Eric - Shaun Tan

Firstly, sorry it's been such a long time between posts! We have lots of reasons but not really any excuses. We haven't stopped reading though so prepare for us to make it up to you with millions, nay BILLIONS, of book reviews starting from this exact moment.

Secondly, Shaun Tan is a life hero of mine. His books are just magical. The English department doesn't know it yet but my thesis is going to have a whole chapter on him in it. Eric is his latest, gorgeous, and - I say this without irony - heartwarming creation. The book is as tiny as it's titular character, but Tan is always concerned with minutia, of both the un/observable world and of everyday extraordinary things.

On his website (it's really pretty, you should visit) Tan has explained the inspirations behind Eric. You can see them here if you like :) Eric is the story of a foreign exchange student that comes to visit and then prefers to sleep in a cupboard than the spare room. It's quiet, and beautiful, and sad. It's about misunderstandings, even amongst the best of intentions. It's also about all the things we share comfort spaces with, use and take for granted, but don't really look at until someone shows you a new way to see.

****/***** (Four out of Five stars)

The Breezes - Joseph O'Neill

Mum lent me The Breezes by Joseph O'Neill (of Netherland fame) but I cannot now remember if she liked it or not. My Mum has the most impeccable taste of anyone I know, far more impeccable than any of my own senses. In fact we have exactly the same sensibilities in almost everything - we mesh on our  appreciation of Revolutionary Road - it's just that I like lots of extra stuff as well and sometimes love most the stuff Mum hates - for example Wet and Wild viking romances. I'm just sooooooooooo postmodern. Anyhoo, I'm fabricating a memory of her saying she liked The Breezes because it's pretty likely, knowing her preferences for good modernists, the Irish, some social satire, some family drama, and plenty of black humour.

The novel looks at the absurd and occasionally tragic occurrences surrounding the Breeze family - focusing mainly on the twenty-something year old son and his lazy struggle to not become like his shambling, pitiable father. The sister and her deadbeat boyfriend also star in variously volatile episodes. 

It's a quiet book - no explosions, speeches or even great revelations - it just examines the emotional, political and moral minutiae of living in families. The most interesting moments of the novel, as I saw them anyway, were the explorations of ambition and purpose - the Breeze family are in so many ways accidental revolutionaries in their total failure to engage with the rhetoric and signs of 'success', 'achievement' or 'worth' in any socially sanctioned way. If this much weren't already endearing, O'Neill's writing is - like Alan Rickman reading a shopping list on the radio. It's not the  most memorable book I'll ever read, but it's appealing in many ways and it certainly whet my appetite for more of his books, more of his take on life.

***^/***** (3.5 / 5 stars)

The Pedant in the Kitchen - Julian Barnes

I have epic love for Julian Barnes, his writing hits all the right notes with me. He's poetical and dry and witty and really literary and clever yet nothing at all resembling a butthead. Read my earlier review of his amazing book Arthur & George, then go read Arthur & George. This is the first non-fiction book I've reviewed here and indeed read in years (if we don't count boring uni stuff - and let's not). But I was happy to pick this up and put the three other books I was reading down because a) it's Barnes and he's my literary version of Bear Grylls - I'm strangely but completely addicted; b) it was two bucks at Co-op and I would have been happy to pay up to $5 for a Barnes with the crazy warp and bent cover I was awarded as a bonus; and c) it's a book about cooking, and I like cooking.

The title is pretty intriguing too - pedants in kitchens is something I know everyone is familiar with but I wasn't sure how on earth you'd write a book about it. And I was pretty darn pleased with the results of my investigation. Barnes was as sparkly and delightful as usual in his writing and since he turned out to be The Pedant in the Kitchen I was pleased to see some glimpses of his life and forge an understanding of his personality a bit better through his relationship with food and cooking. It's probably a maxi somewhere but I bet you can tell a whole lot about people by looking at their attitude about cooking, in much the same way as you can surmise whether someone is good or evil depending on if they prefer cats or dogs, Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, Jacob or Edward.


