Cornflower Books

Expert advice

    -    For Neil Gaiman, precision is the key to good writing, especially when your book is for children. He's talking about it here.

    ("How to write successfully for children and young adults" is a day-long conference in London in early March; it's sold out, but follow the link and you can add your name to the waiting list for tickets, or sign up for information on future similar events.)

    -    "Get an accountant," counsels Hilary Mantel - that's one of her 10 'rules for writers'.

                                                 ~~~~~

    I've read Neil Gaiman's Coraline and The Graveyard Book (the latter is particularly wonderful) but I haven't read any of his books for adults - can anyone recommend one?

The nature and resonance of home

    If you scroll down to the end of the comments on the Where's your reading taking you? post from a few days ago you'll see that Rose said she was in the 20th century with Benjamin Britten via the pages of Paul Kildea's biography which, from what Rose writes, sounds compelling. If Britten (whose centenary year this is) and Aldeburgh are your sort of thing, then the forthcoming Place weekend in the Suffolk town, a cultural programme which combines bird walks, live film scores, live music premieres, readings and panel discussions with a strong literary element including participation by Paul Kildea himself, Ronald Blythe, Geoff Dyer, Blake Morrison, Marina Warner, Ali Smith and others, looks as though it's a must.

    The theme of the weekend is "the nature and resonance of home", and it draws its inspiration from the life and travels of Benjamin Britten who said, "Even when I visit countries as glorious as Italy, as friendly as Denmark or Holland—I am always homesick, and glad to get back to Suffolk.  I treasure these roots, my Suffolk roots; roots are especially valuable nowadays, when so much we love is disappearing or being threatened, when there is so little to cling to".

    Events explore subjects as diverse as considerations of domestic architecture, the psychology of unsettlement, the lure of the local and our place in the cosmos; Marina Warner will be speaking on "Looking for Home Elsewhere: Apocryphal landscapes and narrative ghosts", and Ronald Blythe, known to so many for Akenfield, will talk about the history of his home in Essex.

    This is a particularly rich, cross-culural weekend, and if I were nearer (and free) I'd certainly go.

The Costa Book of the Year

    The 2012 Costa Book of the Year, chosen from the individual category winners, is ...              Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel!

    The Costa Short Story Award goes to Avril Joy for Millie and Bird.

And the winner is ...

   .... Mary!

    Thank you for all your entries to our competition to win Andrew Forrester's The Female Detective, which The British Library have very kindly given as a prize, and thank you for all those wonderful recommendations of crime fiction which came by way of the comments; they include suggestions from an actual crime writer, so many thanks to Martin for giving us the benefit of his experience and intimate familiarity with the genre, and Mary, I hope you'll enjoy the book when you get it.

    Still on the subject of The British Library, Lindsay (in a comment here) speaks highly of the current exhibition there Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire, and says Murder in the Library: An A-Z of Crime Fiction, which he visited briefly, is fun.

    Lastly today, may I mention in passing P.D. James' book Talking About Detective Fiction on which there is a post here, and say that I have yet more books in the pipeline to give away, so look out for a special competition coming up soon!

The comfort of a sweet disorder - on books

   Today's post on Cornflower, The comfort of a sweet disorder, refers to buildings, but it occurs to me that those words could just as well apply to books. Images of Tudor chimneys, irregular eaves and lopsided roofs such are envisaged there could easily be transposed to our tilting piles and listing stacks of books, or those shelved - perhaps because space permits no other arrangement - haphazardly, squeezed in, squashed up, but happily there.

    Just as, in the passage quoted on the other site, a house shows its family's history, so our bookshelves reveal our personal ones, and a collection of books built up over some years may have layers of significance within it, life stages, interests, passions and preoccupations apparent on closer inspection rather as unearthed artefacts provide clues to the existence of earlier cultures.

