'Tolstoy: A Russian Life' by Rosamund Bartlett

'Tolstoy: A Russian Life' by Rosamund Bartlett was a Christmas present of mine that had been sitting around my home since January, looking so rich and informative that I kept passing it over for easier-looking books, probably because my job was requiring so much research of a similar ilk from me at the time. I'm glad I left it until I had some mental-room for it, as this book is very involving and hugely informative, if requiring of a little concentration to read all the way through.

I found Bartlett's writing both very clear and very illustrative of the Russian context, Tolstoy's friends, family and contemporaries, and of the great man himself. The narrative line was also very clear, making sense of Tolstoy's legendarily haphazard, passion-driven life, and it wasn't too difficult to keep track of who's who and how they relate to everyone else.

The most engaging parts for me were the sections in which he was writing Anna Karenina and War and Peace, partly because they're the works of his I know best, and also because Anna Karenina, in particular, gets to the heart of how Tolstoy viewed women and their contemporary role. He was a complicated chap, let's say. I was also thrilled to learnt that Tolstoy made huge, impressive efforts to build and reform educational practices for Russia's serf population, the vast majority of whom were illiterate, and he personally recorded and distributed some of the first statistical information on the living conditions of Russian peasants that was ever published. Of course, his dramatic shedding of possessions at the end of his life is well-known, but I was surprised to find out how early he began on this path, how he struggled and rebelled against the Russian Orthodox church because of it, and how 'Tolstoyans' were acknowledged throughout Russia, Europe and the US as proponents and followers of his neo-religious teachings. I was fascinated by the fact that his social and religious activism was largely suppressed and forgotten until Glasnost allowed its revival and acknowledgement over the last few decades.

As is acknowledged throughout this book, he was a paradoxical man who in many ways seemed to inhabit several lives at once, personifying Russia to an extraordinary degree. In fact, my main thoughts on this book post-read are two-fold: firstly, that Bartlett's achievement is quite momentous, considering the vast depth and breadth of the information to consider, and, secondly, that Tolstoy was rather a difficult man.

It struck me some way through this book that Tolstoy's character and idiosyncrasies bear a  striking resemblance to Charles Dickens's; in particular, his huge energy, socialist reformist missions and sadly, his unkindness to his wife. Both also neglected their families in favour of looking after the fortunes of the country at large, worrying about other people's families and children rather than their own. They could also both be remarkably unfeeling: for instance, Tolstoy's wife Sonya gave birth to 7 children AFTER telling Tolstoy that she'd had enough (by that point I think she'd had 5) (!!) as he refused to allow her an opinion on the subject; Dickens's domestic flaws are well-known enough for me not to have to go into them here. Both, I think it would be fair to say, were essential men for their time, but people you wanted to admire from afar, rather than live close to.

The failing of this book is the dryness of the subject which meant that, at times, it required quite a lot of motivation to keep reading; however, it is made clear that this is Tolstoy's failing, rather than Bartlett's:

'It is no wonder that Tolstoy saw himself in Rousseau [another comparison!], who had also lost his mother at a young age, and followed a number of different paths in his life before finding his metier. Both figures are united by a soaring genius, overweening vanity, a dogged, noble but often misguided sincerity, and a lamentable lack of a sense of humour, the latter being the single thing which sometimes makes the study of Tolstoy's life and works slightly hard-going.' (p76)

 So, the things to glean from this quote are that Tolstoy lacked a sense of humour, hence the dryness, and great male writers and philosophers often have several qualities in common, which I find simultaneously fascinating and depressing.

A good book, but one primarily for dedicated Tolstoy fans.

Title: Tolstoy: A Russian Life
Author: Rosamund Bartlett
Publisher: Profile Books
Date: 2011
Format: Paperback, 454 pages, plus notes and an index, and it was a gift.