Barnes is the titular Pedant which means he is a perfectionist in the kitchen and believes in the truth claims made by cookery books and follows recipes down to the last letter, gram and degree. So The Pedant in the Kitchen is really the story of Barnes the writer, reader and amateur cook, reading and reviewing the cook books and recipes that have influenced or inspired him. So we find he loves Jane Grigson, becomes frustrated with Nigel Slater and finds comfort in the old-fashioned charms of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. Other than recipes that just don't work because household kitchens aren't anything like those in restaurants, what Barnes the Pedant is actually fighting against is the vocabulary of cooking. He calls for a more accurate dialect that can actually indicate what a 'pinch', a 'heap' a 'slug' and  a 'handful' actually equate to in terms of chilli, salt or blueberries.


Though I don't agree that a lot of reform is needed - actually I don't think any is needed, I'm the exact opposite of Barnes in the kitchen, being physically, mentally and emotionally unable to follow a recipe exactly - I really liked that Barnes' book about cooking, a non-fiction memoir sort of book about cooking, showed all the same preoccupations as his fiction. The playfulness masking quite an ingrained struggle for truth is here. A sort of metaphysical  game of hide and seek with the value of words. It's cool and I'm not even sure he knew he was doing it in The Pedant in the Kitchen. If he didn't it makes it even cooler. That, and that there's no mention of Nigella Lawson - I don't know if this book was too early to fall under the siren's call of her cooking shows / books / life or if Barnes just never bothered with her. I guess we won't until I read it in his memoir. My favourite part of the whole thing was actually the dedication- 'To She For Whom The Pedant Cooks' which became 'She For Whom' throughout the book where Barnes was The Pedant. That's pretty nice don't you think?

***^/***** (3.5 stars for an easy as pie, light and fluffy read)

The Love Letters of John Keats - Edited by OE Madden

What a fox right?

I'm holding out for one of the beautiful new editions of Keat's letters to Fanny Brawne for myself, but the one I borrowed from the library is lovely enough for now, even without the pretty movie tie-in cover. Keats would understand the starving artist thing I'm going through even if you lot don't.

Like trillions, the fact of love letters between John Keats and Fanny Brawne exploded to my attention through Jane Campion's beautiful film Bright Star. I weep like crazy when I first watched it, then watched it again and cried even more. I've always liked Keats, he's quite the Romanitc Emo laddie and I adore the fact that he kicks Wordsworth's butt in terms of literary output by 25 (the age when Keats dies and before Wordsworth writes a thing) and general poetical awesomeness. I really dislike Wordsworth. But Bright Star brought Fanny Brawne to life too - and it's their story that I needed to pursue in The Love Letters of John Keats.

I always find it strange reading letters, or texts like diaries or journals which were never intended to be published. And these love letters from Keats to Fanny are just so private I felt like a literary spy. They were exquisite, playful, desperate, loving and occasionally cruel. Keats in love was also in torment. He wanted Fanny but he didn't want to want her and the letters are sort of a battleground where these battling forces play out. It's epic!

In the above letter he starts: "My dearest Girl, / I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more concentrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my Mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy - the fact is I cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it pleases chance to let me live with you for good."

A bit later: "If I cannot live with you I will live alone. I do not think my health will improve much while I am separated from you. For all this I am averse to seeing you - I cannot bear flashes of light and return into my glooms again. "

And signs off - "I wish you could infuse a little confidence in human nature into my heart. I cannot muster any - the world is too brutal for me - I am glad there is such a thing as the grave - I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there... I wish I was either in your arms full of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me. / God bless you, / J.K"

Poor doomed Keats, he had so many issues. And I love that he just lays them all out there on the table in his letters to Fanny. What I really really wanted was to read Fanny's replies. It's awful they've been lost to history because she is such an enigmatic figure in all this. Snippets can be gleaned about her from Keats' letters, questions and responses to her questions and it's easy to surmise that she'd have to be made of pretty feisty stuff to keep Keats' intensity under wraps and to inspire such ardor in him in the first place, but it would be so great to hear her voice in their love story. That's what was so special about Bright Star, viewers get to see two people in love vs the world, not just the tragedy of the young poet genius.

