Bad Intentions ~ Karin Fossum

Alex, (Philip) Reilly and Jon are camping out on the banks of Dead Water Lake.  They all have something on their conscience, something in which they were involved together nine months earlier, something that has affected each in a very different way.  Alex has become more determined than ever to keep the situation and those concerned completely under his control; Reilly has retreated further into a world dulled by the use of narcotics; Jon - Jon has found no way of coping and as a consequence has been admitted to Ladegarden Psychiatric Hospital following a nervous breakdown.  The trip to the lake is Jon's first venture back into the world and it quickly becomes apparent that his reluctance to go away with his friends is well founded.  When the three of them go out on the Lake that night only two return.

This is the first of Fossum's Insepctor Sejer novels that I've read and was kindly sent to me by NetGalley.  Normally, I prefer to read a crime series in order and I'm feeling the lack of any pre-knowledge of how Fossum works acutely in writing this review.  In many respects this novel is very different from the books in this genre that I would normally read and I don't know to what extent that is true of all the author's work, or whether this book stands out as an exception in her own work.  There is also the further complication that I am, of course, reading it in translation and some of the features that stand out may be as a result of that further physical distancing from the writer's intentions.  

And distancing is one of the first things that I was  aware of with this novel, my distance as a reader from most of the characters and most especially from the two detectives Sejer and Skarre.  This is certainly not what I would expect from a British or American crime writer, who for the most part will centre the narrative around the thoughts and the actions of their investigators and make each novel the opportunity to develop their on-going characters.  Here, the only character to whom I became anywhere near attached was Reilly.  The detectives remained almost anonymous, although this could, of course, be a feature of this book alone; it may be that I ought to know them well enough by now from earlier novels in the series.

The other aspect of the book which I found different was how sparse it seemed.  There are no sub-plots, no red herrings, it concentrates on telling the story of the crime these three have committed and its disastrous consequences to the exclusion of anything else.  As crime novels in English get thicker and thicker, with two or sometimes three investigations running parallel to each other, it seemed strange to sit down and read this book in a single sitting.

However, these differences do not make this in any way a less satisfying read.  The main effect of the unexpected point of view is that there is a tendency to sympathise, or at least to understand, the perspective of the accused and in this case, at least, that is no bad thing.  By the end of the book, one person will bear the responsibility for a series of preventable deaths, but nevertheless it is difficult to feel that what you are looking at is a harden criminal.  Coming hot on a succession of Val McDermid's serial killers this is something of a relief.  Perhaps not all baddies are psychopaths after all.  It is also a lot easier to keep up with the twists and turns of the plot.  In fact, I'm tempted to ask what twists and turns?  If you've tried to get your mind round something like the latest C J Sansom, for example, this is also a comfort.  Drawing up plot analyses was something I thought I'd put behind me when I finished my PhD, but with some crime fiction it's really the only way to keep track of what's going on.

All in all then this is a well-written book, with a clear, well organised plot and some interesting, if perhaps underdeveloped, characters.  Certainly, I enjoyed it enough to go back in the series in order to discover to what extent it is typical of Fossum's work and I would be more than happy to pick up her next novel to see where her writing takes her.

The Essay

First, an apology to those of you I haven't got round to visiting this week. As some of you know, I don't always have the best of health and there are times when I just have to sit back and let life go on around me. In the past I have let this put a stop to my blogging, but this time round I don't want that to happen. I may occasionally have to go silent for a time, but I will eventually come back.

Down time does give me the opportunity to do some thinking about how I want to spend my up time, especially my reading hours and one of the forms I know I want to revisit is the essay. Perhaps thirty years ago I read a great many collections of essays, especially those put together from the work of arts journalists. I read everything published by Bernard Levin, for example, a journalist who had such a following that when he wrote in praise of a show or an exhibition it would turn its fortunes over night, as the RSC discovered when he waxed lyrical about their superb adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby. Somehow, however, I've let the habit slip and until the last couple of weeks there have been almost no essays on my shelves at all.

The essay is a difficult genre both to compose and to appreciate, I think. By its very nature it has to be thought in a concentrated form, a distillation of many hours of deliberation. Whatever argument the writer is putting forth, it has to be set out clearly and in a concise manner, it has to make its point at the first attempt. There is no option of setting out your thesis in an opening introduction and then returning to expand on your meaning a couple of chapters down the line; you have to get it right the first time.

Likewise, as a reader you have to hit the ground running. You don't have the luxury of easing your way into a writer's style, of gradually coming to understand their point of view. Although you do, at least, have the option of returning to a difficult passage, an essay generally demands a level of concentration greater than the average novel, a commitment to follow absolutely every turn of the author's mind.

