The Boring Lives of Others

Some of you might remember "Privileges" by Jonathan Dee which I reviewed a while ago and today, time has come to review his novel "Palladio". I had looked so much forward to reading this book because "Privileges" was so amazing and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Dee's writing. His writing is incredibly skilled and he can do things with words that few authors manage. He is an artist and his ability to tell a story is great. 

The story that Dee tells in "Palladio" is a story of star-crossed fates, maybe even star-crossed lovers. Molly grows up in suburbia in a dysfunctional home where love is sadly lacking and in depression, frustration and an attempt to find love, she does something that leads her to be ostracized not just from the town but from her family as well. She feels to Berkeley, where she meets John, a young, impressionable man who falls head over heels in love with her. When Molly one day disappears without any clue to why or where she is, she leaves behind a wound in John's soul that never quite heals. 
Years later, John is successful in the fickle world of advertising when the enfant terrible, the prodigy of the advertising world, Mal Osbourne, tempts him to leave New York in pursuit of art and adventure. John takes the leap to Virginia and becomes an important piece of the puzzle that is Osbourne's empire. But then one day, out of the blue, his and Molly's paths cross again. 

Despite all of his talent, his beautiful artistry, "Palladio" did not work for me. For a very specific reason.  The two main characters, Molly and John, are annoying, frustrating and I found them impossible to empathize with. John is a gutless whiner who takes no responsibility for his life and just lets it happen to him without taken active part. He is an anti-hero but not a lovable one. Molly is to be pitied. If John is not a pilot in his own airplane of life, she is not even an air hostess, hardly even a passenger. Throughout most of the book she is depressed and she lets the depression guide her life, lets it take control and steer her away from anything that might call on her passion, her will to live not just survive. It is impossible to feel any love, any  empathy, any interest in these two. 

The story is fantastic, it's a really good story, but the characters leave me cold. I can't help wishing that Dee had told the story from the angle of Mal Osbourne instead. This maverick of a man, a dreamer with little to no interest in his fellow men, is so much more interesting even if he is not more likeable. The story would still have been difficult to empathise with but at least it would have had the advantage of a dramatic protagonist. 

Read it if: You think your life sucks or you think you're a boring person -  Molly and John will put this into perspective!

So what do modern women want?

Everyone wants the answer to that question - from men to marketing companies, there are plenty of people who would pay big money for the answer. I don't have it but this summer I've been reading through a whole bunch of feminist, modern-womens books in the hope of finding the answer to this and other equally important questions. And I think there's a book I will need to have for my journey, a guide books of sorts. Namely "The Feminist Bestseller: From Sex and the Single Girl to Sex and the City" by Imelda Whelehan. 

This is what it says on amazon.co.uk: 
Imelda Whelehan provides an overview of popular women's writing from the late 1960s to the present, looking at how key feminist texts such asThe Women's Room, Kinflicks and Fear of Flying have influenced popular contemporary fiction such as Bridget Jones' Diary and Sex and the City. Whelehan reconsiders the links between the politics of feminist thought, action and writing and creative writing over the past 30 years and suggests that even so-called 'post feminist' writing owes an enormous debt to feminism's second wave.

Have you read it and can you recommend it? 

The Japanese Godmother of the Fifty Shades Segment

Though "Snakes and Earrings" by Hitomi Kanehara is a short book, very short really, it is one that leaves an impression. The first time I read it was a few years ago. I was on my way out to shop for dinner just as it started raining, so I decided to read for a few minutes to see if it would clear and picked up "Snakes and Earrings" and started on it. It did clear up relatively fast but by then I was deep in reading and I didn't stop reading until I had read the last page. Dinner was delayed by almost two hours.

It is a forceful book and though I rarely say this about any book, this one is not for the fainthearted or for the young. Though it was written by Hitomi Kanehara when she was only 21, I would not recommend it to anyone below the age of 18 as it contains some really explicit scenes of sex and violence.

