Gone with the Wind (volume 2) by Margaret Mitchell

The Review (continued)

The first 500 page volume was reviewed in April 2013 and took us up to the loss of Atlanta and the defeat of the Confederacy.

In volume 2 the war is over and sufficient of the main characters have survived to continue the story. Tara is still standing; or rather it’s on its knees. With the hated Yankees in control, the negroes freed and carpetbaggers from the North flooding in to plunder the defenceless Southern states, Scarlett needs cash to pay taxes or lose the plantation. She turns gold-digger (not in the Californian sense) and returns to Atlanta to entrap one of the few respectable southern gents with any cash.

This saves Tara and gets Scarlett a toe-hold in the now booming Atlanta economy. Her approach to the carpetbaggers is if you can’t beat them, join them. Rhett Butler has the same view and they continue their tempestuous relationship, making dollars, infiltrating the new-moneyed Yankee folk, but losing the respect of the downtrodden, proud remnants of Confederate society. Only faithful friend Melanie Wilkes and her husband Ashley will give them the time of day.

These desperate days for the Southerners give birth to the abomination of the Klu Klux Klan, which attempts to mete out a rough justice on negroes perceived to have slighted (or worse) any white lady’s honour. Following one of their skirmishes Scarlett finds herself widowed for the second time; free once more, but to wed Rhett Butler or to prise Ashley Wilkes from his passionless marriage?

The painful reconstruction of the South eventually gives way to recovery as Georgia gains a measure of self-governance. But the complex four-cornered relationship between Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie and Ashley shows strain and stress under the pressure of events, producing uncertainty right to the end.

The power of the book is in Scarlett’s uncompromising character; frequently dishonourable, always selfish, but undeniably resilient in the face of adversity. Any problem too big to solve today can be shrugged off until tomorrow – famously “another day”. What lifts the book out of the chick-lit pot-boiler category is the broad historical sweep and the riveting scenes between Scarlett and Rhett that crackle with sexual tension and expostulate Rhett’s “don’t give a damn” philosophy.

Six month’s reading (both volumes) and no regrets; tomorrow is another book!

Down and Out in Paris and London – George Orwell

Written in the 1930s this slim volume relates the young Orwell’s personal experience of extreme poverty in the two cities.

In Paris, out of money, he eventually secures a position as a ‘plongeur’, the lowest rated menial in a hotel or restaurant. This provides a pitiful income in exchange for long hours in the stifling heat of the kitchens with the valuable compensation of access to food. His fellow workers provide a treasury of tales of false hopes and ruined dreams. His income pays his rent and no more.

He returns to London on the promise of a job but when it is delayed he is forced to spend a month penniless in the capital. He joins the ranks of the itinerant tramps, kept moving by the vagrancy laws from ‘spike’ to ‘spike’ (a casual ward of the workhouse). From the old hands he learns survival techniques, which spikes are best, and the alternatives to institutional dormitories such as the accurately named two-penny hangover.

Orwell’s writing is clear, concise and is all the more affecting for being un-emotional. In the main he just reports the facts, reserving judgement to a couple of chapters where he sums up his personal opinions and offers simple if unconventional ideas to improve matters.

Is it of relevance today, or is it just of historic interest? It may be possible to judge if much has changed after reading the reputed modern equivalent - A Street Cat Named Bob. As a historic document its personal testimony delivered with a light touch makes it both informative and very readable.

Florence and Giles – John Harding

In late 19^th century upstate New York eleven year old Florence and her younger half-brother Giles are orphans immured in the gothic pile that is Blithe House, looked after by a housekeeper and staff employed by their absentee guardian uncle. He does not believe in educating girls but Florence has secretly accessed the vast library and independently developed her reading and language skills.

In fact they are over-developed; leading to a penchant for synthesising new forms of words whenever she feels the standard lexicon is un-sufficiently expressive. It is her first-person account of events that we get throughout; her synopsis could read thus:

Her brother is boarding-schooled for a while and she friendships a boy from the neighbouring estate. But things pearshape when Giles quits school and a new governess is appointed (we learn a previous governess fatally-accidented on the lake). Florence suspects Miss Taylor is up to no good and witbattles her in a struggle that starts with polite sniping but soon gets life-and-deather.

