The Book That Made Me Laugh Out Loud

The Book That Made Me Laugh Out Loud

I have been following the #bookaday tweets over the last month on Twitter. I was told it was important for the business to have a twitter account and while I’ve been getting used to ‘tweeting’ it has been gods send for me because I’ve had something to tweet every day. This month, as they’ve just published the new list, I thought it would be great for me to use it for blogging about books for all you Lotus Book Club fans. Not only will it help me blog quickly every day, but on every different subjects that might invite more comment.

The book that made me laugh out loud was Marina Lewycka’s ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’ and I often re-read it when I’m between books and feeling low. It was even better when my mum read it too and we could read bits to each other and giggle together. I remember reading parts out loud and laughing till tears ran down my face. The funniest part of the whole book is the main character’s father who is from the Ukraine. He is grumpy, irascible and very difficult to handle. The reason I laugh so much is that I once lived with a character just like this. My late husband had Polish parents and when we made a big move back up North after my graduation, my father-in-law came with us. His plan was to live with us half the year and half the year with his other son in New Zealand. This character reminded me of him so much and the laughter is fond because despite his unique manner and behaviour, we have grown to love him and though he moved out to NZ permanently after my husband died I do miss him. He had a wonderful way of saying exactly what was in his head just like the character in Lewycka’s book. One Sunday lunch with many guests he was juggling emergency chairs and said to a lady ‘I’ll take the stool, you’re bottom is much slimmer than mine’. On a similar theme he once brought me a magazine article which scientifically proved that pear shaped women live longer! Just like Lewycka’s character he had no concept that his pronouncements could be seen as rude or offensive in any way; they were true so what was the problem? He would also had a similar way of making desert by stewing the hell out of cooking apples in the microwave – something the character called Toshiba apples – and then popping a crust over the top and in order to cool it all down once cooked he would leave it in the middle of the garden while we were eating our roast. Of course he didn’t try to marry a woman half his age like the father in the book, because the book takes this wonderfully funny character to extremes precisely to make us laugh.

Prior to Lewycka’s book it was the work of James Herriott and Sue Townsend that kept me laughing. I remember being unable to speak after reading the exploits in James Herriott’s series, mainly at the action of the irresponsible younger brother Tristan. The scene where he has been dressing up as a ghostly monk and terrorising one of the local roads is hysterical. I must have read this story near a hundred times but it still never fails to make me laugh till I cry. The thought of the poor monk crashing through the undergrowth while the local copper chases him with a truncheon makes me smile and the episode of the ‘shitting’ cat who escapes his box while in a moving car is another episode to make even the hardest reader giggle away. The beauty of a book that really makes you laugh is that hopefully they become like really good friends. You might not see them for a while, but when you’re feeling low you can take them out and they’ll never fail to cheer you up.

My Top 10 Heroines

Although there are newer protagonists with power and incredible resolve such as Katniss Everdene (who sounds like she stepped right out of Thomas Hardy) or Hermione Grainger, these are my favourites, the ones who have influenced me and kept me reading.

        Jane Eyre – when I was younger and first read the novel I didn’t fully get Jane. I still believed in the fairy tale and couldn’t understand why she chooses to run away from Rochester and live with the Rivers family. Now, as a 40 year old woman I get it. I get it so much that I had my first tattoo based on her declaration ‘I am no bird and no net ensnares me’. Jane is strong and is aware that she has worth despite being poor, plain and obscure. She has values and wants to stick to them. She proves herself to be hard working, loyal and discreet. She leaves Rochester because he is married even though she loves him, because to live with him as a mistress is to compromise her values. She would lose some of her character id she submitted to his wishes. By leaving and working as a teacher she finds peace with herself and companionship with the Rivers family, but turns down a marriage proposal from St.John Rivers because she has no feelings for him, and he has no feelings for her simply seeing her as a perfect missionary’s wife. Jane knows she is worth both love and respect. Jane returns to Rochester on her own terms and with her own fortune; now she can come to him as an equal and loses nothing of her own character in being with him.