And this, I think, is the reason I have let my essay reading fall by the wayside. Concentrated thinking hasn't been my strong point over the past few years and it is a habit, which once you let it fall into disuse, takes some retrieving. Now, however, I would like to do something about this, even if it only a promise to myself to read at least one essay a week, and so, as a way of breaking myself in slowly, I've been gathering a number of books which are primarily essays about reading. If I can't read about books, what can I do?

Anne Fadiman has been on my shelves all along. I love her work and return to it often. However, someone mentioned Michael Dirda on a blog and his work looks ideal. Classics for Pleasure and Book by Book, I found easily enough and yesterday Bound to Please finally arrived. Carolyn Heilbrun was also recommended and I've managed to pick up good cheap copies of The Last Gift of Time and Hamlet's Mother and other Women on line. I was lucky enough to be given a copy of Sarah Bakewell's essays about Montaigne, How to Live. And finally, and quite by chance, last weekend I picked up second hand collections by Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer, although the latter seem to be political rather than literary.

So, I can't say that I don't have enough to go at, can I, and the next thing I need to decide is how I'm going to structure my reading. And so, two questions: have any of you tackled an essay reading project and, if so, how did you go about it and are there any other collections of literary essays I might look out for? All suggestions most gratefully received.

Annie

A Hal By Any Other Name

Much to my surprise, I found myself having a good old grump this morning at my dear friend, Thomas C Foster.  However, you won't be surprised to hear that it was his chapter When in Doubt, It's from Shakespeare, that was causing the grumping.  There are a couple of factual inaccuracies in there and that really annoys me.  I'm sure none of us is perfect when it comes to making sure that our blogs are 100 percent accurate and completely free from typos.  But then we aren't asking someone to pay for the pleasure of reading our words of wisdom, nor have we set ourselves up as some sort of authority. In a published work of non-fiction such inaccuracies worry me because they automatically call into question all those facts I didn't know before I started reading and have happily been assuming to be true. For the record, it was Prokofiev who composed the ballet Romeo and Juliet and not even a newly pious Prince Hal is hard-hearted enough to hang Sir John Falstaff (nor foolish enough, I would imagine the audience would have lynched him). Rather the old knight made a finer end, and went away an it had been any christom child.  It is Bardolph who is condemned to death for robbing a church while the army is in France.  

Having said that, the main point that Foster is making in this section remains valid, namely that it is not unusual to find a more recent text reworking or in some way referencing a Shakespeare play and that recognising the relationship will often lead to a greater appreciation of the referencing work.  

One of the examples he gives is Athol Fugard's play Master Harold... and the Boys, making the point that the young man, Master Harold, is a modern day equivalent of Prince Hal, loafing around with the black workers when he ought to be readying himself to take over his father's business.  Eventually 'Hally', like Hal, is forced to take not only a position of responsibility but also a political disregard for those whose company he has previously enjoyed.

I have to admit that when I saw this play at The National Theatre in London, I didn't make the connection. However, in my defence, the performance I saw was so memorable in other ways that I think I can be forgiven. I must have seen it in the early eighties and the play (which was initially banned in South Africa) had caused a stir among right wing groups because it questioned apartheid.  About half an hour in two members of the audience (I'm doing my best to be polite here!) stood up and made their objections to black actors appearing on an English stage, in a play which had the audacity to suggest that black people might have the same rights as white, very clearly heard.  Everyone else, actors, audience, staff, froze......for a moment, just a moment, and then the audience members closest to the protestors stood up and without a word formed a ring around them and made it impossible for them to do anything other than walk out of the theatre.  The 'guard of honour' then came back, sat down and the play continued as if nothing untoward had happened.  It was English sang-froid (if that isn't some sort of linguistic disjunct) at its very best, but you will understand that it did mean that I had things on my mind that afternoon other than looking for Shakespearian parallels. 

I've always enjoyed Fugard's work, The Road to Mecca is my favourite, and so I'm sorry if I haven't done Master Harold full justice.  I shall have to go back and re-read it, although, of course, that won't be as potent as actually seeing it on stage.  One thing I will be looking out for is any way in which it makes me re-assess the Henry IV plays because I think these Shakespearian referencings can often prompt new insights into the original works as well, but that is the subject of another post altogether.

My Life in Books

Well, not exactly mine, but the lives of the twenty guests who will be interviewed by Anne Robinson over the next fortnight as part of the BBC's run up to World Book Night on March 5th.  This is not a television household.  The radio wakes me up in the morning and goes off when I finally put the light out at night.  I do, however, make an exception for programmes that discuss books and the prospect of this every weekday evening for a fortnight, is tempting indeed.