****/***** (Four out of Five stars) (Because the edition wasn't very nice, not because the letters weren't.)

Vampire Beach: Bloodlust - Alex Duval

So... vampires. We haven't ventured with this blog into those dark seductive kingdoms yet but all periods of calm must be shattered eventually by a cacophany of screaming fangirls over all the dreamy bloodsuckers. I'm not going to lie, I generally lose my mind and most of my verbal capacity over vampire stories. They're like a drug to me and I scream with the most obnoxious girl tweens out there. I own t-shirts, a life sized cardboard cutout, every dvd and the sheet music realted to various different vampire populated books and shows and several sagas would count amongst my most loved/obsessed over tales OF ALL TIME. The Vampire Beach series will never ever count amoungst them. Bloodlust is the first in the series but since I'll never read any of the rest on purpose I feel I can safely make some huge sweeping generalisations about the whole lot.



I photographed it here sitting on a book of Keat's letters to Fanny Brawne so it wouldn't be so frightening for you all. The fact that Vampire Beach: Bloodlust is 'Young Adult' fiction meant that I didn't and couldn't expect the same sort of vampires-as-sex-gods rauchiness that brilliant Paranormal Romance series like the Sookie Stackhouse / Southern Vampire Mysteries / True Blood books and spin off tv show could play with. BUT then I of course I realised two true things: the sexiness isn't even the most important or interesting thing about vampire stories AND that just because a book is toned down for a younger audience, doesn't mean it has to be shit. In fact the Vampire Academy series and (yes I'm finally gonna say it) Twilight books were both written for the same crowd and both managed to be completely AWESOME.

Thinking about it, the biggest and most obvious problem with Vampire Beach was that it was boring. It wasn't compellingly written, the characters were uninteresting and vapid. And most importanly it didn't capitalise on the amazing figure/symbol of the vampire AT ALL. No one even said the word vampire until page 129 and by then it only had 40ish pages to go. Plus even around the utterance of the magical word - NOTHING HAPPENED. If I summarised the plot of the book right now: Boy moves to beach, falls in love with girl who has boyfriend, she's a vampire, someone dies, this doesn't bother anyone much. LAME and I wouldn't even be missing anything out from the narrative. Maybe Duval was trying to pad out a much bigger and grander storyline? I hope so. I also hope he won't lose all his readers before something worthwhile happens but I think it's especially hard to keep people interested in bad vampire stories. If you like vampires you'll be spoiled for choice of books / movies / tv shows in any age bracket.

Just a short, harsh review - like a bandaid. Now we can all move on with our lives. Sorry Alex Duval - maybe try werewolves next time??? It's much harder to write a nothing book about them - no excepts them to be anything other than boring :)

At least it didn't take long to read: *^/***** (1.5 from 5 stars)

Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates

This book damned near broke my heart. It's amazing.



I saw the film, it was great. Kate and Leo Dio were wonderful and I really do appreciate the fact that their being reunited on screen could finally halt the terrible rumours that They Don't Like Each Other, and Hated Each Other While Filming Titanic - because their combined gloriousness in the film of this book is undeniable. Cheers guys.




But Richard Yates' original novel from 1961 is on a whole other level. At this stage I'll confess that I did read this book because it was set for the uni course I'm tutoring in. And if any of my students ever read this and use my blatant expressions of love for Revolutionary Road to write essays I'll agree with, I say good on ya and just remember to cite this blog correctly :)

I hate to say that I think Revolutionary Road was ahead of it's time, but it was impossible to shake that feeling whilst reading it. We're now used to existential critiques of Modern Suburban Living in the 50s and movies/ tv/ books about the terrible alienating plight of the Housewife but Yates' novel is so insightful and clear and tragic it really is amazing to think it was only published in 61, before it got groovy with capital F feminism and before postmodernity made everyone pop culture nihilists. The 50s and early 60s in most art and literature were still the celebration of the lone-wolf white guys but Yates, with an wonderfully gentle and non-judgemental touch turns his eyes towards the looming specture of suburbia in the US and a young married couple fighting it's dehumanising influence.