      Jo  March –Recently I did one of those quizzes on Facebook that asked which March sister I was. I did all of the questions and was disgusted to find the answer was Amy.  I always wanted to be Jo March. Jo is my heroine because she is a writer first and foremost, an incredibly loyal friend and sister, and above all independent. She doesn’t care about wearing gloves, having dresses with patched holes, and speaking to boys without an introduction. She has a platonic relationship with a boy and she craves the freedom he has in life and his potential for adventure. Jo wants to do the same. She hates Meg simpering over Mr. Brooke and doesn’t understand why the girls have to split up and marry. When Beth is ill she cuts her own adventure in New York short to nurse Beth and support her parents. She turns down a financially comfortable marriage with Laurie to be her own person and will not be pleasant or false just to gain advantage; when Aunt March goes to Europe she takes Amy as a more agreeable companion. Jo has accepted the possibility of being a maiden aunt and is comfortable with her own character when she meets the unconventional Professor Bhaer who is older, poor and not the most suitable husband for a young girl. Jo doesn’t work by society’s rules, she makes her own.

       Anne Shirley – Anne is another writer who caught my imagination when I was very young and made me long

for long red, carroty hair. In liking her I recognised a part of myself I didn’t like very much; the slightly snobbish side where she wants to do better for herself than stay at home and be married like her friend Diana to plain old Fred. Anne is clumsy, plain speaking, full of temper and always getting into scrapes. When asked whether she would rather be divinely beautifully, angelically good or divinely clever she chooses clever. She is so obviously
 in love with Gilbert Blythe but thinks she can do better than marry the boy down the road. She has dreams of gilded rooms, and marble halls and travelling far away from Prince Edward Island. However, she learns as time goes on that home is very important and the people we leave there more important still. She goes through a huge learning curve in the books from a naïve orphan with a huge imagination to a woman who recognises where her heart lies. Yet, she never gives up her own dreams of excelling at school, getting a scholarship to go to university, being a published writer and living away from the island for a time. Yes, she marries Gilbert Blythe the boy next door but Anne Shirley is far from ordinary.

      Lisbeth Salander – Probably the strongest and most powerful woman in this list I guess she is the heroine of every woman my age who has read the Steig Larsson books. A male friend of mine cited her as one of his favourite literary characters ever, never making the distinction that she was a woman, so she has crossed over into the male consciousness too. Lisbeth lives on her own terms, loves on her own terms and works on her own terms. She has quirks both of character and of style. She has a particular look of tattoos, leather and piercings that suggest danger or at least keep people away from her. She doesn’t want to engage with people on first meeting and once we learn about her background that becomes more understandable. She is a survivor of horrific childhood abuse and of a revolting sexual attack in the first novel.  She makes no concessions to societal norms, works undercover and lives undercover. She is super-intelligent and a world-class computer hacker, pulling off daring feats of embezzlement that would scare most people to death. She is super violent and her revenge is often bloody and shocking, and she makes no allowance for the fact she is a woman. She does not wait for someone else to take care of her, she takes care of herself. Although I wouldn’t aspire to her violence I would aspire to her self-reliance and strength.

S    Sugar- the prostitute at the centre of Michael Faber’s novel The Crimson Petal and the White drew me in immediately. I fell in love with the way she addresses the reader directly and brings you into a world you might think you’re familiar and soon makes it clear you’re not. Sugar’s world is one where her mother has prostituted her at the age of 13, and she still ‘works’ in her house. Sugar lives in a world where men are in charge and she spews out her hate for them in her book where she is free to imagine appalling acts of violence she commits on her regulars, particularly William Rackham. He has a neurotic wife at home who needs quiet and receives visits from a doctor who seems to spend his time trying to stop her hysteria with intrusive examinations. William installs Sugar in her own house with an allowance where she is available only to him and this feels like the first freedom she has ever had. Yet it is when she becomes a nanny to his hidden daughter Sophie that Sugar realises all men and mainly William are weak and not to be trusted. She thought she was worth more to him than just a nanny; she thought she was an equal but he dismisses her business ideas and treats her as he does his wife Agnes. Sugar helps Agnes escape to a convent and then escapes with Sophie, hoping to give her the sort of childhood she never had. She buys a new notebook to keep writing her story. I love that Sugar survives, that she has found a way of venting her anger with writing and that she is able be maternal with Sophie, finding a love that makes her feel whole.

      Lucy Honeychurch – This is a bit of a cheat because the first time I met this character in the film and Helena Bonham-Carter’s portrayal may play a large part in my love of this character. Lucy is at the dawn of a new age where classes are mingling more and the old social order is changing. Meeting the Emersons in Florence is a turning point for Lucy, who according to Mr.Beebe needs to live as excitingly as she plays piano. Lucy wants to let go and love George Emerson but can’t because of convention and also some self-deception; she does not want to face her attraction for him. Lucy is at the dawn of a new age where suffrage will come to the fore and through the novel the reader follows her journey from a young woman stifled by convention who can’t even accept the offer of swapping rooms to an independent woman following her own life with the man she loves. All the way through the novel I was rooting for the real, passionate Lucy to break free; when she does, the joy I felt has stayed with me.

