Night Owl

Audiobook Review: Andrew Marr's 'A History of Modern Britain'

I have been desperately short of time to read in recent months, but have been able to steal time during my lunch hour to listen to audio books on my tiny iPod (my book tardis). I'm just coming to the end of Andrew Marr's 'A History of Modern Britain' which is read by the author. This was originally produced for television (2007) and subsequently won a number of awards such as 'best history series' and 'best presenter'.

Marr has become a household name with his own high profile Sunday morning show 'The Andrew Marr Show' which replaced 'Breakfast with Frost' after Frost's retirement in 2005. It's telling that the show was originally called 'Sunday AM' but re-named in 2007, because Marr has gained so much in popularity.

British history was lacking in my education for various reasons (time spent in the Far East as a teenager saw me studying South East Asian history for a time), so I am probably the sort of person who can benefit a great deal from Marr's enthusiastic analysis of British (political) history, beginning after the Second World War. I am becoming hungry to understand more about the society I grew up in, and the political forces that shaped it and I am so glad I chose Marr. Of course this is journalistic, not academic, but the balance of content worked for me for what I want at this time.

As he moves through the decades, he brings to life the names I knew but haven't before been able to place in context. When he arrives in the years of my childhood and beyond, so much falls into place. He brings into the story, not just the remote playing out of the most powerful political lives, but the popular culture on the street. His analysis helps to show how things are interrelated, and moreover, he tells the story in such a compelling way, it acts as a wake up call to the importance of politics and the personal impact of the most powerful people in the recent history of our country. Following on from this logically, it helps put today in context. This has certainly made me more engaged with politics in the run up to the election, and I am recommending this audio book, and the television series. I understand that Marr is planning another series about the first half of the twentieth century. One to look out for.

Audiobooks

I've almost started to take my fantastic eyesight for granted. A few months ago I had laser eye surgery with Ultralase. It's been one of the best things I've ever done for myself. I had different astigmatisms in each eye, but this was easily correctable. I've been totally liberated from glasses. Swimming is one of the most positive advantages of the treatment. Being able to see clearly in the pool is a great feeling, and in the spa or sauna too. Not steaming up in temperature extremes, or when you open the oven door, are other examples of little things that now make me smile.

However, in spite of great eyesight, I have recently been converted to the pleasures of audio books. These are downloadable complete books that you can transfer to a mobile listening device, such as an iPod Shuffle.

The best listen so far has been Ian McKewan reading his own 'On Chesil Beach'. This was hypnotic and addictive, and I was sorry when it was finished. Perfect for a long train journey. It's an intense and intimate story ideally suited to audio. I am on the look out for similar things.

Night Owl Book Review: 'A Week in Winter' by Barth Landor

The opening of this book appears to ask little of its reader at first, but this is a clever kind of deception, because when you reach the end, you may have tears in your eyes.The subtle, understated prose is a pleasure to read and the style economic, almost minimalist. But this is certainly a case in which less is more. The book is, as the title suggests, structured around the events of one week. Yet it is in fact the working week, Monday to Friday, which provides the time-scale. This simple structure is vital to the impact of the story as a whole, as it successfully offsets the complex deliberations and vacillations of the protagonist. Within these few pages, (only 143 of them), a timeless tragedy unfolds. In fact it is a double tragedy, the one indivisible from the other: one is finite, irredeemable, the other a contagion within our civilized world - and it is this latter condition that motivates this extraordinarily powerful book.

The main drama takes place within the mind of the narrator. Clark is a weary worker in a remote American consulate in Eastern Europe, disillusioned by his job, his career. He is deeply disappointed by those around him; his hopes for friendship with his colleagues long since faded:‘Once I thought such a fine profession would perfectly suit me; now I find myself disagreeably altered by it. It changes the way I relate to my world, causing me to distort the significance of success.’ He has become an outsider; he sees his name, literally separated from those of his colleagues, on a tick-off sheet, the context of which he cannot discern. He consoles himself by reading great literature. Gradually, his meditations and deliberations draw us in closer and we start to travel with him, with every twist and turn of his conscience as events unfold. We see him managing his young son in the temporary absence of his wife, telling him unlikely tales in order to win his obedience or avoid the directness of his questions and see him struggle with his weakness and exhaustion and with what is contained in each ordinary day - for it takes little to drag him down.