Most of Revolutionary Road focuses on Frank Wheeler, with illuminating interjections from a few other characters thoughts and feelings, and tellingly it is not until the devastating conclusion of the novel that the reader is given any direct insight into April Wheeler's mind. The Wheelers are very human and are drawn so perfectly that though I went through many different types of feeling about them, practically feeling all the feelings that there are, I always felt FOR them most strongly of all. And Yates keeps his characters thoughts ambiguous and their behaviour troubling, we're supposed to have a bit of distance as readers. We're supposed to feel part of the same alienation from each other and from this occasionally disappointing world as Frank and April do.

As ever I am conscious of spoilers so I won't delve further into details of the plot. There are a few very interesting and important changes between the film and the novel so don't miss out on reading it even if you've seen the excellent version on the silver screen. You should definitely read this book, whoever you are. But I guess especially if you're one of my students. Yates is a revelation to me as an American author, he's so wry, brutal where he needs to be, and has an unfailing honest and wonderful empathetic style. I wish all stories could be told this way.

*****/***** (5 stars)

The Anthologist - Nicholson Baker

This is an extremely clever book, and for the most part it's a good read and a decent dose of what I sometimes like to call The Fun. The Anthologist by Nicolson Baker is a novel about a poet, Paul Chowder (which is a pretty awesome name), who is struggling to write an introduction to a poetry collection about the importance of rhyme. Paul is a little bit famous, and a lot lazy and as a narrator he provides an interesting, discursive history of his thinking about poetry and it's constituent parts. There are some really lovely moments in the book - the parts on baby talk, how iambic pentameter has a built in invisible rest, and the section where they go blueberry picking I really enjoyed and where of course, extremely 'poetic'. Baker has a lovely ambling style of writing as well and it was very pleasant spending time with his novel.

I am a bit worried that I enjoyed it because I’m so often immersed in lit theory as part of my job that I’ve become the sort of person who finds being lectured about the mechanics of poetic feet and rhyme for the length of an entire novel not only commonplace but insanely interesting when a dog or some blueberry-picking is added. This peculiarity in me as a reader aside, I'm sure many people will balk slightly, as I did, at the high-school flashbacks induced by much of the poetry talk. And there was definitely a feeling that oozed through the quieter moments of The Anthologist that the book was really an exercise in showing how clever and witty the writer is. Maybe I’m wrong, I kind of hope so – but intellectual snobbery, even in a book about an intellectual snob of a poet, is never alright with me.

So I know this review has a few mixed messages. It’s to be expected, I’m a Gemini. But it also can’t really be avoided - the book was both entertaining and painful, lyrical and preacherly, poetic and pedestrian. But I learnt stuff, and the writing itself, if you ignore the intellectual baggage, was undeniably well-crafted and engaging. Maybe someone else can make more sense of their feelings about The Anthologist.

***/***** (Three of Five Stars)

Down and Dirty - Sandra Hill

The thing is, I love vikings. Look here's some vikings now... what's not to like??


I also love time-travel. And romance books. And not only am I not ashamed, but I very strongly suspect a lot of people out there like any or all of these things too. So I cannot not do this reveiw. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't bring Down and Dirty to this blog. It's the fifth book by Sandra Hill that revolves around a family of vikings and a bunch of Navy SEALS. A very winning combination, as you can imagine.


This one was not my favourite of the series- that honour goes to the first one I read, though the third in this series Rough and Ready, because in that one the Navy SEALS (one of whom was already a time-travelling viking) accidently travel through a wormhole in time while on one of their missions and land in a viking women's sanctuary. HILARIOUS UNWASHED HIJINX ENSUE. Down and Dirty is pretty great too though, this time one of the warrior women from the sanctuary travels forward in time and becomes a Navy WHEAL (maybe it's too obvious if I tell you that that's the female equivalent of the SEAL) and finally gets it on with a SEAL hottie called Zach but known as Pretty Boy who was crushin on her back in the Norselands of her time. This should all be enough to convince you if you're ever going to be the sort to be convinced. They're really funny and the sex scenes aren't as stupid as a lot of romance books. Plus vikings and time-travel, there's something for everyone.

