What does your book pile say about you?

I found the funniest link on Facebook today, courtesy of The Librarian, and just had to share it here... Please feel free to identify yourselves, and if you're game, leave me a comment to say which pile is most representative of you. At the moment, due to financial and mobility constraints, not to mention the fact that we're moving - AGAIN - I'm No.1. However, there will be more room in the new place. The rest of my books can come back out of storage (cue shopping trip for more bookcases). I will have a study again - my own space where the books can, potentially, pile up all over the place!

So, go have a look, enjoy, and let me know:
http://bookriot.com/2012/10/17/what-your-book-pile-says-about-you/

Still Alice - Lisa Genova

I have spent months retreating into books while I've been ill, and thinking about writing them, then picking up the next book, and the next, and the posts I've thought about have slid away until reading each book was too far distant to write about them as I wanted to... So, now I'm working back through the stack and reading them again - this is the first of what I hope will be more regular posts as I push myself back into the habit of writing.

Still Alice is one of those books that made a huge impression on me that stayed long after the first reading - long enough for my memory to have enabled me to post, but there were layers of processing that stopped me at that point. It tells the story of Dr Alice Howland, respected linguistics expert, revered Harvard teacher, loved wife and colleague of Dr John Howland - also a Harvard professor, mother of Anna, Tom and Lydia. We first meet her, approaching her 50th birthday, in her home in Boston, prepping for an interstate lecture, while John - always disorganised - is fussing around the house trying to find his glasses before he leaves to get back to his lab. She puts her notes aside, calmly does a quick search while John continues fussing, and locates the missing glasses. John leaves, Alice repacks her bag, which is still partially packed from her last trip, and heads to the west coast.

Alice and John's lives have centred around their academic pursuits, Alice fitting hers around the children while they were small, eventually catching up and achieving her doctorate, then tenure. During a sabbatical they took together, the pair collaborated on a book that brings their two disciplines together - John's biochemistry and her linguistics. Their eldest, Anna, is a successful lawyer, married to Charles, also a lawyer. Tom, the middle child, is in medical school. Lydia, the youngest, has broken the family's academic tradition and is in LA taking acting classes, hoping to make it as an actor. Back at home, Alice and John are in conflict over this - Alice feeling Lydia should go to college so she always has back up, John supporting Lydia emotionally and financially, saying she's made her choice and should be supported as were the other two. Alice's upcoming trip to the west coast for her lecture is also an opportunity to catch up with Lydia - which she anticipates with mixed feelings, as the two rarely manage to get together without arguing about the college/acting issue.

At the lecture, Alice has - for her - the never before experience of freezing, blank, on the podium. It's only a couple of seconds, but she is seriously rattled to find herself unable to find the word she wants at that point. She covers, and finishes the lecture, hoping her slip wasn't obvious. She is partly reassured by the reaction of her academic hosts, but it's a worrying niggle that she adds to other, equally, inexplicable wrinkles in her busy life. Dinner later with Lydia is as mixed as Alice anticipates, and heading back to Boston, she is tired and flat. She arrives home to an empty house, having hoped that John would be home from the lab to greet her, something that's happening less and less as he focuses more and more on his work. Feeling frustrated and let down, she decides to go for a run, hoping that the exercise, which she missed during her trip, will lift her mood. Her regular run is a circuit that normally takes about 45 minutes, and all goes well until the very end, when she slows to a walk for to cool down over the last stretch and, reaching an intersection, she is suddenly completely unable to remember which way to go to get home. She knows she's in Boston, she's on a footpath near Harvard, under a mile from home, and she hasn't the faintest idea whether to go straight ahead, left or right. Fighting increasing panic and disorientation, she searches the nearby landmarks for clues, and as abruptly as the memory blank descended, her mind is clear again, and she makes it home, finding John on the point of leaving - having come home from the lab to find her not there... The stress of the ensuing mild altercation pushes what happened from the front of Alice's thoughts until John has gone, when it comes back and she finds herself going over and over the episode before she eventually decides she's just tired, stressed, maybe getting menopausal...time to schedule a checkup with her doctor.

At the doctor's, her GP (PCP for my American readers) quizzes her about what's been going on, and after answering the doctor's questions, Alice puts forward her own theory - that it's menopause causing the memory lapses, having done some research prior to the appointment. The doctor agrees that one of the symptoms of menopause CAN be memory dysfunction, but it's usually associated with poor sleep hygiene, and Alice's sleep is just fine... The doctor suggests they monitor the situation for a while, and orders blood tests and an MRI.

Glitches keep happening... A mysterious note, 'Eric', on one of her many post-its makes no sense at all, until the day she gets a reminder from a colleague about some microscope slide images she'd promised to send for a presentation that haven't been sent. She preps in her office for one of her teaching lectures, and then, when she arrives at the hall, can no longer remember which topic - the topic she's just reviewed half an hour previously. Back at the doctor for results, she is told that her blood work is clear, as is the MRI. The doctor begins to suggest waiting a couple of months and monitoring, but Alice doesn't want that, and asks to see a neurologist.