If there's one thing I love as much as I do reading it is discussing what I've been reading with other likeminded people.  Hence the three book groups to which I belong, not to mention being part of the blogging world.  So, a programme where two guests each brings along five of their favourite books to talk about has to be my idea of heaven.  In fact you can tell how much I'm willing to put up with to listen to a book discussion if I say that two of the three people involved in the first of these programmes are among the broadcasters I would normally go furthest to avoid and yet I still watched it and still enjoyed it.

The format is very simple.  Anne Robinson invites two readers to choose books that mark particular points in their lives and explain why they have been important to them.  It could become extremely formulaic and lifeless and indeed after the first five minutes, especially when Robinson kept jumping in to try and move the proceedings along, I was worried that it wasn't going to work.  However, the two guests, writer P D James and radio presenter, Richard Bacon, suddenly started to interact with each other, ignoring whatever time constraints there may have been, and the programme immediately took off. I hope by the time the second in the series airs this evening Robinson will have relaxed a little and learned to let the discussion flow more easily.  I'm not certain, though, that she does relaxed and it might be necessary for the guests to take over every evening.

Whatever the faults it is just so nice to have a programme that takes reading as a lifelong obsession seriously and I hope that it will be such a success that the BBC will have to think about giving it a regular spot in the schedules rather than just a short term project.  Maybe we should all write and demand a second series.

Some Things Just Never Change

Having discovered during my research on Andrew Marvell that corrupt politicians are not the prerogative of the twenty-first century (OK, so that wasn't really that much of a surprise)  I came across this passage, last night, while reading Daniel Deronda, which shows that the publishing world hasn't changed that much either.

One of the shop-windows he paused before was that of a second-hand book-shop, where, on a narrow table outside, the literature of the ages was represented in judicious mixture, from the immortal verse of Homer to the mortal prose of the railway novel.


Airport novels eat your hearts out.  There is clearly nothing new under the sun.

Andrew Marvell ~ Poet or Politician

You might be forgiven for thinking that there is precious little reading going on in the SCR at the moment, I certainly feel as if that is the case.  I don't seem to be writing much about books and the tbr pile is simply growing by the day.  However, in my defence I do have three quite substantial projects on the go.  My Wednesday evening book group is reading Daniel Deronda for the first week in March and I have to lead the discussion.  Not only is this a substantial read in its own right, but I'm also having to do quite a lot of background reading both on Eliot's own religious position and on the general reception of Jews in England in the period when the novel is set.  I'm thoroughly enjoying the work, but it is taking time.

Then, my Wednesday Shakespeare Group is just about to move on to The Taming of the Shrew and the first of the three sessions is always the most difficult to prepare for as I like to look not only at the major sources for the play but also at the various editions that are available.  In the case of The Shrew, of course, this means reading and comparing the Folio text with the three Quartos of The Taming of A Shrew which were published before the First Folio in 1623 and then taking on board all the arguments as to which, if either, is the original play.  Again, this is fascinating, but it takes time.

Finally, I was suddenly asked to give a talk to our History Group about the seventeenth century poet, Andrew Marvell, on the somewhat shaky grounds that we have now reached that period in our study of English History and I am the literary one.  

Now if push comes to shove, I can talk about any Shakespeare play for an hour or so off the top of my head, and this isn't the first time that I've read Daniel Deronda, but the sum total of my knowledge about Andrew Marvell prior to this request was the first line of the poem To His Coy Mistress.  So, believe me, there has been a great deal of reading going on in the SCR but it's mostly been aimed at finding out more about this remarkable man, who was far better know in his own time as a politician and a writer of tracts designed specifically to get up the noses of the great and the good than he was as a poet.

Marvell was born in Yorkshire in 1621 and the family very soon moved to Hull, a city with which he was associated for the rest of his life.  His father was an Anglican Minister and from what I can discover Marvell himself was solid in that faith throughout his life.  Certainly, he was voluble orally and in writing against both the Catholics and the Episcopalians, and towards the end of his life this would set him at odds with all the major players in the political arena as Charles II moved further and further towards the Catholic church and those who wished to see the power in the hands of the Bishops fought the monarch in the House of Commons.

He was a very well-educated man, attending Cambridge University from before his thirteenth birthday, and using the chance to travel as governor to a young nobleman to learn Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian.  His knowledge of languages was to become well known and he was employed as tutor to a number of well connected teenagers including, for a time, the nephew of a friend of Oliver Cromwell who was intended as husband for Cromwell's youngest daughter.  When he moved into politics as MP for Hull, he was often given secretarial roles that required him to interpret and translate documents for visiting dignitaries and was part of a delegation to Russia when Parliament was trying to renegotiate trading deals that had been cancelled when Charles I was beheaded.  Obviously Tzar Alexis didn't want his own subjects getting any regicidal ideas.

