Annie Proulx - Just finished reading ....

Fine Just the Way It Is by Annie Proulx

9/10

I don't like short stories much, unless they are written by Annie Proulx.
In a book like this, not every story is going to be a gem, but the ones that are are overwhelmingly fine.

Please, please, please read some of these Wyoming stories. Read 'Them Old Cowboy Songs', and it'll break your heart. Read 'Testimony of the Donkey' and, like me, you will never know how it ends. Read 'Tits-Up in a Ditch' and you will break your heart again, and you will know exactly in which circumstances you can apply this phrase in your own life - though I hope you never have to.

Annie earned 9/10 on the back of these three stories and one other.

But do I want to visit Wyoming? Yes, I do. Just like her other masterpieces, 'The Shipping News' and 'That Ol' Ace in the Hole' made me want to see Newfoundland and the Texas Panhandle.

I love Annie Proulx, but I'm not sure I would want her round for dinner. She sees too much and understands too much. A wise woman.

David Mitchell - Just finished reading ....

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

8/10

This reminded me of Julian Barnes' 'History of the world in 10 1/2 chapters'. Why? Not sure - it feels like a momentous book that has a lot to say to us, but I think it might need to be read again to catch all the cleverness. It is a clever book. It's big and made up of several stories, that interlink with each other. I feel that I shouldn't say more than that for fear of giving too much away - but I was taken from the story of a sea-faring lawyer in the 1800s to the fate of a cloned fast-food waitress in a world dominated by multinational brand names to a post-apocalyptic future with tribal warfare.

Bit post-modern (well, a lot, actually) - I think the author cleverly makes reference to what he has done on page 463, where he is describing the work of a composer of music - I'm paraphrasing, so as to describe the book - 'in the first half of the book each story is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished.'

I wouldn't call it revolutionary or gimmicky - but it is a clever way to deliver a book's narratives.

It took me ages to read, though - partly because sometimes it's hard to find the time, but also, it was stodgy at times.

Alderman, Comyns and Cook - read recently in the car

These are some audio-stories that I have recently listened to in the car as I trudge or zoom up and down the motorway to and from work each day.

You may recall from other posts, that I can't listen to anything too exciting or complex, because I can't not have accidents and concentrate at the same time. So, I tend to choose my story CDs from our local library using a system that is roughly alphabetical, tends to favour female authors, de-selects murder mysteries and modern chick-lit.

I often end up with poor Rosie Tralee who has left poverty in Ireland and ends up being a maid in a cruel household in Liverpool but then her luck changes and she ends up owning a department store. There are a surprising number of books that follow this kind of plot.

Whisper of Life by Gloria Cook is one of those books. But in this, Katie who is poor and working class and therefore ill-treated by her family is taken under the wings of a nice middle-class family, so that's alright then. There are 4 or 5 deaths and a kidnapping in a remarkably short space of time. But she gets engaged to a nice man, and the deaths are all people we don't like, so that's alright then, too. The best bit of this audio-book is the person who reads the story, who tries to do post-war upper middle class accents and the accents of the Devonshire hoi-polloi who litter their streets. Made me laugh out loud! No score for this one.

Naomi Alderman's book, 'Disobedience' is an interesting study of what it might be like to rebel against one's Jewish up-bringing and community. So, I learned a lot about the Jewish culture in Hendon and the story was 5/10. I found the characters a bit hard to believe in.

Barbara Comyn's book was called 'The Vet's Daughter', so I assumed that she would be treated cruelly, run away and then find her way to riches, through marriage, in America. But actually, it was a good book. The story had been triggered by a newspaper cutting (Victorian, I think) about a young woman who performed a magical display of levitating above the ground in a London park, and was trampled to death in the consequent crowd surge. 6/10