DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON by George Orwell

I read this book in part I admit because I have always thought it had a cool title. And I guess George Orwell has a track record, 1984, ANIMAL FARM, etc.

What I really admired about this book was it’s clarity. It was just in such good taste, so clearly and unpretentiously written. I have been reading a lot of development research at the moment (votes: should I blog about this? I know this blog is supposed to be about everything I read in 2010, but are you really tough enough for posts on such gems as IMPLEMENTING THE SADC PROTOCOL AGAINST CORRUPTION: RECOMMENDATIONS AND DRAFT RULES OF PROCEDURE? Suspect not) and this research is just so jargon laden, and overwritten as shit. I suspect it’s because they’ve nothing real to say and need to cover that up.

The bio is hilarious, wait, let me quote: “He served in Burma, an experience that inspired his first novel BURMESE DAYS. Several years of poverty followed.” I don’t know if they mean it to be funny, but it is. Ah, the arts and how they don’t pay anything. So this book follows those years of poverty in Paris and London, where Orwell is homeless and near homeless. This must have been an experience and a half for an old Etonian, but we don’t learn much about him – it’s not autobiographical in that sense – it’s more about the people and places he ecountered, and the difficulties of living on little money and food.

At one point, when he hasn’t eaten in three days, he gets a job as a plongeur, which is I guess some kind of dishwasher at fancy Parisien hotels. This is a dreadful job, apparently, with 17 hour days being quite routine. Unsurprisingly, he is pretty big on the subject of how fancy hotels are useless, and has a lot to say on what’s wrong with a world in which people can be enslaved for the useless purpose of fanciness.

He ends with what he’s learnt: “I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning”

It’s an interesting picture of poverty in any period, and an interesting picture of its time in particular – for example, men with shell shock are a routine problem, as they keep people awake in the paupers’ dorms with their screaming. It’s also of its time in being rather anti-semitic, misogynist, and homophobic. But there you go, you can’t have everything.

THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This is a famous book that one keeps meaning to read, so one has decided to read it. I bought it on Amazon, where the customer reviews are the sort of mouth-frothingly eager ones that make one feel all the more required to read it. Check it out. Charmingly, it comes to me in Zimbabwe as a discarded book from a library in small town Arkansas, complete with index card sleeve.

It’s not really the sort of book that one can call ‘good,’ because that seems sort of disrespectful. Quality terms don’t really apply to this sort of book.

Basically, Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a hard labour camp under Stalin. He actually got off lightly, as typical setences were ten to twenty five years. He was jailed for being a literary person, but you needn’t think you actually needed to be guilty to go to the Gulag. Essentially, areas had quotas, both for jailings and executions, so anyone and everyone could be arrested quite randomly, and thousands and thousands of people were. They really wanted ‘confessions’ and lists of ‘co-conspirators’ (ie, your acquaintances, to make arrests less effort). So there was a lot of torture, stomach-churningly described. Incredibly, to me, lots of individuals refused to sign anything, or give up any names, and so as Sozhenitsyn puts it about one case, ‘died a victor in his cell.’

It actually boggles the mind. You can’t believe it really happened. They also sent whole groups – like millions of people – to exile in Siberia, where many died. Just twelve years after the Russian Revolution had divided up the land fairly, some people were already doing slightly better than their neighbours, presumably through hard work as they had no material advantages. These ‘kulaks’ were viewed as class enemies and sent into exile – millions of them – which immediately caused a three year famine, in which millions more died.

Being in Zim at the moment, I’m especially struck by two things: one, how angry the author is, and two, how madly brave he is. He is naming names and ripping shit up. Like, he tells us who informed on who simply to get his girlfriend, and then tells us where he currently lives in comfort in Moscow. Madly brave.

Here’s the rest of the review.

THE SAVAGE GARDEN by Mark Mills

Well, this is one of those books that makes me feel like I better become an author. Seriously, can any old crap become a bestseller? If so, let me start writing. That’s a bit mean, but DUDE. It was a bit rubbish.

It tells the story of a young man who as a university project goes to study a Renaissance garden in Italy. It’s written in the past, and opens with him in university, and the narrator says of his past self: “Try as he might, he couldn’t penetrate the workings of that stranger’s mind, let alone say with any certainty how he would have dealt with the news that murder lay in wait for him, right around the corner.” I mean, seriously. Murder . . . right around the corner. Hurl.

So it’s quite charmingly evocative of an Italian summer, but then it goes down a sort of de Vinci style what secret was hidden in the garden 400 years ago type route, which is distinctly borderline as a plot. We discover a 400 year old murder and also a contemporary one, and also have a love interest and some distinctly dodgy sex scenes.

