To complete a trilogy of reviews, these are the books I have read since retiring.
"A Long Way Down" by Nick Hornby is an irresistible book. Full of contemporary language, written by four very different "friends". "The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger is equally enthralling. I didn't want it to stop.
It took a long time to finish Alan Bennett's "Untold Stories", but his writing is always captivating. And I have already written about "Margrave of the Marshes".
I had to call it a day with "The Night Watch" by Sarah Waters, but I'm glad I did as having started "We need to talk about Kevin" by Lionel Shriver had got me hooked.
After our visit to Canterbury, I have just read "Murder in the Cathedral" by T S Eliot. It was one of the plays we did for "A"Level at school, but I didnt remember it at all. Mainly written in verse, there are some great passages. The four tempters give Thomas a way out before ending together with this speeech:
"Man's Life is a cheat and a disappointment;
All things are unreal,
Unreal or disappointing:
The Catherine wheel, the pantomime cat,
The prizes given at the children's party,
The prize awarded for the English Eassay,
The scholar's degree, the statesman's decoration,
All things become less real. man passes
From unreality to unreality.
This man (Thomas Becket) is obstinate, blind, intent
On self-destruction,
Passing from deception to deception,
From grandeur to grandeur to final illusion,
Lost in the wonder of his own greatness,
Enemy of society, enemy of himself."
And the end where the four knights go to the front of the stage to address the audience and explain their actions. It is just like a business presentation without powerpoint. Wonderful, but it was all wasted on me at eighteen.
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