Published in the late 1950s, the book tells the story of a random group of people who all find themselves in the small German harbour town of Rerik in Autumn 1937. They each come from quite different walks of life, but are brought together by the one thing they have in common: a desire to leave Nazi Germany. From Rerik it is theoretically possible to escape to Scandanavia by boat, and thus the action focusses around one character, the unimaginative fisherman, Knudsen. Knudsen, who owns a boat, is the only member of the cast with the ability to attempt such an escape, but paradoxically the only person who has a good reason to stay where he is. His mentally disturbed wife would certainly be taken away to a concentration camp if he were to leave her unattended for too long.

Knudsen is a (somewhat unenthusiastic) member of the communist party, and one of the party faithful, a young man called Gregor, has been sent to Rerik to give him a bit of a talking to an inspire him to under some propaganda action in the area. Gregor does his best, but he himself has already become disillusioned with communism and before he even arrives in the town, he has decided that he is going to flee from his responsibilities. Whilst holding a secret meeting with Knudsen in a local church, they meet the local vicar Helander, a nice elderly gentleman who lost a leg during the Great War and appears not to have long left to live. Anyone as squeamish as me will feel an urge to be sick when there are detailed descriptions of his wound and his false leg! He himself is clearly too frail to flee anywhere, but inside his church there is a magical piece of sculpture which he calls “Der lesende Klosterschueler”. The powers-that-be have decided that this is so-called ‘entartete Kunst’ (sorry, I don’t know how to translate that… degenerate art perhaps?) and therefore they are sending officials to come and take it away in the morning. The sculpture, which portrays a boy utterly absorbed in a book, is presumably considered dangerous because those in control do not wish to encourage the population to read. As soon as Gregor sets eyes on the figure he becomes strangely haunted by it, and together he and Helander convince Knudsen to help them rescue it.

Things are complicated further by the arrival of Judith, a Jewish girl from a wealthy family who is on the run from the Nazis. Her mother committed suicide a few days previously, and her last wish was that Judith should attempt to escape to Sweden via Rerik. Arriving in Rerik, Judith quickly becomes disillusioned when she realises there are virtually no international boats in the harbour, and she immediately runs into difficulties when the owner of the hotel she is staying in asks to see her passport. She can’t show it to him because that would immediately betray her as a Jew, so she is fast losing all hope when suddenly Gregor takes pity on her and decides to rescue her.

Together the unlikely bunch set off on a perilous adventure which involves rowing a small boat across the harbour in the dead of night, trying to avoid the searchlights of the police boats which patrol the waters looking for those trying to escape. It’s a wonderfully tense book which brings to life the fear and hopelessness of the era in a highly readable way. Somewhat unexpectedly, it more or less ends happily with Judith and the statue making it to Sweden and Gregor cycling off into the distance. Poor old Helander ends up with a back full of bullets, but his days were numbered anyway and he manages to shoot down a Nazi first!

It’s impossible to do the atmosphere of the book justice in such a short review, but I thoroughly recommend it and I’ve categorised it in my list of books which I most definitely want to read a second time

I chose this one, being honest, because it was the shortest. It’s a long time since I last read something in German – probably at least six months – and I feel like I’m getting a bit rusty. Plus I actually enjoyed the relative novelty of reading in English with my Akunin book (as opposed to months of stuggling through ‘La Lada Tambureto’ in Esperanto), so I felt a bit luke-warm about more foreign language reading. Happily, once I got into it however, German came flooding back to me and I started to enjoy it

The action takes place in an unnamed town in the DDR. In fact, Braun wrote and published the novel in the DDR, several years prior to its downfall. The main character is a girl called Karin who has just left school and is about to enter the world of work. She comes from a family who have a strong sense of duty towards the state. Both her father and her mother are very concerned with being politically correct, and Karin has been brought up to respect the authority of the state and to want to serve it. Karin’s father is some sort of local government official, in fact, and it is in this role that one day he comes to her and tells her she needs to split up with her boyfriend Frank. It has come to his attention that Frank is under investigation for some (unspecified) illicit activities.