At a staff holiday party in December, Alice is introduced to her graduate student's new wife early in the evening. In the ebb and flow of party socialising, Alice finds herself next to a young woman she doesn't remember and introduces herself. The circle of people, which includes John, registers surprise - it is Dan's new wife who she's just met... John decides that it's time to wrap up, says their goodbyes, and they head home. Three days before Christmas, she's meeting with the neurologist for the first time. He works her through a rigorous test of her memory, quizzing her on facts from her life and random puzzles. At the end of the appointment, he tells her he wants to do some further testing...she locks him into a stare, tacitly challenging him to divulge what he's thinking, which he doesn't, but in that instant, she realises he knows what it is, but isn't prepared to tell her until he finishes investigating. Home again, she throws herself into Christmas preparations - the whole family will be together again and various traditions will be observed, including making her mother's chocolate bread and butter pudding on Christmas Eve - a dish she's made every year as long as anyone can remember. Only, this year, she can't remember the recipe - it's not written down, and her mother died in a car accident when she was still in college... She tries every way she can think of to recall how many eggs she needs, and in frustration, smashes all the eggs into the sink. She also devises variations on the neurologists quizzes, relentlessly testing herself, trying to convince herself nothing's wrong. But something is wrong. Badly wrong. At her next appointment, after reminding her that she must always have someone with her for appointments, the doctor tells her she has early onset Alzheimers Disease.

Telling John proves to be just as difficult as she imagined. He's determined that she's been misdiagnosed and insists on genetic testing to look for one of three possible gene mutations that can be present in an Alzheimers patient...but not always, which is when it hits her - if she has the gene, all three children have a 50% chance of having it too, which means they could also be in line to have the same diagnosis. The test is positive. There is no putting off telling the children - particularly Anna, who has been trying to conceive for some time. John flies Lydia home and when they're all together, Alice breaks the news herself. Anna and Tom decide they want to be tested. Lydia decides she doesn't want to know. Tom is negative. Anna is not. She will also develop Alzheimers.

The book spans a time period between September 2003 and September 2005. It details Alice's deterioration and the shifting dynamic of the family as each, Alice included, try in their own ways, to cope with what is happening. Anna and Charlie elect to go ahead with having their children, but go via IVF and embryo testing to ensure that their children don't carry the gene. John pushes hard for Alice to try a number of trial procedures and drugs but, exerting her independence with the support of her neurologist, she chooses to join a clinical trial that is in its third stage, a drug that is hoped to arrest the progress of the disease. Alice's deterioration appears to bring a new dimension in the relationship between her and Lydia - Lydia becomes one of Alice's strongest advocates and supports. Tom is a somewhat peripheral figure. He's there, present at nearly every mass family gathering, but apart from the critical moment of disclosure to Alice after he and Anna are tested for the mutant gene, and a later conflict that brings everyone against John, he's not a very strong figure.

And John... John, from the outset, is prickly, righteous, intensely work-focused and he struggles to deal with Alice's diagnosis and prognosis from the outset. He becomes, by default, her primary carer, but without compromising his work time - leaving notes like the big one on the fridge that reminds Alice NOT to run without him (once it becomes clear that she probably can't get herself home again alone) to cover the fact that Alice is left on her own at home for increasing periods. He is, of course, grieving the loss of Alice as he knew her, but seems incapable of acknowledging that, and is presented as someone who is often impatient, cross and frustrated. At times of crisis - like the time that a series of blanks lead to Alice wetting herself because at first she can't remember she is trying to go to the bathroom before they run, to the point that she can't find the bathroom when she's at bursting point and John comes looking for her just as she voids - he is able to be everything she needs, the warm, loving, comforting partner who makes her feel safe. However, on a day to day basis, it's the prickles that show most.

Living with a degenerative disease is a truly disabling experience, at every possible level. The losses are hard for anyone to understand if they've not experienced it for themselves. This is what makes it so very difficult for those who care for loved ones who have illnesses like Alzheimers, and this is one outstanding feature of this novel - the sensitivity and level of understanding of those struggles - Alice's, as she feels herself losing more and more of her capabilities, and worse, when she is still functioning well enough to be aware of losing her sense of what it is that makes her HER, and the rest of the family. Genova doesn't create a heroic and noble family who support Alice through the course of her disease without complaint. The Howland family are a very normal, ordinarily dysfunctional family. There is great love in this family, but there are also deep-seated aggravations, disagreements and resentments that flower at times under the increasingly difficult challenges they face.

This is a beautifully crafted book dealing with a topic that most of us prefer not to acknowledge unless we are not given the choice. It's not all doom and gloom, but it's not mawkish or sentimental either. There are moments of humour, whimsy, and reality that most readers will find quite familiar - the normal stuff of families. Alice's inner journey offers a wonderful insight into the experience of having Alzheimers or dementia, and I would encourage people to seek out this book for its sense of truth.