I got it at a short story reading event I went to quite randomly, where there were cupcakes with labels saying ‘Eat Me’ (as in Alice in Wonderland) and books saying ‘Take Me’ – of which this was one – and so though I didn’t enjoy the book I enjoyed the rather sweet way I came by it.

I just have to tell you that the first line of the author’s bio is “Mark Mills graduated from Cambridge University in 1986.” I guess that’s the beginning and end of his life and everthing we need to know about him. Hurl.

ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY by David Sedaris

Now as I’ve told you before, I almost never buy books. Partly because I’m too cheap, and partly because I only really like owning books I really like. But I’m off to Zimbabwe for three months, where good books are hard to come by, so I gave in and spent some serious money on Amazon. Oh yes. So this is one of the first from that batch. I blogged about WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES by David Sedaris as I read it earlier this year, and really enjoyed it. ME TALK PRETTY was a bit of a let down, really. In the previous book, I enjoyed the way Sedaris was so open about his somewhat messed up life, but in this way rather than being pleasingly open and honest, it started to seem like a gimmick. And I didn’t really find it that funny. Hmmm. Is it because that it’s not as good a book, or is it because it’s the second of his books I’ve read, so I’m wise to his shtick? A pressing question for the ages.

Since I last wrote I’ve flown to Africa – 20 hours, FOUR stop overs – let’s not talk about it – so I’ve read a lot of books, but not been in a bloggable state. Much more to follow. After I get back from a four day holiday, far from internet. Laterz!

WIZARD OF THE CROW by Ngugi wa Thiong’o


Oh god. This didn’t go well. It was given to me as a very kind gift. The back cover, a review, calls it a “remarkable book that will be widely read . . a sprawling analogy.” Hmmm. Remarkable how? Remarkably bad?

And sprawling? This clearly means: needs editing.

I tried for 70 pages or so, but I just couldn’t do it. I could just tell he was settling in for a long one, and I couldn’t handle it. I feel bad, because they’ve even dressed the crow up on the front in Zimbabwean colours, because it’s about a dictator, so I give them props for that, but I just couldn’t handle it.

DR THORNE by Anthony Trollope


Honestly, massive props to gutenberg.net. I don’t know how anyone gets through their workday without it. DR THORNE has been keeping me company many a long day. Here’s where I first blogged about it ages ago, and I’ve finally finished it. I ran out of stuff to read on the train, so I finished it on the tiny screen of my mobile, to the not very Victorian, but very tinny, music coming from some moron’s i-pod.

The props go direct to the guy in the picture, who dreamed Gutenberg up in 1971.

DR THORNE tells the story of a young lady, neice of Dr Thorne, who is illegitimate and poor. A young man of good family falls in love with her, but obviously his whole family opposes the romance, as his estate is in debt because of his father’s extravagance, and he ought to marry money. Surprise, surprise, Mary is found to be a heiress and all ends happily.

This sounds thoroughly lame, but the charm of the book lies not in its plot. It’s the warmth of the narrator’s voice – if you’ve lived in England, you can’t help but love “Let no man boast himself that he has got through the perils of winter till at least the seventh of May.” It’s also the loving way the characters are presented. Note that the book is called Dr Thorne, but not because the story if about him, or because he’s the narrator, but just because Trollope likes him. That’s the kind of book it is.

Here it is. I recommend beginning immediately.

I am off to Zimbabwe for three months, so I’ve ordered a ton of books. DR THORNE is the third of the Barchester novels (I’ve also read the first two) and please don’t doubt I’ve ordered the remaining three. It will be very Victorian, as Zim has non-stop power cuts at the minute so I am sure I will read a lot of them by candlelight . . .

THE KINDLY ONES by Jonathan Littell


I actually read this last year, but I found out at the great blog Reading Matters that it’s been nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, which is for translated literature.

It’s an epic (very epic, like 900 pages of epic) story of a bureaucrat’s involvement in the Holocaust. I think the author (an American writing in French, impressively) intended to show how we are all potential Nazis, and he succeeds sort of. He definitely succeeds in writing an interesting, revealing, well researched novel of WWII. I learnt, which I thought was very interesting, that far more people died through mass shootings in the area of the old Soviet Union than died in the camps.

You probably don’t need to be warned that some parts are a bit grim.

There’s some interesting things going on narratively, because as the novel goes on it becomes increasingly clear that he’s not quite sure what it is he’s telling us. For example, he goes to sleep, and when he wakes up, his parents have been murdered and are covered in blood. He’s naked and the clothing he was wearing has been washed. Hmmm. There’s also some very unfortunate sexual self-abuse incidents. These I skipped.

Totally recommend it though

(The Observer’s review here is interesting)

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STARLINGS LAUGHING by June Vendall Clark – Cont’d


Well, I’ve finished it. And I’m quite thoroughly confused.