.     Pru Sarn – Prudence Sarn is the narrator of the novel Precious Bane. The first thing we learn about Pru is that she is ‘hare-shotten’ which means when her mother was pregnant a hare ran across her path and Pru was born with a hare lip. She knows she is different from what is seen as normal, never mind beautiful. She is often labelled a witch by strangers, but also knows she is not attractive to men because she is tall and willowy rather than rosy cheeked and buxom like Jancis who is being courted by her brother. Pru still has a great sense of self, despite her disfigurement she is knows she is valuable as a help for her mother and when her father dies and her brother Gideon takes over she works as hard as any man to keep the farm going for him. Gideon has a dream that they will all live in a grand house with money and Pru works for this with him, even though she doesn’t need the money or the grand things. Pru knows who she is and is happy with that. She has resigned herself to never marrying, which is why she agrees with the plan to appear as Venus for Beguildy; if Jancis is seen naked her marriage prospects will be ruined but Pru has no marriage prospects anyway. Her love for the weaver Kester Woodseaves is immediate but she knows she has no chance with him. She leaps to his aid when he stops the bear baiting with the courage of a man and is it her bravery and difference that Kester falls in love with. I also love that Pru finds peace while in the attic writing her journal. She is solid, brave, and sure of who she is without wanting expensive clothes, or a grand home. She still sees her own worth, despite not being conventionally beautiful or rich.

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     Anne Elliot- among the witty and beautiful Lizzie Bennet, the idealistic and romantic Marianne Dashwood, and the chatty mischievous Emma Woodhouse, it is easy to forget Austen’s quieter and less dazzling heroine Anne Elliot. Appearing in the novel Persuasion, Anne is independent, intelligent and decent. Anne’s family is headed by a narcissistic baronet who is absurd and foolish. He persuades Anne to turn down the man she loves eight years earlier than the events of the novel. When we meet Anne she seems resigned to spinsterhood and life with her dreadful family. Yet, her story is set back in motion when her previous suitor comes back into their society having fought in the Napoleonic Wars and become wealthy. Wentworth represents a new class of self-made man contrary to the usual hierarchy represented by the Elliot family. I felt so much relief when Captain Wentworth reveals he is still in love with Anne!  The ending reminds us that there are second chances in life and that sometimes the quiet woman in the corner who has dignity and patience wins out in the end. Rather like Lucy Honeychurch, but at the turn of a different century, Anne moves forward in marriage as a new class and status of woman, who has chosen to marry for love rather than convention.

      Rosa Dartle, is my favourite Dickens character and is a great contrast to the other women in David Copperfield, the pathetic Dora and Little Emily, and the ‘perfect’ Agnes. Rosa is Steerforth’s mother’s companion and is described as a spinster in her thirties. She is slender and very dark with a livid scar on her lip. This depiction of her as a ‘spoiled’ woman fascinated me so much I started to research a PhD on women and disfigurement or disability. In contrast to other women in the novel she has her own opinions and is happy to give them. She has an unrequited passion for Steerforth and has been left sarcastic and bitter from his inattention. Her emotions, as strong and unpleasant as they may be, seem the most real of Dicken’s heroines and suggests a woman with depths only hinted at here. Rosa  is left trapped with Steerforth’s mother and has no chance of escape through marriage that other women may have. Yet she also has a certain freedom in action and speech, certainly more than the saintly Agnes will ever have.

