Thursday, December 28, 2006

The Sunday Philosophy Club - Alexander McCall Smith

Oh light holdiday reading. This was a nice quick read, not bad, loosely a mystery, with a little of intrigue towards the end and lots of cups of tea and musings of the 40-something main character who like Phryne Fisher (see review below) lives without a partner, is independantly wealthy and is concerned with living according to her view of how 'one should' in such circumstances. While Phryne muses more on the cut of her swinging 20's frocks and the quality of silk in her shortie nighties, drinks rather a lot and has wild elegant indulgent sex with talk dark quiet types, Isabel Dalhousie is a well-behaved, respectful (if a little nosie, but hey aren't we all), woman concerned with morality. I dig that not once did the book describe the cut of her hair or the jaunty swing of her ankle in a green ankle-straped heel - she is formless in the way that a male protaganist might reasonably expect to be in a novel: she is her life, her actions, her relationships, looking out of and acting from her body. She is not coquetish and flirty, but she does harbour a sneaky little crush on a younger man, which much to my diapointment was never consumated. I thought themusings on philosophy and little trite, just a little, but maybe a nice 'taster', and certainly not alienating to anybody. Her role as an acandemic (even a part time one) I found a little hard to swallow, as despite editing a journal she seemed little more than vagueley intrigued by the subject matter, but in a restrained, affable, hoby-like way - as if she was eighty and reading about hydrangeas for the local fair (sorry to be ageist). I guess what I noticed was the distinct lack of passion, the whiff of enquiry and personal scholarship that i would expect such a character to actually have. But whatever. I'm sure Alexanders' readers prefer her mild mannered and musing than driven and incandescent. She is someone you could pop around and expect an omlette from, with a well-ordered, comfortable existence and a mild curiosity that pulls her into intrigue. The mystery element was quite nicely crafted as something that was almost secondary to her life and partly constructed by her own inquiry. I hope she shags the boy in the next one. I hope she shakes things up a bit and has a wild jaunt to Italy and writes a book or two. Or maybe I'm projecting...

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Sula - Toni Morrison

OK so this book says on the cover 'Oprah's Book Club' and you would be forgiven for thinking that this must mean that the book is sweet and comforting, that it involves baking and quilt making and sisterly love - right?
I've read a few of Morrison's books now and find that they are all a strange brutal mix of love, life, death, madness, poverty and the ache of everything. 'Jazz' was uncomfortable, 'Beloved' was down right wacky... they both kind of took the notions of 'good' and 'bad' and mixed them around a bit, fed them back to you in a strange combo whose flavours were unfamiliar. This one is about a town of people living up the mountains, tricked out of prime farming land in the valley by the white slave owners who gave it to them on their freedom, it's about two childhood friends, about sex and falling in love, about households of women, about black folk and white folk and seeing each other through their lenses of culture, about being a woman and how being in love affects you, about the love of children, about poverty and hope and hopelesness. And I suppose, if I really think about it, it's probably about the whole tricky notion of morality - of good and evil.

Sula is one of the childhood friends, she goes away, comes back. But it's not really about that - or not about just that - it's about everything little and big that happens in and around and before and after that.

The description of Sula's careless love for men, contrasted with the moment when she becomes hooked on one person, who then leaves her, is spine tingling. You feel her begining to see him in objects around the house, like her you want to inhale him, gobble him up; but at the same time you smell the whiff of her clinging desperation the moment he does, and like him you also want to flee. In the same vein, the account of a sexual betrayal of another character is also so real feeling you almost melt into the corner of the bathroom with her, watching dust motes twirl as your life unravels.

I also loved the description of Sula's mother who lost her husband and proceeds to sleep with al the towns men both single and married, but in a gentle, natural, almost unthinking way, as she pulls them into the pantry for fleeting, passionate, unnatached sex, without shame and without spite and without remorse. This is contrasted with Sulas sexuality and the sexuality of monogamy and the sexuality of sex workers in a very interesting way. Like this:

Everything had changed. Even the whores were better then: tough, fat, laughing women with burns on their cheeks and wit married to their meanness: or widows couched in small houses in the woods with eight children to feed and no man. These modern-day whores were pale and dull before those women. These little clothes-crazy things were always embarassed. Nasty but shamed. They didn't know what shameless was. They should have known those silvery widows in the woods who would get up from the dinner table and walk into the trees with a customer with as much embarassment as a calving mare.

Anyway, there's lots of great prose, lots of 'hmmmm, that's interesting' moments, and lots of unertainty in this book.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Away with the fairies - Kerry Greenwood

So, the day of my housemove I found myself at central station yearning for some comfort reading. Something silly and quick to read, something to whisk me away to another time and place and make me feel all warm inside. So I bought this and proceeded to read it in two days (aah, long train journeys were good for something!). Mermaidgrrl bought me my first one in this series when I flew back to Sydney from Brisbane in September. She picked it out at the airport, after declaring that I needed a trashy romance (which I thouroughly agreed with - she is after all a nurse, I trust her diagnosis - and sunk into with relief on the plane). In brief, this series features a woman called Phryne Fisher who is an heiress in 1920's Melbourne, Australia, and although fabulously wealthy and happily whiling away her days with cocktails, lovers, philanthropy, being arch and witty and keeping an eye of her adopted daughters, does a little bit of crime solving in her spare time.

What busy working Aussie woman wouldn't entertain the fantasy of being swathed in silk, sporting a fetching classy bob, having servants (who are gartefuly emplyed as such, and ever so loyal and warm), being adored by men and women alike and getting to nut out juicy crimmes over a cool mint juleppe? No wonder she's gone ahead and written squilions of books.

So - any good? yeah kind of. Some firm feminist stances scattered through this one - which I thoroughly approved of - the requisite insight into some random piece of histo-geography (in this case, silk trading and pirates in the south seas), lots of outfits described in meticulous detail, bitchy suspects who are all either shagging or blackmailing each other, and some rompety pompety bedroom action for the leading lady (oh tasteful mind, ever so tasteful). Not sure that I need any encouragement to conjure up my inner style-queen-bossy-hyperpampered-girl around town though, so may read them sparingly lest I begin clisking my fingers for Astin Martins that don't exist and wearing drapey silk things to match my clouche hats and silk underwear.