    A glance at my own shelves reminds me of people, places and events connected with my books and with me at the time I read them or acquired them - each volume is so much more than simply itself, a text, a story, a container for information. I think that is why I am so reluctant to part with books and I rejoice in the fact that I have so many: they are an element of identity and a key to memory, and there is real comfort in that sweet disorder.

Cornflower Book Group - The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

 

    "Light after light in the windows of the great house was extinguished, until at length it stood dark and silent. And though the house had witnessed many strange scenes, wolf-hunts and wine-drinking and weddings and wars, it is doubtful whether during its whole history any of its inmates had had such adventures as those of Sylvia and Bonnie Green."

    That is the closing paragraph of Joan Aiken's children's classic The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, first published in 1962, a book that has so many 'essential' elements for an engaging, satisfying, fireside yarn: an evil governess, some plucky children in peril, the ever-present danger 'out there' in the form of the predatory wolves, parents conveniently away so that the children's story can unfold, plenty of home comforts (at times - they are made all the more appealing by the privations described in other parts of the story), and a lovely happy ending. Yes, there are some neat coincidences which mean the dice fall to suit the author's purpose, but that's allowed and the story's none the worse for it, and in its atmosphere and adventure it lights the imagination and thrills the spirit.

    I knew it first as a child and have re-read it now so many years later with great pleasure, and for all the reasons above I find it very appealing. What about you? Did you feel the baddies were too bad and the goodies too good? Did Bonnie's stoic acceptance of her parents' apparent fate seem far-fetched? Did the swift move from snowy, wolf-stalked winter to the softer, southern landscape of spring take the edge off the book's mood? How about Simon the goose-boy (whose voice "had a comfortable, brown, furry sound to it") and his unlikely life in a cave - implausible, or delightfully romantic?

    There are Dickensian touches and gothic ones - the 'dark, satanic mills' of the wonderfully-named Blastburn, for instance; there are moral overtones such as Bonnie's acquiring "patience and self-command"; there are sylvan scenes and rustic idylls ("smiling pasturelands all astir with sheep and lambs"), and there is lots of delicious food* - including a reference to champagne as a remedy of first resort for malnutrition! Fifty years after it first came out it the book is still going strong, and I'm not at all surprised.

*The 'books and cakes' post for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is here.

Writers' portraits - Edith Wharton

    Edith Wharton was born on this day in 1862 and here she is aged eight, painted by Edward Harrison May.

    A couple of Wharton quotations:

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."

"The creative imagination can make a little go a long way ..."

    As to her books, I've still read only Ethan Frome and The House of Mirth (with the book group), but what of The Age of Innocence which won the Pulitzer Prize - is that her masterpiece?

Paris by Julian Green

 

     My thanks to Mr. Cornflower who has kindly written this post:

 

    Oxford, Paris, Heidelberg, Edinburgh; I have been fortunate in the cities where I have lived and worked over the past thirty years. I would not favour one above the others, but a recent and very much appreciated gift has revived memories of a place which not only its residents but many admirers regard as the centre of the civilised world.

   Julian Green's Paris was published in the early 1980s, when I myself was living in a student garret in the Latin Quarter, but the sweep of his marvellous book takes us right back to his own childhood - he was born to American parents in Paris in 1900 - and forward in the imagination to a Parisian a thousand years hence, looking through a window at the landscape of trees and houses beneath a rainy spring sky. You will find absolutely nothing in here of any practical value - no museum opening hours, no restaurant tips - but you will find an unsurpassed evocation of place. Paris, says Green, could be spoken of in the plural; there are many Parises, and the Paris of Parisians has only superficial connections with the Paris of outsiders. Until you have wasted time in a city, been bored there, strolled aimlessly through the unfashionable parts of town, you will not even suspect that within the Paris you can see there lies another, secret city, as real but as difficult to reach as Timbuktu once was.      

