For the Hours After Midnight
Sarah Waters, whose own ghost/haunted house story I reviewed here, wrote about her favourite ghost stories on her website. I found the list and insight into the writer's own literary loves fascinating. Of the top ten I had read half when I first read the list but have now read eight of the ten; the short stories I found online (I would provide links but I downloaded them in pdf format and no longer have them) and have still to read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House (as previously mentioned) and Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills (I have never read any Ishiguro).
Of the ten my favourites are photgraphed above.
Beloved was my first Toni Morrison novel almost a decade ago and the one she is most known for, seeing as it won the Pulitzer Prize and was likely the contributing factor to the author winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, the first time a black woman had ever won it. I loved that Sarah Waters included it on a list of ghost stories; it is intensely haunting and does include a haunted house, 124 Bluestone, and its own "little stranger", the ghost of murdered infant, Beloved (so named for the inscription on her headstone). It is also haunted by the sins of the past and I love Waters' eloquent description, " [o]ne of the great fictional studies of slavery and its scars, Beloved is also a sublime literary ghost story: a meditation on the ways in which individuals and communities – ultimately, an entire nation – can be haunted by the violence and injustice of the past. A breathtaking book." It is indeed breathtaking -you gasp in shock often- and somebody or something's breath is perhaps the sensation you feel on the back of your neck.
Beloved is the type of terrifying story that the short story "The Lottery" is, more disturbing and sickeningly shocking than sensational terror.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is also a haunting novella of another kind, a psychological and claustophobic study of mental illness. A spare and essential feminist text, I have read and reread "The Yellow Wallpaper" often. I have the beautiful slim volume (Virago Modern Classic) above as well as a couple of anthologised copies but you are able to read this on Project Gutenberg. Follow it up with Persephone's The Victorian Chaise-longue, which is similarly themed with a trapped and stifled woman.
My impressions of The Woman in Black have recently -and enthusiastically- been given. The building of palpable tension in this short novel still resonates with me.
Coincidentally I paired "Carmilla" by Sheridan Le Fanu and "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James (both novellas) in a Victorian Literature essay many years ago. The latter lauded the former with the praise that he was "the ideal reading ... for the hours after midnight" and indeed Le Fanu's Vampiric tale, which predates Bram Stoker's Dracula, is deliciously atmospheric. As a prototype for lesbian vampires, as well as female, it is also probably of historical as well as literary interest to Sarah Waters. "The Turn of the Screw" is the original rational v. supernatural tale and at the forefront of the genre.
Of the short stories, "The Monkey's Paw" was the most sensational and one I had never come across mention of before (nor the others). Its "be careful what you wish for" motif is blended into a theme reminiscent of The Arabian Nights, a monkey's paw talisman that will grant you three wishes - no matter the cost. Its climax is chilling and emphasises that what is unseen and left to the reader's imagination is frequently effective.
Elizabeth Bowen is a favourite writer of Sarah Waters and one of the few female writers of War-time fiction. "The Demon Lover" is subtly creepy.
Kelly Link's "The Specialist's Hat" bears re-reading as I haven't fully formed an opinion. It is quite poignant but I didn't find it particularly scary.
As I seem to be on a mission to scare the bejesus out of myself, do you have personal favourites in the genre of ghost stories and the general disturbing that you would like to recommend?
Book-centric Memories
Before I moved to London to live I visited a lot and many of the memories of my visit involve books. One visit in June 2006 involved a Southbank Centre calendar of events in tribute to Angela Carter, where writers including Ali Smith and Sarah Waters spoke; I was writing my Master's thesis on Angela Carter at the time so this was highly interesting and beneficial as was the premiere at the Royal Court Theatre of Marina Carr's (absurdist and mythological Irish playwright whose drama I was also working on) new play Woman and Scarecrow starring the wonderful Fiona Shaw. At the beginning of that journey I was reading Fingersmith by Sarah Waters in time for the Guardian's book group discussion with the author, which I attended; I remember buying a copy of Affinity so I could have them both signed (a few months earlier I attended a reading of The Night Watch in Glasgow and had both that and Tipping the Velvet signed). It was quite the literary-centric visit to London and on the journey home I began reading my new Vintage edition of Angela Carter's Wise Children, set in East-end London and concerning the bizarre and theatrical Chance twins, Dora and Nora, in a hysterical Shakespearean romp.
