was the dialogue between the two women. Their relationship changes over the time Marina spends with Dr Swenson but their exchanges are some of the best I have read for some time. In the background is a question about morality in science when drug companies become involved. The actual development of a drug in this case is very unusual and almost surreal. But that does not detract from what is a wonderful novel with a superb ending.

For some reason, possibly because I read a recommendation, I made a note to look out for a Penelope Fitzgerald novel called "The Bookshop". However, I then found she won the Booker Prize in 1979 for "offshore" and thought it might be an idea for our Book Club. It is not a long novel, only 181 spaced out pages. But it is a little gem. All the characters who inhabit the houseboats on Battersea Reach are splendid creations. I particularly like Nenna and her two children, Martha who is a mature twelve and Tilda a grown up six year old. The latter comes out with some great lines. She sits a visitor down at the table, makes him a cup of coffee, slams down the mug and tells him "Get outside of that". Brilliant.

The writing somehow seems quaint. The story is set around 1961/2, although we have to guess the date. So although the prose is quite idiosyncratic, there are some very funny passages as well as some that are quite dark. Even after only 30 pages, when a passing Dutch barge shouts across for a dingy, we already know there is none without being told. The book certainly took me back to my youth. The Christmas of 1961 I was nearly seventeen and in the December of the first year sixth we could help deliver the Christmas post for a small wage. So the novel's description of coffee bars, frothy coffee and a jukebox reminded me of it's warmth after a cold morning delivering Christmas cards. But that was not the only reason I loved this book. It was just a great read. A shame it was over too soon.

Lanhydrock Parkrun

The reason why we packed on the last night of our holiday was because we were aiming to do the Lanhydrock Parkrun on the Saturday morning at 9am. So we had to be up early, load the car and be away before 8am for the drive over to the other side of Bodmin.

We found the venue fine, in fact quite a bit earlier than most of the runners. We had heard that it was quite a challenging one lap course. What I did not expect was that there was hardly anywhere level. So it was down all the way for the first half, and up all the way back.

 But it was very pretty through the wooded trails.

My time was five minutes longer for the 5K than that for the flat Aylesbury course. And I don't run hills in training, so this was really hard. But I challenged myself not to stop and just jogged slowly up the steep bits. I hope it has done me good. Alison loved the course so much (she was only just behind me at the finish) and said she would do this every week if she could. I had to disagree. Once was enough.

Luckily, next to the car park is a brand new cafe etc so we were able to change and have tea and cake before setting off on our journey home. Thanks go to Alison who did most of the driving. At least the venue was almost on the route back.