This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

 

This book was much more like a memoir than stories of non-fiction that I had thought it would be. Most are quite moving as the author reveals intimate detail about her life. Some very personal that I found disturbing. Here are some notes I made along the way on the best of the twenty two stories.

HOW TO READ A CHRISTMAS STORY

The very first words in the book are "I have never like Christmas.". Her stepfather "had the great misfortune to be born on Christmas Day". As someone with the same birthday, I can sympathise. Birthday and Christmas on the same day is all too much. 

THE GETAWAY CAR

This story is all about being a writer, not about writing. Starting with college, all the people who inspired her, and a residency at the Fine Arts Work Centre in Provincetown Massachusetts. (Somewhere I had actually been). A secluded spot in winter to write that novel that had been in her head for a year. She gives one piece of advice: "Even if you are writing a book that jumps around in time, has ten points of view and is deep in flashbacks, do your best to write it in the order it will be read". And ending with "Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything else in the world".

THE SACRAMENT OF DIVORCE

Not for the faint hearted. "There was something liberating about failure and humiliation".

THE BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE

I defy anyone who reads this story not to become emotional as Ann, at 30, suddenly becomes entranced by opera. She describes how she spent a fortune on travelling from Nashville to other cities to see an opera wherever she could find it. That is until they are shown live in her local cinema where she has that "best seat in the house".

MY ROAD TO HELL WAS PAVED

A short story about hiring a Winnebago and going travelling with her husband Karl.

THE WALL

Ann's father was in the LA Police Department for 32 years. While Ann is at college, he wants her to try out for Police Academy. She agrees as it would be something she could experience and write about. He father does not know this. The detail about all the tests is not so interesting, or the interviews. Some are awful, but she somehow gets 100% for the oral tests and that gets her through. 

FACT V FICTION

This is the Convocation Address of 2005 at Miami University. All about her huge friendship with Lucy and about their separate paths in writing.

MY LIFE IN SALES

Actually all about book tours. From visiting bookshops for her first novel when hardly a sole turned up to hear her. "I could still fly halfway across the country to a room full of empty chairs. Who knew I was scheduled to read in Chicago on the night of an NBA play-off game". To her successful fifth and crowds in hundreds. "We are a country obsessed with celebrity, and trying to make an author into a small scale Lindsey Lohan does nothing but encourage what is already a bad cultural habit". But the last page says it all.

THE LOVE BETWEEN TWO WOMEN

When Ann goes to Clemson University to talk about "Truth and Beauty", her book about her friendship with Lucy, it's Ken Wingate who leads a malicious theological backlash before her arrival.

THE RIGHT TO READ

Clemson again and Ann's address to the Freshman Convocation of 2006. A truly wonderful speech includes references to "The Great Gatsby" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude".

DO NOT DISTURB

Ann finds she is torn between all her friends who take up so much of her time, and the necessity for some peace and quiet as she is the guest editor for "this year's American Short Stories" for which she has to read and review . Lots of them. So off to the swanky Hotel Bel-Air in LA.  I lovely piece. 

INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2006

Only a short extract from what is a separate book. This is about short story writing and ends before we get any reviews.

LOVE SUSTAINED

A nice story about her grandmother and how it was only into her nineties did she gradually deteriorate.

THE BOOKSTORE STRIKES BACK

The title could have been "Ann and Karen open a book shop". How it all happened makes for a lovely story.

THIS IS THE STORY OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE

This piece gives the book it's title. Ann starts with all the marriages that end in divorce in her family going back generations. Both her father and mother are re-married. Her mother was excessively beautiful. Ann marries Dennis. Why? A failure from the start. The break up, divorce, and a relationship with a David who then runs off with someone else. Ann is determined that is the end of having one person in her life. The intimate detail of these relationships is quite extraordinary and somehow weird? Short term affairs end with Karl. Eleven years together but despite constant offers of marriage, Ann does not want to know. Separate houses until a scary event leads Ann to finally accept. Moving into Karl's house she finds "empty space, empty closets, empty rooms". She tells Karl "It's like you never actually moved in". His reply says it all: "I didn't want to do too much until you got here". No big ceremony to marry, just some paperwork and it was done. "We went out later on and bought a lawnmower". 