Later that year my boyfriend and I went to London to see Wicked: the musical as a graduation celebration. On an excursion to Foyles bookstore on Charing Cross Road with a friend I bought Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, at her suggestion. I had only recently discovered Neil Gaiman (well I had known who he was for a long time and my boyfriend read The Sandman but I had discovered that I enjoyed him too) and had read American Gods the previous month and loved it. Neverwhere was an apt purchase as it is set in a real and fantastical London known, respectively, as London Above and London Below. The subterranean expanse of the London underground allows limitless imagination and Gaiman capitalises on it. It is so refreshing to read a book where places you know and places you have recently been are mentioned. For instance, I opened the book to read on a jam-packed tube after leaving Emma and eventually obtaining a seat at St. John's Wood tube station and the opening page of the book is a quote which reads "I have never been to St John's Wood" - how uncanny is that? Hardly surprising that it sticks in my mind. I am in dire need of a reread of Neverwhere now that I live in London Above nearly three years later. For that matter I desperately want time to reread Wise Children around Midsummer's Day (a key section of the novel is about Dora and Nora starring in a Hollywood adaptation of A Midsummer's Night Dream). For the sheer joy of it I should also reread Fingersmith too as it is another fantastic novel.
This is somewhat of a non sequitur post, a departure from the norm, but I have some blog posts in mind of literary experiences, places and bookshops, and favourite writers and books that I would like to share.
A Lottery I Wouldn't Want to Win
I cannot reveal much about the plot -nor do I want to- but suffice to say it is set in small-town America, concerns the yearly, ritualistic Lottery that occurs amongst the townspeople, and is a deeply unsettling exam of barbaric inhumanity. Upon publishing the short story in 1948 The New Yorker received a virulently negative response from its readers with hate mail and subsciption cancellation in abundance. To illicit such a strong response over a short story was unprecedented.
It is a long wait until October to read Jackson's other works.
Julie & Julia
Anybody who knows me will tell you that I love food. I have also recently developed a passion for cooking. I have always enjoyed cooking but without my own kitchen I seldom had a chance to partake in the pleasure but now that I live with my boyfriend I am experimenting more and more in the kitchen (even though he is the one with culinary aspiration who has all of the fancy kitchen doodahs and sharp Global knives). I've even been known to watch a few cookery shows on TV here and there. However, other than the shelves of cookery books I don't know much about cooking in literature, exlcuding reading Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (sumptious book) many years ago or having the non-fiction of the delicious Anthony Bourdain on my Amazon wishlist. Julie and Julia (subtitled "My Year of Living Dangerously" in the paperback edition) by Julie Powell about her year of cooking all 524 recipes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and the disasters and successes that ensue definitely appealed to me and was a departure from my normal reading habits (which are usually quite eclectic anyway). In Julie's own words:
"I'm a foulmouthed hysteric with misanthropic tendencies for whom things are constantly going terribly, terribly wrong."
Although non-fiction -it is based on real events in Julia Powell's life in the year 2002 when she embarked on the Julie/Julia project- it reads like fiction with an informal narrator who has a highly irreverant humour. It could be classed as chick-lit, to an extent (which is why it is definitely a reading departure for me), but although neurotic to the extreme, Julie attempts to cook more than Birdget Jones's stringy blue soup, although she does imbibe about the same amount of alcohol, smokes numerous cigarettes, and sprinkles as many -if not more- f**** in the mix.
Despite my love for food and quality eating I sometimes found the description of the cooking dry and I would skim through the ingredients and cooking processes to the funny bits (and there are many). Perhaps it is because rich French cooking doesn't excite me all that much and the French dish titles were too much for my rudimentary grasp of the language. Sometimes, I admit, I was more excited about the mention of Domino's Bacon & Jalapeno pepper pizza. The convoluted nature of MtAoFC (be prepared for that acronym often if you read it) didn't lend itself often to basic description in Julie & Julia although occasionally the insane expectations of culinary skill are highly amusing (as in the chapter "They Shoot Lobsters, Don't They?") It is Julie's warmth, her uncompromising pursuit of her project, and her neuroses that made this an enjoyable read; although the cooking aspect at its base is the vehicle for the book it is not a culinary expert's read but a layman's one. As a sometimes disastrous cook myself I willingly laughed along in empathy with Julie and as a bibliophile commiserated when she recounts the time in her youth that she attempted to cook a recipe -quail in rose petals- from Like Water for Chocolate.