Frank seems on the face of it to be rather a bad sort. His family, when we later meet them, are rather unconventional, his father is seemingly permanently drunk. There are allusions to Frank already having spent time in prison, and all in all his background sounds a bit wild. Nevertheless, Karin seems to believe that he has turned over a new leaf, and has no evidence to suggest that he’s about to become involved in something criminal. Furthermore, not only does she loves him, he appears to love her almost obsessively, and there is nothing she less wants to do than terminate their relationship.

Karin is therefore plunged into a difficult inner conflict. Her parents are very important to her, and if she stays with Frank she risks alienating them completely, as well as perhaps ending up with her social reputation tarnished. She thinks about it long and hard, and in the end she decides to do what her father wants and dump Frank

Poor Frank is rather upset, and Karin’s resolve soon weakens. The new job she is due to start at a local newspaper is based in his home town, and before too long they’ve met up and reconciled. Frank claims not to be involved in any dodgy activities, and the only thing either of them can think of that might be arousing suspicion are some letters he recently received from a friend in the West. They’re innocuous enough though, and it hardly seems grounds for so much fuss. Karin settles into her job and begins to enjoy it. Ultimately she moves in with Frank and falls pregnant by him.

Her parents are outraged and continue to put pressure on her to end the relationship. Once news of her personal circumstances spreads, pressure is put on her professionally too. Karin’s boss at the newspaper gives her an ultimatum, a choice between her job or the relationship, and Karin is utterly confused. At first, she thinks he must be joking. When it transpires that he isn’t, she genuinely doesn’t know what to do. She views her job at the newspaper as her way of contributing to society, and she has been brought up in such a way as to believe this is of the utmost importance. Were she to lose the position, her only way of contributing would be to take a job in a factory, difficult for someone who is already four months pregnant. Following more pressure from her parents she cracks and walks out on Frank.

Oh dear To cut a long story short, Frank is rather a highly strung sort of chap, and after taking a dose of sleeping pills he sticks his head in a gas oven By a stroke of amazing good fortune he manages actually not to kill himself, but instead falls into a coma. The doctors have no idea whether he will ever wake up again, and Karin feels highly responsible. She’s lost her job anyway, and there follow many pages where she mopes about in a confused sort of distress. Frank eventually wakes up, though I find it ambiguous as to whether he still retains all his mental faculties, and then with little warning, the story abruptly ends. I guess that’s why it’s called “Unvollendete Geschichte”.

As you can see, it was a rather sad story and not one you’d want to embark on if you were already feeling depressed. It was written in a rather curious way, with very short sentences and key words or phrases being written in block capitals every few pages. Beyond the fact that living in the DDR was stressful, I’m not entirely sure what the message was supposed to be. I wouldn’t go as far to say that I didn’t enjoy it – it held my attention, was easy to understand, and passed the afternoon – but it’s not a book that I’ll be reading again in a hurry!

Akunin has written a number of series, but the most successful is that which stars Erast Fandorin as a suave nineteenth century detective. I think there are probably in excess of ten books in the original Russian series. A selection of these have been translated into English, however I hasten to add that the translation has not always taken place it what would have seemed to be the most logical order. Chronological would have been a nice order I feel, but never mind. There are enough translated now for you to be going on with, with a new book having appeared every year since I was at university, and so my initial frustration at having to read them in the wrong order has now worn off!

To describe the style of the novels is difficult, but let’s start by saying that they are excellent. In some ways they are very reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes, especially in terms of the dark Victorian atmosphere that they conjure up. The majority of the action is set in Russia however, and this adds some extra spice into the equation. Everything seems far more wild and dangerous for Fandorin in Moscow and Saint Petersburg than it did for Holmes and Watson in the Home Counties In some ways the stories remind me of Agatha Christie, in so far as it is to some extent possible to make deductions and identify the culprit from the clues laid in the narrative. But on a literary level, these books are far, far ahead of Agatha Christie. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a massive fan of Agatha Christie and must have read at least two thirds of her detective fiction, but for me it’s the equivalent of watching a soap opera when I’m tired. You read Christie because it’s gripping and because Poirot makes you laugh; you don’t read Christie for it’s literary merit. The Fandorin books, on the other hand, are really quite beautifully written. It feels quite astonishing to read prose which flows so perfectly in a translation, but I honestly couldn’t fault it, and even if the plots weren’t terrifically exciting, the books would be worth reading for the descriptive passages alone

