Cornflower Books

Have you read ... Edmund Crispin?

    

     I know Elaine at Random Jottings has read Edmund Crispin, but I have yet to, although he has been on my list since I noted this from P.D. James (see Talking About Detective Fiction):

"Crispin's books are always elegantly written with a cast of engaging, witty characters. Most readers at some point in the story will laugh aloud. Crispin is a farceur, and the ability to successfully combine this less-than-subtle humour with murder is very rare in detective fiction."

    Baroness James says Crispin's work has deservedly lasted beyond the Golden Age, and she cites his 1946 book The Moving Toyshop as his most ingenious. Mr. C. happens to be reading it just now on the recommendation of a friend and he says it's quite quirky and academic - reminiscent of Cyril Hare and Michael Innes - it contains a number of fourth wall jokes, and is very entertaining. Interestingly, the book is dedicated thus: "For Philip Larkin in friendship and esteem"; the two were contemporaries at St. John's College, Oxford.

    Have you read Edmund Crispin?

Micro-blogging

     Adèle was right (not that I ever doubt her book recommendations): Amanda Craig's Hearts and Minds is a must-read!

There will be a proper post on it soon, of course, but as I'm dashing just now, imagine this is Twitter and I'm blethering conveying essential information in 140 characters or fewer.

Great danes

   

    I was interested to read Barbara's comment that despite being a fan of Rose Tremain's, she gave up on Music & Silence as she couldn't get on with it. Happily, I loved it, but it took a long time to read, and although the chapters are short, it repays an investment of a solid hour or two - rather than doing a few pages here and there - as I found that's when the book really began to sing.

    The novel is set at the court of King Christian IV of Denmark in the years 1629-30. The King, world-weary, beset by financial problems and infatuated with his consort, the faithless Kirsten, employs an English lutenist to join his orchestra and, with the musician's angelic countenance and "eyes the colour of summer air", to be his confidant and protector. Despite this patronage, Peter Claire finds little at court to sustain him through the long, dark winter, but when he meets Emilia, one of Kirsten's retinue, the face of Denmark suddenly brightens.

    I might best describe this as a glittering, spider's web of a book. The spiders are Christian and Kirsten, the flies, Peter and Emilia. While there is scheming and predation on the one hand, so there is ingenuity and serendipity on the other. Kirsten, the "Almost Queen", is a marvellously dreadful character, grotesque and compelling; demanding, manipulative and blackly comic, she's not unlike Miranda Richardson's Queen Elizabeth I in Blackadder. Christian is plagued by responsibility, a chronic shortage of funds which requires him to pawn Iceland, and a conscience troubled by the death of his boyhood friend. He struggles, and despite wanting the best for his country he finds prosperity and stability hard to achieve.

    But the web is not all about entrapment and striving - it's bejewelled with dew, as it were, in the form of still-lifes, vignettes, episodes and moments which in their beauty, imagination and precision bring the book to life. There is a touch of magical realism and pleasingly eccentric references to calligraphy, buttons and jam as minor motifs throughout the story, but beyond all the quirks and foibles this is quite fabulous, rich, beautifully rendered stuff, and I was truly sorry to reach the end.

Good lines: art for art's sake

     "As to the thoughts, the aspirations, the endeavours or even the genius of ordinary men, King Charles I of England prefers to be shown the fruit of these - the perfected mathematical equation, the sonnet whose beat is as steady as a pulse, the portrait that is finished and complete to its last thread of imaginary lace, the musical performance that is devoid of all hesitation or flaw - rather than to witness the struggles of composition. A man's vision, before it has achieved its intended form, habitually expresses itself in confused strivings. And these the King does not wish to observe. He is able to admire only what has been distilled into art and set before him. Then, in silence, he will often marvel at what he sees or hears. His love for the paintings of Caravaggio verges upon worship. He will sometimes point to an exquisitely rendered outstretched hand, the light upon a bowl of fruit, and, wordlessly, invite others to lower their eyes or bow their knee before this artist's genius."

From Music & Silence by Rose Tremain.

