Émile Zola: The Masterpiece

Susana Clarke: Piranesi

J L Carr – A Month in the Country

 

Last week we wrote about two elderly Swedish men, working together, trying to do a job in between drinks and reminiscences of life.

This week we have another novella with two men working side by side on projects for which they are well qualified. The difference is these two men are young, in their twenties, and both suffering trauma following their involvement in World War 1.

Indelicacy – Amina Cain

 

 

She works as a cleaner in a museum. It is hard to work out the time and place. She speaks of carriages and long dresses, yet also of the beach and bathing costumes. She lives alone and walks freely through the streets. Sometimes she might eat a small meal alone in a cheap cafe. She has no family that she sees, and in the beginning, only one friend. She speaks later of visiting Brazil, but it is hard to get a sense of where she is living.

Ali Smith – Autumn. Winter

 

Autumn, the first published of Ali Smith’s Seasons series, was being written when the EU referendum was mooted. In December 2015 it was just an idea, by January 2016 it was a done deal.

Station Eleven- Emily St John Mandel

Emily St John Mandel wrote Station Eleven in 2014, eleven years post SARS, but well before our present pandemic. I read it a few weeks ago and hesitated to publish my comments, as it concerns a pandemic which has wiped out 99% of the population of the world. It is our current situation greatly multiplied, but still her key hopeful ideas remain true. That the arts and music keep society alive, as does remembering or somehow piecing together our history.  But above all it is the cooperation of the tribe that makes life start again and where meaning is generated.

Peacock & Vine- A.S.Byatt

 

Here is a glorious little book, two essays really, that is deeply cheering about the capacity of humans to be makers and to learn new skills throughout their lives.

A S Byatt says she ‘can’t hear music’ and all the passion and sensual pleasure many of us take from music she gets from colour and form. The artists and creators she writes about are William Morris and Mariano Fortuny. Reading this made me want to rush off to Kelmscott House to see the works of William Morris and to Venice to see the Fortuny museum.

Byatt has loved the work of William Morris for a long time. She has Morris wallpaper in her kitchen, Morris tea-towels, and even sits on a Morris cushion. But she also gives poignant glimpses into Morris’ life. His wife, Janey, taken over by Rosetti, Morris himself, his plumpness made fun of by Burne-Jones in little sketches, his voyaging in Iceland when his life at Kelmscott House become too difficult with the relationship between Rosetti and Janey. But Morris grew to love Iceland. He learned Icelandic and translated some of the Sagas. His life is devoted to learning and developing his skills in design. He taught his daughter May to embroider by unpicking ancient tapestries to see how they were made. His colour and patterning are quite beautiful, and his designs still sold as fabrics and wallpaper.

Fortuny, whose work was new to Byatt, had the same inexhaustible flow of ideas and capacity to work. His wife Henriette was a dressmaker and worked with him on every aspect of his production. His passion for textiles began when he was a child and used to rummage through his mother’s collection of ancient textiles. here is a description of her collection in a book by Henri de Regnier, quoted by Byatt,

She made her first purchase in Spain: a blood-red piece of old velvet, embellished with pomegranates… A fine piece of dark blue velvet made in the fifteenth century, goffered with stylish arabesques. The shade is strange, deep and pure, like the colour of night.

Fortuny designed dresses with a pleat that was unique to his work. It is still not clear how these fine permanent pleats were made. (I couldn’t help thinking that this is where Issy Miyake got his idea for his ‘pleats please’ collection.) Famous women and aristocrats wore his light diaphanous dresses based on Greek sculpture, but the most famous wearer of Fortuny was Albertine in Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. here is a description of her Fortuny cloak,

It swarmed with Arabic ornaments, like Venice, like the Venetian palaces hidden like sultan’s wives behind a screen of pierced stone, like the bindings in the Ambrosian library, like the columns from which the oriental birds that symbolised alternately life and death were repeated in the mirror of the fabric, of an intense blue which, as my gaze extended over it, was changed into a malleable gold, by those same transmutations which, before the advancing gondola, change into flaming metal the azure of the Grand Canal. And the sleeves were lined with a cherry pink, which is so peculiarly Venetian that it is called Tiepolo pink.

A celebration of colour and creativity manifested by two quite different sensibilities. This little book is a must read for those who love such things.

Mimi by Lucy Ellmann

 

 

As all you literary types know, Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize and won the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize.

It is described in various places as, ‘ …1020 pages with 95% of the book made up of eight near endless sentences, ‘(The Guardian) ‘…a torrent of consciousness and intoxicating coziness…’ (Amazon) ‘a brave, unique, ambitious book…’  (Goodreads)

Elizabeth Macneal: The Doll Factory

Sweet and sour cane-toad