Cornflower Books

Admissible evidence

 

    When I heard that Clare Jacob's Ophelia in Pieces was a novel about a lawyer, I jumped at it. My own years in legal practice (though I was a solicitor doing civil work, including litigation, here in Scotland, whereas the eponymous Ophelia is a criminal barrister whose stamping ground is London's Old Bailey) mean that it's of considerable professional interest to me, but even if you know nothing of the world it portrays, it's a very enjoyable, fluent, highly readable book.

    Ophelia Dormandy's marriage is disintegrating, and she's struggling to reconcile the visceral pull of motherhood with the high demands of a pressured career which has no room for absences, preoccupations and competing loyalties. Her job defending those who may be guilty is one she's good at - it's a career she chose for reasons to do with her past - and while questions of conscience do arise, she has long since taken a pragmatic approach, so whether her client is an embezzler or someone accused of sexual offences, Ophelia acts for them, clear-minded, clever, largely in control. But when she finds herself with too much to handle, a simple slip leads her into dangerous territory, and work threatens her personal life in the worst way.

    Good novels about women with domestic problems are ten-a-penny, of course, and while that strand of the plot is well done, where the book really comes into its own is in the treatment of Ophelia's professional life. Clare Jacob is herself a barrister, so she knows well that of which she writes, and I hope that in future books she will revisit Ophelia's chambers and give us more of the QC Samuel Slidders and the clerks, of briefs and case conferences, of the Bailey and its environs, and of the whole frenetic world of the legal machine, because that is the book's real strength and distinction, and it's those scenes which stand out.

     On the basis of this debut I shall look forward eagerly to Clare's next novel, and if you're in the mood for some legal drama with a sympathetic leading character, then this one comes highly recommended.

 

(Just by the way, there's a tiny discrepancy in continuity at one point, and though it's of no relevance to the plot, had Ophelia noticed something similar during cross-examination, she would have used it to discredit or wrong-foot her witness; it has no deleterious effect, however, on my opinion of the book!).

Cornflower Book Group - The Good Soldier

   

     Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is the 43rd. book the Cornflower Book Group has read and it has the 'distinction' of being the only one I've contemplated stopping reading half way through. I didn't give up, I carried on to the end, but I hope you all made more of it than I did, and I hope someone will point out what I've obviously missed, because apart from wanting to shake all the characters and tell them to get a grip, I was otherwise quite nonplussed.

    Need we go into the plot? I think not, and I'd be hard pressed to set it down here, anyway. The style is impressionistic, and so digressional and discursive it reminded me of a children's song, the chorus of which was "We're going this way and that way, forwards and backwards, over the Irish Sea", quite apt considering that John Dowell, the narrator, describes the group comprising himself and his wife and their friends the Ashburnhams as "[...] one of those tall ships with the white sails upon a blue sea, one of those things that seem the proudest and the safest [...]". Forwards and backwards it goes, a detail or contradiction thrown in here to complicate the story originally told there, an unreliable narrator, a fixation with the date the 4th. of August, everyone in the end apparently mad or dead or both - "It is all a darkness," says Dowell at one juncture, and how right he is!

    Granted there are some very fine points and sure touches, but one almost misses them in the effort of trying to tie in the various unravelled narrative strands and finding one's way through what Dowell admits is "a sort of maze". Would a second reading prove more enlightening? I'm not particularly inclined to find out. So, onwards and upwards, Floreant Centaureae and all that, and here's to books which make an impression for more positive reasons. But what did you think of this one?

PS. The Good Soldier's 'cake' is here.

Tbr: The Language of Flowers

 

    Here's a book about which there has been considerable 'buzz' for some months. A first novel which was the subject of fierce bidding by nine publishers here - Macmillan eventually scooped it, and it will lead their fiction list this year - Vanessa Diffenbaugh's The Language of Flowers is much anticipated and is being published in 31 countries, but its origins lie in a copy of Kate Greenaway's Language of Flowers which Vanessa discovered in a second-hand bookshop when she was just 16.

    That find sparked an enduring interest in the charming custom, especially popular in Victorian times, of attributing meanings or sentiments to flowers so that a single bloom or more elaborate bouquet could convey a message. In writing the novel, Vanessa consulted several 19th. century handbooks on the subject, and she has compiled her own floral dictionary which you'll find towards the back of the book (cornflower or centaurea cyanus is listed there under its American name, Bachelor's button, its meaning, 'single blessedness').