Fan clubs

 

    I am so pleased that Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book has won the Carnegie Medal. If that book has a fan club, I'm in it - it's just terrific, and no matter that it's a children's book, adults will love it, too. I keep on mentioning it because it keeps on winning prizes, and justifiably so as it's wonderful stuff!

  

     Last week I was raving about Michelle Paver's new adult novel Dark Matter. I knew about her enormously popular children's series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, though I haven't read any of them, but in going to the website for the fans of Michelle's books - The Clan - I was able to see the trailer for Dark Matter  (you can now watch it here ) and listen to a lengthy podcast by Michelle in which she chats to her fans and answers many of their questions. It's marvellous when an author, particularly a children's one, is as accessible as that, and of course technology makes it possible nowadays, but she seems so friendly and approachable that she must be a hit with the fans on a personal basis as well as through her books.

Feathered friend, feathered foe

  

     Following on neatly from yesterday's post, here is a book with a bird for a title, but happily for me the creature doesn't feature in the way that you might think, so I could read without fear of claws and beak and flapping wings. The corvid makes its presence felt in other ways, though, but let me tell you what else there is in Marcus Sedgwick's White Crow to add to the intense atmosphere of menace and suspense that permeates this "modern gothic thriller" for young adults.

    The story takes place over a long, stiflingly hot summer, and the heat is almost a subordinate character as tension builds, very reminiscent in that respect of Sarah Stovell's Mothernight and Barbara Vine's A Fatal Inversion.

   There is a village, Winterfold, gradually falling into the sea as the East Anglian coast is eroded. As in La Cathédrale Engloutie, you can almost hear the bells of the drowned churches.

   There is an abandoned house, ancient, long left empty and boarded up, but its past is the subject of rumours and disquieting legends.

    There is a girl, Rebecca, lost and almost alone as her father faces accusations and slander, and her friends no longer want to know her.

    And there is Ferelith, a person of strangeness. Who is she? What is she? And for Rebecca, is she friend or is she foe?

     Those are the elements of an extraordinary story of good and evil, one which combines the bizarre deeds of an eighteenth century doctor and cleric, men determined to discover whether there is life after death, with the tale of a vulnerable contemporary teenager, a girl who stumbles upon something she cannot understand.

   Marcus Sedgwick cleverly leaves questions unanswered, and there's much to ponder, not least the very sinister side to this intriguing, intelligent book for older teenagers, one whose obvious quality - in both imaginative and narrative force - makes it stand out.

What I bought

   Here's my modest purchase from Friday's bookshop visit, a book I've had on my wishlist since it came out last year, The Music Room by William Fiennes. Despite not being 'a bird person' at all (I'm quite ornithophobic*), I loved Fiennes' first book The Snow Geese for the way he sees things and the way he writes. His new book is "a small masterpiece - a tribute to the power of place, family and memory".

 

This very personal account of home and family has had such effusive reviews it's hard to know which to quote, but here's one that caught me - "An enchanting book, almost musical in its vividness and exactness. Fiennes has the gift of transmuting the detail of everyday life into a moving poetry".

    I hope to read it soon and add my own thoughts to those of all the others who have loved it.

                       ~~~~~~~

*To go back to things avian for a moment, The Daily Telegraph has taken to publishing large pictures of very scary birds which give me quite a fright as I note it, all unsuspecting, over my breakfast coffee. Yesterday I couldn't read the Mandrake column (tsk tsk) because there was an enormous osprey right beside it and I had to turn over quickly to Tom Stoppard's comments on reading being undermined by technology. It is time I set up the RSPBP, that is the Royal Society for Prevention of Birds in Papers!

Before anyone complains (Lindsay, DP), I am only joking, and I am not anti-birds, I just don't like larger ones getting too close to me, or stuffed ones, or dead ones, or even small ones if they come in the house, or ....

A simply lovely bookshop

    This is The Mainstreet Trading Company, a gem of a bookshop in the Borders village of St. Boswells. I mentioned it the other day in connection with Independent Booksellers' Week, but I hadn't seen it for myself then; now I have and I'm glad to say that not only did it live up to expectations, it surpassed them.