      Coralie Sardie – To pick someone from a brand new novel is a bold move but I have fallen in love with Coralie. In early twentieth century New York City Coralie’s father owns The Museum of Extraordinary Things and Coralie is his exhibit. Born with webbed fingers, Coralie wears a mermaid tail and climbs into a tank every day to be shown off to paying customers in Coney Island. She thinks her webbed fingers make her a freak, and feels she will always be under the rule of her father in the museum. Her father trains her to swim in the Hudson River in the hope people will see her as a monster and raise the profile of his exhibits. One day she swims a little off course and meets a man in the woods who is a photographer. She falls in love with him instantly, but knows she has no chance without her gloves hiding her deformity. Surrounded by people with various disabilities and disfigurements that make them exhibits, Coralie has no knowledge of her worth outside of the money she can make from men who pay to see her. She has to learn to develop her self-esteem and independence, helped by the knowledge of their maid’s romance with the Wolfman which makes her see possibilities for people like her. I loved watching her grow and develop into a woman who learns about her complicated past and then creates her own destiny

      Phew that was tough! I am aware that I have a bias towards characters who are plain, disfigured or disabled in some way. This is probably because I have a disability and identify strongly with these characters. Lisbeth Salander chooses to mark herself in some ways, and even Sugar has an unusual skin disease that leaves circles and spirals of dried skin on her body. All are mostly poor, disadvantaged or at least restricted in some way. I love a character who rises above their problems and takes control of their own destiny. I then remembered others I’d missed such as Denver from Toni Morrrison’s Beloved, Ursula from Life After Life and the lovely Emma from David Nicholl’s One Day. I think that the list might be completely different on a different day!

Every Book Has It's Day

Last year I finally read Jonathon Strange and Dr.Norrell. No Doubt everybody else read this book years ago when it was new and fresh, but for me it has been there, on the shelf, patiently waiting for its time to be read. One afternoon, feeling bereaved after finishing Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, I wanted something else that was magical to read and there it was just waiting for me. I quickly became entranced by the description of the magic of York Minster because I’d just been there the week before. I was then sucked in by the strange man with cotton candy grey hair who dressed beautifully but seemed to appear and disappear at will. By the time I was in Venice, a city I've always wanted to visit, I couldn't put it down until I finished. Why had I not read it before?

Books have their time. When we buy them doesn't really count because we may not be ready for them. A friend who lines books up chronologically and ploughs through them, worries that his wife buys books and then leaves them on the shelf and she tells him she will read them, just at the right time. I am the same. I have tried to pick them up before maybe, but they haven’t clicked and something stops me reading on. I choose to think it is some kind of book fairy who knows that now is not the time for me to get the most or the best out of them.

Another book I was like this with was Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. On the face of it this was a book that tailor made for me, taking in different countries, complex family relationships and all narrated by a hermaphrodite. I have a huge interest in disability, sexuality, and all forms of difference so when it came out I bought it immediately. Sadly, it languished on the shelf through three house moves before I finally read it. I had been doing a year of ‘Gothic, Grotesque and Monstrous’ literature at university when it first came into paperback and I simply couldn't be bothered with another story of difference. I’d done all the classics; Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde and was up to my ears in vampyres, werewolves, spirits, Golems, freaks and seal boys! At that point the thought of anything remotely ‘other’ was overload and I turned towards more African and Caribbean literature. Then suddenly, three house moves later I had a quiet summer and decided to give it another try. I was lost in a deckchair for at least a week, with this tale of a brother and sister who escape a Greek war to come into the United States as husband and wife. This secret is carried over three generations to our narrator who has been brought up a girl but is simply unsure that is what she is. I couldn't believe I’d never read this before and kept popping into my husband’s study in wonder to tell him that this book had been on the shelf all the time and it was a perfect fit. Would it have been a perfect fit at any other time?

I have a theory that a book finds you when you are ready for it. You may eye it up in the book shop for weeks, or even have it on your book shelf gathering dust. It may have been a book you were forced to read at school or university, but when the pressure is off and years later you find it again and it can touch you differently to when you first read it. My obvious example of this was Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. In my teens I loved wild and romantic Cathy, but now I see the Cathy and Heathcliff relationship as dangerous and abusive. Whereas once Jane Eyre was boring for rejecting Rochester’s offer of being his mistress I now see her as strong, true to herself and a great example of knowing who you are as a woman.

More recently I saw that the BBC were doing an adaptation of Michael Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White. This book had sat on my shelves for a couple of years when I’d bought it along with some Sarah Water’s fiction about Victorian England with a twist. I had even picked it up a couple of times and something stopped me connecting with it. I decided to give it another go before the series really got underway and was immediately entranced by Sugar, the prostitute who writes out her anger in a violent novel of murder and revenge. I couldn't believe I hadn't read this before. It was a masterpiece of a novel, showing three woman who actually have more power and strength than they might have believed possible. I loved the descriptions, the frankness and the humour. It was a book that was made for me and again I had a little sense of loss at the end when I had to let Sugar go into her new adventure with her child in tow. I loved the series equally even though, by then, I was so in love with most of the characters I couldn't imagine anyone getting it right.