The precociousness and resourcefulness of Florence, as well as her passion for books, is reminiscent of Roald Dahl’s Matilda; but Florence is older, lacks powers of telekinesis, and is working pretty much alone against an adversary more threatening than the comic Miss Trunchbull. Although you have to root for her, and fear for her welfare, her capacity for ruthlessness is more than a little concerning by the end.

It is hard to decide if Florence and Giles is aimed at the youth or adult market – it seems to occupy ground between the aforesaid Matilda and Henry James’ Turn of the Screw. (Which features similarly named siblings Flora and Miles in a not dissimilar environment).

Not that it matters; I enjoyed the read which was well worth the £1.99 download. The oddities of vocabulary, which could have been irritating, actually fitted in well with and added charm to the narrative.

A Dark Matter by Peter Straub

Read as part S of the “Along the Library Shelf” reading journey

Chosen because

An attractive cover, as ever, drew my eye: a lonely barn in a field of corn below a high white sky dotted with menacing black birds. The blurb was promising with comments from Stephen King and The Guardian, and the first couple of pages left me wanting to know more. The horror genre is not my usual choice, but that is what the A to Z journey is all about – variation from the norm.

The Review

Lee Harwell is a writer in late middle age in need of literary inspiration. A chance encounter brings back to mind a long-buried episode of his youth and soon an irrepressible desire forms to dig it up and examine it.

It was buried for a good reason. His high school friends (one now his wife) took part in a psychic experience, led by the guru-like Spencer Mallon, which ended in death, disappearance and damage to the survivors, who then clammed up and spread far and wide. Harwell himself had chosen not to get involved but now needs to know what actually happened and sets about rounding up the gang and persuading them to talk.

Two strands emerge and intertwine. In the normal world the old friends re-engage and spend time joining the dots from their shared adolescence to their current separate lives. In doing so they each recall and describe the traumatic experience of the para-normal world called forth by Spencer Mallon. Was the spirit world they revealed real or imagined?

The writing is good and maintains interest, although concentration is required as the story flits between now and then, character and character, and first and third person narration (often in the same paragraph). The depictions of horror are vivid and powerful but to me were too unworldly to produce fear or dread.

Read another?

I’ve nothing against the (award winning) author but, as this book has not drawn me into the horror genre, probably not.

On Unfinished Books

When is it alright to give up on a book?

Not never; clearly reading time is a limited and precious resource and should not be wasted on un-rewarding books when there are so many others out there waiting to be enjoyed.

Neither, though, immediately the reading gets a little difficult, drops in pace, or starts to get a bit silly.

Somewhere between these two we each have to draw our own line in the sand. For me it is unusual to abandon a book part way through, I think for the following reasons:

1.    I choose books quite carefully – to get onto the ever growing ‘to read’ pile it has to pass more than a cursory glance; and then to get picked from that pile for reading it will face stiff competition. To abandon it would then call my initial judgement into question, making me naturally reluctant.

2.    Having invested a few hours to get well into the book it seems a bit of a waste to give it up – but this has to be weighed up against the potential greater waste of time in continuing.

3.    It may always get better or produce a late revelation that makes sense of it all or justifies the early indifference.

4.    As I tend to have 3 or 4 books on the go at once I can press on with one dubious volume while getting light relief from the others, so avoiding feeling deprived by the offending tome.

So few of my reads have been discarded, shelved or disposed of unfinished – just half a dozen come to mind – but they do include some well-regarded books that just did not do it for me, including:

§  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne – due to interminably turgid descriptions of underwater inactivity this sank without trace in the Sea of Nonentity.

§  The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers – I anticipated a thrilling period spy story and found instead a manual of yachting terms, techniques and torpidity that became becalmed somewhere off the Coast of Nowhere.

§  Moby Dick by Herman Melville – I am embarrassed by this one and have vowed to return, older wiser and with more time, to search for the mythical great white whale of universal truth that lies reputedly somewhere within its pages.