Book vouchers and Rachel Khoo's The Little Paris Kitchen

So, I had a birthday, as you do...and my cousin - bless her heart - gave me a book voucher. Time was I used to get lots of these but, along with the once predicted stack of book-sized parcels, they've been a little thin on the ground in recent years, so I was very tickled to get this one.

I stood in Dymocks - the last of the mega stores left, I think - with said voucher, wondering what to buy, completely forgetting the list of books-I-want stored on my iPhone - DUH! (found that this morning...and felt silly...)

So...what to do? I could, if clever, manage to buy two new novels, given the amount on the voucher. Browsing the shelves didn't throw anything particularly exciting at me though, and the couple of titles I thought of weren't to be found amongst the store's mainstream collection. The children's fiction shelves I found quite depressing. I'm so spoiled for quality children's and young adult fiction, given my sizeable collection, and I have to say, browsing the new titles, what's largely available is a pretty homogenous collection of similar kinds of books. I remember, as a kid, being so torn for choices when I got taken to bookshops - all those wonderful titles published by the Oxford University Press, Puffin, Faber and Faber, and other legendary houses... These days, there is a preponderance of fantasy (never a big favourite of mine) and very few of the types of stories I used to, and still, enjoy. I gave up on those and wandered over to the non-fiction shelves, looked at some luscious coffee table books, gardening books (I'm craving a garden), decorating books (craving my own house), and came close to a Vogue publication of Vivienne Westwood in Vogue... And then, after a cursory glance over the cookbooks found THE book - Rachel Khoo's The Little Paris Kitchen.

On Thursday nights, I get control of the TV remote (no small thing in a male dominated household!) and my viewing of choice is the lineup of food shows on SBS. I must have missed a few weeks, because I certainly missed the trailers for the series of The Little Paris Kitchen. And then one week, tuning back in, there was Rachel Khoo in the tiniest kitchen I've ever seen, crammed to the ceiling (literally) with utensils and other cooking equipment, turning out delectable, slightly tweaked French classics.

Very quickly, she became 'our girl' to DB, I had regular company while I watched each week, and with almost every dish he would state emphatically, "Now that's MY kind of food! Can you make that?" I hunted everywhere for the book and couldn't find it - finding others in the process, so we have a fairly impressive new collection of cookbooks, and perhaps I should do a post on what we're mostly cooking from at present... I'd quite forgotten it, and almost didn't see the copies stacked right at the bottom of the shelf in a corner. Having leafed through it last night, I'm all excited about playing with the recipes.

Khoo, a young Londoner, took herself to Paris, with nary a word of French, chasing the foodie dream. She trained at the Cordon Bleu school, and where she truly excels, in my opinion - from both the show and the book - is with baked treats. She takes French classics, and plays with them to make both simpler and sometimes lighter versions, and also takes them a few steps beyond original versions to create variations that are sometimes surprising, but will clearly work. One thing I must try before I'm too much older is her onion creme brulee - because I love onions and creme brulee, and I can just see how that could work. She also has a savoury cake that she made one episode when assembling a range of picnic-suitable foods. We're quite accustomed to variously flavoured savoury breads now, but this is a proper cake with cured sausage, pistachios and prunes. She says they're very common in France, and appear for lunches with a side salad and picnics...

The two stand out aspects of the series for me were that, by and large, with a couple of exceptions for excursions to different venues, she makes everything in the weeny kitchen of her studio apartment, and that she debunks the mystery of some of the more iconic French dishes, making them easily accessible to the majority of home cooks. The kitchen itself is a fabulous demonstration of how much you DON'T need to turn out good, seasonal food... To spin around in Khoo's kitchen, you'd have to keep your arms pinned completely to your sides or you'd be injured, and the only way you could have company in there would be if you were both standing still and very close together! However, she has an impressive array of fresh herbs growing in a window mounted glass house, and she's clearly come to a few of her adaptation simply because of the cramped conditions. 

As far as the dishes go, she says exactly what I've been saying to people for years about souffles - as long as you can make a white sauce or a custard, you can make savoury or sweet souffles because they're just not that hard! She's also played with slow cooked, and sometimes awesomely indigestible,  dishes like cassoulet (a peasant dish comprising a mix of meats that usually includes sausage and poultry, dried beans, and vegetables) creating, using all the traditional ingredients, a soup that carries all the flavours of the original, without the lengthy cooking time or digestive issues! She doesn't dumb the recipes down though, and she makes no concessions to current trends for low fat - she uses butter, cream, creme fraiche and cheese with gay abandon - and reinforces the message that eating sensible quantities of these things do us no harm. Binging does, and snacking constantly between meals - not a French habit - does.