Every nuance of the preparations being made for an important visitor to the consulate irritates him – he cannot partake in all the fuss. He seems paranoid, projecting all his insecurity onto others. Why has he been given the most menial of jobs? But then he makes a connection with someone who is herself an outsider, a persecuted soul, and he finally resolves to follow his instincts against the probable wishes of his superiors by helping her. A chink of light enters his heart and his humanity is re-awakened; for a time he even notices that his co-workers are engaged in tasks as menial as his own and he feels some alliance with them. But then come small but significant moments of personal revelation and lucidity which coalesce gradually into a resolve which never the less vacillates until the moment of action.What he discovers as a result of his decision is an atrocity which cancels any doubt that he is doing the right thing. Yet events occur beyond his control and the agonies of the whole week pour into one moment. Clark is left with one final chance to stand up to his superiors.

I particularly enjoyed the descriptive details which unselfconsciously reveal Clark’s feelings and the way he relates to his world. Owl's 'pellet' from this novel is: the office manager ‘unsurpassed in the art of looking indispensable,’ and of whom Clark wonders ‘whether it really is his enterprises, large and small, which give birth to his purposeful manner, and not the manner itself breeding the enterprises.’ I think many of us encounter this in our daily lives. But the value of this book is far greater than the sum of its contents, for we are taken on a journey of monumental importance to our age which lifts off the page.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is a remarkable debut that will attract readers across the globe.

Night Owl's 'Pellet' for today is from Jeanette Winterson

With the onset of recession, the arts will be even more under-funded. In one respect, however, artists come into their own in difficult social times and great things can result. Those arts which are produced in private or cost little or nothing may be the ones to have a boom - and I hope this will be the case with poetry. Today I came across the August column on Jeanette Winterson's Website, which is a very open admission of hard times emotionally for Jeanette, but which also contains some very uplifting words...so today's 'Pellet' is a quote from Jeanette:

'When people say that art is a luxury it is because they have never known its healing power.'

Night Owl Book Review: 'Black Swan Green' by David Mitchell

Today, I finished David Mitchell's 'Black Swan Green'.

Narrated by a 13-year-old boy, the story takes place over 13 months of his life, and is set in the England of 1982.

This novel resonated all the more for me for two reasons: I have a 13-year- old son, and I was not living in England in 1982. For these reasons, the story has given me wonderful insights. On the one hand, I valued getting a teenage angle on the Falklands War (I was 14 in 1982) and on the other, I relished the opportunity to see through the eyes of a young boy of this age. I don’t think I have ever read anything with this kind of voice before. I rarely read books twice, but I can see myself wanting to go through this experience again.

What I have retained most, on first reading, is the poignancy and immediacy of the young boy's experiences - the adjacency of revelation, pain and joy. Especially effective is the way Mitchell has the boy narrator (cast as a fledgling poet) quoting his own poetic lines, in a way that makes them spontaneous and relevant to the moment, but also timeless. This gifted child is put to the test by his peers in rites of passage & initiation, but is also tested and mentored by the mysterious Madame Crommelynck – a character of archetypal quality – in a section of the book which is strangely otherworldly. In fact, Mitchell evidently enjoys using such episodes which act as subtle, unconscious psychological explorations. Take the house in the woods - at first we can’t work out whether the narrator is dreaming or not. But the narrative is so good, it can be read and enjoyed effortlessly without concerning yourself, if you prefer, with what these episodes might really be conveying about the character – they’ll affect you whether you realise it or not. The time-frame is fairly short, and densely packed with engaging detail and dialogue which keeps you hooked. Yet, essentially, I think that this is a story about the survival, nurturing and awakening of a poet. And this is why we want our protagonist to win through – because the world needs its poets – something that society so easily forgets. I couldn't recommend this book highly enough. I was pleased that the story included a positive relationship between the boy and his older sister too. I only had a couple of minor complaints: At times, in the early stages of the novel, I felt a little like I was reading the Beano and also, I felt that some of the 1982 references were surplus to requirements and were there as an easy hook for the age group of reader that the author obviously had in mind.

Night Owl's 'pellets' from this book:

'The world's a headmaster who works on your faults.'

'Woods in winter're brittle places/Your mind flits from twig to twig.'

'Over the English Channel, the sticky afternoon was as turquoise as Head and Shoulders shampoo.'