Lui is a young Japanese woman who is emotionally fragile and depressed. Her boyfriend Ama is an emo, goth type who loves piercings and body modifications and while living with him, Lui starts shedding her pop girl image and exploring the darker fashions, eventually deciding that she wants to split her tongue. To do so she first needs to have her tongue pierced and then gradually make the hole larger and larger. Ama takes her to a friend of his who is specialised in tattoos and piercings and from the very first second there is a fierce sexual chemistry between the piercer and Lui. It is a not a healthy love-at-first sight we are talking about here but a dark, sadomasochistic sexual current. One where there is only a short distance between pleasure and pain, between living and dying.

Kanehara takes her protagonist to the very darkest of places, the deepest despair and a pain that is difficult to handle. It is a beautifully written story. Every word is just right. It is no surprise that it won several awards and has already been made into a film. Don't cheat yourself of this read though you might be repulsed by some of the topics or the actions of the characters - it will stay with you for a long time as it did with me.

Read it if: You want a painful but authentic story that will pierce you with its words. You want a book that deals with sex in a very different way to the 50 Shades type books.

Is it really Super in Cannes?

Ever dreamt of emigrating to France? In the U.K. it seems like it is a dream that  most people entertain every once in a while. Paris is just on the other side of the Channel and if you then drive south for a few hours, you'll be in the beautiful Provencal countryside where a smell of lavender is in the air and where all the women are gorgeous in that French way. At least that seems to be the perception and it definitely is the vision that Paul and his wife Jane from J. G. Ballard's novel "Super-Cannes" have when they up sticks and move to Cannes.

Jane is a 27-year-old doctor who married Paul, an older man and a pilot, while he was in the hospital after a nasty flying accident. When she is offered a role as a resident doctor at the prestigious Eden-Olympia business park just outside Cannes, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Leaving a grey, miserable London behind and pursuing the possibilities that a great laboratory and lots of funding will provide. Paul, the protagonist of the story, is happy to tag along. He is head over heels in love with his teenage doctor, as he calls her, and he is still recovering from the accident and is hoping that the sun and the lazy days by the poolside will do him good.
As they settle into the pace of life at Eden-Olympia, a modern piece of paradise where all you need is inside the gates, Paul starts to become restless. In his restlessness he begins to ask questions - what happened to the doctor who previously held Jane's position? Why did he suddenly (?) snap and murder ten people in a shooting spree? And were they victims chosen at random or were they carefully selected?
Early on it becomes clear that there is more lurking beneath the surface of paradise than visible to the naked eye but what it is and how it will impact the lives of Jane and Paul remains hidden until the last pages of this thrilling novel.

"Super-Cannes" is exceptionally well-written. If you are one of those people who like mystery or thriller novels but hate the fact that the majority of them are thrash, written by people who are not exactly good at writing... then "Super-Cannes" will be for you. It is so subtle and elegant, yet despite the sunkissed setting, it sent shivers down my spine. It is so scary and the reality that Paul is trying to navigate is so distorted that he loses sight of everything but the mystery.

Read it if: You like stories about what happens behind the facade. If you like a well-written psychological thriller.

The Poet, His Girl and Her Brother

Ever since reading "The Line of Beaty", I have been an avid admirer of the beautiful prose and the twisted characters of the author Alan Hollinghurst. With regards to the prose, at times, it is more like poetry. He writes the way I wish I could. The way most authors wish they could. As a first class magician he takes normal words, shuffles them and transforms them into art, making us believe that it is not about skill or talent but about pure magic. In "The Stranger's Child", Alan Hollinghurst has taken this gift for magical writing, honed it, fine-tuned it, so that we are left with not a book but a work of art. However, as magical as the writing is, the story is even better. 

 In 1913 George Sawle is home from Cambridge on a visit and with him, he has a friend, the semi-famous poet Cecil Valance who, it turns out, is more than just a friend. At George's childhood home Two Acres, his mother and sister welcome Cecil and for the 16-year-old sister Daphne, the meeting with Cecil comes to change her life. At the end of the weekend, Cecil writes a poem, a romantic celebration of love and the English garden, in Daphne's autograph book and in the decades following, this poem comes to symbolize England on the brink of war while shaping the destinies of several of the characters in the novel. 