We just watched Julie and Julia again when it aired on commercial TV recently, so I feel as if finding this book now was timely - given that DB is now demanding French food instead of our usual Middle Eastern/Sephardi Jewish mix! These recipes are fun, and I intend to have fun with this book. For anyone out there that has a penchant for French food, but is looking for something a little less daunting than some of the classic tomes, this is a great book, and Khoo's story is inspirational. An added bonus are the delightful watercolour illustrations by Khoo that alternate with lovely atmospheric photos of Paris in all its moods...definitely time to put a foodie trip to Paris on the bucket list!

My Name is Asher Lev & The Gift of Asher Lev - Chaim Potok

If I had to choose the two books to take with me on a desert island, it would probably be this pair. Mind you, if I could find an edition that had them both in the one book, that would be very cool, because it would give me another option to choose in addition to them. But, in all seriousness, I re-read these books at least once a year, sometimes more frequently, as the battered copy of the first of them shows! I took them with me to hospital recently, and found them, as always, incredibly grounding in their familiarity, but again, found new insights in the text.

My Name is Asher Lev is set in the Chassidic world of post-war Brooklyn. Asher Lev is a small boy, the only child of Aryeh Lev, right hand man to the Rebbe of their particular Chassidic group, the Ladover. Aryeh's life is spent traveling for the Rebbe; around the United States, and overseas, bringing people to Ladover communities, setting up new communities with yeshivot (schools) and community services, leaving Asher and his mother, Rivka at home. At six, Asher is already showing that he has a precocious and disturbing gift - drawing. Within this ultra-Orthodox environment, the injunction against making images makes Asher's gift all the more disturbing. When he says he can't help himself, Aryeh's response is angry, saying that only animals can't hep themselves, and that it is not a gift from G-d, it has come from the 'other side', that it can only do harm.

This sets up the ongoing conflict between father and son, which is the template for a collection of conflicts that pepper this story. When Rivka's beloved brother dies in a car accident while on business for the Rebbe in Chicago, she suffers a breakdown that requires Aryeh to stay closer to home. This frustrates him, and brings he and Asher into closer contact and more conflict. As Rivka slowly recovers, so does Aryeh's traveling recommence, but with a difference. Rivka spends all her time while he is away anxiously awaiting his return, fearing that something will happen to him too, as it did her brother. It also creates tensions when Asher is late home unexpectedly, to be greeted by her with anger and hysteria. He stops drawing. He tries to do better at school. But he is lost without his drawing, and in the undercurrents of conversations that swirl around him but don't involve him. At school, he is taunted by the other boys for his difference, and partly because they are envious of his father's position close to the Rebbe.

Then comes the day at school when he finds himself confronted by a picture of the Rebbe that he has drawn without being aware of doing it, on the pages of a Chumash (a bound edition of the Torah, complete with commentaries). This is an act of desecration and he finds himself at the centre of a maelstrom at the yeshiva. But, the gift is clearly back. And having suffered through the period of not being able to draw, he refuses to give it up again. Then comes his next challenge. Rivka, having been granted permission by the Rebbe to study, has now finished her studies and Aryeh is being sent to Vienna. The idea is for the whole family to go, so that Aryeh can go on with the work of bringing Jews out of Russia. Asher, terrified by the idea of leaving his street and his community, refuses to leave. The alternatives are for him to live with his uncle - Aryeh's brother - or Leah, his mother's sister in Boston. He says he can't do that either. In the end, Aryeh leaves by himself, and Rivka stays behind with Asher. During this time, the Rebbe asks to see Asher. Unbeknown to Asher, the Rebbe has been keeping a close eye on the situation, and is well aware of the gift and all the associated conflict. He enlists the help of an old associate, the artist Jacob Kahn, to teach Asher. Kahn is no longer observant, but the Rebbe trusts him to teach Asher and respect the boy's family values.

So begins for Asher a different journey, into the world of fine art, the world of Picasso, Chagall, Modigliani, and Kahn himself. During this time, Rivka gains her Masters degree, and announces that she can no longer leave Aryeh alone in Vienna. Asher again refuses to leave Brooklyn, and this time, moves in with his uncle, who sets him up in the attic of their house so he can paint. His summers are spent with the Kahns at their summer house on Cap Cod. Kahn challenges the boy constantly, telling him that he must find the truth in what he paints, and deal with his demons.

When Aryeh and Rivka come back to New York, it is to discover that their precocious son has grown up, he is an artist. He is still observant, but he treads a fine line between their world and that of the unknown - to them. While he cites Chagall to them as an example, they are all too aware that Chagall walked away from his community in order to paint, and painted commissions for Christian clients as well as Jewish institutions. Kahn tells Asher it is time for him to travel, so armed with directions to Ladover communities all over Europe, Asher sets off on his own 'grand tour'. He settles in Paris, in an apartment close to the Ladover yeshiva. Away from Brooklyn, the demons of his childhood, his mother's interminable waiting by the window, watching for Aryeh to return from his travels, the ongoing conflict with his father, all surface and are realised in the painting of two major works. When visited by Anna Shaeffer, the owner of the gallery representing Kahn, and now the young Lev, she tells him that they are his first truly great paintings. That she will take them for his next show.