The nautical theme of these three may seem significant but I happily sailed through The Kon-Tiki Expedition, The Life of Pi, and A World of My Own (Robin Knox-Johnston’s account of his single handed circumnavigation) without getting sea-sick of them.

§  Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak – I have tried twice to read this but have twice hit the buffers like a train in a Siberian snowdrift; I blame the translation.

§  Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor – I found the author’s laconic radio broadcasts amusing but the book was too slow paced and more woeful than beguiling.

And now I need to transfer Honore de Balzac’s ‘Cousin Betty’ from ‘currently reading’ into the retired unfinished select few. I quite enjoyed his ‘Pere Goriot’ many years ago but I’m finding this volume of his ‘Comedie Humaine’ a bit of a chore. The satire is aimed at French politics and society of a period of which I am clearly ignorant, and the prose is very clunky – possibly a questionable translation in this free down-loaded ‘public access’ edition.

So my advice on unfinished books is: choose your reads with care, but don’t be afraid to experiment; persevere at least 50 to 100 pages to acclimatise yourself the style and pace; before baling out give it a week off and then read another chapter; if you then decide it’s not for you take it to the charity shop – it may be for somebody else - and move on with no regrets.

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Kathy H, who is just 31, is looking back and examining the events of her early life, seeking clues and explanations to help her come to terms with an imminent change to her circumstances.

She tells of her ‘schooldays’ at the exclusive Hailsham, closeted with others of her kind; their graduation to an isolated farmhouse; and transition to designated ’careers’. But they are narrated as if we are already in the know, so it is only gradually we come to realise there is a disturbing background to this coming of age tale. That their lives and shadowy existence are part of an otherwise unchanged modern day Britain adds to the atmosphere of conspiracy and foreboding.

Through the lives of Kathy and her friends, Ruth and Tommy, we run the gamut of boarding school strife and adolescent angst. Despite their unusual upbringing, humanity is all too apparent in their actions and feelings, for what good it may do them. Curiously we see no teenage rebellion against their pre-ordained destiny.

Ishiguro knows how to portray relationships from fragments of things said or left unsaid and from small actions done or omitted, familiar from his “Remains of the Day”. In this work the style is breathy and conversational, but this creates an authentic voice and delivery for Kathy who, after all, is a ‘carer’ not a writer.

As the book rolls unevenly on the tension mounts and the need to know the whole ghastly truth is irresistible; can it possibly end well for Kathy H and those she has to care for?

The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson

The novel opens with the narrator crashing his car which bursts into flames with horrific results, graphically described at a level of clinical detail that indicates both extensive research and morbid fascination. This continues in the description of the treatment and healing process of burn victims which sounds only marginally less painful than the original trauma but lasts a lot longer. Not for the overly squeamish.

In recovery the burn victim, curiously un-named throughout, reflects on his previous playboy life; contemplates the future as a hideous freak; and with cold-heart and cool head plans an elaborate and fool-proof suicide.

But while in hospital he is visited by the strange psychiatric patient Marianne Engel who insists they have history – ancient history as according to her they first met in 14^th Century Germany. Then, as a nun, she nursed him back from a previous burning before quitting her order to go on the run with him to avoid him having to return to his mercenary troop. Having, in her apparently unsound mind, saved him once, she is determined to look after him in his current incarnation (or incineration).

Their developing current and former relationships, separated by 700 years, are related in parallel strands, the then by her and the now by him. The narrative is punctuated with four fables told by Marianne, each on the theme of love and sacrifice (which does not bode well); we also have a hallucinatory descent into hell as our burn victim goes cold turkey on his more-than-painkilling morphine habit.

It’s compulsive reading, even where extraneous detail bordering on the obsessive is included. The twin narration works well, with hers in particular breaking off at cliff-hanging moments that create tension and drama. Gradually the tone of the book shifts from horrific, through cathartic to tender, culminating in a moving, even poignant, ending. Around the tipping point it maybe loses a bit of momentum, but a little perseverance brings its due reward.