Hollinghurst's ability to make small parts of the history of England come to live is astonishing. The first story takes place in 1913, in a still innocent Edwardian England, full of fragrant country gardens. The next takes us to the 1920s, the innocence has been stolen by a World War and families are left amputated as the trenches in France claimed the lives of their sons. Then years pass and we are in the late 1960s, the second World War still fresh in memory and the English still feeling the pinch. Then a short jump to the late 1970s where the world has changed and the fortunes of the great and the good have transformed - gone are the servants and the grand houses, surburbia is on the rise.  

It is without doubt one of the best books I've read this year. Actually more than just this year, in a long long time. It is an absolutely wonderful story, told with elegance, humour and a feeling for passing of time and the evolving of history. 
The characters are interesting and easy to sympathize with and every time the story jumped to another era, I found myself searching the pages for my favourite characters, eager to find out what had happened to them. It's immmensely satisfying to follow the characters for so many years, even the ones whose development disappoints and whose flaws become more and more apparent. For me, that is one of the real strenghts of Hollinghurst's book - that he keeps the reader engaged (to the point of blocking out the rest of the world) without losing the integrity of the characters and the story.

Read it if: You haven't already read it.

Dear Mr. Postman, what have you got for me?

Hopefully, very soon, my good friend the postman will  bring me a little something in the mail. A few somethings actually, some presents from me to me. 

Laced With Romance and Clichés

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Fear of Flying, Fondness of F......

Did my headline seem like a bit much? If so, I'm sorry. Well, not really. If I'm being totally honest, it sums up "Fear of Flying" by Erica Jong rather nicely, I think.


This is not the kind of sex that you find in "50 Shades of Whatever" and its counter-parts. It's dirty, yes, but mostly because the people taking part in the sexual acts haven't had a shower in days... The sex in "Fear of Flying" is more real, not stylized in any way and way cooler than a lot of the drivel in the market at the moment. 


Isadora Wing is a 29-year old divorced and remarried author. Having married and divorced her clinically insane college boyfriend, she is now married to psychoanalyst Bennett and together they are attending a psychoanalysts' conference in Vienna. What better setting for a comedic drama than a room full of psychoanalysts all peddling their individual interpretation of Freud and Jung? While in Vienna, Isadora falls in lust with the psychoanalyst (yes there are a lot of them in this book, somewhere close to 120) Adrian Goodlove who appears to Isadora to be able to supply her with something that she has always wanted: the zipless fuck. As in an anonymous, non-commital, passionate roll in the hay. 
This is a love triangle unlike any I've come across in a novel before, especially as it is terribly short on love, and it causes Isadora to think back and consider her history with men in particular and with her own sense of self in general. 


As a main character, Isadora is interesting because she's bloody annoying. She is indecisive and does not know her own mind. She's frustrated with her sisters for looking down on her for not having children, yet condescends their life decisions. She is passive when she should be proactive, then stumbles mindlessly into trouble when she should be considering the best line of action. Yet somehow, she is also likeable, probably because she puts herself through an awful lot in the hope that things will end up right. Some will be appalled by what has been deemed her promiscuity but sex for Isadora is about more than the physical act, for her it seems to be a tool used to explore her own identify. She is on a journey of self-discovery and her fear of flying is not only literal but also a symbol of her fear of searching for herself and for her own identity instead of searching for a man whose identity she can mould herself on.   


It could all get a bit stuffy (especially as so many psychoanalysts are involved) but actually it is a really funny book, particularly the parts involved Isadora's sisters who really are quite a bunch. When it comes to dumb remarks and stupid decisions, they are up there with the Bennett sisters from "Pride and Prejudice". 


This is the thinking young woman's book. If you are a 18 to 20-year-old considering whether to spend your money on 50 Shades, please pick up "Fear of Flying" instead. It'll give you much more to think about and to consider, about yourself and your generation, about your mother's generation, about men and about sex.


Read it if: You're a woman between the ages of 18 and 60 with a sense of humour and an appetite for passion. 