The plots are, of course, exceptionally exciting, and contain far more action than any of the authors I’ve mentioned previously. Whilst Holmes might admittedly carry a pistol, Fandorin can be known to engage in a spot of Russian Roulette. He is also skilled in Japanese martial arts, and a master of disguise. And he needs to be! The villains he comes up against are dark in the extreme, and I have to warn you up front that these are not novels were the bad people go to prison and the good people die happily ever after. Unfortunately often, the good people appear to die whilst the baddies get clean away

The first novel in the series is The Winter Queen, published in other countries under the title “Azazel”. This is the saddest book in the entire series (it had me in tears) and I’d recommend reading it before you progress onto any of the others, because it will help you to make sense of several things in Fandorin’s character which might otherwise seem strange. After that, I guess the order isn’t so terribly important.

The book I have been reading over the past couple of days is called “Special Assignments” and actually consists of two separate Fandorin stories; “Jack of Spades” and “The Decorator”. The Jack of Spades is a fairly light-hearted story; amusing and action-packed. I enjoyed it greatly. “The Decorator” is a truly chilling story, I would almost venture to call it horror rather than crime, and it left me not wanting to sleep with the lights off If you don’t like blood and guts and gore, it may be worth avoiding! I didn’t quite cry this time, but nevertheless the ending was as sad as it was unexpected.

An excellent birthday present from my parents. I look forward to getting the next in the series next Christmas )

If you have never read The Tin Drum I congratulate you, and hope that you might long remain in this state. Essentially, it tells the story of a thoroughly unpleasant child called Oscar, who is such a freak that he can remember his own birth. The book is basically his life story, written from a mental asylum when he is nearly thirty, which I can assure you is the best place for him. He is born in Danzig, as it was then called, some time before the Second World War, and has a startlingly clear recollection of his mother promising him a tin drum for his third birthday not long after he emerges from the womb. This gives him the motivation to live until his third birthday, whereupon he finally receives the cursed drum and proceeds to spend the rest of the novel banging on it in a noisily obsessive manner. When I say obsessive, I mean that the drum is the most important thing in his life, ranking well above any human beings, and he is prepared to let other people go to their deaths if it means he can retain it. Also on his third birthday, to prove what a freak he is Oscar decides not to grow anymore, and spends the rest of his miserable existance as a dwarf. This causes considerable embarrassment to his longsuffering relatives, to the point where his mother is reduced to killing herself by overdosing on fish. I am absolutely convinced that she only does this to escape from the incessant drumming of her evil midget son.

As time passes, Oscar becomes older if not taller and war breaks out. The lover of Oscar’s deceased mother and his own possible father is employed by the Polish post office in the city and is involved in trying to defend it from military attack. Oscar, who has tracked the poor man down in the hope that he can be persuaded to buy him a new drum, gets caught up in the battle and is locked in the besieged post office whilst the army attack it. The army of course soon wins against the handful of Polish postmen, and when they eventually storm the building and try to capture the inhabitants, Oscar incriminates the poor ex-lover and saves his own skin by sending him to certain execution. Nice.

People have told me that this book is a comment on the war, hence the fact that it has won a Nobel Prize. I’ve not read an interpretation of the book, so I have no idea what clever people think it means, but as far as I’m concerned this is a book which says nothing useful about the war at all. Oscar hardly notices the war, because Oscar is not interested in anything other than his own well-being and his drum. The only time the war gets a real mention at all is right at the end, when the Russians come to his house to capture the inhabitants. Oscar is in the cellar with his mother’s husband who is presumably his father if his mother’s lover wasn’t, and observing that he is in a highly nervous, hysterical state, hands him a badge with a Nazi insignia. The father knows that if he is found with a Nazi badge, the Russians will kill him, so he attempts to swallow it. It’s only small, but Oscar deliberately handed it to him with the pin off the latch so that he would choke and die a horribly painful death. Why Oscar would want to do this to a man who has been nothing but kindness to him for his entire life is beyond me. I fail to see that Oscar demonstrates the slightest little bit of remorse. In fact, he gets so full of his own selfimportance that he decides he’s Jesus. Hmmm.