Oscars 2024

 

Of course the big winner of the 2024 Oscars was Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas's  Oppenheimer but it was the other UK winners that I found so amazing. And so many of them. Nadia Stacey led the team on Poor Things for Best Make Up and Hairstyling and for the same film Holly Waddington won Costume Design and gave us a superb speech. Then an Oscar for Production Design for Shona Heath and James Price also for Poor Things. (In the studio Emma Stones' English dialect coach talked about how he taught her accent, especially to say "water"). It was Jonathon Glazer who led the team making The Zone of Interest who won Best International Feature. And Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn won for Best Sound on the same film.

Otherwise I was impressed with presenters Arnold Swarzenegger and Danny de Vito but even more so when they announced the winner for Best Visual Effects. The team behind the superb Godzilla Minus One were ecstatic.  But the highlight of the ceremony came when the lights went down to pink. And we all knew what was coming next. Ryan Gosling (also all in pink) surprised Margot Robbie, who was sitting in front of him in the audience, when he started singing "I'm Just Ken". And here was British-American composer Mark Ronson playing alongside. The male cast of the film join Ken on stage for a performance far better than that in the movie. Especially when Ken climbs down off the stage to sing with Greta Gerwig, Margot and America Ferrera. It deserved the standing ovation.

When I went to see American Fiction at the Rex, Berkhamsted (post 15th March), that made the ninth film I had seen of the ten nominated for the best film Oscar. The only one missing was Killers of the Flower Moon whose length and subject matter were why. Here are the other nine that I have ranked in order of my preference and the dates of my reviews on this blog:

Oppenheimer  4th and 24th August 2023

The Holdovers  3rd February 2024

American Fiction  15th March 2024

Anatomy of a Fall  16th November 2023

Poor Things  19th January 2024

Past Lives  27th September 2023

The Zone of Interest  21st February 2024

Maestro  6th February 2024

Barbie  7th September 2023

In Between the Sheets, Aiding and Abetting and Bilgewater

 

Seven short stories of around twenty "odd" pages. All quite unsettling, surreal, strange and occasionally pretentious. Having read all of the author's books ( I skipped through the separately published short story "The Cockroach" which may in fact have been a precursor to one of these stories), this was the only one to which I could not relate. It was first published in 1978, so the stories were obviously published well before then.

In "Dead As They Come", our narrator is extremely wealthy and just happens to have a birthday on Christmas Day. (Like me.) But this is how the author describes him: "my predilection is for pleasure unmitigated by the yelpings and whinings of the soul". (Typical of the prose in this book). He is obsessed with a beautiful woman he sees as he passes a shop window every day. But she is a dummy! "He could buy her, buy the shop, buy the street". Yes, some are a little sordid, some have bits of horror, some have a glum look at the future. None uplifting, just McEwan practicing his writing.

A short novel imagining some people involved with the disappearance of Lord Lucan. It's quite clever how the author manages to bring in everything known about this event, mixing it with fictional accounts of other imagined characters. The only problem is that there is just not enough of a story to warrant even this short book. There is a lot of musings about their plight both by Lucan, a colleague Walker and others.
Fortunately there are the typically wonderful quips from the writer. "He would have loved to have been a catholic, the churches were so much more cheerful than any others, so full of colour and glitter, incense and images". 

When Hildegard finishes one of her sessions with a patient : Most of the money wasted on psychoanalysis goes on time spent unravelling the lies of the patient. Your time is up!" And then talking about a boyfriend Hildegard says he "lacked duplicity whereas they (Lucan and Walker) were altogether a double proposition".  So a strange story, not one of Spark's best but still worth the read.

My last novel by Jane Gardam was her very first. I cannot believe how good it was. Helped by the fact that before it starts there is a quote from Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, one of my favourite plays: "Now - counter to the previous syllogism (I had to look it up): tricky one, follow me carefully, it may prove a comfort?". I was sold.

