Nearly back to normal

Oooh it’s nice to re-enter normal life; I’ve been at Book Club this morning where we started and finished with a gossipy catch up and some book talk in the middle. It went on into the afternoon.

A couple of years ago, at our January Book Club, we met to discuss Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. Because of travelling, entertaining guests or other Christmas mania, nobody managed to give it the attention it deserved. So the following January we introduced a ‘pot luck’ meeting where members bring whatever they’ve been reading and enjoying over Christmas. We each get the floor to tell the others about our book choice.

It always provokes discussions and is often an opportunity to be able to say ‘if you liked that, you might like this…’ I like it because, being fundamentally nosey, I want to know what people choose to read when they aren't being told what to read by Book Club. It has introduced me to books that I might not have considered. Last year there was a lot of debate about Engleby by Sebastian Faulks – it seemed to be a love or hate it read so that was one I followed up with (I loved it.) Today I was reminded of Barbara Trapido, whose work I’ve often meant to read. Can anyone recommend which of her novels I should start with?

One slight hiccough to the ‘back to routine’ is that school started today without either of my children in attendance as both of them are feeling a bit sicky today. Hopefully all will be well tomorrow.

My own hiccough for the day is that I went to sleep when I got home this afternoon. Pah! I berluddy hate jetlag.

Now for something more intelligent...

Last night I finally finished ‘The Children’s Book’ by AS Byatt. I feel like I’ve been reading it forever. I started it one month ago on Koh Chang and I know this because I used some hotel notepaper to write a list of the characters as they were introduced.

I’m not ashamed to say that I picked the book off the shelf because of the stunning cover. My scan here doesn’t do it justice. There’s a lot of gold (the title, the border decoration, and on the artefact) set against a rich mottled blue. It’s beautiful. I read the blurb and much of the novel is set in Romney Marsh which is not far from where my novel is set. The story follows two generations from the end of the 19th century to the end of the First World War.

The story is set constantly within the context of the day – and that’s nearly twenty five years of ‘the day.’ Often it wasn’t woven into the story and the narrative stops for large chunks of political and social comment and background. That said I’m fascinated by the period but it may make it hard to read for those that aren’t. In this respect, it reminded me of Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks. Not just that the period is similar (slightly earlier in the nineteenth century from memory but I can’t recall when the story closes though it does cover the second generation of characters) but also the documentation of long passages of research about psychiatry. Both books took me a long time to read because I am not a skipper of such bits!

The story’s main focus is the family of Olive and Humphrey Wellwood but it extends in some detail to other, interconnected families and individuals. Olive is a famous writer of children’s stories (at a time when it was suggested that the best writing of the day was written for children but read by adults, eg JM Barrie, E Nesbitt and Kenneth Grahame.)

It opens at the V&A Museum when two of the children whose lives we follow discover a boy from ‘Burslem in t’potteries’ hiding in the bowels of the Museum. The boys take their discovery to the grown ups: Olive, and Prosper Cain, the Special Keeper of Precious Metals, whom Olive is consulting for research for one of her books. But this is no Oliver Twist: these people are artists and Fabians and they take the boy in and he is found a place with a local master potter, Benedict Fludd. The Wellwood’s Midsummer party follows rapidly on and we meet more characters, neighbour and theatre director Augustus Steyning and his guest, and old acquaintance of Olive, German puppetmaster, Anselm Stern. Further characters are introduced and the stage is set for the subsequent twenty odd years of saga.

I loved it and I’d really recommend the book to anyone who’s interested in the era.

Now, what book to choose next?