Other than that the book rumbles on in a tedious manner, full of Oscar’s oh so terribly interesting thoughts about the most important subject in the world: Oscar. He moves to West Germany after the war, spends a while working as a nude model in an art college, then accidentally becomes a famous jazz musician. Since early childhood he’s had a bit of a fixation with nurses, trying to take any opportunity he can get to them into bed (horrible mental image considering he’s about two foot tall and a hunchback!) and he develops a dangerous obsession with a Nurse Dorothy who happens to lodge in the same house as him. Despite the fact he’s never even seen her because she works shifts, he decides he’s in love with her and breaks into her room one day so he can sit in her wardrobe and smell her clothes. Right. Some time later, he then jumps on her in the corridor in the middle of the night, tells her he’s Satan and trys unsuccessfully to
rape her. Hmmm. Indeed.

The book concludes with Oscar walking alone in a park with a borrowed dog. Don’t ask. The dog runs off and comes back with a human finger. It’s that sort of book. What happens next, for me illustrates the complete inhumanity of the protagonist. Most people, upon being handed a finger by a dog, would be shocked and horrified. Most people would wonder where the rest of the body was, try to get the dog to take them to it, and ultimately take the evidence to the police. That would be the normal reaction. Our dear hero, however, decides that the finger would be a nice souvenir. Coincidentally, it happens to belong to the very Nurse Dorothy whom he has essentially been stalking, and who now appears to have been murdered. Whether or not Oscar has committed the murder is ambiguous, but in any case he is convicted off it and put in the asylum. More or less the end.

So an utterly pointless book about a totally unlikeable character, whom I detested so much that I couldn’t even enjoy the prose when I felt I was supposed to. I wouldn’t, on principle, recommend anyone read a book which conjures up such mental images as a woman inserting a live eel in her vagina. I’m sure that the fact that I have failed to appreciate what is clearly a great work of art demonstrates the depths of my personal stupidity. Doubtless the fact that the reader hates Oscar is some sort of clever literary device which is supposed to help me understand some deep and meaningful point about the Nazis. Nevertheless, the only character in the book who I felt was halfways normal and with whom I had any sympathy at all was Oscar’s official father, he who was killed by swallowing the Nazi party badge. In other words, the only character who I managed to identify with rather than despise was the Nazi – certainly not what Grass intended. There is either something seriously wrong with the book, or something seriously wrong with me

In walking to Brindley Place, it had caught my attention that the Odeon was showing the film ‘The Reader’. I desperately wanted to see the film, but the timetable at the Odeon was rubbish so I googled it and found that the cinema at the far end of Broad Street had a showing at 5.25. Babel agreed to come along with me and watch, and we just had time to stroll back towards the shops and grab a coffee before the film started.

‘Der Vorleser’, as I prefer to call it because the English translation of the name loses half the significance, is without doubt the best German language book I have ever read. I would go further, and say it is one of the best books I have ever read, punkt. My copy of it is one of my most prized possessions in the world; I won’t go as far as to say I would save it from a burning building, but if I were going to save one book from a burning building, this is the only one I would think of. A Christmas present from someone special in 2002, this is the first book I ever attempted to read in a foreign language. My German at the time was honestly not up to it, but the person who gave it to me had helpfully gone through and added pencil translations of the more difficult words. Nevertheless, I think it must have taken me two months of painful stumbling to get to the end of it. I spent so long on just the first page I think I could almost recite it: “Als ich fuenfzehn war, hatte ich Gelbsucht”, that’s the first sentence and peculiarly one of the relatively few details they changed between the film and the book. Inexplicably, in the film Michael has scarlet fever rather than jaundice.

Having read it once, I was so moved by the story that I proceeded to read it over and over again for several years. My copy is now so well-read that the pages are falling out of the spine, and I don’t dare to read it again for fear it will be completely destroyed. Next time I am in Germany I am going to buy myself a new copy to read and keep the existing one purely for sentimental reasons

It was with some trepidation then that I actually approached the film, worried that like with Bambi, a film crew might have seen fit to change a sad ending into a happy one. It is with no small amount of relief that I can report that this is not the case, and the film was as excellent as an English language film of this story can be. It would undoubtedly be better if the film had been made in German, because in my opinion the English translation of the novel is very poor and not just the beauty, but the significance of much of the language is lost too. I don’t even like ‘kid’ as a translation of ‘Jungchen’.