'Breakfast at Tiffany's' by Truman Capote

Like most modern readers, I didn't come to this book uninitiated: the 1961 film version is one of my all-time faves. This is my first Truman Capote though, so that was something, although the stories and folklore surrounding his work made him feel familiar enough even before I started reading. 

The edition I read, the Penguin Modern Classics edition, published in 2000, has been superseded by 'new ed.' 2000 version, with the cover you see displayed. Like this edition though, it also featured three of Capote's short stories: 'House of Flowers', 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory', as 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' itself is a mere 100 pages. 
  

Breakfast at Tiffany's  

 

'Breakfast at Tiffany's', as I'd hoped, is a gorgeous story, with jubilantly lively writing, the irrepressible Holly Golightly and New York city,  full of glamour, potential and portent. I imagine you know the story: young writer moves into an apartment building in New York, is intrigued by his mysterious socialite neighbour, who thinks nothing of telling you what she wants to tell you, but will tell you nothing really of herself, and a relationship between them builds in which he immortalises her character, which alternatively delights and repels him, but always intrigues. She is one of the seminal character sketches, longing for both a solution to the 'mean reds' whilst abhorring the idea of ever being tied down.

The main thing that's stayed with me from it is that reading this story feels eerily like watching the film. The majority of it is the same, which never happens with adaptations. I don't mean it as a criticism, as it was actually a delight; much of the dialogue seems to have been lifted verbatim and the settings and scenes seem stunningly imagined/re-imagined in large part, down to the very last detail. There were a few structural changes made, but take this as your spoiler alert, as I'll discuss them below.

And there's Holly. Audrey Hepburn did a stunning job of making film-Holly much more likeable than book-Holly, I thought, although What. A. Character. - no wonder she's lasted. She twists and turns and contradicts herself and sits there flashing you a smile, fully formed and elusive on the page. Book-Holly seems flakier though, and less like someone you'd happily let pick you up and put you down and allow to crawl in through your bedroom window at 4am without asking too many questions. It's more realistic I suppose, and quite a bit less Hollywood: '$50 for the coat check' is rather more explicitly described, and the implication of a relationship between Holly and 'Fred'/the narrator seems paradoxically far more likely before the big reveal, and also silly in parts, as both Holly and the narrator seem to suggest throughout that he is, in fact, gay. I know that must seem kind of strange, but book-narrator seems less infatuated with an idea of her, and more in touch with the real Holly, who endlessly refuses to admit the real circumstances of her life in favour of something more hopeful and nebulous. 

And that's the big structural difference *spoiler* - she breaks her bail after the Sally Tomato scandal and goes off to Brazil. The narrator is in a limo, which substitutes for the taxi, with her just the same, as she changes her wet clothes and debates what to do, and she also lets Cat out in the street and he calls her a bad person, but then she's off, and the narrator only finds Cat some weeks later, sat, looking very content, in the window of another house.

 'She rubbed her nose and concentrated on the ceiling. 'Today's Wednesday, isn't it? So I suppose I'll sleep until Saturday, really get a good schluffen. Saturday morning I'll skip out to the bank. Then I'll stop by the apartment and pick up a nightgown or two and my Mainbocher. Following which, I'll report to Idlewild. Where, as you damn well know, I have a perfectly fine reservation on a perfectly fine plane. And since you're such a friend I'll let you wave me off. Please stop shaking your head.'

'Holly. Holly. You can't do that.'

'Et pourquoi pas? I'm not hot-footing after Jose, if that's what you suppose. According to my census, he's strictly a citizen of Limboville. It's only: why should I waste a perfectly fine ticket? Already paid for? Besides, I've never been to Brazil.'

This alters the beginning of the book too: we are introduced to the setting and to Holly when Joe Bell, who runs the bar close to the building they lived in, calls to say he's been in contact with Mr. Yunioshi, who was in Africa and found a tribesman with a wooden statue head that is the spitting image of Holly. So that's where she went when she left New York, they guess...and so he tells us how this all came into being. It's quite funny, I suppose, but apparently the likeness of the carving is so like her that there is no mistaking it, and in 1944, pre-facebook, I suppose looking for wooden carvings that resembled old friend's faces is the way you kept track of who was doing what and where in the world... Also, her husband Doc appears, just the same, but that is almost a side note, and is dropped much more quickly as a plot point than it is in the film.