 

    Light, bright and spacious, it has a superb range of stock including many, many Cornflower favourites (so a person of taste is obviously doing the choosing!), and I was served by Rosamund de la Hey herself who was very friendly and accommodating and who, having previously been children's marketing director at Bloomsbury, clearly knows her stuff.

 

    We spent a while browsing and then had lunch in the café at the far end of the shop -

no pictures of that but good soup, excellent bread and wonderful coffee was there in abundance, and they had a very tempting selection of cakes, too.

    The shop's smart pale grey bookmarks bear these words of Henry Ward Beecher's: "Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"

 

   Unlike some of our party, and because of the enormous piles waiting at home, I was quite strong, buying just the one book this time, but I can see that any future visits to the Borders will demand a return trip to enjoy more of what this lovely shop has to offer. Do go if ever you get the chance!

And all shall have prizes

    

     We had a date at the Borders Book Festival on Friday, there to attend the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards (and there's a certain irony to this in that we were invited as guests of the sponsors because Mr. C. is an investment manager, not because his wife actually writes about books. Oh well, I know my place....). Enough of that and to business, and the winner of the overall prize of the evening was the very entertaining American professor, Donald Worster, for his book A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir.

Just by the way, Harriet points out that the cover of the book which won the First Book Category, Eating Pomegranates by Sarah Gabriel, is rather similar to that of this well known novel!  

  

    

     Next day, the festival played host to the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. I wasn't at that event, though I'd like to have been as there was a very strong shortlist (the link there should take you to it) which included one of my favourite books from last year, Iain Pears' Stone's Fall; in the end, the winner was another of my top favourites, Wolf Hall.

   My pictures of the lovely festival grounds are here. 

Eng. Lit.

   A little bit of Joyce Grenfell to brighten your day - I hope you'll be "consumed with interest", and may even find yourself "in close proximity to a kettle", should you feel the need of one.

Cornflower Book Group - Death comes for the Archbishop

   

    What struck me from the very first page of Death Comes for the Archbishop was that here speaks an authoritative voice, a writer in complete command of her material and her prose; and so also throughout these linked stories of a time and a place and of common characters, Willa Cather's liking for her protagonists comes through very strongly. She admires her priests and is fond of them.

     I loved her occasional descriptive notes on the men such as this on Father Vaillant: "he added a glow to whatever kind of human society he was dropped down into", and this on Father Latour's hands: "[they] had a curious authority ... they seemed always to be investigating and making firm decisions". The men are straight and true, "fearless and fine", and I must admit that I took to them and I shed a tear at the end.

     The other main component of this episodic narrative is the land itself, the great expanse of New Mexico where "the earth was the floor of the sky" and (on the Mesa plain) "the country was still waiting to be made into a landscape." In her comment on my introductory post for this book, Mary said that reading it was like reading your way into a Georgia O'Keeffe painting, and I think she was spot on there, as the place is so vividly described, defined by its colours, shaped by forces of nature which are ever-present.

    As a whole, the book has a balance and a steadiness to it that speak of that authorial control I mentioned earlier. It was a great pleasure for me to discover Willa Cather through this most touching piece of writing, one in which things vast and mighty are telescopically defined and made intimate. What did you think of it? 

The iceman cometh

     You have plenty of time to clear your TBR piles to make room for this book as it won't be published until October, but make room you should as Michelle Paver's Dark Matter is a ghost story of terrific menace written with consummate skill.

     Taking the form of the diary of physicist Jack Miller who joins a scientific expedition to the Arctic in 1937, it tells of what befalls the small group when they land at Gruhuken on Spitsbergen (Svalbard) and prepare to overwinter.

   Jack is a loner, a man without family or friends. His academic ambitions have been sacrificed to the need to make a living, but his job as a clerk leaves him bored and dissatisfied, so when he gets the chance to be the meteorologist and wireless operator in a team which will study High Arctic biology, geology and ice dynamics, he accepts this new beginning and determines to go where it leads him.