Here is the link to the author's website - she likes vikings too and I particularly like the way she names her books http://www.sandrahill.net/

***^/***** (3.5 stars)

Arthur & George - Julian Barnes

In my own mind this particular review has been too long anticipated. Mostly because I've taken way too long to read it - I read every single other book I've blogged about here since starting Arthur & George, (except The Life of Charlotte Bronte which I read while I was waiting for Mum was finish the Barnes book early this year). The other reason is that I've been talking about this book to any and everyone with ears since reading the first sentence. I've been a big fan of Julian Barnes' since I read A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters a couple of years ago and fell in love with his writing. Then I found England, England and a book of short stories The Lemon Table, while only a fraction of Barnes' very substantial literary output which fully I intend to read through one day, further solidified my barnacle-like attachment to his way of storytelling.



This book is going to receive my first five-star rating on this blog. Since we try and rate as fairly as possible, some of you may stop reading this review at this point and skip below to the Robert Downey Jr pictures. As long as you understand how great Arthur & George is and use the time saved by exiting at this early point to go out and find/read/love this book I will be satisfied. For those of you either harder to convince or who are so enamoured of my blogging that you hang on Every Word I Type, let's break this claim of extreme excellence down -

Arthur & George is based on the true story of the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I was sold on this book as soon as I realised that HE was the Arthur of the title) and a man called George Edalji. Sir Arthur is plagued by his most successful creation - Sherlock Holmes - and the fame the great detective has brought him.



George is a country solicitor who struggles to gain the respect of his colleagues and to gain an audience for his book about railway law. He's also been receiving some hate mail and the police don't like him very much. The two men's paths cross when George is arrested for a really horrible crime and Arthur decides to play the part of detective for real. It really was a landmark event for the English justice system as George's case, called the 'Great Wryly Outrages', became a catalyst for the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in England. There's a lot more going on than a law case in Arthur & George, though that's what brings the titular characters together and changes both their lives. I loved the illumination of Arthur's growing interest in Spiritualism and George's struggle with his own Christian faith and the many other paralells and divergences of character between them - but I especially love the gentle touch of the writing that reveals without judgment the social experience of two men who were, for very different reasons, seen as different and seperate from those around them.

It's hard to convey without the same gifts for writing, the subtlety and humour of Barnes' language and the way he way he builds his extraordinary story - which feels more like looking through a wormhole in time that Being John Malkovich style puts you inside the character's brains than the result of really good scholarship. I don't want to say any more because Arthur & George is a a mysterious, cloudy jem of a book and I don't want to give any more of it away. I love this book. You should all read it. NOW.

*****/***** (5 of 5!)

Here's another picture of RDJ as Sherlock Holmes and his buddy Watson, played by Jude Law - just because I can. What a fine film it was.

The Green Dwarf, A Tale of the Perfect Tense - Charlotte Bronte

Guys, I seriously love this book. It's even better than the title suggests it could be and by gum does it suggest a lot.


It's a piece of Bronte juvenilia and it shows - everywhere the marks and illusions of the fictive worlds the Bronte siblings, and specifically in The Green Dwarf Branwell and Charlotte - created and inhabited in their youth.

It's kinda clunky in bits and the courtroom scene at the end is just odd, just as the resolution of the plot is definitely a bit deus ex machina-tastic, but the rawness of it is very engaging and I found myself entirely drawn in by the action and the romance-suspense-war narrative arc triumvirate. It was great to read this having already experienced the mature literary mastery of Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre, as in this so-early work I could really feel the full effect of her playfulness, charm and wit unencumbered by the writerly techniques and skills she developed later. I don't mean that to sound snotty or patronising - Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are unquestionably brilliant and I love them hugely but there is definitely something very refreshing and not a little bit endearing in engaging with the cavalier and romantic world of a Bronte's comparatively happy childhood. Plus The Green Dwarf is hilarious and so ridiculous it's the least boring kind of Romanticism there is.

Not much more to say about this one except to recommend it highly if you want to experience a lot of Bronte in-jokes, some chivalry, some dastardliness, some mysterious cloaked strangers of varying heights, some stabbings, some smooching and some fun old times.