Looking at his time in Parliament you do tend to get the feeling that things were pretty much the same then as they are now.  The Borough of Hull paid Marvell 6s 8d for every day that the House sat as well as expenses and the occasional barrel of ale.  Oh that word expenses.  We all know what that can mean after the scandals of the last year about the monies claimed by our current crop of MPs.  And what about those barrels of ale?  I suppose we can only be glad they weren't Duck Houses! (With apologies to my non UK readers who may not quite understand that last comment.)  However, Marvell did speak out in the Commons against a bill designed to allow MPs to accept public office, a means of bribing politicians to vote in ways favourable to those who held the real power.  In fact, my overall impression of Marvell is that he was his own man.  He had his own ideas of what was right and wrong and he supported whichever grouping he thought was most likely to bring about the effects he thought desirable.  This has led to people looking at him as something of a turncoat, but I think you could rely on him if you relied on him to be true to himself.

And all this time he was writing, but not primarily the poems for which we now remember him.  The works that brought him most notice were the poems and the tracts which either feted or poured scorn on the major players in English government.  His final great piece was An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government which opens:

There has now for diverse Years, a design been carried on, to change the Lawfull Government of England into an Absolute Tyrrany, and to convert the established Protestant Religion into down-right Popery

and goes on to trace the conspiracy back to Charles II himself.  A real example of how to win friends and influence people!

Marvell died of the tertian ague (which probably means some form of malarial type illness) in 1678, but even then was hardly able to avoid controversy when his housekeeper claimed to have been secretly married to him and consequently to have rights over his estate.  His poems were published after his death, but for a long time the more political writings were overlooked.  It was really the essay written by T S Eliot for the tercentennial volume of his works, published in 1921, that brought Marvell back to general notice and led to a reassessment of his writings, both poetical and political. 

So, you see there has been some reading going on in the SCR and now I just have to hope that I can satisfy my colleagues when I give the longer version of this paper on Monday.  Fingers crossed.

Recalling Shakespeare

On Monday I went to see a dear friend who is in the process of moving house.  It's a difficult situation because she has lived in the same rather isolated cottage for the past sixty-three years and she is a hoarder.  As you might imagine, given the length of time she's been in her home, she is having to move because of health problems and she is going into much smaller accommodation.  It isn't easy for her, either emotionally or physically.  

I went over on Monday specifically because she wanted me to  have her collection of programmes from the theatre visits she'd made to Stratford over the years to use with the Shakespeare groups I teach.  While I'd seen many of the same productions myself, I don't have the space to be a hoarder and so I haven't kept any but the more recent programmes myself.  I've often regretted this, but a small house is a small house and that's all there is to it.

As you might imagine, I've had the most wonderful time over the past few days going through these programmes and recalling some of the marvellous productions I've had the privilege of seeing since I first started going to Stratford in the early 1960s. They include, for example, the programme for the very first professional Shakespeare I saw, Peter Hall's 1962 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with Judi Dench as Titania, Diana Rigg as Helena and, I notice, the novelist, Margaret Drabble, tucked away among the fairies.  I knew she had wanted to be an actress, but I hadn't realised I'd been there to see her early attempts.

It is, though, the even earlier programmes that really make you catch your breath and turn green with envy. Here, for example, is the 1959 production of Othello with Sam Wanamaker as Iago and Paul Robeson as The Moor.  What wouldn't I have given to see that.  Or the Cymbeline from two years earlier with Peggy Ashcroft as Imogen and, hidden deep among the Lords, Ladies, Servants and Guards, an as yet unheard of, Eileen Atkins.  And what about a production of Dr Faustus just after the war, in 1947, with Robert Harris as the eponymous scholar and Paul Scofield as the evil Mephistophilis? 

The piece de resistance, however, has to be the 1951 programme for Henry IV Pt I.  The cast list reads like a theatrical who's who of the period; Harry Andrews as King Henry, Anthony Quayle as Falstaff, Michael Redgrave as Hotspur, Hugh Griffiths as Owen Glendower and, of course, Richard Burton as Prince Hal.  I am not old enough to remember Burton as anything other than a film actor.  How I wish I could have seen that production.  The Henry IVs are among my favourite plays anyway, but with a cast like that.......

I'm so sorry for my friend that she has had to give away programmes that are reminders of so many happy memories, but I know she is pleased that they are going to be put to good use and when I talk to her about the memories they have recalled for me as well, we are at least going to have food for hours and hours of theatrical discussion.