     This other Paris is woven from the memories, the feelings and the habits of the people who live and lived there. As I sank deeper into Green's world, I recalled my own Paris where it threaded in and out of his tapestry. I can still smell the ripe whiff of the Metro which he mentions; I must have used it many hundreds of times, and one warm day I manhandled a bed and a mattress up and down the escalators and in and out of the trains to save the delivery charge from the discount store to my flat - my fellow passengers expressed no surprise or even particular interest, not I think from indifference but from a courteous respect for my privacy. I could still walk, not perhaps blindfolded but certainly in the dark with no map, from my flat in the rue Maitre Albert to the Archives Nationales, across the two islands in the Seine, with a detour on the way back at Berthillon's ice cream shop as a reward after a particularly dry and dusty session. I was on a fairly tight budget so my occasional minor treats were very welcome - I once spent I think it was 15 francs (about £1.50) on four perfectly ripe white-fleshed peaches from Fauchon, quite a big outlay in 1982, and I can still remember thinking how exquisite the taste was as the juice of the first one hit the back of my throat.

    Hemingway was right: if you have been lucky enough to live in Paris as a young man it will stay with you for the rest of your life, for Paris is a moveable feast. Green's book, published in an excellent Penguin edition with the original French text facing an English translation at which I tried hard not to peep, brought back the flavours and contentments of my own Parisian banquet with a wonderful freshness.

Recent arrivals: some new fiction

    

      

      A new novel by William Nicholson is something to look forward to, and here is Motherland, out on 14th. February. Alice Dickinson (who was 11 in The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life) begins this book at the age of 23, "triggering a story that focuses on her great-grandmother's love affair in the 1940s". In 1942, Kitty is an army driver in Sussex who meets Ed, a Royal Marine Commando, and his best friend Larry, a liaison officer with Combined Operations. Both men take part in the catastrophic raid on the beaches of Dieppe, and both men fall in love with Kitty ... "An epic love story which captures both the beauty and the pain that love brings, set against a powerful backdrop of war and monumental change."

    "Lipska does for the East End what Rankin does for Edinburgh," says crime writer James Craig, and that's quite an accolade for a debut novel. He's referring to the thriller Where the Devil Can't Go by Anya Lipska, in which Janusz Kiszka, unofficial fixer for London’s Polish community, is given the task of looking into what appears to be a routine missing persons case, but he is soon embroiled in a much more complex disappearance. "After he is threatened by drug dealing gangsters and accused of murder his search for answers takes him on a reluctant visit home to the port of Gdansk, the site of traumatic memories from the Soviet era. There, in the cellar of a former secret policeman, he uncovers evidence of a decades-old betrayal – and a conspiracy that will reach its chilling denouement in a derelict warehouse in London’s Docklands."

    Sophie Hannah's psychological thrillers have an enormous, loyal following, and here is the latest, The Carrier. "When her plane is delayed overnight, Gaby Struthers finds herself forced to share a hotel room with a stranger, a terrified young woman named Lauren Cookson - but why is she so scared and why won't she explain? Lauren blurts out something about an innocent man going to prison for a murder he didn't commit, and Gaby soon suspects that Lauren's presence on her flight can't be a coincidence, because the murder victim is Francine Breary, the wife of the only man Gaby has truly loved. Tim Breary has confessed ... but he claims to have no idea why he murdered his wife."

    Next, from Courttia Newland comes The Gospel According to Cane, "a gripping tale of loss, despair and hope of redemption". Beverley Cottrell had a dream life: a great job, a wonderful husband, a new baby. "But then, one winter afternoon when her son was barely a few weeks old, he was kidnapped from a parked car. Despite a media campaign, a full police investigation and the offer of a reward, Malakay was never found. Two decades later, Beverley believes that she has pieced her life together again - until a young man starts appearing wherever she goes. One dark evening the stalker gets close and tells her not to be scared. He says that he is Malakay, her son."

