My mouth is stretched –
A soundless wail of anguish
For the sorrows of the world
An eye into hell
In the corner of my room
Cry out your lamentations
Prostrate yourselves
And weep, and weep, and weep.
Minus One now available on amazon in print and ebook format.
A seasoned tree lifts
its limbs to sun, rain, wind, snow,
welcomes what life brings.
Primroses in a
ditch, surviving wind and rain,
lighting up the gloom.
I am currently putting together a collection of poetry including photographs which I have taken myself along the river. The collection will be called The Red Petticoat and it’s almost ready.
Narrow, stone-walled streets,
palace, church and square resound
with strains of Mahler.
“I was trying to shave with a bluntish razor-blade while the water ran into the bath. My face looked back at me out of the mirror, and underneath, in a tumbler of water on the little shelf over the washbasin, the teeth that belonged in the face. It was the temporary set that Warner, my dentist, had given me to wear while the new ones were being made. I haven’t such a bad face, really. It’s one of those bricky-red faces that go with butter-coloured hair and pale-blue eyes. I’ve never gone grey or bald, thank God, and when I’ve got my teeth in I probably don’t look my age, which is forty-five.”
There is so much more to Orwell than Animal Farm and 1984 and I love this book – Coming Up for Air. It’s the story of a man on a day out, searching for scenes of his childhood. It’s so very readable and engrossing. I read several passages over and over again. But I’ll just add one more here.
“I bent down to pick up a primrose. Couldn’t reach it – too much belly. I squatted down on my haunches and picked a little bunch of them. Lucky there was no one to see me. The leaves were kind of crinkly and shaped like rabbits’ ears. I stood up and put my bunch of primroses on the gatepost. Then on an impulse I slid my false teeth out of my mouth and had a look at them. If I’d had a mirror I’d have looked at the whole of myself, though, as a matter fact, I knew what I looked like already. A fat man of forty-five, in a grey herringbone suit a bit the worse for wear and a bowler hat. Wife, two kids and a house in the suburbs written all over me. Red face and boiled blue eyes. I know, you don’t have to tell me. But the thing that struck me, as I gave my dental plate the once-over before slipping it back into my mouth, was that it doesn’t matter. Even false teeth don’t matter. I’m fat – yes. I look like a bookie’s unsuccessful brother – yes. No woman will ever go to bed with me again unless she’s paid to. I know all that. But I tell you I don’t care. I don’t want the women, I don’t even want to be young again. I only want to be alive. And I was alive that moment when I stood looking at the primroses and the red embers under the hedge. It’s a feeling inside you, a kind of peaceful feeling, and yet it’s like a flame.”
There, that’s enough. Has anyone else read this? Or other Orwells?
I was walking along the river this morning when I came across this old bed-head. I stood and looked at it for a while and then I took a photograph. You’d have to wonder whose bed this once was, a child’s anyway. A boy? A girl? We’ll say it was a girl. And what else was in the room with this old-fashioned bed? Some drawers for little socks and cardigans. Was there another bed in the room? No, there was not. There were a lot of teddies though, and two tall dolls dressed in knitted clothes. Their names were Vanessa and Valerie. On the window-sill lay sea-shells collected from the beach. And in the bottom drawer of the press there were some Enid Blyton books and illustrated fairy stories and a Beano annual, and different clothes for the dolls in a tidy pile.
The little girl, whose name was Rosalie, was never disturbed in this room although there was no lock on the door. This was her very own place where she didn’t have to arrange her face to suit her parents.
When Rosalie was seventeen she left the house and five years later she came back to collect her belongings. She wanted her old books, and she wanted her favourite dolls to put on a shelf in her new flat. She smiled at the thought of her small red bed.
“I’ve made a few changes,” her mother called up the stairs after her.
Rosalie opened the door and sat down on the floor beside her cardboard box. The red bed was gone; her teddies and tall dolls were gone; the shells on the window-sill were gone. She pulled open the bottom drawer of the press but all her books and annuals were gone too.
There was a new wooden bed, a bed for grown-ups, and a new wardrobe.
“Where are all my things?” she asked her mother.
“Oh, for goodness sake,” her mother said. “I knew you’d make a fuss.”
She banged the newspaper on the arm of the chair.