I loved this story, which is a novella by definition, and devoured it in a day. I suppose the truest compliment I can pay it is that the novella is worthy of the film, and the film is worthy of it. Both are fuzzy and vibrant and wonderful. Some of the dialogue is original though; I spent the whole book looking for my favourite line,

'I'd marry you for your money in a minute'

but, alas, no. Capote is a hell of a writer though, even if this is the only story of his I ever were to read.

But, we know that not to be the case...

House of Flowers

 

This is another stunning story. It is about, although not narrated by, Ottilie, a teenage girl who comes down from her adoptive family in the Haitian mountains to Port-au-Prince and ends up, after dropping all of the rice that she has been entrusted to sell, as the most popular girl in the Champs-Elysee brothel. At a cockfight she meets Royal Bonaparte, a boy with a house of flowers in the mountains too. They get married and six months after her absconding with him her family and friends all presume that she must be dead.

In reality she's living in this house of flowers with Royal and his evil grandmother Old Bonaparte, who makes spells. She hates Ottilie and takes every opportunity to criticise and pinch her, and starts doing disgusting, witch-crafty things, like putting cat heads in her sewing basket and snakes in her food. Ottilie turns these spells around with effective effect, whilst Royal starts to return to his pre-wedding behaviours.

I don't want to give any more of the plot away, but this is a story about the satisfaction that can come with love, however abusive, and the challenges that a person can, frankly, take pleasure in overcoming.

Haiti is beautifully evoked - the whole story felt hot, heavy, dark and fragrant, and completely divorced from the New York which I'd been living in just a few pages before, and Ottilie is a great, three-dimensional character, as are, to a slightly lesser degree, Royal and Old Bonaparte.

This story subverted my expectations throughout, turning on a knife edge at one point, and the ending was a surprise that had me trying to suppress the shock and surprise on my face in a coffee shop, which seems a bit daft now as the rest of the country was sat elsewhere, watching the first England game.

Anyway, 'House of Flowers' is a really great short story, and a lesson in how to write them for best effect.

A Diamond Guitar 

 

The Diamond Guitar, the third story of four, is a story told in retrospect about a prison farm in an American forest where Mr Schaffer, one of few literate men in the prison camp and your classic old-timer, befriends Tico Feo, a young Cuban inmate with a diamond guitar, given to him by his sister, who also, incidentally, has a ruby guitar too. A relationship builds between the two men and they start to consider attempting some kind of prison break.

 I thought this was the weakest of the four stories, and I struggled to get into it before it was over, so much so that I don't remember the detail of what happened. I'm still wondering though how a man could be allowed to keep something like a diamond guitar with him in a prison - it's a working guitar with, what I imagine, are rhinestones stuck on - and why the other men wouldn't try to steal it, but nothing happens of that sort. It was quite an artificial premise and not one that I felt particularly affected by, although undoubtedly, my opinion of it was coloured by the fabulousness of the two stories before.

A Christmas Memory

 

'A Christmas Memory' was a touching, bitter-sweet story, somewhat incongruous on a sunny June day, about a little boy called Buddy and his cousin in her sixties, who I'm guessing is suffering from dementia or a learning difficulty as she is treated like a child also, which means Buddy, the lady and a Jack Russell called Queenie are largely free to do as they please.

This particular Christmas memory concerns the day they want to make Christmas fruitcakes to send out by post to all the 'acquaintances' they remember together, including President Roosevelt and the knife grinder who comes to town twice a year. They then want to decorate a Christmas tree, which is very sweet, although the story is kept on the bitter side of sweet by their lack of resources and ingenuity, and also the old lady's confusion about how she's treated and the fact that Buddy will soon grow up. Loss, loneliness and the sadness that many feel at Christmas are under-lying features of this story, as well as the notion of time and the inevitable passing of special moments with people you love.