    Pam Jenoff's The Ambassador's Daughter is a prequel to her novel Kommandant's Girl and is "a beautifully wrought coming-of-age story about a young woman deciding her destiny in a world that is redefining itself". It begins in Paris in 1919 where Margot Rosenthal has come with her German diplomat father as world leaders gather to rebuild Europe after the Great War. "Margot feels trapped and uncomfortable in the city ... but everything changes when she befriends Krysia Smok, a famous yet secretive pianist, a group of radical political activists, and Georg Richwalder, a handsome naval officer haunted by his experiences of the war. Margot finds herself questioning where her loyalties should lie."

    "A multi-layered, deftly observed novel of the fallout of fame and fortune," Little Known Facts by Christine Sneed is a story about celebrity. "Life as one of Hollywood's most handsome, charismatic and critically acclaimed movie stars seems like a glitzy fairytale to the people who orbit Renn Ivins. But for his grown children, their father's fame threatens to permeate every aspect of their lives. For medical student Anna, Renn's exploits are a source of embarrassment and bemusement. Her brother Will is floundering in a quarter-life crisis, the only thing to outlast his directionless career and failed relationships is his trust fund. While Will and Anna are happy to use their father's money, they're less happy to use his influence...." Secrets and lies unravel in this "psychologically exquisite, superbly realised novel."

Murder in the Library and a book to give away

 

    Just opened at the British Library in London is the exhibition Murder in the Library: An A-Z of Crime Fiction. This is a look at the history of crime fiction from its early roots to the present day, and it features familiar and well-loved writers as well as more obscure and surprising ones. The 'A-Z' element takes us from 'A' for Agatha Christie to 'Z' for Zodiac as in Soji Shimada's Tokyo Zodiac Murders, an illustrated Japanese detective novel, and highlights of the exhibition - which is free and runs until 12th. May - include John Gielgud's annotated script for Murder on the Orient Express and photographs, from his personal album, for his appearance in Morse, original material relating to the real-life crimes behind Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher and Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair, and Arthur Conan Doyle's manuscript of the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Retired Colourman (1926).

    The Library is hosting a series of events to accompany the exhibition including, on Friday 8th. February, The Story of Crime Fiction with Mark Lawson and crime fiction writers P. D. James, Henry Sutton and Jason Webster discussing the history of the genre, their favourite classics and their own work, and on Friday, 8th. March, The Female Detective in which a panel of writers discuss what makes the female detective, from Miss Marple to Mma Ramotswe, "an icon of the genre".

   

    You may not have heard of Britain's first fictional female detective Miss Gladden, otherwise known as "G", but in 1864 she appeared in the book The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester where "her deductive methods and energetic approach anticipate those of Sherlock Holmes, and she can be seen as beginning a powerful tradition of female detectives". The Library has recently re-published the book, with a foreword by Alexander McCall Smith, and they have kindly offered me a copy to give away, so to enter the draw please leave a comment naming your favourite crime novels or authors (male or female). I'm looking forward to reading what you write as it should amount to a great list of crime fiction, so please do put your name in the hat - it's open to all - and I'll pick a winner in a day or two.

And the winner is ...

    .... Pia in Sweden!

    There were some terrific answers to the question "what are you waiting for?" in the draw to win a copy of William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise, so a big 'thank you' to everyone who entered, and for those among you who are waiting for better times in one way or another, I hope they are not long in coming.

    I numbered all the comments and then used the random number generator to call a winner, and that is Pia, so snow permitting the book will be on its way to her very soon.

    As one book is bagged, so another is up for grabs - please come back later when we shall be having another draw, this time for what we might call 'a literary curiosity'.

When Nights Were Cold

    We've talked before about 'companion reading', books which complement one another in having themes or settings in common (there are examples here and here); having just read and greatly enjoyed Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind: a History of a Fascination, I'd offer Susanna Jones' unsettling psychological thriller When Nights Were Cold as a suitable companion piece. Each book has at its core the pull of the mountains, but here the draw of the Alps for the young Edwardian women who attempt to scale the Matterhorn stems from ideals of emancipation and self-actualization.