A book is not something to get through or past before picking up the next one. For me it is a world to immerse yourself in; if it is written well that is. Sometimes, I know why a book has had to wait. It might be that my own experience is too close to the story and I can’t let go of my own narrative. It might be that it seems heavy and I can’t feel in the mood for it because I don’t feel well, or I am wrestling with some difficult stuff at work and want little more than pure escapism. That’s the good thing about books, there’s one for every occasion. However, nothing beats the joy of escaping into a rich world of characters who have an incredible story to tell.

The Lotus Readers : May Meeting Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun

Tonight’s meeting was great, plenty of discussion and interesting, differing views. Some very personal experiences were shared and I left the meeting really happy to have such a diverse and interesting group of friends and readers.

‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ is one of the books on my list for The Lotus Flower Book Club because the author is incredible and I have loved everything she has written from her debut novel ‘Purple Hibiscus’ onwards. The book explores Nigeria around the time of the Biafran war in the 1960s. This is a period of history that not many people in the group knew about so it was educational as well as drawing us in with the two central characters of twins Olanna and Kainene.

We started by discussing the sisters and how we’d responded to the characters throughout the novel. Olanna was thought to be immediately accessible and many readers felt they had connected with the character early in the novel. Kainene was more a more reserved character and because of this she was the harder one of the two sisters to connect to. It was mentioned that it seemed very shocking that both women lived with men out of wedlock in the 1960s which might have been frowned upon in 1960s Britain. This lead to a long discussion about how being rich means you have more choices; if the girls had lived in a poor family their behaviour and views might not have been able to be so progressive. We talked about how poverty and class has a huge effect on morality with one group member sharing how surprised she had been when reading about the London slums during the Victorian period and how many couples didn’t bother to get married, how the aristocracy pretty much behaved as they liked, but how there was a growing middle class who had a rigid morality based upon the new example set by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The twin’s wealth insulates them from disapproval and so have more choices than the average Nigerian girl.

We talked about beauty and how the perceptions of beauty can affect the formation of character. Kainene knows that Olanna is the beautiful sister, and we wondered whether this knowledge had made her more closed off, wary and cynical, but also a very focused and brave business woman. Her lover Richard thinks Kainene is beautiful because of her grace, her height and her dignity but it was discussed whether he simply admired her in the same way he admired the coiled pots he wanted to see – almost like an exhibit to represent his romantic vision of Africa. Both sisters are very aware of custom and expectation; Kainene knows that her parents have practically promised her to a powerful General, while Olanna knows they don’t approve of her ‘revolutionary lover’ either. Yet, both of them are masters of their own lives and make their own choices of career, and in their personal lives.

We then discussed the two male characters in the novel – Kainene’s white lover Richard who wants to write a novel about Africa and Olanna’s lover Odenigbo, a university professor and revolutionary thinker. I asked which man our readers were drawn to and while most chose Odenigbo  there was a lot of criticism of the men and their actions. Readers were not drawn to Richard who has a romantic vision of Africa in his head and struggles to write his novel throughout; the snippets of a novel called ‘The World Was Silent When We Died’ are interspersed with the story and we assumed this is Richard’s. He is interested in the tribal aspects of Africa, local art and seems to have an idea of the ‘noble savage’ in his head. The other characters want to leave behind the tribal customs called ‘bush’ thinking and animism that was the tradition, but Richard is fascinated with these customs and asks Odenigbo’s houseboy Ugwu to take him to his village for festivals. Despite all the inspiration around him he does not seem inspired by anything but Kainene who he falls in love with. Odenigbo was thought to be a nicer man, mainly because of the way he treats Ugwu – he needs help around the house but treats him with respect and Ugwu can’t believe how well he lives. He helps Ugwu read and is very complimentary about his cooking and work around the house. The lively evenings at the house with Olanna and all their friends from the university were enjoyed and many readers wanted to meet some of the radicals in the group.

