Little Exiles

Jon Heather, proud to be nearly nine, knows that Christmas is a time for family. But one evening in December 1948, no longer able to cope, his mother leaves him by a door, above which the legend reads Chapeltown Boys’ Home of the Children’s Crusade. Several weeks later, still certain his mother will come back, Jon finds himself on a boat set for Australia. Promised paradise, Jon soon realizes the reality of the vast Australian outback is very different; its burnished desert becoming the backdrop for a strict regime of hard work and discipline.

So begins an odyssey that will last a lifetime, as Jon Heather and his group of unlikely friends battle to make their way back home.

Two exciting things today. One - I have tickets to see Beyonce in concert in May (I may have jumped up and down a few times... eeee!). Two - it is publication day for Mr. Robert Dinsdale and his third novel, Little Exiles, and I'm going to review it. Well, I was going to review it. Then someone said to me 'Ooo, you're brave' reviewing a friend's book. Thank. you. very. much. Now I feel considerably un-brave and still not quite sure whether this review is going to go ahead.

The fact this post is continuing, though, can give the author a little relief (because he is, naturally, waiting with bated breath to hear what I've got to say... I find most people are) as there was no way I would review this book if it was crap. I am not about to have that conversation.

A few years ago I read about the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown offering a formal apology on behalf of government to the tens of thousands of British children who were shipped, forcibly, to Australia (and some also to Canada) between the 1920s and 1967. Almost all of these children came from deprived backgrounds - many already in social care - and were taken to the other side of the world, unbeknownst to their parents (some of whom would try to collect their children to find they had gone), under the premise that Australia offered them a brighter future. Some of the children were even falsely told their parents were dead so that they would cut all ties with England.

Little Exiles brings to life this terrible ordeal through the eyes of Jon Heather and his friends. As a reader you witness the abuse, terror and brutality these children endured and of the unpaid labour they were forced to do but this novel also goes further and exposes the lasting effect of these experiences on the families involved. It is a coming-of-age story of the most traumatic kind but it is also a touching tale of friendship and hope. Hope you can forgive the corny... but you know I love a novel that spans a few decades so you can watch the characters transform.

While this is an adult read with plenty of complexity, the writing flows beautifully and the narrative somehow creates a tone of naivety that I really enjoyed - if that makes sense... I don't mean, though, that there isn't anger, tension, fear; I think this is one of the most frightening stories - made all the more so by being founded in something scarily real. I think if you enjoyed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak you would like this and everyone enjoyed The Book Thief.

Ps. If you didn't, we are not friends.

You can also see the author talk about his book here.

85th Academy Awards

And they've finally happened. After all the hype, the predictions and the glitzy dresses, the Oscars have been awarded by the Academy and I have to say, it's been quite an exciting year. Not because the films are any more amazing than previous years, or because the fabulous Adele sang "Skyfall" at the ceremony or even that DanRad danced his merry way across the stage of the Kodak Theatre, but because, except for Daniel Day Lewis, no one really knew what was going to happen (certainly didn't expect poor J-Lawrence to stumble up the steps). And actually partly because Jennifer Lawrence was nominated and, in the words of Bridget Jones, I have, 'let's face it, a bit of a crush now, actually'. I. Love. Her.

Anyway, as last year, I can't really persuade you that film awards are 100% to do with books. I can, though, talk about the award for Best Adapted Screenplay. This year rather embarrassingly I have not read any of these books despite my mum having bought me Life of Pi, twice.

Argo, winner of Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, was adapted from Antonia J Mendez' book The Master of Disguise and Joshuah Bearman's Wired article, 'The Great Escape'. Mendez is a, now retired, CIA technical operations officer who led the rescue of 6 American. diplomats from Tehran during the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis. The film stars Ben Afleck, who also directed and produced along with fellow producers Grant Heslov and George Clooney.

Other contender, Beast of the Southern Wild, was derived from Lucy Alibar's play Jucy and Delicious. The fantasy drama garnered a Best Actress nomination for the youngest ever Best Actress nominee, 9 year-old Quvenzhané Wallis and has been highly praised since its release last year. Then six years old, Wallis plays young Hushpuppy whose dilapidated bayou community falls victim to a flood caused by melting icecaps. If that weren't enough, she must also cope with her hot-tempered father who is not well.