Growing up in London's Dulwich, Grace Farringdon avidly follows reports of the polar expeditions of Scott and Shackleton and longs to be an adventurer herself. But her family stifles talent and thwarts ambition, her parents intent on keeping Grace and her sister Catherine virtually sequestered from the outside world with only domestic pursuits to concern them. Grace, however, manages to get away to college, and at this all-female establishment she makes friends with three fellow students, Locke, Hooper and Parr. The four form an Antarctic Exploration Society to study expeditions and go walking and climbing in Wales and the Lake District, to emulate as far as possible their heroes' exploits. But when the more experienced Parr takes the group to the Alps, they experience what an ascent of that nature really means and come to understand what it can lead to or demand from a person.

    Farringdon's aim in climbing is to reach her "own Pole", prove herself in a taxing environment. But as she looks back from a distance of some years to the dramatic events of the 1910s, it is soon apparent that she is not what she seems, that she may be an unreliable narrator, increasingly out of kilter with herself and others, a person in whom repression seems to have wrought deep flaws. Her confessional account of what happened all those years before is gripping and chilling in equal measure. Atmospheric and intense, this is a beautifully balanced story of obsession.

Where's your reading taking you?

     

    This week I've 'been' on the Matterhorn with a group of adventurous Edwardian ladies in Susanna Jones' excellent and chilling When Nights Were Cold (of which more soon), and then I went to Cornwall in the 1990s via a re-read of Tim Smit's The Lost Gardens Of Heligan, his beautifully enthusiastic and succinct account of the discovery and restoration of the gardens of this now world famous Cornish estate. Now I'm off to 1660s Oxford to make a start on our February book group book, Iain Pears' An Instance Of The Fingerpost.

    Where's your reading taking you?

Out now in paperback: Waiting for Sunrise

    William Boyd's latest novel Waiting for Sunrise was one of my top books last year, and as it has just come out in paperback this is a good opportunity to talk about it again and to give away a copy! A slightly edited version of my original post on it follows, then below that are details for entering the draw.

   Waiting for Sunrise begins on "a clear and dazzling summer's day in Vienna [in 1913] in a skewed pentangle of lemony sunshine"; there is a "stirring of potential in the air, that possibility of audacity", a brightness that seems to bring with it hope and purpose. Then as the story unfolds, at different junctures and for different reasons, the main character is quite literally "waiting for sunrise", waiting for day to lighten darkness, and metaphorically waiting for dawning realisation, clarity, waiting to see clearly through the mist and murk of obfuscation, for all is not what it seems, and clouds have moved in front of the sun, casting doubt as well as shadow. For this reason as well as many others, the book's ending is particularly apt; will our man eventually find that elusive 'golden afternoon', or will his days be dark and dreich?

    As you'll have deduced from the above, this is a story about truth and lies, identity and re-invention, about trying to discover who is really who and what is what, and it's no coincidence that the novel's 'hero', Lysander Rief, is a young actor from a well known theatrical family, a man for whom disguise and assumed personality, 'front' and feints, are all part of his stock-in-trade, something he will rely upon heavily in the dangerous world into which he falls by chance.

    Lysander has gone to Vienna to consult a psychoanalyst about a sexual problem, and while Sigmund Freud himself appears in a cameo, Lysander's therapist Dr. Bensimon is a practitioner of Parallelism, an adjunct of Freudianism, a theory and technique he has devised to help his patients deal with trauma or neurosis by replacing their painful memories with a new 'reality'. (The author himself explains his invention in a brief video, and it's a remarkably plausible construct). While in Vienna undergoing treatment, Lysander becomes obsessively involved with an English sculptress called Hettie Bull, and it is this relationship which - as war in Europe becomes inevitable - leads him into a world of espionage and treachery, of intelligence-gathering and feats of derring-do.