The war is the great leveller to everyone in the novel. We did not talk about the massacres in detail but we did talk about how all the characters become equal because no one gets paid, Olanna’s bank account is inaccessible and Ugwu becomes equal to all the others in the household; everyone is hungry. The anxiety of becoming poorer is so beautifully expressed as Odenigbo and Olanna move to smaller and smaller houses, with less money and the panic of being conscripted hanging over their heads. The women seem to become stronger as the novel progresses whereas the men become more withdrawn and even cowardly. Some readers found the structure of the novel difficult because the different parts don’t run chronologically. The first part was thought to be hard going and something to persevere with, whereas once readers reached the second part the novel seemed to flow better and kept their interest. It confused readers that Olanna suddenly had a baby, and one or two readers found this distracting, wondering where this baby had come from rather than concentrating on the novel!

Infidelity was a huge issue in the novel and made up a large part of our discussion on the night. We have the privilege of having members from different backgrounds, from many different parts of the UK as well as Kenya and Romania. This is great because it gives us so many different perspectives and this really became clear in this conversation. We discussed Odenigbo’s mother first and how she comes in and takes over the house when she visits the home, removing Ugwu from his kitchen, taking over the cooking and insulting Olanna to such an extent that she leaves and goes back to her own flat. We discussed the role of the mother-in-law and how in British culture she is a figure of fun and the butt of jokes, whereas in some parts of Africa the mother-in-law is a very respected figure and one member discussed the story that if both your wife and mother are hanging from a cliff, the man will save his mother. She explained that there are some lines you don’t cross out of respect, which was interesting to other readers who had wanted Olanna to stand up to Odenigbo’s mother and stay. Some readers thought that if she had stayed and shown her place in Odenigbo’s life the infidelity would never have happened. Although Ugwu phrases his concern in a ‘bush’ way he does see the danger Odenigbo’s mother poses to his master, Olanna and his own lifestyle – if the household is split what will happen to his own security. He tries to warn his master of the danger but either Odenigbo does not want to see it, or objects to village talk of ‘dibias’ and dark spirits. Ugwu is right and when she drugs Odenigbo and offers him her servant girl, Olanna knows immediately from his face that something has gone wrong with their relationship.

There was some discussion about how superstition and old beliefs cause such problems in countries like Nigeria and also how new myths (such as the one about sleeping with a virgin curing HIV) are creating a terrible environment for young people to grow up in. Odenigbo went down in most reader’s estimation after this incident because even being drunk or drugged was no excuse. It was discussed whether we were bringing western ideals into the story, and this created an very personal and interesting discussion on how we would personally cope with infidelity and how it can have a ripple effect, causing problems way beyond the couple involved. In this case Olanna leaves and goes to see her Aunty Ifeka, but is told to return to Nsukka. Her aunty tells her that she has her own job, her own flat and must return to her life because only she can change it. Most of the readers felt this was harsh advice and didn’t take into account the emotions and sexual jealousy involved. However, when infidelity is put in the perspective of other problems in Africa it starts to look like a minor issue. We discussed the reaction to Odenigbo’s infidelity in depth, especially Olanna’s betrayal of Kainene by sleeping with Richard. It seemed a strange thing to do because it does not punish Odenigbo as much as her twin and we wondered if there was an underlying rivalry between the twins that drives this event. Maybe Olanna’s status as the most desirable twin was dented by Odenigbo sleeping with a village girl, and she needed to regain it? Her reaction to Baby is another surprise because having wanted her own child with Odenigbo to take on his child from another woman is very brave and accepting of her. Most of us were unsure whether we could do the same, but her love for Baby seems unconditional.

Ugwu was the character most readers warmed too immediately because of his naivety and humour. He cares deeply about the family he works for as if they are his own and does everything to keep the peace. He wants Odenigbo to support Olanna more with his mother, and also to support him because he is very proud of how he looks after the master and how he cooks and doesn’t want anyone to meddle. He finds his mistress beautiful and loves Baby. He protects them, and sticks with them during troubles they face in the war. The rising panic over whether he might be conscripted if he lingers too long in the streets but makes a decision that changes his life when he is picked up and forced to fight. We had talked for 2 hours so never got to discuss the terrible scene with the rape of the girl in the bar. I never got to ask whether it changed the reader’s opinion of Ugwu, but for me it typified the futility of war. Ugwu does not want to rape the girl, but forced into it by his fellow soldiers he joins in with the rape and hates himself. The look on the girl’s face haunts him for life and I felt he was as much a victim of the terrible war as she was.

As usual we didn’t get to discuss everything, because there is only so much time and we bring a lot of personal experience into the group so we can talk about how the book affects each of us on such a personal level. We are all looking forward to the film coming out later in the year so we can take a trip out to the cinema and some of us are already looking forward to reading Adichie’s new novel Americanah. 