“What things? Oul teddies and muck from the beach? Aren’t you far too old for that nonsense now. I threw everything out.
Will I give Rosalie a happy ending? Will her old father tell her to look in a box in the garage behind his ancient motor bike?
‘Ennis Del Mar wakes before five, wind rocking the trailer, hissing in around the aluminium door and window frames.’ Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx.
‘All night long he would walk the ship, from bow to stern, from dusk until quarterlight, that sticklike limping man from Connemara with the drooping shoulders and ash-coloured clothes.’ Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor.
‘While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years.’ The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.
‘”All good things must end,” said Frances Price.’ French Exit by Patrick de Witt.
‘It was love at first sight.’ Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.
‘The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.’ Coming Up for Air by George Orwell.
I think that last one is my favourite but then, I’m a big Orwell fan!
What are your favourites? Tell me in the comments – I may discover more great books to read!
I was interested to read “Life for Sale” as I am not familiar with Japanese writers – except for Kazuo Ishiguro who grew up, and lives, in Britain.
The protagonist, Hanio Yamada, fails to commit suicide and decides to put his life up for sale, hoping that someone else will do the job for him. There follows a series of adventures as different buyers turn up with a proposition but no situation works out as planned and he remains alive, becoming wealthy as each sale brings in a lot of money – and a few dead bodies.
The book is well paced and so quotable! (I had to choose among so many.) It is a surreal tale with impossible scenarios, including one with a vampire:
“There was a lustrous quality, for sure, but it was the lustre of a corpse. The faint boniness of her arms betrayed her extreme thinness. And yet her breasts were full and firm, while her stomach was soft and white like a vessel brimming with an abundance of rich milk.”
And I did laugh out loud a few times:
“A dead body reminds me a bit of a bottle of whisky. If you drop the bottle and it cracks, what’s inside pours out. It’s only natural.”
“Tall, and probably rather snooty, the steward had clearly just spent a lot of effort squeezing blackheads. “
Eventually Hanio has to re-think his life and his decisions.
“How fearless, utterly fearless he had felt when he first put his life up for sale! But now, a warm furry fear clung to his chest, digging its claws right in.”
I don’t think I’ll re-read this book but I did really enjoy it. It’s the sort of book where you jump in and see where it takes you. You immerse yourself in the strange world of Hanio and that way you get the best out of it. I will definitely try this author again.
This is Patrick de Witt’s latest book, his fourth, published in 2018 and it certainly lives up to the standard of the other ones. Ablutions, the first, The Sisters Brothers next, and Undermajordomo Minor – I love them all. It is impossible to categorize them as they are all completely different.
So, French Exit – as the title implies is mostly set in France although the first quarter of the book is set in New York. It is a wonderful romp of a book – you’d pick it up with a smile of anticipation. The main characters are the wealthy Frances Price and her son, Malcolm. Frances is beautiful and elegant and totally irresponsible. Malcolm is vague and pleasant. He is engaged to Susan, a girl he professes to love but can’t quite commit to.
The story takes off when Frances realises she has spent all her money and is completely broke. The pair decide to go and live in France when a friend offers them an apartment in Paris. They sell everything they have left, jewellry, pictures and furniture and take all the cash with them. They also bring their cat, Small Frank, so called because Frances believes him to be a reincarnation of her husband, Franklin.
To give a small flavour of the text:
‘Frances sniffed the flowers and asked, “Who has died, and what was their purpose, and did they fulfill their potential?” The doorman didn’t hazard a response. Frances made him uneasy; he believed there was something quite wrong with her.’
‘Frances suddenly became aware of the chair’s dimensions. It was an exciting thing to know and she was happy she’d been told about it. “What did he choke on?” she asked. “Ah, lamb.” “And have you eaten lamb since?” “No. But, you know, I never liked lamb much in the first place.”‘
‘Tom’s foremost characteristic was his handsomeness; his second was his normality; his third was his absolute lack of humour; his fourth, his inability to be embarrassed.’
In France they pick up an entourage of hangers-on, impossible to describe. I have looked for quotes to illustrate them but it’s impossible to take them out of context.
The book is very funny but all along it has a darkness to it. It is perfectly shaped and paced and I can only recommend that you read it.
Morning sun lights up
red-gold naked canes against
cold grey Winter wall.
embookstuff 