Us – David Nicholls

Douglas Petersen has reached a crossroad in his life, not uncommon in middle age. His only child, son Albie, is due to go off to university and his wife, Connie, suddenly announces that their marriage has run its course and she wants to leave him. As Douglas (the narrator) puts it “if Albie had flunked his exams we might have had another good year of marriage”.

The timing of the announcement is also inconvenient as to mark Albie’s last summer at home a Grand Tour of Europe’s cultural centres – Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, Florence and Rome - has been planned and paid for. So they decide to see it through. In Connie’s mind it will be a last hurrah; for Douglas it will be a chance to show the woman he still loves a good time and convince her to stay.

So far so downbeat - funny but in a Victor Meldew vein of humour. But before they get to Paris the cracks in his relationships with both his wife and more particularly his son begin to show. Then in Amsterdam the pressure of keeping up appearances is too much and the threesome fragment. Douglas for once acts on impulse, and once he becomes liberated from his itinerary and exposed to new experiences, the action becomes frantic, funny and more purposeful.

As well as the on-going mishaps of an Englishman abroad and the inescapable trials of family life, Douglas also relates how his courtship, career and family evolved to this point, musing on how it all went wrong after him trying so hard. In addition to the humour there are moments of bitter sweet emotion, tense heart-stopping episodes, and an ending full of twists and turns.

So just another cracker from the author of ‘Starter for Ten’ and ‘One Day’.

Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace – Kate Summerscale

In the same style as her excellent ‘The Suspicions of Mr Whicher’, Kate Summerscale here reveals another Victorian scandal in the downfall of Isabella Robinson.

From about 1852 to 1856 Mrs Robinson, an intelligent and articulate woman who moved in upper middle class, radical society, maintained a secret diary. In it she recorded not so much her comings and goings but her thoughts, opinions and more crucially her amorous musings and encounters.

The latter rarely involved her husband Henry, who was often away on business, was cold towards her, and kept a mistress. Who they increasingly, but not exclusively, involved was Dr Edward Lane, a family friend and a married man.

Henry’s discovery of the diary in 1856 led him, in 1858, to be one of the first to take advantage of the recently passed Divorce Act (1857) and the new Court of Matrimonial Proceedings to seek a divorce (previously only obtainable through a prohibitively expensive application to Parliament).

The ensuing case became a cause celebre, bringing into sharp focus the unenviable status of a married woman in mid-Victorian Britain, or more accurately her lack of status, being a mere chattel of her husband. The great and the good debated her case. Did she actually commit adultery with Dr Lane, or did her diary record wishful thinking, or even delusions brought on by her sexual frustration.

Around the central narrative of the “affair” and the court proceedings Summerscale constructs a fascinating picture of society at a point where many established views were being challenged by new radical thinkers – scientists like Charles Darwin, authors such as Marian Evans & Charles Dickens, and marginal medical practitioners such as phrenologist George Combe – and when the issue of a woman’s right to an independent life began to be considered.

Reading Challenge 2015

No review this week as I am working through some lengthy tomes at present. But instead this 150^th post will share thoughts on the Popsugar 2015 Reading Challenge.

Although nominally the challenge is to read 50 books (52 really as one has to be a trilogy) it is actually a list of 50 characteristics to tick off. And as most books will satisfy several criteria it should be possible, within my normal reading pattern, to cover most bases. We shall see.

In fact, thirteen books into the new year, seventeen boxes can already be checked off, some multiple times, as I have no problem with ‘nonfiction’, ‘set in a different country’, ‘female author’ or ‘translated from another language’.

Looking at the rest of the list I foresee difficulties stumbling over a book by an author with my initials, or one published in my year of birth. Also a graphic novel and one featuring non-human characters will stretch my normal literary parameters, but then that is the whole point.

And the final box – a book started but never finished – means that Moby Dick could raise his head once more.

The Railway Man – Eric Lomax

As a boy growing up in Edinburgh, Eric Lomax developed a love of trams and then trains. The interest was maintained as a young man but he wouldn’t have guessed just how big a part a railway was to play in the rest of his life.

Having left school to become a telegraphist with the post office, the natural progression at the outbreak of the second world war was to enlist in the Royal Corps of Signals. Deployed to the eastern theatre he ended up in Singapore just in time for its mass surrender to the Japanese army.

As a PoW with technical knowhow he was put to work, along with similarly skilled colleagues, in the repair sheds, maintaining (as badly as possible) the equipment used to build the notorious Burma - Siam railway. This group’s relatively privileged position came to an abrupt halt with the discovery of their homemade radio receiver and Lomax’s hand drawn map of the projected railway route.

The Japanese response is no less horrific to the reader for being predictable from the likes of ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’ and ‘Unbroken’. Lomax relates the torture and brutality, and his stubborn resistance without hyperbole; the drama and pathos self-evident.

His trauma does not end with liberation; for three and a half decades he is haunted by his experiences and it is only after meeting (on a train) his second wife-to-be that he can, with her encouragement and support, begin to come to terms with them.

And when he discovers that one of those involved in his interrogation is alive and is now an activist for reconciliation, he resolves to go and confront the man and test how sincere is his professed remorse.

It is a compulsive, powerful read, highly recommended.