Women in a Time of Change

A while back I read "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe and my review was pretty raving: I loved it! So when I heard that others who like "The Best of Everything", also liked Mary McCarthy's "The Group", there was no way around it. I had to have it. Last week, when my boyfriend and I went on vacation, I started reading "The Group" on the train to Gatwick airport and pretty much from the first page, I was hooked. 


"The Group" is a eight young women, all graduates of Vassar, who become close friends during their college years. The novel follows them as they leave their college days behind to pursue love, careers and plans for the future. As characters, they are very different and the focus of the novel shifts from one girl to the next so that we get to understand their individual stories one at a time while glimpsing the all of them in each others stories. It is a genius way to to tell the story of this group of girls and it kept me reading furiously, as I tried to understand how their lives interwove and how their actions impacted each other. 


What becomes very clear from the stories of these girls is, that they are living in time of change. World War I, the depression, the changing roles of women, of marriage, of sex. These are a generation of women who have to find their own way in life because the world has changed tremendously since their mothers were young. They are all keen to make a difference, to do something meaningful with their lives in a world where nothing is as it once was. As a historical novel, it works beautifully. 


For me, however, the history aspects were an advantage but not the main advantage. I found that one of the best things about "The Group" is that there are no clear goodies or baddies emerging from the stories, each of us readers will root for a different girl and who we root for might change. Personally, I found the bohemian "women who loves too much" Kay slightly exasperating and Priss made me want to shake some sense into her. However, I suspect that many others will see Kay as a hero because of her fierce pursuit of her ambition to "do good" in New York. 


My favourites changed a bit as I read but at the end of the book, I was found that three girls had made most impression on made and had come closest to my heart: 


Dottie for her robbed innocence and her steely character as she realizes that sometimes the happy ending will look different to what we imagined. 


Polly for her maturity and her insistence that what counts is that she is happy - not other peoples perception of her or her circumstances in life. 


And last but not least the beautiful and fascinating Lakey who is understood to live a charmed existence in glamorous Europe but who turns out to be the girl who may have most to fight for. 


Read it if: You like "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe, "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann. You wouldn't mind going back in time and visiting 1930s New York. 

Packing Up the Books

The time has come - there are only a few days left until I go on holiday and I have now officially started packing. Most girls would probably start with their dresses and bikinis but I have to admit that I start differently. With my books. The rights books can make a vacation just that much better. Lazing on the beach or in a flowery garden with a fantastic book is one of the best things ever! Pure bliss!

So here is what I will be bringing with me as summer reading: 

The Group by Mary McCarthy

From amazon.com: Mary McCarthy’s most celebrated novel follows the lives of eight Vassar graduates, known simply to their classmates as “the group.” An eclectic mix of personalities and upbringings, they meet a week after graduation to watch Kay Strong get married. After the ceremony, the women begin their adult lives—traveling to Europe, tackling the worlds of nursing and publishing, and finding love and heartbreak in the streets of New York City. 

The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst

From amazon.com: In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge schoolmate—a handsome, aristocratic young poet named Cecil Valance—to his family’s modest home outside London for the weekend. George is enthralled by Cecil, and soon his sixteen-year-old sister, Daphne, is equally besotted by him and the stories he tells about Corley Court, the country estate he is heir to. But what Cecil writes in Daphne’s autograph album will change their and their families’ lives forever: a poem that, after Cecil is killed in the Great War and his reputation burnished, will become a touchstone for a generation, a work recited by every schoolchild in England. Over time, a tragic love story is spun, even as other secrets lie buried—until, decades later, an ambitious biographer threatens to unearth them.

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

From play.com: Compulsive daydreamer Isadora Wing doesn't want much - just to be free and to find the perfect, guiltless, zipless sexual encounter. Pursuing this ideal across two continents, she discovers just how hard it can be to make one's dreams come true. Though Isadora fears flying (in all possible senses), she forces herself to keep travelling, risking her marriage and even her life for her own special brand of liberation. This intensely witty and exuberant novel is about how she achieves her freedom and loses her fear.

The Leopard by Guiseppe di Lampedusa

From amazon.com: Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time.