    But this is a contemporary story whose heroine Victoria has been brought up in a series of foster homes. Isolated and damaged, her passion is for flowers and their meanings, and it is that which eventually leads her to the possibility of love, revealing along the way the secret she is hiding and why it is that flowers mean so much.

    "Real literary quality combined with a page-turning and deeply moving plot"; all that and flowers, too - I can't wait!

Cornflower Book Group 2011: Volume 8

 

    Right then, I've taken your advice and decided to give the book group a break in August, so after we've talked about The Good Soldier this coming Saturday (30th. July), we can relax a bit and have an unhurried and what looks to be a rather less perplexing read(!) for our September title. B.R. Wombat suggested Ursula Le Guin's 1968 classic of fantasy literature A Wizard of Earthsea, so let's read it - it will certainly be something new for me.

    "The island of Gont is a land famous for wizards. Of these, some say the greatest - and surely the greatest voyager - is the man called Sparrowhawk. As a reckless, awkward boy, he discovered the great power that was in him - with terrifying consequences. Tempted by pride to try spells beyond his means, Sparrowhawk lets loose an evil shadow-beast in his land. Only he can destroy it, and the quest leads him to the farthest corner of Earthsea."

    Likened to Tolkien's Middle Earth and Lewis's Narnia, the award-winning Earthsea novels depict an imaginary world which draws the reader in. I'm particularly interested in the fact that, apparently, "Le Guin challenges her readers to think about the power of language, how in the act of naming the world around us we actually create that world"; I'll look out for that aspect.

    I hope that even if you're not in the habit of reading this type of book you'll be willing to give it a try. I should think it will be available in shops and libraries everywhere (as far as I can see there isn't an e-book edition, though), and for those who want to go the whole hog, there is the omnibus The Earthsea Quartet. In the event you can't lay hands on a copy, The Book Depository will, as always, send it anywhere post free.

    Let's set the discussion date for Saturday, 24th. September, and do please all join in - the more, the merrier!

Tbr: The Darling Strumpet

   

    If Booker contenders aren't your usual reading matter - though by the look of it this year's longlist broadens what's seen as the typical scope of the prize - how about "an ebullient page-turner" of a historical novel?

    The Darling Strumpet will be out next week but is already getting very enthusiastic reviews and commendations for its meticulous research. It's about Nell Gwynn, darling of the people, the most famous courtesan of her age, favourite of King Charles II.

    The book is a first novel by Gillian Bagwell whose background is in the theatre, both on the acting and production/direction sides. She began researching Nell Gwynn as the subject of a one-woman show, but found that that format couldn't do justice to the richness of Nell's life, so a book was born. "Richly engaging", "bawdy and poignant", "thoroughly recommended" - a romp in Restoration London - and if you're wondering about the title, it's from "A Panegyrick Upon Nelly", Anonymous, 1681:

"She's now the darling strumpet of the crowd,

Forgets her state, and talks to them aloud,

Lays by her greatness and descends to prate

With those 'bove whom she's rais'd by wond'rous fate."

Booker's dozen

 
    On the longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize are:

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Sebastian Barry, On Canaan's Side

Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie

Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

Yvette Edwards, A Cupboard Full of Coats

Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child

Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English

Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days

A.D. Miller, Snowdrops

Alison Pick, Far to Go

Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jessie Lamb

D.J. Taylor, Derby Day

    From a list which includes a former winner, Alan Hollinghurst, and four authors - Kelman, Miller, Edwards and McGuinness - making their debuts, I have five of the thirteen books, but have read only one so far, and that is Snowdrops, which I thought was good but not great. I'm very pleased to see D.J. Taylor there, however, as I am a fan of his work and would expect Derby Day to be a dazzler. 

    The shortlist will be announced on 6th. September.

Blackadder winners - 2

    As I said on Cornflower, the winners of the Elizabeth Blackadder draws have been pulled out of a virtual hat, so the bookmarks above will soon be on their way to Julie, while the ones below will go to Maria.

    Thankyou for entering, everyone, and for all those flowery book titles!