It is the first show where there are no nudes. The first show that, when he goes back to New York for the opening, that his parents will attend because he has told them there are no nudes. The two giant paintings are placed so that they are the final pieces to be seen after the journey through the rest of his show...and they are crucifixions. Asher has placed his mother against the crossbars of the window frame while waiting for his father, in a traditional crucifixion pose. His parents are completely unprepared, and are devastated, leaving the opening as everyone else in the gallery realises who they are and what has occurred.

It is the final straw for Aryeh. The Rebbe calls Asher to meet with him and tells him that he must leave the community for a time, to go back to France, to allow the hurt he has caused to heal. Asher leaves, and goes into exile.

The Gift of Asher Lev picks up some many years later, in the south of France. Asher is living just outside a village where his wife, Dev, has a cousin, also an artist. They have two children, Rochel and Avrumel. After many years of living and working in Paris, they have moved to the country for Rochel's health. The child is severely asthmatic, even her father's studio is out of bounds to her. She is an old soul in a child's body. Dev is a child of the Holocaust, having survived the war in hiding with her cousin Max and his parents after her parents were picked up in a round up. She is haunted by ghosts, and buries herself in writing children's books. Jacob and Tanya Kahn live nearby, and eventually Jacob dies there, at home. Asher has become a great artist, but at this time, has hit a dry spot. Then his uncle dies, the uncle who housed him while his parents lived in Europe. They have to go to Brooklyn for the funeral.

It is the first time Asher has been back in his community in many, many years, and Dev's first time living in the bosom of a vibrant Ladover community. Rivka and Aryeh have time to enjoy their grandchildren, and press Asher to stay beyond the seven day period of shiva (mourning). He says he has to get back to France, to work, and the children must go back as they are due to go back to school. The suggestion that they enroll at the yeshiva in Brooklyn he meets with suspicion, but in the face of Dev's enjoyment building a relationship with Rivka, and the children's clear happiness, he concedes. The time continues to pass. He wants to go back to France, having promised Max to collaborate with him on a complex print making process. He visits the gallery, now managed by Anna's son, Doug. Doug pesters him for work for a show, but Asher demures, saying he's not painting. However, he is drawing. Many pictures of Avrumel. Even the abstract pictures, Rochel says, have Avrumel in them one way or another, which Dev also realises when she finally gets to look through them. Doug says he'll show the drawings. Meanwhile, Asher grandually realises that there is something much bigger going on.

He goes back to France without his family to work with Max on the print in Paris. He goes back to their home in the south of France, sees Tanya Kahn, sees their neighbour John, tries to paint and finds he is still blocked. Returning to Brooklyn, he finds the children enrolled in summer camps - Rochel is away from home at a residential camp, Avrumel is at a day camp in the city. The Rebbe is getting very old, and has no sons. Chassidic movements like the Ladover are dynastic, and there is no one to follow the Rebbe. Except, possibly, Aryeh. But that can only happen if there is someone to follow HIM. And that can't be Asher, because Asher is the painter... Periodically, the Rebbe calls upon Asher to visit him. He sympathises with Asher's painting block, remembering that Jacob Kahn also had similar periods. He poses enigmatic riddles to Asher, which make their way into the drawings, the drawings that keep featuring Avrumel. Slowly he comes to understand that the gift he can give back to his community, the redemption he can gain after the hurt he caused with the crucifixion paintings, can be gained by allowing Avrumel to grow up among them, and become heir to his father...who will one day take the Rebbe's place as leader of the Ladover.

What I've written is the tip of the iceberg with these books. They are far more complex and detailed than I have described. There are other small stories woven into the main narrative of both books, and the intricacies of living a fully observant life as Torah Jews is treated with sympathy and grace. The world of the Chassidim, viewed from the position of the reader of a Potok book is one that I find enormously attractive. There is an overall simplicity in living a life that is dictated by halachah (Jewish Law) - things are done a certain way because halachah states that that's how they be done. However, it's never that simple. There are arguments and discussions always, about the degrees of observance, the scholarship of those debating the finer points of the law, and the restrictions that are placed as a consequence. For all that, there is still a clarity about how to live that can be harder to find when the way of observance is more interpretive, as is the tradition in non-Orthodox streams of Jewish practice.

For myself, these books speak to me of many things. They speak of values that are too fast disappearing in many communities. They draw detailed portraits of people struggling to reconcile what they understand to be right and true with things that don't fit their worlds. There is, in each of the main characters, a striving to find their own truth and live it out within the world of the Ladover Chassidim - for Asher not to give up on his community regardless of how difficult it is for him to still fit in; for Aryeh to find his way back to a meaningful relationship with his son, even though Asher's work represents much of what he sees as evil and wrong in the world; for Rivka, to not get caught between Asher and Aryeh, and also to keep hold of herself; for Dev to find peace from her ghosts, and a life that offers joy again, despite having to deal with living with an artist whose work can create anything BUT peace; and again, for Asher, to find peace in the gift of his son to the community to ensure that all the work of the Rebbe and his father is not lost due to his own need.

