Tomorrow is January 31st and the last day in the current From the Stacks challenge, which, you may remember, I embarked on back at the end of December. And, would you believe it, I have actually accomplished my goal and read the five books on my list. I even finished a few days early.
I accept your enthusiastic and resounding applause.
I started off with The Apple: New Crimson Petal Stories by Michel Faber, which turned out to be pleasant and enjoyable, but nothing compared to the magnificent tome from which it takes both its inspiration and its marketability. The Crimson Petal and the White rode the wave of Victorian pastiche with both style and energy: a weighty tome, cut from the finest grade paper, beguiling from the first line of the first page. The Apple is soft fluff in comparison; the cotton candy of Victorian historicals. For the most part, at least. Stories like 'Christmas at Silver Street' and 'Chocolate Hearts from the New World', which imagine Crimson Petal's lead characters in the years and months before they become subject to the novel, make for pretty reading but petty narrative. Unlike Susanna Clarke, whose Ladies of Grace Adieu was sufficiently disengaged from her magnum opus to stand-alone, Faber has chosen stories that require a certain affection from the reader. In his introduction he claims they can stand-alone, but this is clearly not so - who can intelligently read about William Rackham's future if they don't know his history with Sugar? Indeed, the only stories that really rise above the legacy of Crimson Petal are 'A Mighty Horde of Women in Very Big Hats, Advancing', about a child's experience of a women's suffrage rally and 'Clara and the Rat Man', about a prostitute and her strangest client. Whether these warrant the hardback price is questionable: if you've read and loved Crimson Petal, then probably yes, and if not, probably no. Buy The Crimson Petal and the White instead!
I then moved on, working my way through The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzenitsyn, before I washed up on the shore of The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco.
Now, I know Eco mostly by reputation having only previously read The Name of Rose, but I'm aware of several of his penchants and literary tics: his moral dialogues, philosophical musings and Russian doll structures. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana has all of them squared, and is something of an oddity of a novel because of it: I mean to post in full about it soon. Similarly The Invisisble Man by H.G. Wells. I admit that I was uncertain about delving into this one and quavered over whether or not to pick it up, thinking that it would be too familiar a story, or too melodramatic a prose style, or just plain silly. I was wrong of course, on all counts. Wells is a consummate story teller, and a surprising stylist, and only silly when he means to be - The Invisible Man is visceral, unrelenting and unflinching; a work of psychological realism if there ever was one.
What all this amounts to is a very successful challenge - I completed it for a start, but I also read books I wouldn't ordinarily have picked up of my own volition and enjoyed them. I didn't feel in the mood for Solzenitsyn, or Wells, or Eco but I read them anyway and feel enriched for it. (Hurray!) So much so that I decided to do it again. There are a plethora of other challenges to try, I know, - the Classics one sounds especially tempting - but the From the Stacks challenge suits my needs so well that I think I might make it a permanent fixture. Esther will pick me 5 books from the TBR stack every 2 months, and I must read them, whether I have a passion to or not.
Last night she picked out these for me:
1. Father and Son by Edmund Gosse - I picked up this little NonSuch edition as a remainder at the Minster Gate Bookshop for £2.99 after readng a biographical article about Gosse in the LRB. This is a memoir of his late Victorian childhood - both of his parents were members of the strictly religious Plymouth Brethren and he grew up stuffed full of missionary narratives, biblical literalism and hellfire before becoming a provacative, free-thinking academic in adulthood. Also interesting to me because Peter Carey used Edmund as a model for Oscar, also a child of Plymouth Brethren in his brilliant Oscar and Lucinda.
2. Pavane by Keith Roberts - I seem to remember that Nic bought me this for Christmas 2005 (or was it 2004?) and I've been meaning to read it ever since. An alternate history, it imagines an England in which Elizabeth I was assasinated and the Spanish Armada successful conquered the British Isles, bringing Catholocism and the Inquisition with them...
3. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson - I read Gilead last year and raved on and on about it until Esther read this, Robinson's first novel, to shut me up. Now she keeps raving on and on...
4. Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters - Which I bought after it won the Guardian First Book Award in 2005, but haven't gotten around to yet.
5. Other Stories and other stories by Ali Smith - She shook my hand and gave me her own reading copy of The Accidental and so now qualifies for a rare honour: the reading of the ouevre. I don't ordinarily read multiple works by the same author in quick succession, mostly because I don't feel I have the time to focus so intently, but now and then an author comes along and demands that sort of attention. Ali Smith is definitely something special.
All of these I mean to read by the end of March, interspersed with other bits of pieces and my non-fiction reads and, of course, the Bible, which I've been neglecting recently. (I got bogged down in the prohibitions of Leviticus and the many different ways to sacrifice an animal but hopefully will be emerging with thoughts on it some time soon.) Not to mention the fact that the Orange longlist is announced in late March...
~~Victoria~~