Life of Pi may not have won this film but this magical realist adventure unexpectedly saw Ang Lee snatch the Best Director award for the second time in his career. The book has already received high praise since it was published over ten years ago in 2001 but there was always a question of how the unusual style would translate into film. Ang Lee's fantastical masterpiece, though, seemed pretty successful, also picking up the award for Special Effects. Amazingly the book (which follows Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, after he survives a shipwreck in the Pacific Ocean with just a Bengal tiger for company, was originally rejected by 5 London publishing houses before being taken on by Knopf in Canada. The book has now sold well over three million copies worldwide.

Lincoln was inspired by the book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. As we all know, Daniel Day Lewis broke the records this year by winning his third Best Actor Academy award for his portrayal of the beloved president. While the film focuses on the turbulent final four months of Lincoln's life and presidency, focusing on the passing of the thirteenth amendment, the book is a real beast at nearly 1,000 pages and looks at the final four years. Apparently Goodwin had previously consulted with director Steven Spielberg on a project of his in 1999 and just mentioned that she was planning to write Team of Rivals. Spielberg didn't hang about... and immediately asked for film rights there and then. Interestingly, Lincoln was going to be played by Liam Neeson until he had to withdraw in 2010. Reportedly, the film was then pushed back by a year so that DDL felt he had enough time to prepare for the role... we've all heard how he likes to prepare...

Finally, my highlight of 2012 cinema, Silver Linings Playbook, was adapted from the novel by Matthew Quick. For what is, essentially, a romantic comedy, this adaptation did very well this awards season, being nominated for 8 Oscars (including the Big Five - the first time since Million Dollar Baby in 2004) and with J-Lawrence walking/tripping away with Best Actress. The story follows Pat Solitano (played by Bradley Cooper), a bi-polar sufferer who has just spent some time in a mental institution, who meets recovering sex addict Tiffany (Lawrence) who has problems of her own. The film's subject brought Robert De Niro, who also stars in the film, uncharacteristically to tears during an interview and Director David O. Russell has spoken openly about his inspiration: "It's personal to me, because I've lived through some of these experiences with a son". 

Anyway, excuse the long post and go see ALL these films. Ciao!

BBC to make War and Peace

Worryingly, the title of this post took some time. I really thought that somehow I must be able to make some form of witty headline with this so that, at least occasionally, I can be seen to be as intelligent and hilarious as I truly am. I'm afraid, though, today is not that day as this is the best I could do. Let's move on.

Anyway so we've recently ascertained that Nicholas Hoult is to star in the Hollywood version of Sebastian Faulkes' Birdsong (see post here), a part only recently taken on by fellow Brit, Eddie Redmayne, for the BBC. Now it's hard to feel sorry for Eddie because he's had a pretty fantastic couple of years with successes like My Week with Marilyn, playing King Richard II in Richard III at the Donmar Warehouse in London's West End and, more recently, singing his heart out in the BAFTA and Golden-Globe-winning Les Miserables. But. Saying all this. It seemed a little cruel that only a year after his performance in Birdsong is aired, Hollywood decide they can do better.

But it's ok, people - it's O.K. I know you were almost worried there. Eddie Redmayne is rumoured to be part of what surely promises to be a BBC masterpiece, an adaptation of Tolstoy's epic War and Peace. Perhaps a little ambitiously, Andrew Davies (the mind behind previous BBC book-to-film triumphs Bleak House and Middlemarch) is retelling the story in just six 1-hour episodes. Bear in mind that last time the BBC tackled this beast of a book with Anthony Hopkins in the lead role, they made 20 episodes...

The novel, first published in 1869, centres on five aristocratic families in Russia and looks at the impact of the Napoleonic era and the French invasion.