   The group make camp in August when there's almost constant daylight, and the vastness of the place, its solitude and remoteness, touch Jack and lift his spirits. He comes into his own and relishes the task ahead, despite the curious wariness and unease of the Norwegian skipper and crew who will shortly bid farewell to the men for the winter, and a strange feeling as of something sinister around the part of their camp where once stood an abandoned trappers' hut.

   But it's when Autumn draws perpetual darkness down and illness forces Jack's companions to leave while he stays on alone to man the instruments and take the survey readings, that the unsettling sights and sounds he has experienced become inexplicable, truly frightening ones. Ever rational, Jack refuses to believe that Gruhuken could be haunted - such a notion defies logic, and surely if there is 'anything' there at all it is only some kind of echo, a 'place memory', which he, a man of sensitivity and acute perception has happened to pick up?

   I can give you no more of the plot than that, but Michelle Paver has drawn the strands together in a tightly written story of stark contrasts: a book of dark deeds in a white wilderness, of the unthinkable becoming horribly manifest, of the strength of companionship and the desolation of being utterly alone. It is genuinely chilling, perfectly paced and fittingly resolved, and with its very fine focus it is an intensely atmospheric, concentratedly gripping novel.

Here's looking at you, kid

    While I go off and write a sensible piece about a terrific book, here's some silliness to be going on with (and it's not even Friday, yet).

    My study faces east so the morning sun is bringing the room to life just now and happens to be illuminating various books. As I sit at my desk and occasionally glance up for inspiration, whose faces do I see looking back at me?

     T.S. Eliot stares, sombrely, fixedly, Philip Larkin looks ... well, as Philip Larkin always looks (I blame the parents), while Kay Graham's demeanour is calm but steely. Out in the hall, where light and dark are opposing forces, as it were, and the crime shelves face those housing Wodehouse and McCall Smith, Ian Rankin looms from a dust jacket in a rather chilling fashion. Back here I've just realised that if Thomas Stearns were to fall off his shelf, the very handsome Anthony Hopkins would then be face out.

Bloomsday

     "It's such an absorbing book, it's got diamond mines of references, it's so compassionate, so tender, so moving, so funny - and most of us never know that, because most of us have long been daunted by it. No need to be afraid any more ..."

      So says Frank Delaney about Joyce's Ulysses, and if you haven't already read it (unlike Dovegrey & Co. who can now proudly claim they have), you may like to discover the book through Frank's highly authoritative, short but spirited podcasts!

Independents' day

     

     This week, 14th. to 21st. June, is Independent Booksellers' Week, special events are being held, and the organisation sponsors an award - while I can't speak for the children's one, there are some very strong books there on the adults' shortlist.

     But let's look beyond that initiative and shine the spotlight on a few independent bookshops, specifically the ones on my list there in the sidebar on the right.

     Close-ish to home are The Edinburgh Bookshop and its sister shop The Children's Bookshop, and the lucky people of Bruntsfield and Morningside have these two excellent places on their doorstep (NB Vanessa, we need a branch on this side of town!!).

     Up in Perthshire there is The Watermill at Aberfeldy - a converted mill (and beautifully done it is), a coffee shop, gallery, but chiefly lots of wonderful books and browsing corners and more. It is well worth a visit.

    Two London shops make my list: Heywood Hill because I have shopped there and they were kind enough to get in touch when I linked to them ages ago; they sell a mix of old and new books, and will send you a list of recommended new titles four times a year. Then there's The Big Green Bookshop who had the bright idea of asking bloggers to recommend a 'book of the month', a scheme in which I am delighted to take part.

    Lastly comes The Mainstreet Trading Company in St. Boswells, down in the Scottish Borders. I haven't been to the shop - yet - but local friends have sung its praises so loudly (a fantastic selection of books, very nice, knowledgeable staff and delicious cakes, I'm told) that I'm taking a trip down there on Friday and shall report back.

   If you have a favourite independent bookshop, either a regular haunt or somewhere you've just happened upon in your travels, do leave a comment and tell us about it.

Misc.

    A busy family life and other commitments often pull me away from my two blogs (and that's as it should be), and the last few days have seen just that happening, so planned posts have not materialised yet and books I'd expected to have finished by now are languishing, neglected - though that's no comment on them, just my lack of reading time.