This husband, who was apparently so horrible to her, she divorced him and then when he asked her to, and not very nicely either, she remarried him. What? Then they got divorced again. Also, none of her three children seem to speak to her. What? How did we get there? I really can’t figure this lady’s personal life out. Suffice to say, it is wild. Almost as wild as the wildlife.

But the parts about the African landscape are very interesting, as are her attempts to set up a game reserve. She reads like an old colonial, but her reserve was apparently incredibly forward thinking – not just for its time, but for our time too, as it involved the local community; see here

After the acrimoious divorce, she keeps bleating about wanting to go back home to England. Bizarre, as this was a place that by my calculations she’d maybe spent 6 months in her whole life in. I guess as all the cultural life came from there, she felt that – despite it having nothing to do with her actual real life – that was home. Interesting that culture is actually a stronger predictor of ‘home’ than mere circumstance. ANYWAY. I just want to say, she moved to Norwich. This is a woman who used to chew up and spit up ground up doves for her orphan civet cat. Whole doves. With their feathers on. Yup. Her pet lion once mauled her son and she cheerily pumped him with the vet’s antibiotics. NORWICH.

COMMENT: Emily Woof in the Guardian Review

Further to our conversation yesterday about motherhood and how central or not it is to our essential experience, see here

Clearly, it’s written out of a belief that birth and motherhood are fundamental, defining experiences. Now, that’s kind of what I think too. But it’s interesting to see, given the Vendall Clark I’m reading, that other cultures clearly haven’t viewed it that way.

It’s rare that to get a chance to suddenly see the facts of your life as possibly just pre-conceptions.

STARLINGS LAUGHING by June Vendall Clark


I bet there aren’t too many blogging on this one.

I’ve had this in my bookcase for a while; it belonged to a friend of my father’s, who was forced to leave Zimbabwe during the Gukurahundi (if you don’t know what this is you really ought to Google it), lived in Darfur for a while, setting up schools (most of which were burnt down in the recent events there – definitely Google that if you don’t know what that’s about) and then had to move to London as he badly needed the NHS, due to an incident with a stomach virus and some vets. He spent the rest of his life in a tiny flat, a fine example of living in a way above and beyond your circumstances: books, newspapers, music, his flat was as big as the world mentally, for sure.

ANYWAY. I still didn’t really want to read this soppy “Memoir of Africa,” (that’s it’s very dodgy subtitle). I just had it because it had his name in it in his rather charming old school hand. Anyway, I was too hungry to lug my ass to the Library, so I needed someething to read and had a look through the bookcase. I thought it would probably be kind of racist, and full of weird issues about being ‘British’ in this exotic land, even though she’s lived in Africa since she was four, so how it’s exotic I’m not clear. So I thought that was how it would be and I wouldn’t like it, but what do you know, that is how it is and I kind of like it!

Actually, it’s not very racist; it’s problematic by our standards, but it’s very clear from her description of her life that she was far more liberal than anyone she knew. She was in Bulawayo from the age of four, and we learn all about her WWI veteran father, and her parents’ horribly bad marriage, and her weird childhood; she wasn’t allowed to play with white children in case she lost her upper class accent. She got pregnant at 16 by the first man she kissed. This being the 1940s, she had to marry him and went on to have 25 years of misery. They founded a farm in Matopos, and have moved to camp in the middle of the Okavango Delta – that’s where I am now.

The book is firstly interesting, and quite charming, for her clear love of the African landscape, and, in a strange and mixed up way, her love of African people. It’s full of vervet monkeys getting into the chicken coop and throwing eggs at each other and at the chickens, of chats that fly into her bedroom in the morning and wait to have some of her toast, of sunset over the granite hills and so on. She spoke fluent Ndebele, and knew a great deal of the culture and wife of life of these people – she even knew a man who’d fought in Lobengula’s impi (Google also).

It’s also interesting as a view into her community and the ideals of her time. She’s totally not bothered to tell us she never got on with her mother: no remorse, no bitterness, and even better, no psychologising. Very not modern. I love it. Apparently once her mother was moaning about something, and our author told her not to, and the mother replied, with pride “But I’ve always been a grouser. I’ve always been a moaner.” This is too much for our author.

It’s more or less a biography, but fabulously also she spends little time on her children. Love it. You certainly get the impression that the farm and the landscape were of far more interest to her than her children, and, incredibly interstingly, she feels no societal pressure to pretend it isn’t so. She gets pregnant for the third time, and is with good reason too scared to get a backstreet abortion, so goes through with it, and refers to it quite frankly as a little wretch.

Also, there’s lot of sex and naked dinner parties, which goes very oddly with the fact that she felt she couldn’t get a divorce. I’m not quite following. More when it’s finished.