You can still find these books in second hand bookstores, and there are recent editions listed on Amazon. If you've not read Potok before, these are good books to start with, particularly if you're of an arts bent. It is my personal opinion that Chagall is a partial model for Asher Lev - there are many parallels, as there are differences. Chagall also painted crucifixions, and the reason Asher gives when asked why THAT symbol, is the same as Chagall's - that it is the most universally recognised symbol of human suffering...

Shanah Tovah - Happy New Year

Shanah tovah to my Jewish readers!

It's Rosh Hashanah - the Jewish New Year. As it happens, a huge chunk of my latest reading has been by Jewish writers. I'm just trying to get myself a bit reorganised so I can get some posts written and up. Watch this space...

Burial Rites - Hannah Kent

Well, a change of pace was becoming necessary after weeks of re-reading vintage children's literature. Hannah Kent's Burial Rites has been on my 'must get' list for quite some time, and a change of pace it certainly was. A change of just about everything. I've literally just finished reading it, as I begin to write this post, and my head is still chockablock full of images that Kent's magical, succinctly elegant prose created as I read. I found myself deliberately putting the book down - stopping reading so that I wouldn't finish it too soon. Believe me, this is not a usual practice of mine. Normally, a new book is something that I gobble up, and then go back and read slowly a second time. Small note - the Icelandic names are full of accents and blogger doesn't offer me the option of inserting them...apologies.

Burial Rites tells the story of the last person executed in Iceland, Agnes Magnusdottir, for her part in the murder of two men. It is based on a true story, one which I gather has gained semi-legendary status in Iceland, which Kent first became acquainted with while she was an exchange student there during high school. Three people were implicated in the crime - Agnes, another maid on the farm, Sigridur Gudnundsdottir, and Fridrik Sigurdsson, a youth from a neighbouring farm - the latter not well liked by one of the victims. In the final judgment, Agnes and Fridrik are sentenced to death by beheading, while Sigridur eventually has her sentence reduced to life imprisonment in Denmark. 

The case is full of circumstantial evidence and back stories about old histories, enmities and complex relational ties between the protagonists and their neighbours. The social system of Iceland at the time also comes into play - almost as another character. At the time it was a complex hierarchy of local organisations, headed by both parish and civil leaders, all of whom were answerable to those next up in the chain. People were landowners, farmers, farmhands and/or maids, or paupers reliant on the charity of the parish for placement into families. People move around the area from farm to farm for various reasons, and while the roles they play on any given property might be clearly marked, they all live together in small dwellings, often sleeping in the same room - owners and their families, servants and charity cases. The status of different individuals becomes a critical point in understanding the details of how anyone in particular might end up where they do - for instance, Agnes, illegitimate child of a maid, left by her mother to the mercies of the parish at age six, from the outset has almost no chance of moving into one of the other social positions. That she is intelligent and literate becomes, almost, another strike against her. Once condemned by the legal system, she is viewed as a pariah, a witch, something evil that can taint anyone who chances contact with her, and fluttering around her are stories from her childhood and youth that are brought up again as people within this highly close-knit community try to reconcile themselves to the crime within their midst and the people involved.

So, imagine the horror with which the family of Jon Jonsson receive notice from the district commissioner that Agnes is to be sent to them, to be consigned into their custody until such time as the execution can be arranged. Jon is a district officer. He and his wife run a smallholding with their two daughters, Lauga and Steina. They are surviving, but not living in luxury, and Margret, Jon's wife, is ill with a lung disease exacerbated by the deteriorating state of their croft, that will see her die too young. They are also informed that Agnes has requested the services of the Reverend Thorvardur Jonsson (Toti), a young assistant priest, son of the priest in a neighbouring district, as her spiritual advisor.

I found the whole concept of 'incarcerating' a condemned prisoner within the bounds of a private home absolutely mind-boggling. As do, clearly, the members of Jon's family. However, in a community whose judicial system originates in Denmark, and who have no police, as such, or prisons, it's the only option. Jon, as a district officer has no option but to comply, when ordered to do so by his immediate superior. Agnes herself is all too aware, when she arrives, filthy, emaciated, lice-infested and exhausted, that she is the last person this household wants to invite through their doorway, much less have amongst them for the ensuing months. Lauga and Steina, very different in character are alternately appalled and intrigued - the former reaction being prompted, mainly, by the thought of the stigma that could be attached to them by association with the criminal. Jon and Margret counsel both girls to go about their business, Jon, particularly, stressing that it is a matter of duty that cannot be shirked, and they just have to get on with the reality of Agnes in their midst, but to maintain their distance. Margret is initially hostile, appalled and fearful. Fearful that many of the rumours flying around about Agnes' inherently evil and vindictive nature might be true and that her family, particularly her girls, could be at terrible risk. The immediate thought any reader might have of, why not just run, is quickly disabused as the narrative delivers an inexorable picture of both the nature of the community - within which there is no place to hide - and the totally unforgiving location, which offers even less in the way of possible refuge.