Tbr: The Kashmir Shawl

    - The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas.

    - "A lifetime of secrets spun into the finest of yarns ..."

    - When Mair Ellis clears out her father's house after his death she finds an exquisite, antique shawl, painstakingly hand-embroidered and worth a fortune. Wrapped within it is a lock of a child's hair ... Tracing her grandparents' roots back to India and Kashmir, she is inspired to unlock the secrets of the past - a journey that throws her into the path of unrest, drama and tragedy that will change her own life forever.

    This sounds like a book in which to lose yourself: from rural Wales to Kashmir and the Himalayas, a three-generational family story, dangerous liaisons, love and friendship ... and there's a description of the shawl itself here.

Making molehills out of mountains

    My study doesn't usually look like this - ordinarily the floor is clear - but these pictures show my 'to be read' piles today, in mid sort-out.

    Following on from this morning's post, I've been busy. I took all the unread blog-related books from where they had been parked on shelves and in ad hoc piles, went through them, weeded out duplicates and things I'm never going to read (they'll go to the charity shop), then divided the rest into 'very much want to read' and 'would like to read' and housed them all  - arranged alphabetically - accordingly.

     This wasn't just an exercise in moving things around; I've cleared my desk and in doing so defined my 'next actions', I've got a far more manageable amount to cover in prospect, and a sharper focus on reading what I want rather than what I think I 'should'. Also, freeing up space around the desk means I no longer feel hemmed in and oppressed by the mountains on all sides as I did before.

    I've spent a full day at this, and there's still some work to be done, but I've acccomplished quite a lot, and it's a good start, I think.   

Good lines: on getting things done

    "A vision without a task is but a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery, a vision and a task is the hope of the world."

    An inscription (c. 1730) in a Sussex church, quoted in Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity by David Allen (which itself was recommended by the highly productive Natalie, and by Peter Jones in How to Do Everything and Be Happy).

Saturday miscellany

    - The Telegraph magazine is always my Saturday breakfast reading, and one of its highlights is Mary Portas's shop review column. Today she casts her critical eye over Daunt Books, specifically the Marylebone High Street branch, and you can read what she has to say here. I've never been to Daunt's so I can't comment on her impressions, but I find it very interesting that one of the key areas in which they can compete with online retailers and other shops which sell books at large discounts is service, and that's exactly were Mary marks them down.

    - For anyone who missed Wednesday's post, I've postponed our CBG discussion of The Good Soldier by a week to Saturday 30th. July. Meanwhile, I've got our next book - or possibly even next two - in hand, so more news on those very soon.

    - If you glance over to the arrivals list on the right there you'll see at the top a new novel by the excellent Sally Gardner (her brilliant I, Coriander was a favourite of mine a few years ago, and The Red Necklace was equally impressive and imaginative). The Double Shadow is a book for older teenage readers, due out in early November. I read the opening chapter yesterday and I had to force myself to put it down - I'm reading too many books just now to add another one to the mix - but it was compelling and promises much. Here's the gist:

"In a bluebell wood stands a picture palace. Arnold Rubens built it to house an invention of his that could change the war torn world forever. It is to be given to his daughter, Amaryllis, on her seventeenth birthday. But it's a present she doesn't want, and in it is a past she has to come to terms with ... Who knows what her past has been, or what the future might hold for Amaryllis, lost as she is in this place with no time?

Against the tense backdrop of the second World War, Sally Gardner explores families and what binds them, fathers and daughters, past histories, passions and cruelty, love and devastation in a novel rich in character and beautifully crafted."

Just a few more books

   

     Thankyou for all your kind and helpful comments yesterday and your emails on the same topic - lots of sound advice and supportive words to which I should certainly pay heed.

    Just to pick up one or two of the points raised, Claire mentioned the book How to Do Everything and Be Happy by Peter Jones which she'd noticed under 'current reading' in the sidebar - it so happens that that was sent to me for review and arrived at just the right moment! I've now read it, enjoyed it, and am skimming through it again to be sure I've grasped its strategic elements and then I'll come back and talk about it here soon.