If you don’t know the story, it starts off in West Germany in the 1960s with a 15 year old boy who becomes involved in an affair with a woman in her 30s. It’s a strange relationship, characterised by the fact that either before or after they make love, she asks him to read aloud to her. One day she randomly disappears and the boy is devastated, for the rest of his life seemingly unable to form normal relationships with women. Nevertheless, time passes and he begins to study law at university. One day, his lecturer takes him along to see a trial of ex-Nazis which is taking place in the local town. Several women are accused of being SS guards and responsible for the death of hundreds of women. Amongst the defendents is his former lover.

I won’t go into the intricacies of what happens next because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. I just want to make the point that this is NOT a novel about the Holocaust and it annoys me when I read comments from critics, be they German or foreign, complaining that the Holocaust is not treated in a serious enough manner or that it is not right that we are made to feel empathy for one of the perpetrators. The novel is about a society struggling to come to terms with what it has done, a generation of children growing up unable to comprehend the acts committed by their close relatives. It’s a novel about guilt, both collective and personal, and how far people are responsible for their actions. It does not ask us to excuse what was done by the SS, but rather than demonise them it makes the point that they too were human and in the same situation, we might not behave any better.

Definitely one of the most moving films I have ever seen; the book makes me cry and the film even more so. I would have cried more were I not sitting next to Babel, who looked a bit bored and tried to go to sleep

Draußen war später Novembervormittag. Neben dem Stadttheater, nahe der Straßenbahnhaltestelle standen religiöse Frauen und frierende hässliche Mädchen, die fromme Hefte austeilten, Geld in Büchsen sammelten und zwischen zwei Stangen ein Transparent zeigten, dessen Aufschrift den ersten Korintherbrief, dreizehntes Kapitel zitierte. “Glaube – Hoffnung – Liebe” konnte Oskar lesen und mit den drei Wörtchen umgehen wie ein Jongleur mit Flaschen: Leichtgläubig, Hoffmannstropfen, Liebesperlen, Gutehoffnungshütte, Liebfrauenmilch, Gläubigerversammlung. Glaubst du, dass es morgen regnen wird? Ein ganzes leichtgläubiges Volk glaubte an den Weihnachtsmann. Aber der Weihnachtsmann war in Wirklichkeit der Gasmann. Ich glaube, dass es nach Nüssen riecht und nach Mandeln. Aber es roch nach Gas. Jetzt haben wir bald, glaube ich, den ersten Advent, hieß es. Und der erste, zweite bis vierte Advent wurden aufgedreht, wie man Gashähne aufdreht, damit es glaubwürdig nach Nüssen und Mandeln roch, damit alle Nussknacker getrost glauben konnten:
Er kommt! Er kommt! Wer kam denn? Das Christkindchen, der Heiland? Oder kam der himmlische Gasmann mit der Gasuhr unter dem Arm, die immer ticktick macht? Und er sagte: Ich bin der Heiland dieser Welt, ohne mich könnt ihr nicht kochen. Und er ließ mit sich reden, bot einen günstigen Tarif an, drehte die frischgeputzten Gashähnchen auf und ließ ausströmen den heiligen Geist, damit man die Taube kochen konnte. Und verteilte Nüsse und Knackmandeln, die dann auch prompt geknackt wurden und gleichfalls strömten sie aus: Geist und Gase, so dass es den Leichtgläubigen leichtfiel, inmitten dichter und bläulicher Luft in all den Gasmännern vor den Kaufhäusern Weihnachtsmänner zu sehen und Christkindchen in allen Größen und Preislagen. Und so glaubten sie an die alleinseligmachende Gasanstalt, die mit steigenden und fallenden Gasometern Schicksal versinnbildlichte und zu Normalpreisen eine Adventszeit veranstaltete, an deren vorauszusehende Weihnacht zwar viele glaubten, deren anstrengende Feiertage aber nur die überlebten, für die der Vorrat an Mandeln und Nüssen nicht ausreichen wollte – obgleich alle geglaubt hatten, es sei genug da.