Jane Austen Stamps

2013 marks the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. To celebrate, the royal mail released yesterday six stamps, each depicting a scene from one of Austen's novels - Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Austen's novels have always provided an insight to and opinion on society, both its merits and its flaws. One of the overriding themes, though, is social hierarchy and so, perhaps tenuously - when trying to think what on earth I could offer to this blog post aside from the pretty pictures - I thought that stamps were a pretty apt medium. Stamps, after all, clearly have a hierarchy... I mean First Class stamps wouldn't dare be seen wondering arm in arm with a 20p... postal suicide...

Further to that, if you live in Steventon near Basingtsoke, where Jane Austen was born, or Chawton in Hampshire, where she lived towards the end of her life, any letters you post will be graced with the quote, "Do anything rather than marry without affection".

Hilary Mantel and the 'Plastic' Princess

Oh dear, Hilary Mantel's unstoppable success has finally been, well, stopped. Well at least some of the lovely members of the British press have jumped on the first thing they can to put an end to Mantel's impressive year following the publication of her Costa and double-Booker winning Bring Up the Bodies.

Much to my mum's despair, I'm a bit of a royalist (I'll come back to Hilary in a mo). I can totally see all the arguments - monarchy is outdated, it's expensive, it's undemocratic, the Queen doesn't smile any more etc etc - but at the end of the day I think you are just a little cold inside if you didn't feel a tincy bit excited when Kate walked down the aisle in that enviable Alexander McQueen dress or a little in awe of the Queen and Prince Philip who, in their 80s and 90s, stood for several hours in the cold and rain to wave at people and watch some boats.

Now, Hilary Mantel is pretty well-acquainted with our historical royal families but unfortunately she has slightly underestimated the modern royals' popularity this time. Taken slightly out of context, arguably the prefix to many different scandal-exposing articles by the tabloid press, Hilary Mantel has been charged with the utmost treacherous behaviour - taking a stab at the Duchess of Cornwall.

During a lecture entitled Royal Bodies, Mantel was quoted describing Kate Middleton as 'a plastic princess designed to breed', while comparing her to the likes of other young royal women - Diana, Marie Antoinette... Unfortunately for Mantel it seems these words are all that has been taken from the original lecture, the point of which writer Beatrix Campbell tweeted was to "NOT attack K. Middleton" but rather "offered feminist critique of monarchism."

I'm not sure we can 110% defend Mantel, she definitely said what she said, but I don't believe she meant to offend the individual, nor her fans. It was merely, in my opinion, a controversial interpretation of the modern royal family and how it relates to earlier royal dynasties that she is, perhaps, a little better acquainted with, after writing the likes of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and my favourite, A Place of Greater Safety, and are unlikely to be immediately offended...

Anyway, you can make up your own mind after listening to the famous 'context' here.

Other posts on Hilary Mantel:

Hilary Mantel at the Southbank Centre

Book Review: Bring Up the Bodies

RSC to stage Wolf Hall

Book Review: A Place of Greater Safety

Hilary Mantel Makes History...

Nicholas Hoult to star in Birdsong

What? Huh? Wait. Have we not just had an adaptation of Birdsong for the screen? Yes, yes we have. But as we all know, nothing is ever finished with until Hollywood have had their go. Sometimes twice.

Think The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, The Great British Bake Off... One thing all these films have in common though? Except perhaps the latter... top male leads. Daniel 'Phwoar' Craig, Michael 'Wunderbar' Fassbender, Jeremy 'English Rose' Irvine... I'm sure Irvine would love being called an English Rose... *shrugs*

ANYWAY, the BBC had already done a pretty good job with casting for Birdsong last year with the irresistible Eddie Redmayne. Therefore it was always going to be tough for Hollywood to take it up a notch in my opinion. But, I have to say, if the rumours are true, Nicholas Hoult is a pretty good choice. Now he may not be the conventional Etonian gorgeousness that is Mr. Redmayne, but everyone loves a bit of Nicholas Hoult don't they? Even with blonde hair in A Single Man. Actually, that brings me on to a good point. Nicholas Hoult is not only rags to riches, Skins to Hollywood, rising British star... he also does a pretty good job of adapting characters from page to screen. From Nick Hornby's About a Boy to A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood to, more recently, Isaac Marion's Warm Bodies, he's done quite a range.

