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February
4th
Today
is
the
birthday
of Russell Hoban, born in Pennsylvania in
1925.
After serving in the Philippines and Italy during
WWII, he worked as an
illustrator and as an advertising copywriter before
writing and
illustrating the first of many children's books,
including his series  about
Frances,
a
temperamental
young badger. In 1969 he moved to
England where he remained until his death last
December. Most of his adult
novels were set wholly or
partly in contemporary London. Often described
as a fantasy or
science fiction writer, only two of his novels, Turtle
Diary
(1975) and The Bat
Tattoo (2002), were without supernatural
elements. A
common theme for Hoban was the development of a
relationship between two
characters, drawn together over a mutual obsession
or artistic
interest. Turtle Diary,
adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter, revolved
around two lonely
Londoners - played by Ben Kingsley and Glenda
Jackson - who decide to
release giant sea turtle from London Zoo and return
them to the ocean.
On February 4th, Hoban's fans celebrate his birthday
by writing down
favourite quotes from his books on sheets of yellow
A4 paper and
leaving them in public places, so far recorded in 46
cities across 14
countries.
 Waiting For Sunrise,
William Boyd
Vienna. 1913. It is a fine day in August when Lysander
Rief, a young English actor, walks through the city to
his first appointment with the eminent psychiatrist, Dr.
Bensimon. Sitting in the waiting room he is anxiously
pondering the nature of his problem when an
extraordinary woman enters. She is clearly in distress,
but Lysander is immediately drawn to her strange, hazel
eyes and her unusual, intense beauty.
Later the same day they meet again, and a more composed
Hettie Bull introduces herself as an artist and
sculptor, and invites Lysander to a party hosted by her
lover, the famous painter Udo Hoff. Compelled to attend
and unable to resist her electric charm, they begin a
passionate love affair. Life in Vienna becomes tinged
with the frisson of excitement for Lysander. He meets
Sigmund Freud in a café, begins to write a
journal, enjoys secret trysts with Hettie and appears to
have been cured.
London, 1914. War is stirring, and events in Vienna have
caught up with Lysander. Unable to live an ordinary
life, he is plunged into the dangerous theatre of
wartime intelligence – a world of sex, scandal and
spies, where lines of truth and deception blur with
every waking day. Lysander must now discover the key to
a secret code which is threatening Britain’s safety, and
use all his skills to keep the murky world of suspicion
and betrayal from invading every corner of his life.
Moving from Vienna to London’s west end, the
battlefields of France and hotel rooms in Geneva, Waiting
for Sunrise is a feverish and mesmerising journey
into the human psyche, a beautifully observed portrait
of wartime Europe, a plot-twisting thriller and a
literary tour de force from the bestselling author of Any
Human Heart, Restless and Ordinary
Thunderstorms.
 The Detour,
Gerbrand Bakker
A Dutch woman rents a remote farm in rural Wales. She
says her name is Emilie. She is a lecturer doing some
research, and sets about making the farmhouse more
homely. When she arrives there are ten geese living in
the garden but one by one they disappear. Perhaps it's
the work of a local fox.
She has fled from an unbearable situation having
recently confessed to an affair with one of her
students. In Amsterdam, her stunned husband forms a
strange partnership with a detective who agrees to help
him trace her. They board the ferry to Hull on Christmas
Eve.
Back on the farm, a young man out walking with his dog
injures himself and stays the night, then ends up
staying longer. Yet something is deeply wrong. Does he
know what he is getting himself into? And what will
happen when her husband and the policeman arrive?
Gerbrand Bakker has made the territories of isolation,
inner turmoil and the solace offered by the natural
world his own. The Detour is a deeply moving new
novel, shot through with longing and the quiet tragedy
of everyday lives. |
  
Think On This
I must get some
Evening Primrose Oil or else we’ll all suffer from
her foul temper. Now that she’s coming home to
stay, we’ve got to take all necessary steps.... read on
And I Quote...
Let
us read and let us dance - two amusements that
will
never do any harm to the world ~ Voltaire
In Consent
of the Networked, Rebecca MacKinnon
investigates how the governments and corporations that
control the digital world can impinge on civil
liberties.
You wouldn't necessarily think of a cancer support
group as a place where teens meet and fall in
love in The
Fault in Our Stars, the latest from
author John Green.
Why it's healthy to move
outside you reading comfort zone and try a new
author.
Where do I write
best? Out – where someone’s keeping an eye on me
- author of The Art
of Fielding, Chad
Harbach on his writing habits.
John Lloyd reviews four
books on Russia, and Putin’s grip on power. |
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Poetry Corner
Of
The Terrible Doubt Of Appearances
by Walt
Whitman
Of the terrible doubt of
appearances,
Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be
deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations
after all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful
fable only,
May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants,
men, hills, shining
and flowing waters,
The skies of day and night, colors, densities,
forms, may-be these are
(as doubtless they are) only
apparitions, and the real something has yet to be
known,
(How often they dart out of themselves as if to
confound me and mock me!
How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows,
aught of them,)
May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless
they indeed but seem)
as from my present point
of view, and might prove (as of course they would)
nought of what they appear, or nought anyhow, from
entirely changed points of view;
To me these and the like of these are curiously
answer'd by my lovers,
my dear friends,
When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long
while holding me by
the hand,
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that
words and reason
hold not, surround us and pervade
us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom,
I am silent, I
require nothing further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances or that
of identity beyond
the grave,
But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied,
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.
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