***^/***** (Three and a half stars)

Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis

Never fear, I have many more Bronte books to unleash like child-crackens upon this blog - but even I can get bored of the amazingness of that family and long for a change of scene and society. I wasn't quite prepared for Bret Easton Ellis' debut novel Less Than Zero though. I think the cover of this book tricked me by provoking happy David Hockey swimming pool thoughts like this -



whereas actually what this book makes you feel like is this -



This is actually an image from the 1987 film made of Easton Ellis' book, which I haven't seen and I'm not sure if I could bear it now - even though it has my future husband Robert Downey Jr in it. It's my own fault, the Bronte sisters tenderised me and I've never read any of Easton Ellis' books before or managed to develop anything more than a vague idea about what they might be like. Less than Zero is like an 80s version of one of my favourite books Catcher in the Rye, just without as much verbal roguishness, Robbie Burns references or good headwear. I wish I had been the first to make the comparison between Easton Ellis' and Salinger's teenage-angst-coming-of-age stories because that would have been amazing of me and I could die happy but it's actually so obvious it could easily have been a deliberate 'update' on the classic by the younger writer. The title was taken from an Elvis Costello song that attacks the conservative politics of England in the 1970s by making nasty comments, and rightly so, about a butt-headed English fascist from the 1930s called Oswald Mosely. Both song and novel are concerned with a world in chaos, and the often disastrous consequences of materialist culture. In fact the David Hockney allusion on the cover of the edition I read may be quite appropriate in it's hyper-real, luscious, perky-bottomed other-worldliness...

Less than Zero is about an eighteen year old guy called Clay who has come home to Los Angeles after living in New England for four months. He is beautiful, bored and ridiculously wealthy, as are all of his friends - they do a lot of drugs, have sex with everyone regardless of their age or issues of consent, look at a few dead bodies, watch porn and snuff films, do more drugs, have more sex, there's a dalliance with prostitution, trips to the grandparents summer house, some eating disorders and lots and lots of nihilistic angst. Surprise, surprise, it's a critique on consumer culture! Easton Ellis was 21 at the time this book was published and from what I've read about the author significant episodes of Less than Zero are autobiographical. The anger and despair that presents as the apathy of the narrator feels real. It's a good and useful book. It marks a scary moment of excess and dissipation in capitalism. It's just really unpleasant to read because it's so unrelenting - because the narrator isn't a hopeful existentialist like Sartre or even Holden Caulfield but is instead more akin to the depressed blackboard in Mr Squiggle. And there's no comic relief! Easton Ellis is a talented writer though, and it's certainly a memorable novel but that doesn't mean I could ever bring myself to like Less Than Zero. He also announced that a sequel called Imperial Bedrooms, focussing on the same characters now middle aged, will be published in May this year - hopefully it'll be slightly more uplifting on the philosphical front, though I imagine the bottoms wont be quite as perky.


**/***** (Two stars out of five for freaking me out).

Literary Tattoos

Does everyone know about this site? It's pretty neat!

Contrariwise Literary Tattoos - http://www.contrariwise.org/

My favourite tattoo on Contrariwise - a nod to the Marauders :)

The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Elizabeth Gaskell

Earlier in my Bronte summer, while immersed in the wonders of Kinokunuya I forced myself (in order to aid a future trip to Bronte country) to choose between a biography of Branwell Bronte by Daphne du Maurier and The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell. I eventually chose the latter - for once thinking more of the merits of the biographers than the sexy mysteriousness of their subjects. Being filled with recent memories of Richard Armitage from a recent TV version of Gaskell's North and South and remembering vaguely that Mrs Gaskell and Charlotte had been bffs - I decided that I could spend time with my literary crush now and come back for Daphne's Branwell on my next trip to Sydney.



Is it bad that I enjoyed reading about the Brontes more than some stuff by them? Elizabeth Gaskell is a hoot - she's funny and thoughtful and lets her imagination run away with her just enough to enrich but not undermine her meticulous research. The Life of Charlotte Bronte is well put together too - appropriating material about Charlotte and her family from letters that the subject wrote to her school friends, some publishers and a few other acquaintances as well as info from interviews Gaskell sought out with Charlotte's friends and father after her death.