    It's clear that meticulous research informs and underpins every stage, every layer of this complex book, and William Boyd is such a master at setting a scene, placing a telling detail, 'seasoning' his narrative with just the right amount of factual flavour to balance and ground the fictional substance of the text, that his material is beautifully shaped and works to fully support his plot. As well as being astute, inventive and intelligent, he's a writer with an instinctive feel for rhythm and pace and a gift for making the reader want to turn the page while still being fully engaged with the deeper themes of the book and the ideas behind them, so his stories just flow and it's pure pleasure - on several levels - to float along with them.

    This is a thrilling spy story and a portrait of Europe at a time of enormous change, a bildungsroman and a picture of the human psyche under pressure, a book springing from intellectual heft and virtuoso narrative technique, so no wonder it featured in my 'best of 2012' list.

                                                       ~~~~~

    I gave away a copy of the hardback last year and had great fun with that competition which played on the book's title. I asked everyone who wanted to enter the draw to leave a comment in answer to the question "What are you waiting for?", and the responses were super because they covered big, important, serious things, and simple, little everyday ones, so let's do the same again. There are no geographical or other restrictions, so to put your name in the hat just tell us what you're waiting for, and I'll draw a winner soon.

And the winner is ...

 

    Thankyou to all who entered the birthday draw. The random number generator did its work, and out of the hat came Belle's name, so a favourite book of mine (it's non-fiction, that's all I'll say for now) will be on its way to Belle soon.

    But that's not all, because later today I shall be holding another draw - this time the prize is an excellent novel - so please stay tuned.

Why?

    The T.S. Eliot Prize has gone to Sharon Olds for her collection Stag's Leap, and in making the award the chair of the judges Carol Ann Duffy paid tribute to the "freshness, skill and authority" exhibited in this year's shortlist. "We were particularly impressed by the strong presence of women on the list," she said.

    Why?

    Since when was it the case that, as in sport where physical differences mean men and women cannot compete on an equal footing, women were somehow the 'weaker' sex where writing is concerned and if they make a strong showing that is in itself comment-worthy? Maybe I am misinterpreting the Poet Laureate or perhaps her remark has been taken out of context, but it strikes me that in singling out the presence - per se - and contribution of women in this way a disservice is being done them, almost as if she were saying "and haven't those weaklings the girls done well this time? Let's give them a special round of applause to encourage them." Further, to argue - as some might do - that special commendation ought to be made as women continue to 'escape the burden of centuries of repression' would be, I feel, to make an old, tired and unnecessary point and to re-inforce the 'own goal' which the "strong presence of women" remark seems to constitute.

    On a golf course, women's tees are set nearer the pin than men's because - with a few exceptions - women cannot hit the ball as far as men can; that difference in physical capability is a fact. But there are no physical or other limitations to women's writing abilities, so what justification is there for remarking on their presence on a prize list as if it were, somehow, remark-able? I'd like to see prize lists based entirely on merit with no regard paid to the sex of the authors and no comment made as to women's showing compared to men's - or vice versa - because to do otherwise seems to me to be patronising. We are all people, but comments such as the one quoted above imply that one group of us is less capable than an another, therefore less is expected of them, therefore it is noteworthy when they exceed expectations and do well. I beg to differ.

Waterstones 11

 

    The Waterstones 11 for 2013 have just been announced, and here are the 11 debut novels the book chain has pronounced 'ones to watch' this year.

Pig's Foot Carlos Acosta - that is the Carlos Acosta

Idiopathy by Sam Byers

Y by Marjorie Celona

The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

The Fields by Kevin Maher

The Son by Michel Rostain

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera

Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi

Ballistics by DW Wilson

Light up your brain

    Scans of the brain taken when subjects were reading Shakespeare, Wordsworth and T.S. Eliot show that activity is heightened compared to what occurs when reading "straightforward" texts in everyday language. Apparently this leads to a beneficial effect on the mind, with attention engaged and moments of self-reflection triggered - so a recent study shows.
   