Now I still have reservations about whether or not Birdsong will ever make an entirely successful transformation from page to screen because I've always slightly wondered if there's something missing from Sebastian Faulks novel. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it (you can read my review here) but Hollywood is going to need to bring something a little different. Perhaps Nicholas Hoult will do that? We shall have to see.

See my thoughts on the BBC adaptation here.

Book Club: The Woman in White

'In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop ... There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth ... stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white'

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

Perhaps the prettiest of the Book Club books so far, don't you think? Admittedly this novel was first published in book form (previously serialised) in 1860 so it's had quite a number of covers... including this simply gorgeous cover for the first US edition I think you'll agree...

Anyway, this book doesn't just win the aesthetic prize, it is also the oldest novel we've read together and, originally being an epistolary novel, it is also the longest. Jaysus. It is long. 700 pages plus. And it's an old book so it's not like reading Potter before any of you start comparing it... But I finished it people and do you know what that means? It was really quite good.

It's successfully eerie to start with. It's often credited as one of the first sensation novels, a genre of literary fiction that drew on the Gothic and Romantic genres and tended to focus on a shocking incident of some kind - murder, kidnapping, adultery etc - and often domestic in setting. This fits all that criteria and there are plenty appearances of the Gothic 'Other' too: nothing like a mad woman dressed all in white, and then you've got fat foreign Fosco who just can't make your mind up about.

It's really quite an achievement that, first of all, Wilkie Collins was taken seriously being called Wilkie..., and secondly that he has written a great novel which kept me entertained for 700 pages with only a small cast of characters.

One of the first characters we meet is Marion Halcombe, Laura Fairlie's half sister, and she's wonderfully feisty. I would go so far as to say Wilkie Collins is burgeoning on early feminist writing here if Marian wasn't immediately described as having an amazing physique but a really ugly face... Once he's got out the way, he can pave the way for her to be an opinionated, intelligent woman who fights back at authority. Beautiful Laura meanwhile just squeaks in the background and is a little dull. Saying that, there are other important reasons with regards plot why these characters are the way they are. It was more of an historical observation of the times rather than something I was offended by.

Anyway, if you are looking for a classic to read and you don't fancy Austen or the Brontes, I would definitely recommend this mystery novel. It's main downfall is that it is just too long for modern readers. I did drift off a little on a couple of occasions, but to be fair never for that long. All in all it gets an 8/10 from me, 7/10 from the Book Club.

Le Bal des Ardents

Le Bal des Ardents is a bookshop in the centre of the beautiful French city of Lyon. Lyon is located halfway between cultural Paris and sun-kissed Marseilles and so, naturally, will always be fighting for its own recognition... but I think this little bookshop is holding up, at least, Lyon's literary reputation, quite literally, pretty well all by itself. Nothing like this health-and-safety-law-defying arch of books to draw in some trade. I'd just love to be there the moment one man absent-mindedly browsing the books and thinking Oooh Victoooiiiireee 'Ugooo, removing a fat copy of Les Mis, only for the whole Arch de Literary Triumph come tumbling down around him.

Ignore my appalling French accent. I spend most of my spare time day dreaming of being transformed into Marion Cotillard. Naturally it's only my accent that lets me down...

Anyway, this bookshop looks marvelous and next time I find myself in Lyon, I will make my way here and see if this architectural triumph is still standing. The name is peculiar, though. Le Bal des Ardents, meaning 'The Fiery Ball' (ball as in a 'dance'), takes its name randomly from the Dance of the Burning Men, or the Dance of the Savages, a 1393 masquerade ball where Charles VI of France performed along with five other noblemen. A torch brought in by one of the audience, coincidentally the King's brother, set four of the men on fire. Turns out it wasn't the best publicity for the King's court and only exacerbated public belief that the court was a decadent disgrace. Anyway, noooo idea why this was chosen as the name but it sounds and looks awesome.