Tiu citaĵo aparte plaĉas al mi, almenaŭ germane. Kiam mi unufoje legis ĝin, mi opiniis ke tio simple estas sensencaĵo. Sed ju pli mi ĝin legas, des pli mi komprenas. Grass parolas pri la similoj inter Hitler (der Gasmann/la gasisto) kaj Sankta Nikolao (der Weihnachtsmann). Al ambaŭ apartenas la koloroj ruĝa kaj blanka, kaj je ambaŭ la tro kredema popolo pretas kredi… Hmmm. Do, eble ja indas legi ĉi tiun libron – post 200 paĝoj mi fine trovis ion legindan.

Ĉu aliaj novaĵoj? Hodiaŭ mi kompatas mian koramikon, kiu devas manĝi kun mi kaj mia familio. Ni iras al trinkeja restoracio ekster Birmingham por festi la sepdekan naskiĝtagon de onklino de mia panjo. Tiu naskiĝtago efektive jam okazis antaŭ 4 monatoj, sed mia praonklino rifuzis festi dum mia fratino ankoraŭ estis en Germanio, kaj hodiaŭ estas la unua taŭga tago kiun ni trovis. Preskaŭ mia tuta familio ĉeestos – ni ja nur estas malgranda familio – kaj neniuj escepte de miaj gepatroj kaj fratino jam renkontis mian koramikon, do ili ĉiuj ege interesiĝas pri la sperto. Mi simple esperas ke mia koramiko ne mortos pro enuo, ĉar familiaj renkontiĝoj kutime ne estas tre interesaj eĉ kiam estas via propra familio, do certe ne kiam estas la familio de iu alia. Kaj kompreneble mi esperas ke li kondutos bone, por ke ĉiuj ne malamu lin, sed pri tio mi ne dubas

Post kiam mi revenis hejmen mi tuj eklegis, kaj (bedaŭrinde) rapide konfuziĝis. Jam en la unua ĉapitro troviĝis multaj vortoj, kiujn mi ne komprenis. Floso, ekzemple. Kvankam mi opinias, ke mi verŝajne ankaŭ ne komprenus tiun vorton se mi legus germane, ĉar almenaŭ laŭ mia scio, en la angla ne ekzistas taŭga traduko.

Do, mi legis malrapide, de tempo al tempo mi eĉ uzis vortaron por kontroli la signifon de kelkaj vortoj, kaj tion mi tre malofte faras dum legado – enuigas min. Iom post iom mi progresis tra la unuaj ĉapitroj, kaj kvankam mi ne komprenas ĉiujn ideojn, mi kredas ke mi komprenas sufiĉe.

Dum la semajno antaŭ mia svisa ferio, mi atingis la ĉapitron kiu temas pri sankta vendredo. Tiun tagon la juna Oskaro kaj sia familio ekskursas marborden, kaj posttagmeze okazas la plej malagrabla afero, pri kiu mi iam legis. Apud la maro la homoj renkontas viron, kiu prenas angilojn el la kapo de mortinta ĉevalo, kaj sekvas tro longa kaj terura priskribo de tio Mi multe kompatis la patrinon de Oskaro, kiu devis vomi, kaj malamis la patron de Oskaro, kiu decidis aĉeti kelkajn el tiuj angiloj kaj intencis, ke lia familio hejmeniru kaj tiujn manĝu! La plej terurega bildo tamen venas, kiam Oskaro rakontas pri alia virino kiu perdis sian fekundecon ĉar ŝi “volis meti la vivan angilon en sian piĉon”.

Urgh!