The book is told in the first person. Marigold Green is known as Bilgewater, a derivation from her father's name. Or Bilge for short. Except for dreamy Jack Rose who always uses her Christian name. Her father is an elderly master at an all boys school where some are boarders. He and Marigold live at the school. Unattractive she may be, Marigold studies with the boys and soon reaches the sixth form. She had surprised everyone with top grades at "O" Level.

There is much humour in Gardam's writing, there are the occasional moments where the prose seems off kilter, but I found it captivating. We have to wait until Chapter 9 a third through for the story to turn on it's head. Here is the author at full throttle. When all the masters are discussing who in the sixth form might make it to Uni, a lot would fail: "Clegg then?" ... "Worse. Hull if he's lucky". (Your reviewer even failed for Hull).

The story just gets more and more hilarious, especially those parts with nurse and general helper Paula. She is a huge comfort to Marigold. She should get her own story. Events suddenly gain momentum as a weekend away for Marigold turns into a farce. She somehow escapes until she is rescued. The father of a friend at the school is the Reverend Boakes: "We have the whole day in front of us - my dears, the whole day! Not a meeting, not a service, not a Boy Scouts jumble sale, not a marriage, a confession or Holy Unction ...... Makes up for everything a day like this."  Then towards the end, and after the Cambridge entrance exam, she has finished with school. A brilliantly written piece about all those years there .... "the pattern, the plot, the safety ..... the sureness of what to do next".

Of the dozen Jane Gardam novels (there are still some of her short stories to read) the final trilogy is completely magical. They are too familiar to read again now, but I'm looking forward to some future time when I can read them in succession.

Songs from Call the Midwife - Series 13

 

Here we are in 1969 for the thirteenth series of Call the Midwife. I'm now only using soundtracki.com as tunefind and all the others missed the second song in the first episode. The trailer for this series included the song Build Me Up Buttercup by The Foundations that made number 2 in the UK charts in 1968. It was played to death on the radio. The Christmas Special included the Andy Williams song It's the most wonderful time of the year and a hymn from The Sixteen and Harry Christophers called It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.

Episode 1

Series twelve kicked off with a number by The Kinks and so does Episode 1. This time it's the superb Days, written by Ray Davies and released in 1968. But it only reached number 12 in the UK charts and did nothing in the USA. I'm glad to say it is now recognised for the little gem it always was.

Comment te dire adieu by Francois Hardy and again released in 1968. In English it's "How to say Goodbye to you". The French version is adapted from the song "It Hurts to say Goodbye" written by Arnold Golan. Released in the UK it was a flop. Until Francois Hardy's version made it to number fourteen in the UK singles chart, and numerous versions since. It did seem very familiar.

Episodes 2 and 3

NO SONGS! What is going on?

Episode 4

Telstar by The Tornadoes. An instrumental from 1962 composed by Joe Meek. It reached number one in the UK charts.

Episode 5

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini by Bryan Hyland. Released in June 1960, this novelty song was written by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss. Again, it reached number one in the UK.

Episode 6

No songs. I'm glad I gave up watching a couple of years ago. In the early series you could be guaranteed half a dozen songs on each episode.

Episode 7

No songs. Again.

Episode 8

No songs. Although there is one instrumental track. The Adventure of Life by Maurizio Malagnini and Peter Salem. 

So only three songs for the entire series. Not including two instrumentals. Gone are the days when there were four or even five songs in each episode. Glad we gave up watching years ago.

Sight and Sound Magazine - March 2024

 

The March Edition of Sight and Sound included three main articles that were all terrific. The first, obviously, was a huge sixteen page spread about Christopher Nolan. A long interview with James Bell that not only included a discussion about Oppenheimer (a lot about IMAX and visual, not special, effects) but also Nolan talking a lot about his influences. He also mentions designer Ruth de Jong. Nolan says "on every set we walked on to, or any location, every place was dressed perfectly. There are huge photos from some of his movies.