If you're lucky enough to live in Lyon or nearby and haven't yet been in here, I suggest you do and let me know what it's like. Although I could just spend my days looking at their 'virtual tour'... because I'm that awesome.

17 Rue Neuve

69001

Lyon

France

The Charleston Bulletin

Julian and Quentin Bell with their half-sister Angelica

Virginia Woolf's sister, painter and interior designer Vanessa Bell, had two children from her marriage to Clive Bell - Quentin and Julian. The family was, you might say, slightly unconventional. Vanessa and Clive had an open-relationship, with Vanessa having affairs with the likes of critic Roger Fry and artists Duncan Grant (with whom she had a third child, Angelica). Their family home, Charleston, was painted all over - including the furniture, by the artists that lived there and became a countryside retreat for much of the Bloomsbury Group, including EM Forster, John Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf herself.

Growing up in such a household, it probably isn't surprising that Julian and Quentin developed a creative streak.

Perhaps inspired by their mother and aunt's own childhood publication, the Hyde Park Gate News, Julian and Quentin put together a family newspaper, The Charleston Bulletin, during the summer of 1923 when they were 15 and 13 respectively. Rather sensibly Quentin concluded that 'it seemed stupid to have a real author so close at hand and not have her contribute' and so they employed the literary talents of their aunt Virginia.

The British Library are to publish these Charleston Bulletin supplements for the first time this June and they show a very different side to the perhaps unfairly pigeon-holed Virginia Woolf. The supplements document the adventures of the Woolf-Bell family coloured by Woolf's humour and wit and are accompanied by Quentin's illustrations.

Filled with family in-jokes, from light-hearted digs at the boys' father and Woolf's brother-in-law, Clive Bell, to the culinary disasters of the household cook, the supplements promise to offer their readers an insight into the life and times of the family from a refreshingly more informal, fun and personal perspective that we are perhaps not used to when learning about Woolf, who famously committed suicide in 1941. Sadly Julian too died prematurely at just 29 in the Spanish Civil War.

The supplements, as I said, will be published later this year and the unusual house and gardens of Charleston are available to visit (they are currently closed I believe, but will reopen next month).

The Hyde Park Gate News

Other posts on Virginia Woolf:

Introducing... Virginia Woolf

Book vs. Film: The Hours

The Rest is Noise

Keep Anne Ginger campaign!

Red heads are often missing from literature. Perhaps it's the author weighing up in his/her mind what the biological chances are that this character would be ginger? (Turns out about 1-2% in the world at large). Regardless, there are a certain few characters that we like to hang onto... The Weasleys... Pippi Longstocking... anyone played by Lindsey Lohan pre-crazy (aka. Parent Trap...think that's about it)... and Anne of Green Blooming Gables! So when someone tries to steal away the ginge... we're not too happy about it and start screaming 'THIEF' or 'RACIST' from behind our books.

And that's exactly what happened (not the screaming 'racist' bit...). A new edition of LM Montgomerey's childrens' classic, Anne of Green Gables, has been released via Amazon's CreateSpace program and somehow in the process Anne has been bleached! Her "very thick, decidedly red hair" and "much freckled" face has instead become a buxom blonde suductress. Just so you know, in case you aren't already acquainted, Anne is supposed to be ten years old at the start of the novel...

Anyway, it sparked [red fire joke insert here] a red riot with a 'Keep Anne Ginger' campaign and several highly intelligent (as a race, we are pretty damn smart I'll have you know) moments of comic genius:

'This book is supposed to be Anne Of Green Gables NOT Anne Does Green Gables!'

'For those of you who have not read this series, I will give you a summary: Anne is a young red-headed orphan sent to live on a farm on Prince Edward Island. Unfortunately the adoptive family wanted a boy but she does her best to fit in and warm their hearts. However, after coping with her feelings of abandonment and insecurity, getting her best friend drunk, getting teased by a boy in school, and losing the only real father figure she's ever known, she dyes her hair blonde, dons a plaid shirt and becomes the town whore of Avonlea'

Monica Hesse of the Washington Post writes:

'We shall overlook the clingy, farm-girl plaid shirt (no, really, we shan’t; that shirt is an atrocity), and we shall do our best to ignore the come-hitherness of the stare, with the bedroom eyes and the bee-stung lips, and we shall even forgive the fact that the girl on the cover of this new, horrid edition of the book that we used to re-read until the pages fell out is raking her fingers through hair that cascades loose down her back as if she’s a Canadian Rapunzel. But the hair itself. The hair cannot be ignored. Anne of Green Gables has red hair. And this saucy impostor is a blonde.'