    Sometimes I leave the computer behind to go off and do bookish things, and last Friday saw me at the launch of Hazel McHaffie's new novel, Remember Remember, while later this week I'm away for the day with planned visits to "places of interest for booklovers". More of that anon.

    But for now, I picked up a novel yesterday intending just to have a quick browse, a look at the first page or so, but I got so engrossed in it that I've gone on reading. Dark Matter by Michelle Paver won't be out until October so I hesitate to say too much about it for fear of tantalising you unduly when you'll have a long wait for it, but so far, so very good indeed!

    Last but not least today, we often talk here about book covers, but how about the blurb which goes on them? Who writes it, how is it done, how successfully does it convey the essence of a book to a potential reader? Here is a very interesting piece on just that subject, one written by someone on the inside - James Spackman of Sceptre.

What's cooking

   

    Here's a lovely light read, but not a candy floss one. You may recognise it by its alternative title and cover, but regardless of externals, Erica Bauermeister's The Monday Night Cooking School is a novel about food which has people at its heart.

    Food creates and evokes memories, joins us in shared experiences, and the links it creates can be more than just the savouring of a moment. Lillian knows this; she runs a restaurant which is warm and welcoming, the sort of place people are drawn to and want to linger in. On Monday evenings when the restaurant is closed, Lillian opens her kitchen to those who wish to learn to cook or increase their knowledge and appreciation of food. As her small class meets weekly so they get to know one another, work in close proximity and find they interact much like the play of flavours in a dish - they bring out in one another things which were long hidden, strengths hitherto undiscovered, qualities underused.

   Each chapter is in effect a short story about a member of the group - one pupil is the focus, both in the kitchen and in life around and before they donned their apron. As Lillian teaches them to slow down, observe and notice scents and tastes, so food provides the key to what for each one has been missing. The results are - as with the best recipes - more than just the sum of their parts.

   Sensuous, warm, uplifting, this is a charming novel, and one that should make the reader look a little more closely at how they cook and what they eat.

Rogues' gallery

     I take photographs of all the books I talk about here or on Cornflower in order to illustrate the posts. What I have only just discovered is that the Picasa picture program has automatically taken all the faces from book covers - whether writers or characters, illustrations or actual photos - and put them in amongst those of my family and friends in an "unnamed people" folder. I've been browsing through them and have combined a few as you see, just for fun. No prizes, but if you want to have a go at identifying them, please do!

Good lines: a hanging thread of mystery

     "She is seated next to Sir Mark Langton-Smythe and they converse in German, which language Sir Mark has striven to perfect, liking as he does the way the verb withholds itself from its own completion until the last moment in almost every sentence, thus imparting to all linguistic constructions a hanging thread of mystery."

From Music & Silence by Rose Tremain.

Cornflower Book Group 2010: Volume 7

   

   "When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire, until his role brings him to a shocking and premature revelation. The haunting story of a young boy's awakening into the secrets of the adult world, The Go-Between is also an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society."

    L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between - have you read it? I have, but so long ago that other than the vague gist of the story I can remember nothing of it (though it does have a very good cricket scene - as Simon happened to mention in a comment on Mr. C's recent post!). The film version may be more familiar to you, directed by Joseph Losey and starring Alan Bates and Julie Christie, but I thought the book might make a good read for the Cornflower Book Group and I am really looking forward to it - I hope a lot of people will join in.

     We shall be discussing Willa Cather's Death comes for the Archbishop from next weekend (Saturday, 19th. June), so let's have The Go-Between as our July book, getting together here to talk about it from Saturday the 24th. (will our weather be as stifling as that of July 1900, when the book is set, and the temperature - in Hartley's story at least - rose to 84.7 degrees?).

    The group is open to anyone who would like to read the book, and as you can comment any time after the post goes up on the set day, you can have your say even if holidays or other commitments mean you're not around that weekend. As to availability, libraries should have copies, bookshops should be able to get it easily, Amazon US and UK stock it, and The Book Depository can supply it with free worldwide delivery.

   Oh, and even if you haven't read the book, you may already know its very famous first line!