Mi tute ne komprenas kial laŭ la aŭtoro, indas meti tian frazon en la libron. Al la vivhistorio de Oskaro, tiu aldonas nenion utilan, intertempe la legantaro eksentas naŭzon Kaj estas tuta ridinda frazo – kia virino metus *angilon* tien?! Mi konfesas ke leginte tion, mi tuj prenis mian vortaron kaj denove serĉis la vorton “angilo”, ĉar mi volis kredi ke ekzistas alia traduko de tiu vorto, escepte de la angla vorto “eel”. Bedaŭrinde tamen ne, kaj ekde mi legis tion mi ne tute sukcesis forigi la naŭzan bildon el mia kapo. Pro tio mi ne kapablis malfermi la libron dum pli ol tri semajnoj

Hazarde mi trovis recenzon de alia Esperantisto, kiu kritikas la “pornagrafian” lingvon de la tradukanto. Li eĉ menciis la frazon pri angiloj – germane tiu ŝajne estis, “sich mit einem lebendigen Aal befriedigen wollte”, kiu en Esperanto pli alproksimiĝas al “volis kontentigi sin mem per vivanta angilo” – frazo kiu laŭ mi estas multe malpli terura – ol “volis meti la vivan angilon en sian piĉon”. Do, eble mi ne povas kulpigi Grass pri ĉio.

Post tri semajnoj mi sufiĉe forgesis la aferon por ne plu voli vomi, kaj do mi rekomencis ĉe la sekva ĉapitro. Antaŭ ol mi sufiĉe aŭdacis tion fari, mi diskutis la libron kun mia fratino, kiu diris ke mi jam legis la plej malfacilan parton, kaj poste ĉio pliboniĝas. Al mia fratino mi eble ne plu parolos, ĉar en la sekva ĉapitro mortis la patrino de Oskaro. Estante graveda, kaj ne sciante kiu estas la patro de la infano, ŝi ŝajne decidis mortigi sin. Bedaŭrinde, tiu sankta vendreda afero kun la angiloj estis tiel traŭmata por ŝi ke ŝi iomete freneziĝis, kaj elektis mortigi sin per senĉesa manĝado de angiloj kaj aliaj fiŝoj. La priskribo denove estas tute naŭza kaj mi denove ĉesis legi…

Mi grave ekdubas, ĉu mi iam atingos la finon de ĉi tiu libro. Sed mia koramiko tamen povas ĝoji – estontece, se mi volas seksumi kaj li tute ne, sufiĉos ke li diru al mi la vorton “angiloj”, kaj mi promesas ke mi tuj perdos ĉian intereson…

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you love.
4. Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5. Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

So, erm I think I’ve got that right. The one’s I’ve read are bold and total around forty, which I feel is respectable The ones I love are bold and underlined; for the category “love” I used the criteria that I must have read them multiple times and be prepared to sit and read them again today were it not for the fact that I’ve arranged to meet Babel. There are about 15 I love, and this has been an interesting process because having always naively assumed the html for underline would be ul, I have now (after a painful 10 minutes) established that it is style=”text-decoration: underline;”. The ones I have always hoped to read but never got round to are italic, and the ones I never hope to read are crossed out. They’re mainly Harry Potter, Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Wilson. I thought the latter was immature when I was ten, so feel I am unlikely to enjoy her more now. I read one Pratchett as a child and hated it, and as for Harry Potter… well, call me contrary, but I’m of the opinion that something everyone likes can’t be that good

Of course, it didn’t The novel tells the story of an elderly Australian lady, who on her 21st birthday discovers that the people she has thought of as her parents are not, in fact, her parents. At the age of 5, she was taken from her English home and placed on a ship to Australia by a mysterious lady who she knew only as “The Authoress”. The Authoress told her to hide in a dark part of the ship and indicated that she would be back later to fetch her, but she never reappeared and the little girl arrived in Australia several weeks later with nothing except a small suitcase containing a book of illustrated fairy tales. She was found by a kindly worker at the port whose wife was having problems conceiving, and he took her home with him and brought her up as his own daughter.

This happened at the turn of the century, and many years later the now elderly Nell decides to travel to Britain to try to uncover her past. She traces her ancestors to a particular stately home in Cornwall and is so taken with the area that she purchases a cottage on the estate with the intention of moving there permanently. When she returns to Australia on a brief visit to sort out her affairs, however, she is confronted by her wayward daughter who dumps her grandchild Cassandra in her care and runs off with her latest lover.