Ohhhh the hilarity. Do Google this if you want some other nuggets of genius on the subject...

Dark World for the Amala Children’s Home

Do you ever have those moments when you meet someone and as they keep talking you start to realise how much more exciting/fun/meaningful their life is than yours and that you really should be stepping up to the table of life and start making your contribution? Ok, so maybe just me, but everyone knows someone who is doing that little bit more for the world than you are.

I reckon the friends of teenager Timothy Parker Russell are all feeling a little bit like that. Only a sixth form student from the Wensleydale school in North Yorkshire, not only has Timothy has gone and collected together a selection of ghost stories and produced and published a book, but it's all in aid of Amala Children's Home in India.

Dark World is a limited edition book published by Yorkshire publisher, Tartarus Press, and features thirteen ghost stories by various different authors, some of which have written stories specially for this collection. 

The writers involved are Reggie Oliver, Christopher Fowler, Rhys Hughes, Mark Valentine, Anna Taborska, John Gaskin, Corinna Underwood, Rosalie Parker, Jason A. Wyckoff, Mark J. Saxton, Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, R.B. Russell, Stephen Holman and Steve Rasnic Tem.

The Rest is Noise at The Southbank Centre

The Southbank is one of my top areas of London. It's kind of cheating because it's pretty long so includes lots of stuff... The Globe, Tate Modern, Gabriel's Wharf, The National Theatre, The Southbank Centre... the list goes on. Last weekend I had tickets for The Rest is Noise, a programme of talks, lectures and concerts that brings to life Alex Ross's survey of 20th Century music that is his book of the same name.

Before I get started, I  have a confession. I have not read this book. One of my mum's friends grabs us in a queue for the last talk of the day raving about this magnificent book by some guy on MUsic and CULture. Until then, neither my mum nor I knew this programme was about a book. Luckily for me, it's totally about a book, and so I can blog about it. Saying that, I'd have blogged about it anyway. a) because somehow I was always going to blog about something this weekend and I sense my 3 hour stint in front of the TV on Sunday morning probably doesn't qualify... and b) because my first talk was on none other than her wonderfullness, Virginia Woolf.

Professor Rachel Bowlby was looking at the work of Virginia Woolf while considering one of her most famous quotes: ''On or about December 1910 human character changed.'' I'm not about to type out what she said but I'm going to put my two cents in. It's quite a big statement to make about a year that most of us would struggle to talk about for much more than thirty seconds... It has been argued that Virginia Woolf suffered from something like 'hurry sickness', developing anxiety and depression as a result of the constant speeding up and flux of culture and time in the early 20th Century. This thought, together with Woolf's quote, do comfort me slightly as sometimes I feel we too often think that we are the first to experience the life we are living. The fact is, cultural change (be it good or bad) has happened before. Recessions have happened before. And we're still here!

Next up, David Tong on Einstein's Theory of Relativity and I actually understood it... ok, so I'm not about to write a paper on it, but my unscientific mind actually has some kind of grasp on this theory. That is really all I have to say on this matter. It blew. my. mind. Turns out there's no gravitational pull - WHO KNEW?

Finally, I got to meet the legend that is Tony Benn. To use the introducer's words, Tony Benn 'is history' - he's seen it all. Sure he was an MP, sure he was a cabinet minister, but what is incredible about this man is that he is one of those rare people who actually sticks to his values. It's so easy to say to ourselves that we believe in certain things but, when challenged, how many of us slip slightly to protect ourselves over our values? He didn't. Thus, he is a dude. He is also a great speaker.

If you didn't go yourself, wonderfully you can hear what they all had to say here on the Southbank Centre's website!