Of course, people are complex creatures. All of us. And I think this was one of the primary underlying motives behind the writing of this book and retelling Agnes' story. Living in such close quarters, barriers are, inevitably, broken down. When the young priest, Toti, comes, he discovers that despite his youth and inexperience, Agnes has asked for him in particular as she has met him before and feels a connection - and, I think, understands instinctively that he won't push the fire and brimstone redemption package at her that she's previously experienced. His father, learning that he isn't preaching to Agnes, or focusing on reading her the Bible, takes him to task, but Toti comes to understand that, for Agnes, the only way to reconcile herself with her fate is to allow her to find her own path, with him there to provide a constant.

As the autumn harvest comes to and end and the weather begins to close in, the family and other members of the household are forced even closer to each other, spending the bulk of their time inside the house, in the badstofer (bedroom, I assume - a communal, dormitory room where everyone sleeps). Toti encourages Agnes to speak, and slowly, as she begins to trust him and understand that he will just listen and not pass judgement, her story emerges. 

It is the tiny details of this beautiful book that stand out. Kent's text is spare - there are no superfluous words anywhere. For all that, it is far from stark or barren. It conveys, magnificently, a sense of the brutality of the environment in which the characters must survive - a place where everything that is arrange by date carries a contingent, 'or the next day the weather permits' - a caveat that even appears in the written orders for Agnes and Fridrik's executions. There is a sense of fatality that comes through in the character of the people, an inevitability about the course of their lives. Roles are clearly marked, social stations are understood, but at the same time there is also an understanding of temperament - that the conditions, the climate, the harshness of their lives, can and do have an effect on peoples' emotional stability. There even appears to be a certain level of allowance made for this at times - a bit like the weather caveat...someone in a rage will be left to themself until they're calmer before anyone tries to deal with them.

The narrative is woven together from historical documents, earlier research into the case, interviews and Kent's fictional elements. Kent is quite frank in her intent - while fascinated, haunted even, by Agnes' story, she sets about to deliberately offer up an option that allows us to question what actually might have happened the night of the murders. In the time since the murders and executions, the tale has become part of Iceland's folklore, and like all legendary tales, has many variations and many perspectives as to what may have happened, who did it, and why. Kent explores the imagined inner lives of the people closest to Agnes during that last season of her life, as well as that of Agnes herself. She calls the book her 'dark love letter to Iceland', hoping that in her telling of the story, she has created something she can gift to the country that provided her with the inspiration for this magnificent debut novel.

I found this book to be absolutely gripping. I wanted to keep turning pages to see what happened next, but at the same time I so did not want to get to the end of the book too soon. I rarely have that kind of conflict, so it was yet another challenge provided by this already challenging read! The pace is deliberately slow, and it spins out the further you go into the narrative - the more we learn of Agnes' story, and the more the relationships shift and change, the more the little everyday details and exchanges become of paramount importance. Kent's treatment of this is masterful - there is no sense of the story being dragged out. I found the opposite - I wanted to know more. I still want to know more. But there can be no sequel. Agnes Magnusdottir was executed in January 1830.

The 'Dimsie' books - Dorita Fairlie Bruce

Dorita Fairlie Bruce (1885-1970) was one of the 'big three' of English girl's literature - the other two being Elsie J. Oxenham of The Abbey Girls series and Elinor Brent-Dyer, who write the Chalet School books. You can read my recent post about the Abbey books here. I read the odd Chalet book during high school, but never really got into them, and I've never collected them.

The Abbey books, while fitting into the English girl's boarding school genre, aren't dominated by the school itself as much as the community of girls who meet there and form the central group of characters. Bruce's Dimsie books are all, bar the final story, based in the school, The Jane Willard, which is based on Bruce's own school, Clarence House. It gives the books a completely different feel - we get to know the girls completely within the school environment, and it is their relationships with each other that are the focus rather than their places within their families, who are, with the exception of those who have sisters and cousins at the school, largely peripheral.

We meet Dimsie - a diminutive made up of the initials of her name, Daphne Isabel Maitland, used so as not to confuse her with her cousin Daphne who is also at the school - when she first goes to Jane's. She bonds with a group of girls who become her boon companions and something of a force at the school from their earliest days when they stand up against a plot against Daphne in the face of the whole school. In the second book of the series, they form the 'Anti-Soppist League' - a secret society they feel moved to create when they are moved up a form into a group of girls who are prone to crushes on mistresses and senior girls, pronounced to be, by Erica Innes, the forceful leader of the group, soppy. The others, Jean Gordon, Pamela Hughes, Mabs Hunter and Rosamund Garth, fall in willingly, initially, but it is dreamy, easily influenced Rosamund who gets caught up in a web of petty revenge being enacted by a nasty senior, Nita Tomlinson. All comes out in the end as, regardless of her sometimes unorthodox methods, Dimsie has a knack for managing people and situations - involving girls and teachers alike - and this one is no different, earning her, in the end, even the dastardly Nita's grudging respect.