One of my favourite passages:
"I felt like a Jane Austen heroine all of a sudden (except, of course, that Jane Austen heroines never cook), confusedly looking on at all the people she loves, their myriad unpredictable couplings and uncouplings. There would be no marriages at the end of this Austen novel, though, no happy endings at all."
If you don't enjoy a Bridget-Jones-esque light read with filthy language, sex, irreverance, and pop-culture references to Buffy then this is not the book for you. I also wouldn't recommend you read it if you are a Republican as it may offend. For me, it was a dollop of good fun and amusement with a peppering of interesting facts and anecdotes (I didn't know that Julia Child's kitchen had been transported to tha last spoon to the Smithsonian, for instance).
The book is more Julie and less Julia (despite her influence) but the movie adaptation seems to have fleshed out Julia's part and made it an equal story about two intriguing women with a love for cooking. It also comes across in the trailer as being more chick-lit than the book, presumably in order to appeal more to a core market; I don't have a problem with this as I'm sure the film -like the book- will be entertaining.
Belated Birthday Gift
On Friday evening I received a welcome and wonderful surprise in my e-mail inbox. An exceptionally generous friend had sent me an Amazon gift voucher as a belated birthday gift with apologies for forgetting. I jumped up and down in glee. Large Amazon purchases of books used to be a regular feature in my life but it's been over a year since I'd placed an order of more than one book at a time that was for myself. I've been trying not to buy as many books and, to be quite honest, my current economic situation doesn't allow me to, so you can imagine how ecstatic I was to be able to SPLURGE (guilt-free) on books. Even though Amazon sells more than just books it was only for a fleeting moment that I considered buying anything other than them. I also decided to buy items from my wish-list that I had been coveting for a while, books that I had never read before, and ones that would be a welcome addition to my library.
For most of Saturday I added and removed and added again and amended and evaluated my Amazon basket until finalising upon these (collectively photographed above):
Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
Couples by John Updike
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Therese Raquin by Emile Zola
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Of Human Bondage by William Somerset Maugham
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.
So, one writing handbook, one Finnish Children's book, two English classics, one French classic, one Russian classic, one German classic, and one American classic. Those six classic novels are all ones that the Guardian recommend that I must read. Cumulatively I have 2882 pages to read. Have you read any of these? Are you wanting to read any of them?
I have overdone it with the photographs a little but in my enthusiasm I wanted to show you some of the lovely covers; my particular favourite is the Penguin edition of The Day of the Triffids to the right. The cover art is by Brian Cronin and I covet the entire set. I already have the similarly striking copy of The Midwich Cuckoos, which was a novel I enjoyed earlier this year.
Now I am off to admire my books for a while.
Teaser Tuesdays
From what started as a blog, is now a book, and is soon to be a Nora Ephron movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams:
What Katy Did
So embracing my inner child at the weekend wasn't entirely successful. Re-reading What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge I was wishing that I hadn't. Much as Hilary Mantel did I found Katy's story to be pious and moralising. Is this really the Katy Carr I loved as a child? Post accident she is so saintly saccharine that I felt the need of a visit to the dentist.
I was a good child and I am sure that I looked to Katy as I did Anne Shirley and Mary Lennox and Pippi Longstocking as a means of escape. I certainly preferred the Katy Carr who got herself into scrapes earlier in the children's novel and not Saint Katy that she later became.
What Katy Did at School was my favourite of the What Katy Did trilogy (What Katy Did Next I can barely recall) and I approach re-reading it with trepidation ... what if all my wonderful childhood memories of reading and re-reading it are shattered? It is a school story, one of my favourite children's literature genres, and therefore full of promise but I am still nervous. I don't think I'll be able to bear the disappointment of now hating it.
Far more successful were re-readings of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Although not a revisit to childhood memories for me as I first read about Harry Potter and -at that time- four of his magical adventures in 2002, it is certainly embracing my inner child. I am an unashamed and avid fan of the Harry Potter books and films and I am still waiting for my letter to say that I am going to Hogwarts.