Review: "What the Nanny Saw" by Fiona Neill

Interesting genre, the nanny literature. A close sister of the governess literature and sometimes a twin of the chick lit. As confessed in an earlier post, I have a thing for books about nannies. Not sure why but it is a topic that interests me so when I saw that Fiona Neill, who has previously made me laugh out loud when I read her book "The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy", had written a book about a nanny, I had to read it. 


Ali Sparrow is an English Lit student who is barely making end meets so when she sees an advertisement seeking a nanny for a busy, professional London family, she takes a year off to improve her financial situation. She's quite ambiguous about the whole thing but the money is too much of a temptation so suddenly she finds herself abandoning her life as a poor student to move in at one of the most expensive, posh addresses in London. It is a different world. Bryony and Nick has everything that money can buy except from time for their kids so Ali has to learn how to deal with four kids, a housekeeper and the other nannies in the neighbourhood. Yes, that is about as difficult as it sounds. 


How would you deal with young twins speaking in their own, private, invented language? Or a teenage girl with bulimia and goth tendencies? Or a teenage boy who sticks to himself and is very difficult to "nanny"? 
Not easy right? And we haven't even gotten to the adults yet... The controlling grandparents, the picture perfect wife and the banker husband. It takes all her social skills to navigate that cast of more or less eccentric characters is great fun! 


It's a light read, created for entertainment and sure to make you laugh. As a comedy it works wonderfully. However, it is also an attempt at a commentary on the financial crisis, on greed, on bankers who earn vast sums of money and spend it on champagne but it doesn't work well as a reprimand. Neill should have stuck to what she does best: commentary on the haves and the haves-more-than-you-ever-imagined. Her observations about the ways of the astronomically rich upper class Londoners is hilarious, she does that better than anyone else. 


Read it if: You subscribe to The Times mainly to read the "Slummy Mummy" column. You don't mind stereotypes as long as they're funny. 

The Two Sides of Italy

As I've mentioned before (but will mention again because I'm literally counting down the days), I will very soon be off for a week or so in Italy. London seems to have forgotten what summer is about and instead of sun, we've had rain, rain, rain, rain. So lazy days of sunshine and pasta sounds heavenly to me and I can't wait to go. I've been preparing by reading non-fiction books about Italy and today I'll share my opinions of two of these with you - they each give an honest account of life in Italy but oh what different lives they tell of. 

"Extra Virgin" by Annie Hawes
This is the most wonderfully life-affirming story of two young British women, who are fed up by the London weather and price levels (oh do I know that feeling!) and flee to Italy for a summer of rose-pruning. In the small, traditional village of Diano San Pietro, Annie falls in love head over heels in a small hovel of a house that she and her sister buys on a whim. In the following years, they live part-time in the Ligurian mountains (to enjoy life) and part-time in London (to make money enough to enjoy life) and "Extra Virgin" is the story of how two very British women who know nothing about olives (the horror!!) learn to adapt to the Italian way of life where every piece of string or wood can be fashioned into furniture and where food is something that you forage for in the mountains and turn into feasts. 
The worst thing about this book is that it left me perpetually hungry for proper Italian food. Go away Pizza Express, I want a proper meal of antipasti, primo, secondo and homemade wine. 
It is a fantastic non-fiction book because Annie conjures up the characters with such vividness that they leap off the pages. It is a book about people and about the Italian spirit and it is absolutely gorgeous. This is la dolce vita sprinkled with village feuds and a dash of fresh olive oil. 

"Gomorrah" by Roberto Saviano
Have you been to Napoli? We went there a few years ago on a daytrip and I wasn't impressed. Everything was dirty and people were less than welcoming. It was a different Italy to the one I knew - which is mainly Liguria, Umbria, Piemonte, Tuscany and Rome. This was crime capital in a way that I hadn't imagined. At all. 
So when I started reading "Gomorrah", I had a clear picture of Napoli in my mind but it was nowhere near as horrible as the picture painted in this book. It's divided into sections focusing on the different types of crime happening in Napoli and spreading not only across Italy but across Europe and the world, like rings in water. There is the smuggling from China, the workers in small, factories in Napoli sewing designer clothes that end up as far away as the Academy Awards red carpet in Hollywood. There is the drug cartels, supplying Italy with cheap heroin and testing the drugs on volunteers who'll do anything for a free fix, even die. The toxic waste dumping and the mountains of landfill waste. And then there's the violence. Everyone in Napoli might not be involved with mafia-like gangs but everyone is a potential victim in their wars. 
It is not a happy read, it won't make you feel good. It will probably make you feel worried, even scared. But it is an important book because it deals with a topic that no one wants to touch out of fear for repercussions. When I closed it, having read the last page, I admired Saviano that he had the courage to write this book and hope that it will inspire others to do the same. 

