Sarum...

Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Imagine a grand mural in a grand, several-storeyed palace. Imagine that palace has secret chambers, a humble attic or two. And the mural travels from space to space, beginning at the entrance. The mural is a story within many stories, a giant narrative of people and their descendants through time. Their stories spring from Salisbury, medieval Sarum. Watching over the lives of these people is one constant...Salisbury Cathedral. It too grows and changes and grows through time. Edward Rutherfurd's Sarum is a masterpiece, first chronicling one man's emergence from the world's darker place to the Salisbury Plain, then the interaction of many families and their descendants, all the way to World War II encampments. In between, the Black Death, colonisation, markets, cathedral challenges, loves and heartaches, social tensions and visions intercept the flow of many family lives. Here is time on a grand scale, but the intimacy of characters and emotions is not neglected. We feel Jane Shockley's yearning for Jethro Wilson. But that cannot be. They come from different worlds. We feel Jane's stoic dignity in accepting this fate. We feel many stories and we learn so much about the colours and the mores of many times passing. Indeed, this novel is a vivid mural painted with words.

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old worlds

many

old lifetimes

sometimes

the eyes of yesteryear

seem to watch

sadly

on new worlds

and wonder

why

Girl With a Pearl Earring...

Girl With A Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Girl With a Pearl Earring may initially have attracted the reader who seeks an understanding of a 17th-century painter's lifestyle. But this novel offers so much more...intimate interactions between class levels, conflicts of values, all impacting personal journeys of the inspired and those more intent on 'fitting in'. Johannes Vermeer, the Dutch painter in Delft, lives in his own world of painting portraits, lit with light and soul, even though his large family attests to occasional, more worldly distractions. Griet, the housemaid in this family, becomes his muse. She feels challenged to survive in, to straddle the two worlds...the real and the surreal. Finally, Griet understands that the magic moments of soul connections can only survive the moment. A charming, sensitive portrait of old Dutch worlds.

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torn from her family 

by circumstance

working from

cellar to attic

being a housemaid

for some

a muse

for one

but movement

from low to high

vibrations

always comes

at a price

with few guarantees

and maybe comes with

some personal loss

some sacrifice

Page 214: "He is an exceptional man" van Leeuwenhoek continued. "His eyes are worth a room full of gold. But sometimes he sees the world only as he wants it to be, not as it is. He does not understand the consequences for others of his point of view. He thinks only of himself and his work, not you. You must take care then -' He stopped. My master's footsteps were on the stairs.

"Take care to do what, sir?" I whispered.

"Take care to remain yourself."

I lifted my chin to him. "To remain a maid, sir?"

"That is not what I mean. The women in his paintings - he traps them in his world. You can get lost there".

A Theatre for Dreamers...

A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though Charmian Clift, George Johnston and Leonard Cohen may appear in A Theatre for Dreamers, the novel is not all about them; they are just a few of a huge cast of bohemian characters. The novel is about the Greek island of Hydra, its 1960's lifestyle and culture; it's about the magnetic power of an island paradise, an island curse. Through the eyes of young, rooky novelist Erica, we bask in the party lifestyle of a would-be arty community and realise that the idyllic party world thinly shields darker tensions and insecurities and secrets. Erica seeks answers about her mother, her mother's connection with Charmian Clift. What she finds are questions she needs to ask herself. And in this cast of many, despite the underlying darkness, infidelities and tragedies, there is always the dream that is Hydra.
In short, our curiosity treats us to a lifestyle most of us will never know. We may even not want to party endlessly, where each day rolls out much the same; where the event of the day seems to involve who is bickering or sleeping with whom. Indeed, at times, the novel seems to become weighted down with this cycle. But thankfully, Erica drags us away for some relief in England... and only returns with a little extra age... and maybe wisdom.

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NOTE: Polly Samson is married to Pink Floyd's David Gilmour...

sunny island days

intent on keeping

the Cold War at bay

(at least

the political Cold War)

other wars were

simmering

brewing

but where there's

sea

sun

ouzo

stars and

a slice of moon

anything

is bearable

almost

who can forget

Hydra

the island

the rock

the tiers of white houses

rising

like amphitheatre seats

a theatre for dreamers

it's all fine

while the curtains are open

but at some stage

the curtains

must close

nightmares

will always

find you

even if you live

on a rock

We are all made of Stars...

We are all made of stars (2015) - Rowan Coleman


7 nights

Sarah is a night-shift nurse
at a hospice
facing transitions

transitions back into the world

her own transition
between worlds

and those who face
the ultimate transition

7 nights

7 phases

intertwined
with many stories

in the moment

in the past

and some
only glimpsed in

the letter
of truth

NOTE: I almost did not buy this book...The title sounded a little 'artificial'...
But then, I always seek books that are out of my comfort zone, so finally the decision was
'Why not?' 