The importance of The Life of Charlotte Bronte as a feminist piece - the first biography of a female novelist by another female novelist - is not lost on me, and I'm sure it accounts for the thoroughness of Gaskell's dedication to verisimilitude. The status of the female novelist was a major subject of concern for all the Bronte sisters, and for Gaskell herself throughout her life. Charlotte, Emily and Anne famously adopted the pen names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell while trying to publish their work - fearing that their work would be discriminated against or just dismissed as women's writing. A letter from Charlotte to one of her reviewers argues this point so strongly and eloquently in Gaskell's book - it's actually the most passion we hear from the eldest surviving Bronte outside of her own novels.

My favourite part of Gaskell's biography is where she tries to put in a good word for Emily - whom Charlotte loved above all others, but who comes across in all accounts from outside the family as the prettiest and most obviously brilliant sister, but certainly high-maintenance and probably more than a bit anti-social. I've always been a fan of the tortured weirdo artist school of genius anyway so all that made me like Emily more and Gaskell is so polite that none of the worst stuff that we now know about the Brontes (well mostly Branwell) now appears beyond a vague, charming illusion in the book or is reconfigured as an illustration of the sisterly love and concern the Bronte girls had for one another, their father, and brother.

Gaskell's biography of Charlotte works so well because they were contemporaries, peers and friends. Gaskell understood the pressures and problems Charlotte and her sisters faced in regards to earning a living through teaching and writing but by virtue of her close friendship with Charlotte she also caught a rare glimpse of the personal lives and relationships among this very private and territorial family. As a biography The Life of Charlotte Bronte is fascinating as it contains so much of the authors own sensibilities and feelings while painting a vivid and very believable picture of the inner workings of Charlotte, mostly in her own words. Gaskell's account of the troublesome Branwell, emo Emily, saintly Anne and kind, down-to-earth Charlotte was the beginning of a mythmaking process that grew around the Brontes then and continues unabated and ever increasing in fantasy to this day - the book is practically fanfiction, and all the better for it! I think more biographers should feel such a reasonable but very real emotional stake in the reputation and appreciation of their subjects.

It's really good dudes - go read it!
****/***** (I'd have made it four and half stars out of five if I could but we don't have a key for that)

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, published in 1848 was the second and last novel of Anne Bronte, the youngest of six Bronte children, and a unique text amongst the many splendid creations of that family. Anne's voice contrasts strongly with those of her more famous sisters - where they are romantic and gothic, Anne is ironic, realistic and radically Protestant.




It is undoubtedly a feminist novel - Anne's primary concerns are with the inequalities of marriage laws which rendered wives chattels of their husbands, and the problems she saw in the education of children at the time; here boys were trained in machismo and excess and girls in financial dependency and social helplessness. None of the men are particularly likable – in fact any of them named with ‘H’s are at the very least insensitive, selfish bores without any of them being so charmingly evil and engaging as Emily’s Heathcliff. Even the hero at endgame is a bit of a knob and his transformation into marriageable material seems only to be that he now internalises his whining insecurities instead of beating random men up and insulting plain women.

There are no haunted houses in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, only the depressing strains of dissolution and decay. Anne's novel echoes her beloved sister Emily's Wuthering Heights in it's repetition of 'H' names and unflinching examination of male depravity. Anne's heroine Helen also shares traits with Charlotte's titular character from Jane Eyre in her self-sufficiency, unshakeable moral compass and rebelliousness. Yet Helen doesn't receive Jane's reward of a happy, equal marriage with a brooding spunk-rat - to my mind Helen settles for a man who is merely the best of a quite a despicable bunch. Helen is more complicated than Jane but never more likeable. She lacks Jane's humour and intriguing mind. Anne's heroine makes mistakes, big ones, and pays for them - but does so with a air of sanctimony that gets on my nerves a whole little bit.