Review: "Cassandra at the Wedding" by Dorothy Baker

Take one motherless, disillusioned, obsessive, neurotic grad student battling to finish her thesis and trying to come to term with her twin sister's wedding. Add a swimmingpool, a stiff drink, a wedding dress disaster and a whole lot of unspoken tension. Recipe for disaster? So I should think.

Cassandra is going home to her childhood home to celebrate the wedding of her twin sister Judith to a young doctor. It is a joyous occasion for everyone - apart from Cassandra. For her it is a horror story. She and Judith used to do everything together but when Judith met her fiancee what was supposed to be the future was suddenly the past. The possibility that one of them might end up getting married and setting up home with someone else has never crossed Cassandra's mind and when the reader meets her, she is in a state of shock. As the book progresses, Cassandra seems to get more and more erratic and angry, her actions becoming increasingly selfish and destructive at the same time.

"Cassandra at the Wedding" by Dorothy Baker is a classic. It is at the same time funny, heartbreaking, sad, tender and beautiful. Cassandra's difficulty coping with her sister's marriage becomes more and more encompassing until it obliterates her sense of perspective completely. What is so impressive is that even though Cassandra behaves like a selfish, spoiled brat towards her family, her sister, her sister's fiancee, it is impossible not to like her and not to empathize with her.
Dorothy Baker has given her such a strong voice that the reader will not fail to see the story from Cassandra's angle. Even when she is horrible, I still felt for her and that is the strength of this book.

The story itself and Cassandra herself is actually pretty sad. She is so miserable, so unable to find her place in life, yet it is told with a certain cheerfulness. The juxtaposition enhances the misery yet highlights that for everyone around Cassandra, for her immediate family, this is a time for celebration, while for her it is more like a funeral than a wedding and her mourning are a pair of glasses that colours how she sees all the events around her.

At the same time, Cassandra and Judith can be seen as representing a very exciting historical period in American history. Judith follows a traditional pattern, getting married, laying her ambitions aside to devote herself to her husband and let their life be dictated by his career. Cassandra is the modern woman who finds this incredibly difficult to accept and who instead follows her ambitions and her heart. She has no interest in men and actually behaves quite masculine herself at times but she feels out of place and cannot find her way.

Read it if: You like to be challenged by a clever story with realistic and not necessarily likeable characters. If you like a 1960s vibe and reflections on the changing roles of women.

Review: "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe

Some books  retain their freshness decade after decade, never losing their relevance. "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe is one of those books. It is truly special. Published in 1958, it was written during the 1950s when women wore smart skirt suits to the office and only worked to fill the time until they could get married. Preferably to a man with a good enough job to fund a house with double-garage and school fees for two children. Last year, apparently, the book got a bit of a renaissance because it was featured on Mad Men - however, I found it thanks to you wonderful people in the blogosphere!

Every day young women flood out of the subway stations in central New York making their way to the city's offices. One of them is Caroline, a young graduate from a good college, who discovers that she has ambitions and slowly starts to work her way up in the world of publishing. While working for a publishing company in the glamourous Rockefeller Center, she meets the obsessive actress Gregg who becomes her flatmate, the beautiful April who is as terrible with men as she is with personal finance and the successful single mother Barbara, divorced at the tender age of 21.

As chapter after chapter weaves their stories together into one story, I felt like these girls became my friends. Their world absorbed me completely and as they experienced bad romances, difficulties in their careers and worry about families and futures, I became more and more enthralled to the story. When the last page turned, it felt completely wrong. I just did not want to let go. I craved knowledge of what happened next and the last few days, I have been thinking about all of them, especially about Caroline and Barbara.