Then six pages about Andrew Haig's All of us Strangers and the music including the final track: Frankie Goes To Hollywood's  The Power of Love. Then five on Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest. The Editorial asked "what is needle drop", and to answer we get a selection of tracks from some movies. But none like my far better list in my post of 9th February 2023.  There was also that article about Alice Guy-Blache for which I have a separate post.

There is an obituary of director Norman Jewison who died at age 97 that included some of his films. This month it was Steve McQueen who picked his favourite films that included Once Upon a Time in America and La Regle de Jour.  The "Endings" feature is about the BFI's newly restored The Wages of Fear from 1953. But I will have to wait for this £20 DVD to go second hand.

Forsythia spectabilis variegated

 

Our Forsythia has never had the dense large flowers you see in other gardens. It seems to be a strange variety. My post in March 2017 showed it's pathetic performance over the years. 

But if I remember rightly, the main trunk that had been there over twenty years died, but left three new shrubs in it's place. These seem to be much happier and are more upright than their predecessor. The view at the top shows it in a really nice setting.

This was how it looked in January before flowering.

Then in the middle of February.

And now it has never looked so good.

Now we are into March and I'm wondering how long it will flower.

Here it is next to the Photinia Red Robbin.

By the end of the third week in March the flowers are replaced by leaves.

The Cold War and Cinema on Sky Arts - Part 2 - Cuba and a New Dawn

The same presenters from Episode 1 start this episode with a discussion about British spy films. A little about Ian Fleming before we see clips from the second of the  James Bond movies. From Russia With Love came in 1963. The Russian threat of the time is disguised, according to John Aizlewood,  by only references to SMERSH and SPECTRE. It's Simon Heffer who describes Bond and Sean Connery, but this is nothing to do with the Cold War. In 1965 came Michael Caine's Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File from the book by Len Deighton. I laughed at the deadpan actor we see. These are my late teens early twenties so all very familiar. Two more Harry Palmer films came next. 

When Simon talks about "the complexity and duplicity" of the Cold War, he refers to both sides fearing the science and technology of the other. That was probably the summation of this whole series. In 2011 came the film adaptation of John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. This was already a brilliant TV series three decades previously starring Alec Guinness as Smiley and a fabulous cast. Gary Oldman took the part in the film and was equally good. We were told how well Le Carre disguised the traitor in the book and how this was realised in the film.

Cuba

After the long introduction, we are told about Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution from 1953 to 1959. Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana was an obvious choice to start this section. We see Alec Guiness and Noel Coward in the 1959 film, almost a light hearted version? We are then on to the Cuban missile crisis and the "world wide paranoia". We see some real life footage of JFK addressing Congress, before we see clips of  1993's Matinee that was new to me. Ian Nathan liked how it showed the panic in the country. We also see extracts from Thirteen Days from 2000 whose direction by Roger Donaldson impressed Derek Malcolm along with an all star cast.

The Atomic Age

After some documentary footage of an H Bomb test, The threat of nuclear destruction was all too real. On the Beach from 1969 was, according to Ian Nathan, "ahead of it's time" in it's portrayal of nuclear devastation. The clip we see does not have a happy ending for the survivors of a submarine crew. In 1964 came the blockbuster Seven Days in May". A disarmament treaty that is under discussion is hijacked by Burt Lancaster's coup-de-tat. 1964's Fail Safe with Henry Fonda is one film I want to check out. But we have all been waiting for Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove again from 1964 that Derek Malcolm said "towers above them all". One of my favourite movies. Peter Sellers telling the Russian leader "something going wrong with the Bomb. The Bomb, Dimitri. The Hydrogen Bomb". The full clip on YouTube. The film is called a horrific satire with that terrible farcical ending.

The Space Race

Not sure if this was part of the Cold War, but no denying the competition between the USA and Russia. The Right Stuff from 1983 describes it well. Sometimes stupidly "who wins (the space race) controls the world". Then clips from the film JFK. Not sure why this is relevant to this episode? But Derek Malcolm talks about Oliver Stones "controversial film". I suppose the producers wanted us to see something of this important film.