Though a criticism on the heightened gothic passions and sentiments - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall still appropriates many of the flavours of writing around at the time. Though unpopulated by ghosts, the landscape becomes a character in Anne's book too. Houses act like prisons, 'town' is a place of vice and depravity, people who work with the earth and animals are rooted in decency, and travelling through the countryside externalises the inner journey towards greater senses of goodness and selflessness. Like her sisters' most famous texts, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall comes to an imagined reader via readers and listeners in the narrative. Anne's novel is constructed through a framing narrative of the farmer Gilbert Markham's letters to a friend where he reveals his impressions of Helen and eventually encompasses the primary narrative which is told through Helen's journal. I think the form of the novel is the most auto-biographical marker because Anne, like so many good writers is preoccupied with the nature of truth in language and literary expression. Maybe this particular thought is a blog for another day though.

It's a good book. Anne Bronte was a very accomplished writer and her message and observations were keen and I'm sure, very pertinent at the time. My problem was that the biting social commentary could sound too much like preaching to my ears and that there was no redeeming feeling in the romantic storyline to engage me enough to muster sympathetic feelings about any of the main characters. You can't even love/hate them like in Wuthering Heights, so while appreciating the cool skill of the youngest Bronte's writing, I received it coldly too.

***/***** (3 of 5 stars)

JD Salinger dies age 91

My first and most enduring literary love. I always wanted to be part of the Glass family. I'm going to make everyone read Salinger All The Time!

Happy Brithday Virginia Woolf!

Dear Virginia,

Happy 128th Birthday! 1882 was a cool year, not just because you were born but because while the assassination attempt on Queen Victoria failed (yay!), Jesse James was shot by Casey Affleck. There was also a rockin comet and Tesla invented alternating current :)

We think you're the best thing from that or many years though Virginia!

Love, Troubadour Cottage

Greetings from Haworth

Every summer I try and trick my brain into thinking it's on a holiday somewhere cold and lovely by making it read something pretty epic, preferably with snow in it. Two years ago I began meandering through Proust's In Search of Lost Time and failed after two and a half of the seven volumes. I spent the last summer with the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels which made things much more enjoyable, especially since I've retrospectively cast Robert Downey Jr as the title hero in my mind after seeing what a wonderful job he's doing currently in the film. The location for this summer's brain holiday had been near top of my favourite travel destinations for years and since meeting Isa it had become one of our most talked of landscapes. In October of 2009 I saw the comic below, made by one of my favourite artists Kate Beaton (who is fantastic and everyone should read her stuff all the time!), I was irrevocably sold on spending this summer with the Brontes.




I'm pretty sure there's a some fundamental divide between devotees of Jane Eyre and those of Wuthering Heights, not unlike the deep rifts between the Teams of Edward and Jacob in the Twilightverse, but certainly more civil. I fell in love with Jane and Rochester while a teenager but never warmed to Cathy and Heathcliff in the same way, probably because I found Emily Bronte's writing so emotionally charged and therefore a bit alienating for someone discovering Wuthering Heights, on the far side of a love affair with Austen. Also because I thought Cathy and Heathcliff were such arseholes and with their albeit unwitting association with Kate Bush really just made things worse between me and Emily's book. I really hope Isa will fight me on this.

So I knew and loved these two Bronte books before this summer, and had heard tons of different versions of the Bronte myths, seen BBC adaptations, Cliff Richard's musical version of Heights (amazing!) but had never done any investigating for myself beyond that. So I now have a large pile of books by my bed all by and about different Brontes and several more being flown in from the internet. So far I've read Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte. Anne is definitely maligned as a writer - there's nothing shabby about The Tenant. It shows too that Anne doesn't lack the romantic passion of her elder sisters, it's just that she has an overriding drive to expose the problems with passion as well. Mrs Gaskell's book will get it's own blog post soon, it's extraordinary in it's own right.

So I just wanted to warn you guys about what you'll be hearing from me for some months to come and where my reading has taken me to. All Brontes all the time! Let's all meet up in Yorkshire!

YO PEEPS

We are Jane and Isa. This is our cottage. We wish we were Cornish Troubadours, but for now, this online haven will suffice. Like-minded Bronte obsessees, comic buffs, romance readers, fanboys and girls of b-grade anything, trekkies, Bloomberoes, crazy curly-haired pre-/post-/and modern modernists, and unemployed arts students are most welcome. Basically we like books and we want to talk about them, with YOU.

So please, read, respond, disagree and fantasize with us.