Story Bereavement

There should be a better term for this strange feeling of loss and melancholy as you finally finish the story that you have lived in for every hour you have been reading it. A good book draws you in and makes you feel so immersed in the characters and their lives that when you finally look up from the page you are surprised that they are not sitting there with you in your living room. When I find a good book I can’t put it down and for the next couple of days, every spare hour (and often quite a few stolen ones) are immersed into it.

I carry my Kindle with me – I love real books, but having a disability means I can’t carry weighty books around with me all day so I finally bought myself a Kindle. Considering I often used to take 8 books on a week’s holiday it was a good investment, and now I can take more clothes with me! The disadvantage of the Kindle is that sometimes, because it is so portable, I rush stories. I so want to know what happens that I can’t leave it for quality time, and find myself snatching a few pages between work, on the train, in the doctor’s waiting room and even in the gap while waiting to be served in a shop. This really defeats the purpose of savouring and enjoying the book properly but I still can’t help myself from reading just a paragraph, or just a few pages and then before I know it I have raced towards the end and now I don’t want it to be over.

This strange push and pull between finishing the story and wanting to stay in it forever has been with me since I was a little girl. When I was eight, I had finished the reading scheme at school. It was a fairly boring scheme which for some strange reason seemed to involved pirates. I was never happier than when I was in a book and I raced through them, sometimes 3 or 4 a week until my teacher finally gave up and during reading time let me have the run of the school library. I chose to read Louisa M.Alcott’s Little Women and was entranced with this story of sisters, balls, dancing, and all their clothes, theatricals and romances. I remember feeling very proud of the fact that while  everyone else was reading to the teacher or one of the visiting mums I was allowed to lie in a bean bag and read this amazing story. Of course when it was over I moved on to the next in the series and then I followed by reading series of books such as ‘What Katy Did’ and the Moomin series by Tove Jansson. In this way the separation from my beloved characters was not so harsh, but then I discovered Jane Eyre. I was around 10 because I remember there was a series on the BBC on Sunday teatimes with Timothy Dalton as the dark and mysterious Mr.Rochester. I didn’t know the term ‘Byronic’ then but I thought he was the most exciting and handsome man. I was enthralled by the woman in the attic who may, or may not, be the servant Grace Poole. I was reading alongside the series and remember throwing a complete hissy fit when the series showed the eve of Jane’s wedding and the ghoulish Bertha comes into her room and rends her veil in two. I knew I didn’t have to wait to following week for resolution because I had my book, so when my Aunty Doreen took it from me so I couldn’t sneak a peek I sulked for hours. Those characters stayed with me long after I found out the ending, and I had to take a short break from reading for a few days to exorcise the literary ghosts!

More recently one book that completely sucked me in was David Nicholl’s ‘One Day’. Again it was a romance between Emma and Dexter that was at the centre of the story and I identified with Emma immediately. They studied at the same time as me so the fashions and the music were the same, I recalled the books that she studied and loved as much as I had when I first discovered them. I understood Emma and I too had a Dexter, a male friend I fell in love with – although mine love was mainly unrequited. I raced through the novel feeling like I was reading about my friends, and it took me two days. Towards the middle of the second day I reached the point of Emma getting on her bike to come from swimming, she and Dexter had argued that morning, but I knew it would be okay because these two were meant to be together. Then (SPOILER ALERT) I reached the devastating sentence:

‘then Emma Mayhew died and everything she thought or felt died with her’.

-and I was devastated. I immediately burst into tears. Nicholls was such a talented writer that he had made me believe in this character so completely. Now I had lost her and along with Dexter I grieved for this funny, loyal, intelligent and forgiving woman. I had to seek out someone else in the house and tell them Emma Mayhew was dead. I finished the book in state of grief. I had to keep going back to the sentence and re-reading. I couldn’t believe that life would be so cruel as to take her away from Dexter just as they had found each other. I couldn’t believe he would take her away from me!!

There are books that have absorbed me so much I could cry when they’re over. Michael Faber’s version of Victorian London was a version I wanted to stay in forever. More recently Alice Hoffman’s new novel was extraordinary and I knew that I would feel this strange sadness when it was over. I know I have read a really good book when I have to put the book to one side and think quietly for a while. There needs to be a respectful gap between the end of that book and the beginning of another, because I have to come to a new book with a fresh mind. I can’t have old characters hanging over me and haunting me.