It is a story of looking for love and finding instead sex, friendship or rejection. Of trying to figure out whether to pursue a career or while away the hours until a walk to the altar. It is absolutely fascinating and many of the observations are as relevant today as they were then. Like the lecherous senior executive who will grab any female thigh when he's had a bit too much to drinks or the girl who brings even her bridal underwear to work in order to get the approval and envy of her colleagues. It resonates with me as a modern office girl and I found the office politics very familiar, just as the trouble that these girls experience with prioritising family, work and boyfriends is just like the stuff that my friends and I talk about today.

The beauty of this book is in its relevance, in the way that all girls will recognize something of themselves in these girls even though the books was written over fifty years ago. Also it is beautifully written with every girl's voice being distinct and characteristic.

Read it if: You enjoyed "The Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles" or "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann. You prefer a good book to a re-run episode of Sex & The City.

50 Shades of Boring

The last few years it has seemed like one hyped booked after another has taken the book markets with storm and in a way that is great. It keeps interest in the industry and hopefully brings in people that otherwise wouldn't read but it also means that some genres get put in a box. 
If you haven't heard of "50 Shades of Grey" by E.L. James, I have to asked where you have been for the last few months because this book has been everywhere. Literally swept the globe, invading book shop after book shop and defining a new genre that goes by the name mommy porn. Which in my humble opinion is a horrible name and evokes some nasty pictures reminiscent of Stifler's mom but that's besides the point. The point is that this is one of those hyped books that I can't figure out whether I like or hate. 
The story about it is more interesting that the plot as it were. It started out as a fan fiction blog imagining a heavily sexual relationship between Edward Cullen and Bella Swan of Twilight. Oh yes, someone actually got so fed of with the lack of s.e.x. and abundance of lukewarm romance in the Twilight books that they took matters into their own hands. Well done and a fun idea but if you ask me, it doesn't really work as a book. 
The heroine is a young woman called Ana. Short for Anastacia. She is pretty without knowing it, clumsy and quite bookish - not a party girl. So far, so Bella (though Bella is not bookish, I guess). By coincidence she meets the very handsome, very rich, very eligible Christian Grey who turns out to be a bit of a pervert who doesn't do girlfriends but instead have young women sign contracts detailing their relationships. Sounds pervy, doesn't it? 
In the end, it isn't. Not really. The first book was okay, entertaining, it had novelty factor and I will admit that Christian Grey is quite a catch. But by book three, I was so weary of the same boring sex scenes over and over and over that I skipped them. And then you might as well not read the bloody book in the first place. 
So instead of writing up reviews of all three books and driving myself nuts in the process, here comes the list of all of the things that annoyed me about the three "50 Shades..." books:

• All of the characters apart from Ana and at times Christian are decidedly 2-D and lack personality. 
• The ridiculous psycho-babble about why Christian Grey is who he is - who gives a ....?
• The fact that Ana climbs the career ladder faster than you can say casting couch.
• The cover art. Cringe.
• The way it airbrushes sex (no limbs get in the way, nothing is ever awkward). 
• The focus on all things material - I don't want to know the brand of her shoes!
• The fact that it is hyped up to be boundary-breaking when really it is very very vanilla (as Christian would say). 
• Book three. All of it. Every single bloody page.

Read it if: You are curious what the hype is about. You have never read erotic fiction before and want to be put off it forever. 

Review: "Palladian" by Elizabeth Taylor

There is a smell of history, old days about this book - not about my actual copy but about the story. It is not the fusty, musty smell of something old and shoved-away-into-a-corner-of-the-attic, it is more like the smell of distant memories. A smell of a silk dress hanging in a wardrobe, a smell of good quality tea leaves and autumn leaves falling from teas. It is a good thing, a good smell. 


