Is it wrong that I kept seeing Audrey Hepburn in my mind's eye while reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's best-known novella? I guess it's Is it wrong that I kept seeing Audrey Hepburn in my mind's eye while reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's best-known novella? I guess it's understandable, given how iconic Hepburn's portrayal of Holly Golightly is. In fact, I think Hepburn's Holly may well be my all-time favourite movie heroine. She's a slut, a snob and a gold-digger, and her life is so shallow and vapid that it should be reprehensible to me, but at the same time she is so delightfully charming and eccentric that it is impossible not to fall under her spell and end up madly in love with her. As played by Hepburn, Holly is the ultimate It Girl, witty and beautiful and so stylish it hurts, but vulnerable and conflicted enough for us not to envy her.
Capote's Holly is slightly different from Hepburn's. She is tougher and more potty-mouthed than her movie counterpart, with a touch of racism that I don't remember from the film. She also seems a bit more hell-bent on self-destruction, and less inclined to be saved by the well-meaning narrator. For these and other reasons, she should be mildly off-putting, but for some reason she's not. I guess it's because she is immensely alive -- less girlishly and innocently so than in the film, but just as alluring. And she doesn't need Hepburn's charm to come off the page. Capote did a great job imagining Holly and fleshing her out, giving her one good line after the other and endearing quirks galore. It probably isn't fair to him that I (along with millions of other readers, no doubt) kept picturing Audrey Hepburn while reading his descriptions of Holly, to the point where I was shocked to discover Capote imagined her as a blonde (surely not?), but thankfully, my love for the film didn't prevent me from recognising the quality of the writing, which is beyond dispute. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Capote was a master storyteller with a finely developed ear for dialogue and a massive flair for making the unglamorous glamorous. He used both gifts to great effect in Breakfast at Tiffany's, creating a story which, while less romantic and emotionally gratifying than the film adaptation, nevertheless succeeds in making the reader yearn for Holly the same way the narrator does. The prose is effortlessly elegant, even when it refers to ugly things, which it does rather more regularly than George Axelrod and Blake Edwards seem to have cared to replicate in the film. Timeless and evocative, it is a story about friendship valued and lost, about belonging and refusing to belong, and like the film, it stays with you as the perfect blend of cynicism and sentiment, with an added sense of loss. I can't think why I waited so long to read it...
The other three stories in the collection, 'House of Flowers', 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory', are almost as strong as Breakfast at Tiffany's. Like the better-known novella which opens the book, 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory' are elegies on broken friendships, on bonds shared and then lost, and like Tiffany’s, they are poignant and evocative, with moments of startling intimacy and many a well-turned phrase and eye-opening observation. 'House of Flowers' (about the romance between the most beautiful prostitute in Port-au-Prince and the peasant who makes an honest woman of her) is less poignant, but just as memorable for its matter-of-fact weirdness and quirkiness (spider bread, anyone?). All three short stories prove that Capote was a master of the genre, equally at home in first-person narratives and third-person ones, with male heroes and female ones, with child protagonists and more mature ones. The four stories contained in Breakfast at Tiffany's all have vastly different points of view, styles and subjects, but in their own ways, they are all interesting and memorable, making it all the more regrettable that Capote only published so few of them. He was obviously quite the short-story teller.
Do seek this collection out if you haven't already -- you won't regret it. ...more
One of the things I like best about the great nineteenth-century Russian authors is how they can have their characters say outrageously grandiose thinOne of the things I like best about the great nineteenth-century Russian authors is how they can have their characters say outrageously grandiose things without making them sound ridiculous. Such are their characters' passions and romantic ideals that they get away with statements which in Western European or American literature would draw a guffaw from the reader. Take, for instance, this violent outburst by Andrei Kovrin, the schizophrenic hero of Chekhov's story 'The Black Monk':
'I was going out of my mind, I had megalomania, but I was bright and cheerful, even happy. I was interesting and original. Now I've grown more rational and stable, but I'm just like everyone else, a nobody. Life bores me... Oh, how cruelly you've treated me! I did have hallucinations, but did they harm anyone? Who did they harm, that's what I'd like to know!'
Personally, I love that kind of stuff when it fits into the story, but I can see how a less romantically inclined reader might roll his eyes and go, 'Yeah, you tell 'em, buddy. Right on.' Russian characters have that effect on some people.