''Buddy, are you awake?' It is my friend, calling from her room, which is next to mine; and an instant later she is sitting on my bed holding a candle. 'Well, I can't sleep a hoot,' she declares. 'My mind's jumping like a jack rabbit. Buddy, do you think Mrs Roosevelt will serve our cake at dinner?' We huddle in the bed, and she squeezes my hand I-love-you. 'Seems like your hand used to be so much smaller. I guess I hate to see you grow up.'

I found this story quite moving and I can see how it attained the 'classic' status that seems to have been bestowed on it, according to Wikipedia at least, but for me it pales in comparison to 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' and 'House of Flowers.'

Title: 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'
Author: Truman Capote
Date of Publication: 1958; this edition 2000
Publisher: 1958, Random House/Hamish Hamilton; 2000, Penguin Modern Classics
Format: 157 pages, paperback, and I bought it from a used book stall in my home town for the bargain price of £4.







Review: 'Charles Dickens: A Life' by Claire Tomalin

The world is a veritable Dickens-fest at the moment, and there is zero point in fighting it.

Actually, I wouldn't, because I'm quite enjoying it, not least (smug) for the number of people around me who are happy to rhapsodise on the importance of Dickens whilst having never read a word of it: I know for a fact that there is a certain Head of Something Bookish in my city who only opened a free download of 'Great Expectations' just before Christmas, despite the fact that he'd already been planning all the bicentennial celebrations and related work in schools for the best part of a year, singing Dickens' praises all the way. Oh the shame.

Anyway, I bought Claire Tomalin's 'Charles Dickens: A Life', just before Christmas, out of sheer curiosity, desperate to read it and see what it was about. The thing is, there are a few people in my sphere who dislike this book immensely, regarding it as a libellous travesty, whilst there are those who think it is wonderful, and a deservedly honest account of a very complex man. All this, naturally, made me keen to read it myself and wade into the fray.







Review: 'The Night Circus' by Erin Morgenstern

'The circus arrives without warning.
No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.'

And so starts Erin Morgenstern's 'The Night Circus', an epic tale of  a dark and magical travelling circus, and all the dark and magical people therein. The coming of Le Cirque des Reves (The Circus of Dreams), the Night Circus of the title, is a stylish and mystical event for the town it pitches up in during the night, enchanting nocturnal visitors with an elaborate series of spectacles and dreamy, game-like challenges and acts, before disappearing just as quickly just a few days later. Within this, Celia, the beautiful illusionist, whose illusions are more than a little bit real, and Marco, assistant to the circus' proprietor and more than a little magical himself, are locked within a predestined contest of magic, wits and eventual loss and sadness.







'A Woman should know only how to do 3 Things: Tell the Truth, Ride a Horse, and Sign a Cheque.'

....or so said William Faulkner, according to Javier Marias' delightfully surreal 'Written Lives', which brings together a series of mini biographies of well-known writers, composed out of 'fragmentary and often...bizarre' anecdotal vignettes and tit-bits that 'treat these well-known literary figures as if they were fictional characters, which may well be how all writers, whether famous or obscure, would secretly like to be treated.' Of course, we know this to be absolutely true (in my case anyway - I used to frequently fake name people for the hell of it, and whilst temping, would make up fictional life histories and fake siblings and uncles just to pass the time.) 







'I am a Literary Sensationalist!'

Or so it would seem: have you read 'The Woman in White'? Of course, you have, but I've only just got to it. Not to rave or anything, but I totally want to rave about it. It was like a shot in the arm - that plot arc! those coincidences! Marian's upper lip! Wow.