    Also on the current reading list is my attempt to 'break free' (though I can't possibly compete with Freddie's outfit), i.e. reading something of my own, not a book someone has sent. I absolutely loved T.E. Carhart's The Piano Shop On The Left Bank when I read it a few years ago (it got a bit of coverage in this post) so I've picked it up again and have happily entered the world of Desforges Pianos: outillage, furnitures behind its deceptively simple shopfront. Coincidentally, there are two piano shops in the street where I live and we are on the left bank - not of the Seine, rather the Water of Leith, so while our neighbourhood may not have the same cachet as Thad Carhart's Parisian one, its piano shops, small run of secondhand book shops, the house in which Chopin gave a recital and the house in which Robert Louis Stevenson was born all give it a cultural frisson!

    Lastly for now, a quick word on today's arrivals: Insurrection, a hefty 600-pager of a novel about Robert the Bruce written by Robyn Young, whose Brethren trilogy has been a bestseller - that's due out early next month, and The Yellow Duster Sisters: A Wartime Childhood, a memoir by Susan Kennaway which tells of her evacuation, along with her sister, to Africa, and their subsequent return to England and boarding school. With an emphasis on "the often destructive nature of shifting wartime family relationships, Susan Kennaway asks in her prologue, "Can anyone be in the least surprised at the people we children became? Remote, fearful of separation, suspicious of close relationships. Cautious, mistrusting and, sometimes, cold as ice? Did that really happen to us? Were we really part of the exodus? Was that really me? Well, yes." That book, too, is due out shortly.

Books, books and more books

    Apologies to any authors, publishers and publicists who have written to me recently offering books; I've got a large email backlog (and a spam problem) so I'm being terribly slow in replying. I've also gone way beyond tipping point as far as the books in/books read balance is concerned as I'm managing to get through a mere 40% of what I'm sent, so because of sheer volume (no pun intended), good books will inevitably be overlooked, and I'm hesitating over inviting more in to join the mountains already here.

    I fret endlessly about this, and I know I've raised it here before, but I wish I could come up with a solution that was workable and fair to everyone. If I say yes to the offer of a book (and I certainly don't accept everything, either because a title doesn't look as though it would sit well with the site or because I occasionally try to stem the flow for a while) I am genuinely interested in reading it and hope that I shall get to it soon, so my heart's in the right place, even if my head isn't - I delude myself by imagining that I can somehow fit more reading hours into the day. A lot of books arrive out of the blue, with no prefatory "would you like ...?" message; some will be of great interest, others less so, but while still welcome, they all just have to join the waiting piles and take their chance in the queue, being opened if they happen to fit my mood and inclination.

    Although this is a situation which I'd like to be handling better, I do realise how fortunate I am - it's a nice problem to have - but to get back to my original point, I may have to tweak my system somehow, especially as I rarely manage to get to read anything I buy for myself (apart from the CBG titles), being driven by my perceived obligation to the publishers and authors who have sent me books to always read theirs as soon as possible.

    I know this is all a bit of a self-indulgent, 'thinking aloud' post, but please allow me that as sometimes these things have to be aired.

                                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Related to the above, I am reluctantly going to have to postpone the CBG discussion on The Good Soldier as I haven't read the book yet and a recent bout of nasty eye-strain headaches (caused by reading too much) means I must give myself a bit longer to do so. I hope this won't inconvenience anyone, but let's move the date to Saturday, 30th. July, and if you're not around that day, the comments do of course remain open so that you can contribute your thoughts and impressions at any time. Meanwhile, I'll choose our August book, and if you've any suggestions for that - it must be something that's easily obtainable everywhere, in shops, libraries and online - please do leave a comment here. I was wondering about E.M. Forster, in the light of this post, but what do you think? Perhaps after the Ford Madox Ford we should have a marked change of period, country, genre, even?  

Blackadder lucky dip - 2

    On Cornflower today I'm giving away some Elizabeth Blackadder postcards, while over here I've got two sets of two Blackadder bookmarks to go to anyone who'd like them. One side of each is pictured above, the other side below, and as they are laminated they should be fairly robust.

    I can send them anywhere in the world, so if you want to enter the draw for them, just leave a comment on this post naming a book with a flower in the title - anything at all will do! I'll pick a winner in a day or two, and you're welcome to enter for the postcards on the other site, too.