Of course, Kovrin is not just any character. He's an academic on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Advised by a doctor to take a break, he travels to the Crimea to visit an old friend, but doesn't actually stop working. Soon he gets so overworked that he begins to see and have ardent discussions with a black monk others can't see. A gothic and somewhat haunting tale exploring the relationship between genius and insanity ensues. Both Kovrin and his friend Pesotsky are manic, but Pesotsky's mania takes a more socially acceptable form than Kovrin's. Chekhov (who had hallucinations about a black monk himself and, like his hero, died at a young age because he kept working while suffering from TB) leaves it up to his reader to decide which of the various kinds of madness depicted in the story is worse. With its expert characterisation and oppressive mood, 'The Black Monk' is a good story, intense and compelling and quintessentially Russian. It's Chekhov at his best, and Chekhov at his best will never get old.
The second story in the volume, 'Peasants', is equally grim but more realistic. It centres on a man who, suffering from bad health and no longer able to support his family, travels from Moscow to the countryside village where he grew up, only to find that his parents have too much on their minds to look after him and his family -- a hard-drinking son, a slutty daughter-in-law, taxes to pay, and so on. And of course the local council is to blame for everything, because it wouldn't do to blame the vodka, would it? 'Peasants' paints a bleak picture of a society torn asunder by poverty and alcoholism. It rings true, and probably was -- Chekhov was a dcctor, and as such met many poor people. I don't think it's Chekhov's best story, but it's very readable, albeit depressing. Then again, I don't think anyone reads Russian literature for the cheer it brings to people's lives....more
The fantasy stories of George MacDonald (1824-1905) served as a source of inspiration to Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Madeleine l'EnThe fantasy stories of George MacDonald (1824-1905) served as a source of inspiration to Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Madeleine l'Engle. Lewis said that MacDonald did allegorical/mythopoeic fantasy 'better than any man', and that quote alone was enough to arouse my interest. I'm glad it did, because I would have missed out on something good if I had not discovered MacDonald. While I'm not sure I'd call him the greatest fantasy author ever, he definitely was a master of allegory. He had a wonderfully vivid imagination, a beautifully fluid writing style, a gentle sense of humour, and a keen eye for protagonists with whom readers will sympathise (in this volume, mostly lonely children). He also came up with some wonderful quests and journeys into dreamscapes, so it's easy to see why other fantasy authors would be impressed and inspired by his work.
The four stories collected in this volume are all very different. The title story, 'The Golden Key', is a tremendously symbolic fairy tale about a boy who finds a golden key at the end of the rainbow and, together with a neglected girl, sets out on a journey to the country whence the shadows fall, meeting a fairy, the Old Man of the Sea, the Old Man of the Earth and the Old Man of the Fire on the way there. Like The Hobbit, it feels rather episodic at times, and I'm sure half of the imagery went over my head, but I loved the tone and otherworldliness of the story, as well as the archaic writing style. I only wish MacDonald had taken slightly more time to flesh out his tale; at times it felt like a jumble of ideas not properly worked out or joined together. On the other hand, the author's refusal to explain or go into detail definitely adds to the otherworldly feeling, so I suppose there's something to be said for it. Anyhow, 'The Golden Key' is a beautiful piece of work with a lovely old-fashioned and mythical quality.
The second story, 'The History of Photogen and Nycteris', focuses on an evil science experiment whereby a wicked witch deprives a young girl of light and keeps a young boy from ever experiencing darkness. Needless to say, the boy and the girl meet up eventually and learn to love and complement each other in all the right ways. The story is rather baffling in that you never find out why the witch embarks on her cruel experiment (the only explanation MacDonald provides is that she 'had a wolf in her mind', which is intriguing but ultimately a little unsatisfying), but that's pretty much the only complaint I have about 'Photogen and Nycteris'. In all other regards, it's a beautifully crafted, lyrical and romantic story which will teach you to look at light and dark differently and raise a glass to complementary love. I wish I had read it as a child; I would have loved it.
The third story, 'The Shadows', is an intriguing little tale about a man who meets the enigmatic Shadows and finds out how they affect our lives. A large part of the story consists of Shadows telling other Shadows what they have done to change people's lives. Part of me wanted these stories to be told another way (i.e. to be shown rather than described in dialogue), but I'm not sure how MacDonald should have gone about that; I can't come up with a better way myself. In any case, it's an imaginative tale which will have you look at shadows in a different way and curse the unromantic, Shadow-unfriendly electric light we have these days. After reading the story, I felt like lighting candles all over the house and waiting for the Shadows to show up. I can't think of a better tribute than that.