Book Quote Friday: Dior by Dior

My dear friend Abi recently moved flat and city, prompting an urge to down-size her possessions, including, most shockingly, her books. So round I trotted to her increasingly empty flat, more concerned with sadness that she was moving than anything else, but of the 12 or so books she offered me, I picked up 11 and then went back for the 12th. She really does have excellent literary taste (in fact, as well as being my friend, she was also one of the most vocal members of my book club). Dior by Dior, an Autobiography of Christian Dior, was the first of this pile to reach that hallowed spot on my dressing table where hopes are fulfilled and dashed and literary heroes are made....








Book Quote Friday: The Tiger's Wife

Readers, I am sick. Not in a twisted or Dostoevsky-type way, just in a head cold, rooted to the sofa-eque fashion. My sneezes are violent enough to scare off Tolstoy (my cat, obv.) and right now my cough is definitely worse than my feeble little bite.

All of this is unfortunate for Tea Obreht, author of this week's Book Quote Friday book, The Tiger's Wife, as the attention that I wanted to commit to talking about this wonderful, wonderful book is currently being occupied by my search for more tissues and increasingly overwhelming desire to just go back to sleep.

So I will be brief:







Book Quote Friday: The Happy Ending

      Sometimes, at the end of a rough day, all you want is food, bath and the miraculous good fortune of a happy ending in your bedtime read. 

     I know there’s been a bit of a Rose Tremain love in on this blog lately (I most recently talked abut her short story, Moth), but after seeing her speak at the Vintage events I’ve worked my way back through a fair part of her back catalogue. As a general conclusion, it rocks. If you haven’t read much of hers, you should probably stop reading now as seeing the name of the book will tell you the ending of said book (tis tricky to write a post about a happy ending without revealing the ending, of course) and these books are so good that I wouldn’t want to do anything that would discourage you from reading any of them.







Book Quote Friday: Bohane

You know, sometimes you come across a book that shatters your concept of what a book could, or should, be with a new hook, a fresh turn or a incredible imagination stretch. You lay it down halfway through and exhale deeply, incredulously, not wanted to let it go from your hands but needing to take a break to come to terms with the onslaught. The magical and spell-binding onslaught. You’ve had that, right? This book is one of those. 







Book Quote Friday: Returning to the Book

     From the film, I mean.  

     I was too young for Bridget Jones the book when it came out, but was ideally placed for Bridget Jones: the Movie and Bridget Jones: the book genre/purveyor of massive pants. I knew it was a book, of course, and knew it was a classic, but never felt any great urge to seek it out as I’m not the biggest fan of chick lit or British comic writing (sorry!). However, having finished the magnificent 'City of Bohane' earlier in the week (blog post about that coming soon), I found myself on holiday in my beautiful French farmhouse with nothing to read and someone else’s bookcase to raid; i.e. THE DREAM. So, Bridget Jones’ Diary finally entered my hand.







Book Quote Friday: Why Limit Yourself?

     Why limit yourself to reality, when I know (I just know) that you can imagine so much more happening in your head? 

      There's a whole look of stuff that can happen to a whole lot of people in just an average day when you open the door to the surreal and nonsensical and dream-like, as hopefully today's book quote will illustrate...







Book Quote Friday: One Day in the Life

     Using a day to represent a lifetime; a lifetime to represent an era; a man to represent a people; a place to a represent a country. Everything in Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' uses a part to represent a whole: it is synecdoche made Nobel Prize winner made compellingly readable book about the real experience of far too many Russians under Stalin in the first half of the twentieth century. 







Book Quote Friday: Disguising the Big Stuff behind Vampires and Wolves

     I know, the last thing the world needs is another book blogger talking about vampires and werewolves. I’ll say it here: this is not a post about Twilight or any other YA adult vampire series. Nope, what I’m about to talk about here is the sexy older sister of those series, who’s had a couple of bad marriages, owns a gun maybe and has more than a few [emotional] scars. She is also hilarious and terrifying and has some big things to say about some big ol’ things. Yep, you guessed it: I’m talking about Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series.