Moving through the series as the girls move up through the grades, Rosamund's young niece, Hilary, arrives at the school with tumultuous effect, being a much indulged young lady who has garnered her knowledge of boarding schools almost entirely from boy's adventure stories. Out of control at home, and totally beyond Rosamund at school, Dimsie takes her on. She cracks Hilary by coming to understand that if the child is forbidden something absolutely, she won't do it, not that it stops her finding plenty of pranks that no one would have considered needing to forbid! But Hilary also has a strong sense of honour and fair play, which is what eventually comes to be Dimsies strongest avenue of appeal.

Dimsie makes prefect, along with the other Anti-Soppists, and eventually, when Erica has left school and Jean, as senior prefect stepping up automatically to take her place as head girl fails miserably, is appointed head girl by Miss Yorke, the headmistress. Mabs has also left school, so the original group are down to four, and have two other girls from outside their circle as fellow prefects - neither of whom are particularly congenial or much respected by the body of the school. Undercurrents that began under Jean's haphazard rule start to surface and Dimsie is faced with some enormous challenges. As usual, via some less than conventional methods, she gets to the bottom of them - from the strike against the two dis-favoured prefects to Hilary and Co's. nursery for stray animals hidden in the secret passageways of the school, transgressing the no pets rule!

Eventually, Dimsie grows up and leaves school, becoming engaged to Peter Gilmore, and planning, in the wake of the death of her father, to take over the old family home in Scotland and begin a commercial herb garden. However, Miss Yorke has not been well. Dimsie's set all having left school, the overall tone has lowered, and Miss Yorke asks her to come back, not as a mistress, but as an Old Girl, to both pick up some secretarial requirements and perhaps find a way to reinvigorate the old spirit of the school. This is where the changing influences of modernity start to creep into the old style of the school. There are social forces afoot, illicit makeup is being experimented with, banned card games are being played behind closed doors, and worse... Hilary is now a senior, and while she retains all the admiration she had as a child for Dimsie, she's not inclined to 'barge in' as was Dimsie's wont. So, where she might have been the leader Dimsie once was, she isn't, which Dimsie soon discovers. Complicating matters is another precocious new girl, Lintie Gordon, Jean's niece, who Dimsie brings with her to begin school. Accompanying Lintie is the inimitable Jeems...a feisty West Highland White terrior, who quickly becomes the terror of the school. Clashes between the junior school and their all too healthy mischief and the indolent, disinterested seniors are inevitable, and Dimsie is caught in a nether world of having no actual position to fall back upon. Her strength of character prevails, and eventually the tangles are untangled, the juniors reinstate the Anti-Soppist League, and all settles again.

The last book is set in Scotland some years later when Dimsie is married to Peter (invalided in WWI and working as the local doctor) with two small children and WWII is in progress. Lintie - now a senior at Jane's - makes a brief appearance, as do Erica and Pam, also married and living not far away, while Jean, now a published poet is a little further off in Edinburgh. It is Dimsie's young assistant, Anne, and her boon companion, Primula, who get caught up into a spy drama that is linked to a nearby secret submarine base. This book has quite a different feel to the rest of the series, but it's great fun to have the glimpses of the girls all grown up.

Bruce wrote two other school series with different settings, and there are cross overs. I have a couple of the Springdale books - I've been hunting for the rest for years to no avail - and Dimsie appears on the fringes of those, as the school is set in Scotland so there are various social links that come into play.

It is widely thought that many of the adventures and incidents that make up the school based stories were taken directly from Bruce's own schooldays, and they are such marvelously wholesome stories that have a timeless quality that make them immensely appealing even now. It's books like these that made me wish I'd got to go to boarding school, in fact - something my mother considered for me for high school but decided against, not having ever actually consulted me!

While many of the more common Abbey books are still readily available, Dorita Fairlie Bruce's smaller output are very hard to find. It took me years to acquire the full set of Dimsie books, and I still remember the absolutely spine tingling thrill of coming across the last of them - Dimsie Intervenes - which was published out of reading order, and is the rarest of them. I'd been told with utter confidence by a member of a book group I was involved with that I'd never get it, and even if I could find one, I'd have to pay and absolute fortune for it...and there it was, on the shelf of a Salvation Army thrift shop in Port Fairy one summer for the grand sum of $2.00!! THAT was a good day. The black and white illustration in this post is from that book. For lovers of vintage girl's fiction, these are gems; just as priceless and rare, but SO worth the hunt.