    "Serious literature acts like a rocket-booster to the brain," says Professor Philip Davis, "the research shows the power of literature to shift mental pathways, to create new thoughts, shapes and connections in the young and the staid alike.”
   
    Another good reason to Brush up your Shakespeare!

People of the Book

    I have very much enjoyed Geraldine Brooks' novel People of the Book, but (yes, there is a but) it struck me as a less successful book than the two others of hers I've read, the excellent Year of Wonders and March. Admittedly, it's been a while since I looked at them and I may be mis-remembering, but my recollection is of works which have a greater level of consistency and integrity to them than People of the Book has.

    This is the story of a highly important, hugely valuable book - the Sarajevo Haggadah, "a lavishly illustrated Hebrew manuscript made at a time when Jewish belief was against illustrations of any kind" - and of how its conservation reveals its history and origins. It is told by way of a modern-day narrative interspersed with episodes from the book's past, so we move back in time from Sarajevo in 1996 when conservator Hanna Heath is called in to work on the book, to the city during the Second World War, then to Vienna in 1894, Venice in the 1600s and so on, each period supplying the answers to the clues to the book's past found by Hanna in her meticulous examination of the precious, mysterious work.

    Hanna's own story is very much in the foreground, too; daughter of a top Australian neurosurgeon with whom she doesn't get on, she has never known her father's identity, and has grown up determined to make her own way in the world despite her mother's condescending attitude and evident disappointment that she chose not to follow her into medicine.Without conventional family ties but with an enviable reputation at the top of her field, hers is a life of travel, scholarship and casual relationships, but nothing beats the thrill and interest inherent in her primary work, the conservation of medieval manuscripts: "By linking research and imagination, sometimes I can think myself into the heads of the people who made the book. I can figure out who they were, or how they worked. That's how I add my few grains to the sandbox of human knowledge".

    That passage might describe the novel itself as it's based on a real book and real events but around fictional characters and a great deal of plausible invention. The author's extensive research shows, but there are sections where it has been incorporated with less finesse than I'd have expected, and to raise one tiny point of irregularity, would a fin-de-siècle Viennese liken an acquisitive person to a bowerbird? Surely that's too Australian a term for that time and place.

    Overall I felt there was an uneven tension between the historical strands and the present day one with its suspense and spy thriller-like action, but the drama of the book reflects well the turbulent passage of the Haggadah itself and those who made it or were connected to it in times of extremism, religious intolerance, persecution and war. It's a terrfic story whose technical aspects are fascinating, and in which the protagonist's surprisingly high-powered life engages the reader, but Geraldine Brooks says in an interview that working with a plot ranging over centuries was intimidating and at one point she put the book aside for two years as she felt herself overwhelmed, and I think that sense of the material's being unwieldy does show in the finished piece - it isn't quite as polished as I remember her earlier books being. In the grand scheme of things my criticisms are small ones, and I remain a firm Brooks fan, keen to read her latest, Caleb's Crossing.

Fun and games

  

  London readers in search of a bargain may like to pop into Heywood Hill in Curzon Street before 26th. January and have a rummage in their basement as they are offering 40% off a large selection of secondhand and antiquarian stock including items from the libraries of Anthony Powell, Edward Heath and others.

   

    If you haven't already seen it, do read the poem Oatmeal by Galway Kinnell which Nancy very kindly incorporated in her comment on the breakfast post earlier in the week, and another lovely food-related poem, Mother N by Adèle Geras which you can find here.

    Fans of Angela Thirkell (and I am one now having read three books of hers in quick succession last month) will be pleased to hear that Virago Modern Classics are to be bringing out four more of her novels. Pomfret Towers, described by the publisher as having “a pleasingly light-hearted Downton-esque storyline about the marriage plans of a young heir to the entailed family estate”, will be published in November 2013, while The Brandons, Summer Half and August Folly will follow in summer 2014.

   

    Lastly today, this is very tongue-in-cheek this, but follow the link to find out whether you are on the Wolf Hall spectrum, and if so, where!