A Doll's House

A Doll's House is a three-act play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and looks into the life of a seemingly typical housewife who becomes disillusioned and dissatisfied with her marriage. The play in its current incarnation has received extraordinary reviews from the British press with Hatty Morahan's turn as Ibsen's protagonist, Nora Helmer, has been hailed as a 'once-in-a-lifetime performance'.

I've seen Morahan on stage and television a number of times and she is a fantastic serious actress but for me she often brings a comedic element to each production, and I can never tell if it's intentional... there's just something about her that makes people smile. In this case, and perhaps it was a conscious decision of the director, the subtle comedy worked perfectly. I don't know about anyone else but after years of studying Arthur Miller, Euguene O'Neil and Tennessee Williams, I've got used to a whole lot of bleak and very little laughter when it comes to drama, which is a shame because comedy, when used well, works brilliantly to both provide relief and/or heighten tension.

Although I've read and seen Ibsen before, I've never known much about A Doll's House and I have to say I loved it. Brilliantly performed, yes, but politically fascinating. I don't want to give away what happens even a little bit but, as everyone has been saying, it's amazing that this play, given its feminist sensibilities, was written in 1879. Simply having a female protagonist must have been controversial and A Doll's House isn't the last time Ibsen does this. Unsurprisingly the play's controversial subject and ending attracted a lot of criticism and outrage with Ibsen being forced to première the play in Germany with an alternative ending due to pressure from his agent and leading actress.

Interestingly, though, Ibsen was adamant that this was not a consciously feminist play, saying in his speech at the Festival of the Norwegian Women's Rights League in 1898 that he"must disclaim the honour of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," as he wrote the play as "the description of humanity [...] without any conscious thought of making propaganda."

On to more important matters, the award for Best Overlooked Performance goes to... the baby. Perfected the cute podgy look, didn't look at all perturbed or utter so much as a whimper - triumph.

Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann

Liza Klaussmann's Tigers in Red Weather tells the story of Nick and her cousin Helena who have grown up together, sharing long hot summers at Tiger House. With husbands and children of their own, they keep returning. But against a background of parties, cocktails, moonlight and jazz, how long can perfection last? There is always the summer that changes everything.

Tigers in Red Weather is a delicious novel, a book that simmers with tension, threat and an intoxicating cocktail of money, sex, heat, boredom and beauty. Gracefully drawn and utterly intriguing, it's the perfect summer blockbuster.

This was the book I was most excited to get reading this summer. It's a good example of some fantastic marketing - fantastic cover, title, a blurb that makes you feel the heat of summer... even when it's snowing in April... and all those wonderfully addictive cliches dropped in - jazz, cocktail parties, materialism, 'the summer that changed everything' etc - that I fall for every time.

Unfortunately, I found the whole book a bit disappointing. I'm not going to say it was bad because it really wasn't. Ostensibly it has some great themes - coming-of-age, crime, forbidden love (and lust) and a little voyeurism thrown in for good measure - but the execution, for me at least, lacked sophistication.

On the character side of things, I found the problem was that I couldn't find anyone to side with. Everyone was flawed, which is fine as otherwise it'd be unrealistic, but none of them were 'nice' people (the 'nice' police will have to excuse that one) and I too often found myself irritated by them.

One thing that Liza Klaussmann did succeed with, though, and the area where I felt the book was faithful to the blurb, was that I really did feel hot reading it. Not in a Fifty Shades kind of way, more that Klaussmann really got across that intense summer heat and the atmosphere that creates. In that way, the world very much came alive for me; I could imagine the huge house, the scorching tennis courts, the sweat dripping, the never-cold water.

Overall, though, it was a disappointing read for me. Probably not fair to have read it straight after Alone in Berlin though... not sure much could compete with that.

It gets a 5/10 from me, I'm afraid.

Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts to star in Hardy film

It's no secret now that my knowledge of the really classic classics, as opposed to, well, The Great Gatsby... I suppose by that I mean classics that are super old and, often, super long and dense... is pretty poor. That said, it won't come as a surprise that I have never read a Thomas Hardy novel. Some of his poems, sure, and I'm always partial to a BBC drama here and there, but I've never completed one of his novels. I think perhaps I was scarred by everyone who studied him at GCSE: "Just sheep. Sheep and more sheep," was pretty much the gist.

That said, I was pretty excited to see that Thomas Vinterberg is doing a new adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd with Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts (if you haven't seen Rust and Bone, just do it. He is beautiful. Marion Cotillard is beautiful. The film is just, well, beautiful). The film will also star Michael Sheen, because it seems most films do and he is pretty good..., and Tom Sturridge, who I have to say I was pretty impressed by in On the Road last year. David Nicholls is on board to write the script, who as it happens also adapted the BBC's 2008 adaptation of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbevilles with Gemma Arterton, and 2012's Great Expectations.

Far From the Madding Crowd, for anyone who doesn't know, follows Bathsheba Everdean who arrives in the village of Weatherbury and manages to capture the heart of three men. There is love but, as with any Hardy novel, there are also consequences.

Apparently this will be the fourth adaptation of the classic for the screen, the most famous starring Julie Christie in 1967, and more recently the novel inspired the comic-strip (and subsequent film), Tamara Drewe.

Right, guess I probably should read it now. We'll see...

Olafur Eliasson, Books and Madrid's Contemporary Arts Festival

Warning: potentially arty farty blog post...

Olafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic contemporary artist and is best known for his large-scale installation art that has appeared in cities across the world. His three most famous pieces were his rainbow panorama at Denmark's ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Aarhus, four man-made waterfalls in New York Harbor, which ranged from 90 to 120 feet high, and his weather project which saw a gigantic sun light up the Turbine Hall at London's Tate Modern.

All three, as well as loads of his other projects, have carried distinct messages - culture, politics, and the guy just loves talking about climate change. Each piece also requires people to contribute to the art in some way, put something in so that it works (be it walking, lying down, listening...), so that change can happen and so that they can experience the art's full potential.

At Madrid's contemporary arts festival this month, Olafur Eliasson's latest project, 'A View Becomes the Window', uses these same ideas to look at the world of books to celebrate them at a time when they are under threat from digital. 

"I love books," he says, "but I'm not afraid of that. In my experience, the printed book has been taking on its own pride. The kind of paper used matters, typography matters, books are books again."

So, what's the piece. Eliasson has made 9 pretty spectacular looking books from hand-blown glass, each page nearly a metre high. Each page is a different colour and each has a hole cut into the centre. These holes, Eliasson insists, are not 'voids' but instead allow you to see the colour of both the page before and the page to come, with the idea being that we must always in the present remember what has happened but also what is to come. So, the colour of each page is determined by the colour of the pages either side but they also reflect whatever is around them - time of day, the room etc - arguably as a book's 'meaning' or message is always, to an extent, a reflection of who the reader is and their subjective response.

Importantly, the 'reader' must turn the pages - they themselves must 'do' something or else nothing changes, nothing happens, the art remains incomplete. Eliasson's overarching message is that books, like anything else, are our 'shared responsiblity'. I couldn't agree more, although that's not to say that we have to completely reject any kind of change...

He's not the only artist to have had their say on books. Perhaps take a look at Anish Kapoor's Wound Book or the aMAZEme installation at the Southbank Centre last year.

Book Club: Alone in Berlin

I'm sorry to have taken some time out on the blog front lately but, after 10 weeks and a little bullying from some people..., I am back! First stop? Book review I think.

Inspired by a true story, Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin is the gripping tale of an ordinary man's determination to defy the tyranny of Nazi rule. This Penguin Classics edition contains an afterword by Geoff Wilkes, as well as facsimiles of the original Gestapo file which inspired the novel.

Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm and the unassuming couple Otto and Anna Quangel. Then the Quangels receive the news that their beloved son has been killed fighting in France. 

Shocked out of their quiet existence, they begin a silent campaign of defiance, and a deadly game of cat and mouse develops between the Quangels and the ambitious Gestapo inspector Escherich. When petty criminals Kluge and Borkhausen also become involved, deception, betrayal and murder ensue, tightening the noose around the Quangels' necks ...

When it was first decided that the next Book Club read would be Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada, I'd had it in my head that this was a contemporary historical novel. I remember seeing posters for it on the tube back in 2009 when it was published and thinking it looked my kind of read. Turns out it was re-released in English in 2009 but it was actually written yonks ago in 1947. This knowledge completely blew my mind and completely changed my entire approach to the book - in front of me now lay a secret, controversial, brave almost-diary of wartime Berlin.

As I've bored you with a number of times, some of my favourite books are what I would call 'mosaic literature' (see, not just Derrida that can make up words to suit his argument...) where you get several snapshots into different lives and worlds. Some of those worlds may overlap, some may not, but you end up with an epic picture of society and the different outlooks/reactions to a particular time or event. This book definitely subscribes to my new genre but of course that doesn't mean it was successful. Only it 100% was successful. Easily one of the best books I've read this year so far, if not the best.

Fallada achieves so much in this novel. But for me his biggest achievement is the way the fear that permeates the entire book feels so immediate, in all its guises. With all the destructiveness and loneliness caused by fear and all our retrospective knowledge of this time in history, it would be easy to read the entire novel and feel completely depressed. Surprisingly, though, it is this 'fear' and people's ability to fight against it, learn from it, is somehow uplifting. That's not to say this is a comedy. Please don't accuse me of saying that... I've made a similar mistake before... I recommended The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and subsequently had a balling woman in front of me, outraged that I would describe it as a children's book...

Anyway, another achievement for Fallada is that his characters are so wonderfully drawn; they aren't black and white, good or bad - they are all completely human and are all subject to the same flaws, same fears as any one else. As a result, Fallada has done one of those rare things by creating a network of characters, none of which do you particularly love, but who are all so strong that you can't help but be drawn in by them. Even the most irritating, weak or depraved characters like serial-adulterer and gambler Enno Kluge or members of the Gestapo stir something.

For me, though, it's not just the story itself and Fallada's writing that makes this book a modern classic, as Penguin has credited it. It is the whole background: the historical backdrop, obviously; the fact the novel is based based on a true case (and I'd recommend not Wikipedia-ing the story until you've read the novel...); but also Fallada himself, as a man, as a writer. His personal story is both disturbing and fascinating and gives you an idea of just where this story has come out of.

I could keep going on about this book, it's good points and bad - there are just so many things (characters, events, the writing, the ending... the list goes on) that I could talk about but I shall leave this review here and just say, go read it.

Book club gave it an 8/10 - think it might be a record! I give it a 9/10.