I'm glad I followed that decision...


MY GOODREADS REVIEW
 We Are All Made Of Stars by Rowan Coleman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I admit, at first, the title seemed a bit 'syrupy'. My first thought - a loaded, inspirational book, in the guise of a novel, that offers heavy-handed guidance for leading a 'good life'. But I am one who likes to at least give a book a chance - (without resorting to reviews for answers). I'm so glad that I did. Perhaps a hospice setting sounds a little intimidating. But this book only uses that setting as a connection with lives that were, that are and could be. Sarah is the night shift hospice nurse, the connecting character with the stories, and her own story becomes part of the narrative fabric. Even a little furball - of multiple personalities and attitudes - Jake, Ninja or Shadow- becomes an interesting 'sub-thread' in the stories. And then there are the letters - the truth-tellers - that offer intriguing insights into the lives of those who wait for their final transition. Far from being a depressing narrative, we feel the inner journeys, the challenges of ordinary people and admire their bravery. Yes. This is indeed an inspirational book.


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Some Kind of Freak

Some Kind of Freak - Satya Robyn (22nd December 2017)



in a world of
social norms and
political correctness
I stagger
sometimes getting it right
mostly getting it wrong


my younger days
born of a mother who barely knew me
(too drunk
too tangled in boyfriends)
could have instilled
the freak in me

some say a crisis brings on
the weird
the odd
the voices
however
on that note
I'm keeping it classical and
'No Comment'


the workshop
is outside
where
taxidermy is an art
my art -
even if others squirm -
to me
it is my way of being in contact
with life

I am learning to live with
the me that is
the hermit
the hermit learning to cook
the hermit with a dog
the hermit learning to feel

till the iced Gran springs from the workshop freezer
that is

and then a whole new chapter of weirdness
(in a world of
social norms and
political correctness)
could begin
mightn't it?

it could begin with fish fingers


but for now
what matters most are
my voices
my shape shifters

they know my buttons
to push

MY GOODREADS REVIEW
Some Kind of Freak by Satya Robyn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jude Horridge, a taxidermist, is a social misfit thrust into living independently. He takes his taxidermy art, his guilt of appearing to be a murderer and the burden of his voices with him. He learns to cook (with a little help from Google), learns to measure social cues and to cope with text messages. Importantly, he learns to feel loved, even give love, thanks to a dog named Shadow. Jude learns to adapt to the life he has and accepts what he is. Incredibly, it is other social misfits, such as lesbian Beth ('He worried that he might have come to depend on her for a basic level of happiness'), who help Jude. The narrative beautifully spins a web of mesmerising adventure and intrigue. Overall, an incredible, dramatic, psychological insight into the stresses and questions buried deep in those who fly under the conventional social radar.
P.S. For me, there seems to be some interesting allusions to 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' - Mark Haddon (2003). Both novels feature a hermit-like male character struggling to identify logical sense in the world around.

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MY AMAZON REVIEW
Know Me 
Imagine seeing through the eyes of an unusual character, Jude Horridge; exploring the mind processes of that character; almost living the life of that character. Imagine surprise twists in that life that belie any trace of convention. Add an atmosphere of tense drama and mystery -('The tail was proving tricky' - opening sentence), and there is a tantalising view of a book that defies narrow labels. A lively writing style carries the reader on an almost 'psychedelic journey' that could be the very real life of some 'unknown someone' in our society who is very different. A psychological masterpiece!

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens. 1843


Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. 

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern 

He carried his own low temperature always with him

 he iced his office

 and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.




not many knew
that the rich Scrooge
was once a poor child
a lonely child
trapped in a colourless world


joy
friendship
love
were meaningless ghosts

he himself had
no meaning


he could be a ghost


he could not connect with
ghosts


Scrooge the cold child became the cold man
absorbed in wealth
not spending it
not giving it
just
hoarding it


but this year
the ghosts of Christmas
would awaken
what he could have been
what he could be

he faced his own ghosts

they awakened his heart
they found rest
and stirred
his spirit


 the secret of finding joy
is giving joy


 
NOTE
Images adapted from Works of Charles Dickens. Avenel Books. 1978.