The final story, 'The Gifts of the Child Christ', is a beautiful, extremely Victorian family drama about yet another neglected child who finds love. It's a bit too mawkish and Christian for my taste (MacDonald was a minister, and it shows here), but it's well told and must have been popular with Victorian readers.
In summary, I really liked the book, and definitely look forward to checking out MacDonald's longer works now!...more
Elizabeth Gilbert's Pilgrims (first published in 1997) has come in for a fair bit of criticism on Goodreads -- mainly, I think, because it is so diffeElizabeth Gilbert's Pilgrims (first published in 1997) has come in for a fair bit of criticism on Goodreads -- mainly, I think, because it is so different from her humongous bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. I get the impression many readers go into this collection of short stories expecting it to be a re-tread of themes discussed in Eat, Pray, Love, only to be fiercely disappointed and unforgiving when they find out it isn't. It's a pity many readers can't judge the book on its own merits, for Pilgrims is an accomplished collection of short stories. In my opinion, it showcases Elizabeth Gilbert's gifts as a writer better than does Eat, Pray, Love, but I guess it doesn't contain enough soul-searching and navel-gazing for the average fan of that book.
The twelve stories contained in Pilgrims are refreshingly diverse and unsentimental. They are set all over the USA, and feature a wide range of characters: directionless fifteen-year-old boys, brilliant and less brilliant magicians, brassy cowgirls, shy artists, incestuous bar owners, punch-happy protective older brothers, overambitious porters, pretentious students who like to pretend they're British aristocrats, and so on. The situations in which Gilbert puts these characters are equally diverse, but they do have a few things in common. For one thing, many stories revolve around characters learning important things about themselves, frequently finding things they did not even know they were looking for. For another thing, they all share a certain sympathy and compassion. No matter how silly or downright stupid some of Gilbert's characters are, the author never stoops to judge them, treating them instead with a tolerance that borders on respect. I like that, just like I like the fact that Gilbert never feels compelled to tell her characters' whole histories. The twelve stories in Pilgrims are not miniature novels; instead they are slices of life that start in medias res and end there. They capture a moment in time rather than a story, and as far as I'm concerned, they capture it well -- no need for more background or closure.
The best thing about Pilgrims is Elizabeth Gilbert's fabulous ear for dialogue. Readers familiar with Eat, Pray, Love will know that Gilbert excels at writing lively and witty dialogue. In Pilgrims she does an even better job of it, sketching complete (and again, very diverse) characters by means of short, frequently absurd exchanges. Many of her dialogues are quirky as hell, but they suit the characters and situations so well that they always feel genuine and right. As a beginning novelist, I quite envy Gilbert for the ease with which she gives all her characters a voice of their own, but I digress...
As I was saying, Pilgrims may not appeal to the millions of navel-gazing self-seekers who ate up Eat, Pray, Love, but those who like original and unsentimental slices of life with good characterisation and vivid dialogue should appreciate it a lot. I know I did! ...more
Did you know they had lotteries back in the late eighteenth century? And did you know that lottery tickets cost so much back then that not-so-wealthy Did you know they had lotteries back in the late eighteenth century? And did you know that lottery tickets cost so much back then that not-so-wealthy people had to sell a cow in order to be able to afford a ticket? Neither did I, until I read Maria Edgeworth's 'The Lottery', a short story published as a booklet in the Phoenix 60p series.
Edgeworth, of course, was a contemporary and favourite author of Jane Austen's, who commended Edgeworth's Belinda in Northanger Abbey and sent the Irish-born author a (presumably autographed) copy of Emma upon its publication. Being an Austen fan, I naturally had to check out Edgeworth, whose Castle Rackrent, The Absentee and Belinda are considered minor classics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
'The Lottery' is about a likeable couple, Maurice and Ellen Robinson, who are talked into buying a lottery ticket by Mrs Dolly, Maurice's live-in aunt, and really do have to sell a cow to do so. Much to their surprise, they win five thousand pounds. Ellen wishes to save the money and go on living as they always have, but Maurice and Dolly spend lavishly. Needless to say, it doesn't end well. This is, after all, a morality tale, and a fairly unsubtle one at that.
I have to say I was surprised at the tone of the story, which seems incredibly modern for something that was written in 1799. Sure, five thousand pounds isn't the fortune it once was, and rich people are more likely to have fancy cars than horse-drawn carriages these days, but other than that, the story doesn't seem to have dated at all. Both the language and the subject matter are entirely recognisable to us, denizens of the twenty-first century, give or take a few 'prays' and 'forsooths'. And of course the moral (don't gamble!) is as pertinent today as it was two centuries ago.