 







Book Quote Friday: Kew Gardens

     Today's post comes from a short story that entered my life long ago, but recently re-entered it thanks to the swag obtained from the Vintage Open Day: ‘Kew Gardens’ by Virginia Woolf. It is an ecstatic account of a sunny afternoon spent amongst the flowers, which sings with lyricism, colour and life. It is stunning, as hopefully the quote below, the first paragraph of the story, will demonstrate:







Book Quote Friday: Searching for the Apolitical

     Whilst involved in the conversation about whether writing needs to be political to matter on this blog a few weeks ago, I tried to think of a novel that, rather than engaging with the politics of its era or setting, shunned any discussion of them, and was all the the richer for it. So often the personal struggles of characters are wider political commentary, and on occasion, if they is no political feeling in a novel, it can be unclear whether they were shunning involvement in it or whether there was just nothing going on at the time.

     A thought then came to me, a whisper of a memory of a review, which turned out to be this:







Book Quote Friday: Cracking the (Da Vinci) Code

     Pacing. Tension. Nerves. Dear God, man! Competitive blockbuster writing. A nail-biting chase to the end.

     Its route? Short sentences. Rhetorical questions. Sexual tension. What can it all mean?  Random italics. Interior monologue. Questions? So many questions? Dynamic verbs. Crossing of boundaries. Direct speech. There’s surely been a mistake!

     ‘Langdon opened his mouth to explain the bizarre error, but Sophie flashed him a silencing glance that lasted only an instant. Her green eyes sent a crystal-clear message.

      Don’t ask questions. Just do it.

     Bewildered, Langdon punched in the extension on the slip of paper: 454.

     Sophie’s outgoing message immediately cut off, and Langdon heard an electronic voice announce in French: ‘You have one new message.’ Apparently, 454 was Sophie’s remote access code for picking up her messages while away from home.

     I’m picking up this woman’s messages? 

     Langdon could hear the tape rewinding now. Finally, it stopped, and the machine began to play. Again, the voice on the line was Sophie’s.

     ‘Mr Langdon’, the message began in a fearful whisper. ‘Do not react to this message. Just listen calmly. You are in danger right now. Follow my directions very closely.’

     Suspension. Exclamation.  Superannuation. Only you can help us now! Laughing all the way to the bank. 







Book Quote Friday: Releasing your Inner Bitch

     This passage from 'The Pursuit of Love' actually made me snort in bed the other night:

     ‘For dinner, Linda wore a white chintz dress with an enormous skirt, and a black lace scarf. She looked entirely ravishing, and it was obvious that Sir Leicester was much taken with her appearance – Lady Kroesig and Miss Marjorie, in bits of georgette and lace, seemed not to notice it. Marjorie was an intensely dreary girl, a few years older than Tony, who had failed so far to marry, and seemed to have no biological reason for existing.’







Book Quote Friday: Perfecting the Voice

     Now, I've not quite finished this book yet, but already it's clear to me that 'Any Human Heart' by William Boyd is a masterpiece of characterisation and voice. Written in the form of a diary, with the odd explanatory insert, it spans the life of the protagonist, Logan Mountstuart, from his Uruguayan beginnings in 1912 to his death in the early 1990s. We travel with him from Oxford to Paris,  Nigeria to New York, the Bahamas to Switzerland, and from London to the French countryside (I'm being deliberately vague so I don't inadvertantly include too many spoilers).

      The test, I think, of an fictitious diary or memoir is whether we find it increasingly and incredibly hard to believe that the protagonist is not really in existence. 







Book Quote Friday: Unlocking the Doors

Some worlds, through their isolation, exclusivity or general elevation from the common person on the street, are closed off to the majority of people and exist as islands, buffeted only gently by the more turbulent wider seas. That is, until someone from within chooses to write a book about them and throws the doors open for all to see. When this happens, more often than not, those inside are outraged and try to drag the doors shut, whilst the excluded crane their necks to see even the smallest glimpse of how the other half live. 'The Age of Innocence' is much like this.