MY GOOD READS REVIEW
 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is easy to get caught up in the colour and mystery and intrigue of the Christmas ghosts of A Christmas Carol. But I have read this story - usually at Christmas - a number of times. For once, I found myself pouring over the Christmas past - the 19th century London Scrooge as a lonely child, little more than a ghost himself. Somehow the older, selfish monster that he became was a sad reflection of why - perhaps a sad reflection of why many today still lock out the Christmas spirit. The story is an enchanting carol, celebrating a possible transformation from ghost to spirit.


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A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens. 1859.


...Guillotine. 
In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of public diversion, 
are a number of women, 
busily knitting... 
 Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities (p. 233). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.



Therese Defarge
bold leader of the knitting sisterhood
missed the game
today

but let me begin at
the revolutionary
beginning

it was
the best of times to see
the worst of times

Madame's benefactor
(her damaged sister)
paid The Ferryman

and Madame 

was able to watch the game
right from
the preliminary finals




She
was there
to muse
when Doctor Manette
emerged from his tower prison

She
was there
to plot
when spies
spied

She
was there
to grind her own axe
when the doctor's daughter
cried for her Charles Darnay
imprisoned
wrongfully 
for treason

She
was there
to turn
sweetness
sour

She watched many games
and played along with them

but
She missed
the grand final

the grand moment
when Sidney Carton
 idlest and most unpromising of men,
 took the place of Darnay
on the scaffold
and rose to glory

She
missed
her final revenge

the switch of
fate

too busy with
her own




NOTE
Images adapted from Works of Charles Dickens. Avenel Books. 1978.


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MY GOOD READS REVIEW
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Many years ago, I had to read this book as a school text. I was in Year 7 at the time. I remember being mesmerised with the knitting theme (knitting round a guillotine haunted me) and totally disenchanted with Lucie Manette, the Doctor's daughter. For some reason, I thought of Shakespeare's Desdemona - syrupy and tragic, bearable but not totally warm and likeable. All these years later, and my views haven't changed, but I have noticed other features in this story. Dickens is adept at personifying the weather and the countryside. The personifications subtly add tone and mystery and depth to unfolding dramas. He shaves off a few layers of character and storyline and then moves on. So frustratingly delightful. And he is also adept at seeing beyond external characters. Sidney Carton, the ugly, insipid loser of the whole narrative, becomes a tragic hero of grand proportion. I read the whole book in two sessions over two days. It still enchants.

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Refugee Boy

Refugee Boy - Benjamin Zephaniah
Bloomsbury Publishing 2001


I'm Ethiopian
  I'm Eritrean
  I am cursed
  I walk the line


like a lonely piece of flotsam
  in a sea of coloured skins
  I bob around east London


Sheila, Pamela and Mariam
  foreign faces 
  become my guides


I'm African
  I'm a refugee
  I'm uneducated
  I walk the line


a family moors my life
  my small room means a large view
  and Ruth becomes my sister

 
I'm African
  I'm just a teenage boy
  I want to learn
  I walk the line


I find friends I did not know were friends
  young friends
  school friends
  willing to march for freedom
  willing to walk my line


I am Alem
  I want to give
  I want to be 
  a light


without the line


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MY GOODREADS REVIEW
Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Perhaps this book disappoints- not outlining the tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia, not fully exploring and explaining the work of young Alem's parents, but the book is about the boy; the boy finding his own journey and his own rite of passage. We feel the incredible confusions he must feel - an alien culture and climate, a Refugee Council, a foster family, a new school and the whole disturbing, temporary arrangement of it all. And in the midst of all this darkness, appear some rather special miracles. Young people dare to face and challenge legal strongholds. An apparently indifferent girl becomes his sister. This book bridges and casts a rainbow over the many tragic chasms in our world.

View all my reviews + My liberation haiku, inspired by this book, is posted on my Haiku Songlines blog.

NOTE
This story became a play - BBC Review 14th March 2013

A Night in Hell

Jacko is a reporter with a
Tainted reputation
Launching into yesterday's news with a
Healthy dob of skepticism
And some 
Churning
Desperation

Meeting the echoes of
Yesterday's war in a
Small 
Village cemetery


Meeting their context of
Gunfire and
Muddy footprints

Unable to leave one of
His own


Meeting the voices

Hearing their tragedy
Their cursed
Blackened windows and
Closed doors


But he did
Inadvertently manage
To unsmear 
Some window 
To open 
Some door

To bring
Some 
Lost voices

Together

GOODREADS REVIEW

A night in hell by Liam Foxx
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The scenario was intriguing! The ingredients of World War I, a cemetery, the Somme village and a reporter seeking to mend a damaged reputation all waited to be ignited into a reality cloaked in mystery. But somehow the war got in the way. Descriptive detail of old action sounded a little too like many war stories! And the reporter paled back into an inhibited observer. Perhaps that was the author's intention. But somehow the drive of the story seems frayed at the edges and the conclusion doesn't really rescue the original purpose. Perhaps the story spiked with war action may suit male readers more than female.

