Review: 'The Death of the Adversary' by Hans Keilson

"His death is enough. Tell!"

"He will fall, Father, like a dead thing, a rotten branch, bare and desiccated, whihc a mountain stream sweeps down into the abyss. Or like a stone, cold and hardened against the perils of a fall through the blind night, leaving no luminous trail that could one day light torches in the memory, before it buries itself in the soil of the steppes which no human or animal foot will ever tread. Such will be his death: bare and unfruitful, like the avalanche of stones under which he lies anonymously buried, the refuse of extinct planets, and there is nothing more to tell."

Hans Keilson's 'The Death of the Adversary' is a very strange book. 

Throughout its 208 page, the narrator remains vague and nameless, cities are known only by initials, the country is never referred to and the adversary is never given an identity beyond that. It's a mysterious book strangely lacking in Proper Nouns or concrete ties, that might lock it down to a country, an era, a place.

If you didn't know better, you'd think it was some kind of dystophian coming-of-age story in which the young man pits himself against some kind of Big Brother, where the adversary is a known person and the narrator is one of a persecuted mass. Of course, though, we all do know better - we have all heard of WWII, after all - and then it becomes a bleak and horrifying look at the diabolical relationship between Hitler and the Jews of Germany, of which Hans Keilson was one.







In My Mailbox, No. 4

Happy 2012! I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year? I'm trying to extricate myself from my holiday-induced lethargy in preparation for going back to work tomorrow, and I thought an In My Mailbox post, which is part of the Story Siren meme, might be the way to start doing that.

And what a bumper crop we have today :) Santa and my family were tres kind, as you're about to see:







So...2011!

So, we have reached the end of 2011. Where has the year gone? I feel like this one has flown by. 

Looking back, it's been a mixed bag, overall, in terms of writing, blogging and reading - if I were to summarise this year in a sentence, it would be as 'the year in which I read a lot of books I didn't want to be reading'.








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.







Is it Misogynistic if It's of Its Time?

You know, I'm a fairly modern girl, and, using fairly large strokes, take the equal stance of women in the Western world entirely for granted. I think most girls my age (I'm 26) would say the same: we believed without pause that we were entitled to education, to respect and to our own voices. The last one I especially accept without question, and set up my own platform (this one) without pause. So far, so fine.

Then, the other day, I caught myself singing and dancing along to this quite loudly whilst getting dressed one morning, and realised that I was quite happily singing along with surely one of the most misogynistic songs ever performed:







Wedding Poems

This is actually the sister post to something I posted in November about looking for wedding poems with a friend; this is the one where I describe those that were actually found. I didn't do the finding, the bride found them herself, but I always think that the poems read at weddings say quite a lot about the bride and groom, both as a couple and as individuals.

Here are the two chosen for the wedding a few weeks ago, in the venue that reminded me of Manderley in 'Rebecca':








The Christmas Gift Picker

Stuck for ideas for presents? I know, get them books! Seeing as that is not the kind of information you normally get from me (ha), you know to take it seriously and oblige.

This might help: The Vintage Book's Gift Picker.

And failing that, get them 'A Christmas Carol' (no-one can resist Tiny Tim - what a bummer that I didn't manage to get to that before Christmas. Look forward to an unseasonable review in February!) or Jilly Cooper's 'How to Survive Christmas'(I remember seeing this on my mum's bedstand when I was younger and being like 'Mum? Are you ok?')

I imagine most families fit into the mould of one or another or these.

My other contribution to Christmas this year is the addition of green to my usual red blog theme. I did doctor the Tolstoy is my Cat logo in Paint, adding a Christmas hat and some holly, but it looked so naff that I won't be uploading it here. I was also a little concerned that the logo designer, who's a friend on facebook, might see that I'd destroyed her logo with lame makeshiftness, so out of respect for her, I have abstained :)

I so wish it would snow! Snow always makes me want to take my delicious copy of Dr. Zhivago off the shelf and waft around looking pale in furs. Of course, in reality, it's exciting for a day or two, or for as long as you don't have to spend much time outdoors, and then it becomes the most annoying thing since unsliced bread. 

Some for Christmas would be nice though, wouldn't it?