'The Lottery' is a straightforward story, well told but not a great masterpiece. There is some fine comedy at the expense of Mrs Dolly, who likes her brandy, but like many eighteenth-century stories, 'The Lottery' is slightly too moralistic and self-righteous for its own good. Still, it's a perfectly agreeable introduction to Maria Edgeworth's work, and having read it, I look forward to reading her more famous books....more
Carol Reed's The Third Man ranks among my favourite noir films. To a large extent, this is because of its stunningly atmospheric black-and-white cinemCarol Reed's The Third Man ranks among my favourite noir films. To a large extent, this is because of its stunningly atmospheric black-and-white cinematography (I just love those ruins and shadows...), but it's also because there's something quite compelling about the story about a Brit who is invited to post-war Vienna by a friend, only to discover that said friend is dead and may have been involved in a rather nasty racket. That story was written by Graham Greene, and was published by Penguin along with another Greene story adapted for the screen by Reed, 'The Fallen Idol'.
The Third Man is unlike other Greene books. As Greene himself points out in the preface, 'it was never written to be read but only to be seen'. In other words, while it's not exactly a film script, The Third Man was written to be turned into one, and it shows. By Greene's standards, the story is light on characterisation and heavy on descriptions of actions and situations. This is bad news for those of us who like Greene precisely for his characterisation, but it's not necessarily a bad thing per se, as for one thing, what little characterisation there is is solid and original (I love Rollo Martins' semi-split personality) and for another, both the plot and the atmosphere are great. Post-war Vienna (carved up into four spheres of influence by the Americans, British, French and Russians) makes for a wonderfully tense setting, and involuntary detective Rollo Martins' journey from indignation to disbelief to disillusionment to acceptance makes for compulsive reading, featuring as it does dramatic plot twists, some dark humour and a healthy dose of cynicism. In short, it's a fairly strong novella, even if it doesn't match up with Greene's longer works. Even so, I'm going to defer to the author's own assessment, which is that the film is better than the story (and not just because the story lacks the famous cuckoo clock line, which was written by Orson Welles). It's simply because the film (on which Greene closely collaborated with Reed) is, as Greene points out in his preface, 'in this case the finished state of the story', whereas the book version is merely an earlier draft -- a solid draft, but an unfinished one nonetheless.
As for the second, much shorter story in the book, 'The Fallen Idol', this is a tragedy about an innocent child who gets caught up in the nasty games adults play and ends up accidentally handing his best friend over to the police. As an exploration of the innocence-versus-guilt theme, it's rather interesting, especially since it is (unusually for Greene) told from the child's point of view. Due to the childish perspective, Greene doesn't get to indulge in his trademark cynicism (which is what I love best about him), but still, it's a well-told, well-observed story with great characters, some menace, several 'Oh, no!' moments and an abrupt but effective ending. It's not brilliant, but it's decent story-telling -- more proof (if any were needed) that Greene didn't need many words to tell a powerful story.
All in all, I'd say this is a solid 3.5-star book. Since it's closer to four stars than to three, I'll be generous and give it four....more
The Apple is a hard book to rate. On the one hand, I enjoyed the seven stories contained in it for the additional glimpse they provide into the lives The Apple is a hard book to rate. On the one hand, I enjoyed the seven stories contained in it for the additional glimpse they provide into the lives of the characters of The Crimson Petal and the White, one of the best novels I've read this year. On the other hand, they don't provide nearly enough glimpses for my liking, and I doubt they'll appeal much to people who haven't read The Crimson Petal. So. Yeah. Conundrum!