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The Three Strangers

Review on Litfy

I have just read "The Three Strangers" (1883) by Thomas Hardy - one of the stories in the collection Stories by English Authors.

In the pastoral, rain drenched world of night outside Casterbridge unfolds the mysterious connection of three strangers who drop by a shepherd's hut!

A beautiful short story etched with the subtle tensions of questions!

Quotes

Description bristles with substance - Five miles of irregular upland, during the long, inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; 

Atmospheric alliteration - surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod

Always get the feeling with Hardy that a passing comment on Nature has another level of foreshadowing or  "insinuation".
The house was thus exposed to the elements on all sides.

First stranger - light satire - his gait suggested that he had somewhat passed the period of perfect and instinctive agility, 

Suspicious riddles keep the mystery flowing - The man at the table took up the hedge-carpenter's remark, and added smartly, "True; but the oddity of my trade is that, instead of setting a mark upon me, it sets a mark upon my customers."

Beautiful imagery - Beyond all this winked a few bleared lamplights. 

A reality becomes a legend - In brief, the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never recaptured.

Imagine singing

By a fire with a hangman

One rainy deep night

GOODREADS REVIEW

  The Three Strangers, and an Imaginative Woman by Thomas Hardy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have read the short story The Three Strangers (1883).
In the pastoral, rain drenched world of night outside Casterbridge unfolds the mysterious connection between three strangers who drop by a shepherd's hut!
A beautiful short story etched with the subtle tensions of suspicious connections, a wheelwright, a hangman and another all gathered round a fireplace of questions!
Another glorious vignette of Hardy's Wessex!

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Farmer Giles of Ham

p.9 The time was not one of hurry or bustle. But bustle has very little to do with business.

p.22 The warm summer was followed by a hard winter. It was bitter cold in the mountains and food was scarce. The talk got louder.

p.25 He was a hot dragon when he felt in the mood.

p.33 ...if it is your notion to go dragon-hunting jingling and dingling like Canterbury-Bells, it ain't mine.

p.38 I will pay for the funerals of all the people I have killed, especially the parson of Oakley; he shall have a noble cenotaph - though he was rather lean.

p.40 He was a grammarian and could doubtless see further into the future than others.

p.45 You cannot offer excuses to the King as you can to your neighbours.

p.55 ...nothing pleased him more than finding the miller at a loss for a sneer and the blacksmith quite out of countenance.

p.60 ...the man who has a tame dragon is naturally respected.


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Poetic Impressions of The Wind Singer

Aramanth
Land of the Manth people
A giant scarecrow structure 
A special gift
From unknown special people
The wonder of the wind singer

But there emerged scarlet gowned examiners
Who sought to grind the human spirit into
Coloured labels
Maroon for those of valuable obedience
Orange for those with midstream potential and
Grey for those who verged on 
Disposable

Tests 
Ongoing tests
Ensured
The right people were
In the right places

And the key to the windsinger's song was
Invisible
Missing

But there are always those 
Who wish and will
A different world

Bowman and Kestrel
The twins
And the 
Muddle-headed 
Mumpo

They were children
Just children
Cast
Down and
Up into
A labyrinth of journeys

Outer landscapes
Together
Inner landscapes
Alone

Braving the muds of the Underlake
The crumbling parapet above the gorge
Riding wolves and
Soaring in eagles' claws

Seeking the identity of
Their lost souls

The Emperor held 
The map
Aging Queen Num wore
The silver clasp 
The key to
The windsinger's song

And in the shifting shades
Always smile
The old children
Lurking 
Longing
To touch
Their crippling touch
Hoping for some fire to burn them back
To what they should be
~~~~~~

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The Wind Singer (2000)
William Nicholson is a British screenwriter, playwright and novelist.

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Wind Singer by William Nicholson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Aramanth
Sounds like some legendary jewel
But the gem
The walled city
Has lost the sparkle of the wind singer
The strangers' tall tower of
Wooden beams and metal pipes
Has lost the voice of
The soul
Extract from my poetic review - an alternative review on my Gemma's Greyscale Territory blog

An extraordinary fantasy that hints of breaths from old legends and becomes a chameleon of reality and dream! And if you feel the spirit deep down, you will feel the smudges of our society lurking.

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Good Reads discussion: For some strange reason, "The Wind Singer" seems to reflect elements of "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. Both represent a world of crushing, stifling perfection and the journey of those who seek a way out. But this time, the travellers are children.

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