Nell decides to do her duty and be a parent to Cassandra, and the first the girl knows of her grandmother’s past is in 2005 when the old lady dies and Cassandra is left the cottage in her will. Having lived through some fairly troubled times of her own recently, Cassandra travels to England also and attempts to decipher her grandmother’s past. She knows that there is some sort of dreadful secret associated with the cottage, but no one seems prepared to tell her what. She is fairly confident that she has found out the identity of Nell’s parents, even if she cannot understand why the Authoress, a family friend, would have kidnapped her. But all is not as it seems, and when Cassandra finally uncovers the true identity of Nell’s mother, the whole mystery begins to unravel.

This was a pleasant book, which was fun to read It didn’t grab me quite as much as ‘The House at Riverton’ did, though I’m not sure I can explain why. I didn’t identify with the characters as much, I guess, and despite the fact that parts of this book are undoubtedly sad, it failed to reduce me to tears so I can’t categorise it as being quite in the same league. It was easy to read though, and I certainly finished it in record time; it took the entire week, but given that I read for at most an hour a day and that there were well over 400 pages, that seems pretty quick At times it was a little confusing, because the action kept switching between different periods and locations, but on the whole I managed to keep up and it all contributed to building the suspense. Unfortunately I think I saw the final twist a couple of chapters before I was supposed to have seen it, which probably ruined the effect slightly, but all in all I would say that it is an excellent book which I would thoroughly recommend

It tells the story of a very unlikeable and shallow young woman called Kitty, who decides to marry a rather socially inept bacteriologist to appease her parents. This is the 1920s, and he is based in Shanghai, so after the marriage she moves out to China with him. Life there bores her, however, as does he, and fairly soon she is having an affair with a much more attractive gentleman who unhappily is already someone else’s husband. Unbeknownst to Kitty, however, he is actually rather a cad, and when her husband catches them in bed together he feels he has nothing to lose by issuing the following, chilling, ultimatum.

Either she travels with him into central China to a town which is suffering a severe epidemic of cholera, or else he will divorce her for adultery. She pleads with him not to publicly disgrace her, and in the end he relents and agrees he will let her divorce him if her lover also divorces his wife and marries her. The lover, of course, had no such intentions – a fact which the husband knew full well, and before long Kitty is accompanying her husband on a long and arduous journey into the seat of the infection.

The world which awaits her there is very different from 1920s London. Whilst her husband deals with the cholera outbreak, she is left alone with nothing to do. Tensions with the British and the local population mean that she is practically a prisoner in her own home, and when she does venture out it is to witness scenes of death all around her. The doctor at best ignores her, at worst is rude, and in the end she is so bored and frustrated that she begins to help out at the local orphanage, assisting the nuns from the local convent.

This is really her turning point, as she starts to do something slightly worthwhile and becomes a bit more likeable. Her husband thaws out a bit too and they begin, unexpectedly, to fall in love with each other for the first time. When Kitty unexpectedly faints, the viewers’ first thought is that she has succumbed to cholera, but it turns out that she is in fact pregnant. There’s a slight problem in so far as it probably isn’t her husband’s child, but he generously agrees to overlook that and they seem fully reconciled.

All too good to be true, of course. Within no time, he is called away to treat an outbreak in a refugee camp outside the town and soon news is brought to Kitty that he is ill. She sits by his side while he dies a nasty and painful death, which is rather sad and not terribly tastefully done, I must say.

The ending flashes forward five years, showing Kitty back in London with a small boy. She randomly bumps into her former lover on the street – he looks at the boy and must have suspicions that he is the father – but Kitty blows him out and walks on. The End.

Hmm. Initially I hated it because the characters were entirely unlikeable, but halfway through I began to warm up to them a bit, at which point the whole thing just became tragic, because it seemed horribly inevitable that the storyline required the doctor to die. I thought the film was well done though; there were enough nasty shots to convey the full horror of cholera, but not so many as to make me need to leave the room or look away. There were some beautiful views of the Chinese scenery too, and the soundtrack was very atmospheric. I would recommend it, so long as you’re not looking for a laugh.

I spent the whole film trying to work out the origin of the title by the way, and at the end I even temporarily forgot Kitty was pregnant and thought she might become a nun, hence the “veil”. But I googled it just and apparently it comes from Shelley:

Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live/Call Life