Good lines: the scholarly character

 

    To set the scene - Maggie, the wife of William's oldest friend, has suddenly admitted to William that she's been in love with him for years. Nonplussed, he now confides in another friend, Marcia, and asks her advice on how to handle the situation:

   "Now what do I do? She's written to me and announced - announced, mind you, not asked - that she's coming to see me on Friday so that we can go out for dinner. What on earth can I do - tell her not to come? Not open the door to her?"

    "No, you can hardly do that," said Marcia. "Just picture this ... this harridan pounding on the front door of Corduroy Mansions. Think of the gossip."

    "She's no harridan," said William. "She's an extremely attractive woman. She's not a harridan at all."

    "Trollop, then," said Marcia.

    William looked incensed. "And she's not that either!"

    "Well," countered Marcia, "here she is, a married woman, trying to start an affair. How do you know that she hasn't tried it with any number of men?:

    "Don't be ridiculous!" snapped William. "She's an expert on Iris Murdoch."

From A Conspiracy of Friends by Alexander McCall Smith.

International Anita Brookner Day

    "What's she trying to get us to do now, Mollie?"

    "Couldn't tell you, Pip, but I hope it's not that old 'let's teach the dogs to read' nonsense."

    "Well, we could chew them when she's not looking."

    "I wouldn't try that if I were you, young pup. She thinks these are good."

    Thomas and Simon S. are celebrating the work of Anita Brookner with IABD today, and they have generously allowed posts involving pets to be included. I had hoped to re-read Hotel du Lac for the occasion but I haven't managed it, so the Cornflower contribution will be limited to that of the resident canine critics.

Statistics of the day - 2

 

    - The printed collections of the National Library of Scotland comprise over 14 million items, and the library is open to all.

 

    - The earliest item in the library's collection of rare books is a Gutenburg Bible of 1455. Among its special collections are books on such diverse topics as mountaineering, witchcraft, beekeeping and baking!

    - The library's manuscript collections (items from which I saw on a special visit today) begin with a letter, written on papyrus, dating from around the sixth century.

 

Shown here are three of the allegorical figures which decorate the building's otherwise austere façade. Designed and carved by Hew Lorimer (of Kellie Castle) between 1950 and 1955, the full seven represent Medicine, Science, History, Poetry, Law, Theology and Music.

Quotation of the day

    "The Booker is designed to make people cross with one another."

    Margaret Drabble.

She goes on, "Look what it did to Martin Amis and Julian Barnes. In the mid-eighties, I thought it was getting out of hand and how right I was. That was before my sister won [for Possession in 1990]."

The full interview with Dame Margaret (mother of lovely Joe!) is here.

All out

    Judging by the helpless laughter coming from my husband, this is a hilarious book. He's wiping away tears of mirth as we speak.

Finding the sweet among the bitter

     If you're looking for a feel-good book, a warm - and yes, sentimental - story that may well bring a tear to your eye (as it did to mine*), then Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet could be just the thing. It's a lovely light piece of fiction based on real-life dark days, specifically the later stages of World War II when Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps, communities were divided by racial mistrust or even hatred, and life changed for many people.

    Henry Lee is growing up in Seattle's Chinese quarter. A hard worker, he stands out as the only pupil of oriental origin at his school, so he gets more than his share of bullying. Then Keiko, a young Japanese girl, arrives and a friendship develops between the two, one which intensifies when anti-Japanese feeling runs high and Keiko places her trust in Henry.

    Forty years on, Henry, now a widower, is still living in his old neighbourhood. When the new owners of the long empty Panama Hotel discover in their basement the possessions the displaced Japanese families were forced to leave behind when they were sent to camps in 1942, Henry wonders if there could be a trace of Keiko there among the forgotten trunks and boxes, piled high and thick with dust.

    Weaving back and forth from the 1940s to the 80s, Henry's own story is a touching one, and the book as a whole is a soft-focus treatment of what must have been harsh and harrowing events. Two things struck me as not sitting quite as they should: Henry is portrayed as an 'old' man, and yet he's in his mid-fifties, while he and Keiko as youngsters sound remarkably sophisticated and grown-up for children of twelve and thirteen. However, neither point lessened my enjoyment of this book which pitches duty to family against loyalty to friends, and presents it in a neat, fluent and affecting way.

*(For those who've read it, it was a scene involving Henry's friend Sheldon which got me!).