Three of the stories in The Apple are set before the events of The Crimson Petal. They show Sugar treating Christopher to a nice Christmas meal at Mrs Castaway's, Sugar having to deal with proselytising evangelists, and Emmeline writing letters to American slave owners. They're nice enough stories, but to my critical eye, they look rather like outtakes from the book with which Faber couldn't quite part. The remaining four stories, which take place after the ending of The Crimson Petal, are much better in my opinion. I delighted in seeing the unpleasant fate of Clara, the Rackhams' evil servant. I grinned at Mr Bodley's unenthusiastic visit to a brothel, which culminates in a laugh-out-loud encounter with a Malaysian prostitute who hasn't had a chance to learn proper English yet. I nodded with satisfaction at the poetic justice of William Rackham's fate. And most of all, I relished the opportunity to see what had become of Sophie Rackham, and how she had implemented the lessons Miss Sugar taught her. Sophie's is an interesting, occasionally poignant tale with some nice historical tangents -- the best in the collection, I think. But as much as I enjoyed the various vignettes, they didn't satisfy me. I wanted more. I wanted to hear what had become of Caroline and the Rackhams' lecherous driver. I wanted to hear what had become of Christopher, the young brothel boy. And most of all, I wanted to hear -- in detail! -- what had become of Sugar, The Crimson Petal's heroine. Amazingly enough, Sugar's post-Petal life hardly gets a mention in The Apple. We learn where she took Sophie and that they did a bit of exploring together, but we never find out what Sugar ended up making of herself. Nor do we get a full account of Sugar's post-abduction relationship with Sophie, or find out what Sophie really felt about the abduction, because the one time the subject is brought up is in a story which isn't told from Sophie's point of view. Seriously, how sucky is that?
As for the stand-alone value of The Apple, I don't think it has any. Sure, the stories have their charms, and the one about Sophie's later years is actually quite interesting from a historical point of view, but I doubt they'll mean much to people who aren't already familiar with the characters. Nor do I think they make particularly good examples of the short story in general. Faber may be a fabulous novelist, but short stories aren't his forte, and it shows here. The seven stories in The Apple are a very nice try, but they don't live up to the expectations raised by The Crimson Petal. Then again, very few things do.
I know Faber has said he won't write a sequel to The Crimson Petal and the White, but I'm harbouring a secret hope that the fact that there's hardly any information on Sugar's post-Petal life in The Apple means that Faber intends to write a full-length account of it elsewhere. If that ever happens, I'll be first in line to read it.
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ORIGINAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Short stories about the characters from The Crimson Petal and the White, which you should all read because it's amazing!...more
Wow. That was my response after reading just a few pages of The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter's amazing collection of re-imagined fairy tales. Carter Wow. That was my response after reading just a few pages of The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter's amazing collection of re-imagined fairy tales. Carter has a way with words that pulls you right into her stories, seducing you, intoxicating you. And the stories themselves are pretty impressive, too. Carter has a superb imagination and ambition to match, leading her not just to modernising famous fairy tales, but to feminising them, eroticising them and giving them a dark and primordial slant. The result is a pretty heady mix of ingénues, beasts, vampires, werewolves and feral children who discover things they never did in the story books you have at home, but which make perfect sense in the strange, highly atmospheric universe Carter creates here. You may never read your fairy-tale books in the same way again after reading this collection, but then again, perhaps you weren't meant to read them that way, anyway. Who is to say what is the definitive version of a fairy tale?
To be sure, the quality of the stories in The Bloody Chamber is uneven. There are a few stories in there which are so obscure they had me going 'huh?', but even in their obscurity they were seriously beautiful and evocative. I genuinely enjoyed being immersed in the delirious bath of feelings and impressions Carter poured me, and I honestly look forward to taking the plunge again at some point to see if I can make more sense of these stories then. That's how good a writer Carter is -- even at her most obscure she seduces you and has you coming back for more.
Meanwhile, the good stories in The Bloody Chamber are very good indeed. My favourite would have to be 'Puss-in-Boots'. The most straightforward story in the collection, it's a delightfully brazen retelling of the fairy tale of the same name, in which Puss proudly relates his efforts to get his master to bed the lady of his dreams. Other superb stories in the collection include 'The Bloody Chamber' (a very erotic retelling of the old Bluebeard story), 'The Lady of the House of Love' (a marvellously gothic retelling of the Snow White tale in which Snow White herself has been recast as... a vampire), and 'The Company of Wolves', in which Little Red Riding Hood saves her own life by sleeping with the wolf. Well, wouldn't you?
As you can probably tell from the above, sex is an important theme in The Bloody Chamber. Many of the stories are about sexual awakening; many of them feature girls who are only just beginning to discover the sensual life, usually at the hands of pretty brutish men/monsters. Sound gruesome? It's not. 'Sensual' is the word to describe these stories -- sensual, seductive, luscious and erotic. And yes, some of them are also quite dark, gothic and morbid, but always beautifully and seductively so.
I could go on to writing an essay about Carter's stunning (and occasionally startling) imagery, or about the way she desanitises old tales and gives them a feminist twist, but I think I've said enough here. The bottom line is that this is good stuff and that you should all read it. Personally, I can't wait to read what else Carter has written. She seems quite a discovery....more
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