"Palladian" is a governess novel, much in the tradition of Jane Eyre. The poor, orphaned Cassandra Dashwood (a nod to Jane Austen whose sister was called Cassandra and who wrote about the Dashwood sisters?) is not all alone in the world. Her former head mistress and now friend Mrs. Turner has found her a position as a governess with a good, wealthy family and now she has to leave her childhood behind and take charge of someone elses. 
Being a young, bookish, shy and timid girl, Cassandra is not the best suited person to fit into a family where everyone have their cross to bear and their secrets to hide. 
Marion Vanbrugh is a widower whose love of books and Greek has left him with little interest in the real world whereas his brother Tom is so bruised by reality that he sedates himself with drink and sex. Aunt Tinty suffers from anxiety to a degree where it is almost disabling her but which nobody acknowledges. Pregnant Margaret has much to be happy about, her pregnancy, her career as a doctor, but she is depressed and unhappy and snaps at people at every turn. Nanny has seen better days, nothing is as good now as it once was, it is all going to the dogs...
Sophy Vanbrugh, Cassandra's young charge, is a ray of sunlight even though she has a morbid fascination with graveyards and funerals and fears that she will never be as beautiful as her late mother. 


It is a novel that is hard to pin down. Some pages are so sad that I wanted to stop reading, while others are full of hope and Cassandra's youthful optimism. It is beautiful, the words building a little world so full of characters and all of them come to life, none are left one-dimensional. 
In "Palladian", Elizabeth Taylor draws on great authors such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Daphne du Maurier, yet the novel is fully her own. It is a bittersweet story full of sadness yet with little sparkles of humour and love. It is a joy to read and while reading the second half, I was unable to put it down, so enchanted was I with the story. 


Read it if: Your favourite Jane Austen heroine is Anne Elliott. If you enjoy Virago classics and a good cup of tea. 


For other bloggers' review of "Palladian", try:
Booksnob
Fleur Fish in her World
Heavenali

Snow White and The Huntsman - a far cry from fairytale

This is a test. If I say Snow White, which image springs to mind? Let me guess... a young lady with black hair, a yellow, blue and red dress, large eyes, surrounded by squirrels and a birds and all kinds of cute animals. It is the Disney Snow White I am referring to... I have a feeling that for many of us, she is who springs to mind when we hear the words Snow White. 
The original Snow White, however, was the main character of a German fairy tale and as with most fairy tales, there are several versions but the most famous one is probably the one told by the Brothers Grimm in Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs. Though the queen in the Disney version is quite grim, she is nowhere near as scary as the original queen in the Grimm version who, upon finding out that Snow White (at the tender age of seven) has grown more beautiful than herself, commands a huntsman to take Snow White into the forrest, kill her and bring back her organs... oh yes, pretty nasty stuff. 
Snow White is getting the big overhaul this year with Hollywood bringing out not just one but two versions of the fairy tale. "Mirror, Mirror" looks quite cute and pretty-ish whereas "Snow White and the Huntsman" is going for a darker version of the story. 
My boyfriend and I went to see "Snow White and the Huntsman" at a late screening recently. There was only seven people in the cinema and we settled in to enjoy what we expected to be an action-packed adventure but unfortunately left with a bit of a meh feeling. 


The good parts were: 

• Kristen Steward who adds character and steely courage to Snow White. She is pretty but she is also a really tough girl who takes on the queen and her beauty is more about what is on the inside than what is on the outside. 
• Charlize Theron as the evil queen. Magnificent. 
• The dwarfs are cool! They are not cute and they are not funny like the Disney versions, they are hardcore warriors fighting to survive.
• The costumes, especially the queens dresses, are spectacular and the scenery in the dark forrest is really well-made with a spooky atmosphere. 

The not so good parts: 

• The huntsman doesn't do it for me - it might be prosaic but I kept thinking that he could do with a shower and a shave... He just was a bit too much of a pretty boy made rough only by grime and beard, they should have gone for someone a bit more rugged. 
• The enchanted forrest. Dear me... they could have gone a bit lighter on the fairies, not to mention the deer. It was too much, next time stick closer to real nature which is amazing enough without the added sparkly and glitter. Did Twilight and sparkly vampires teach you nothing people? 
• The ending. Too fast and too little time and energy spent on tying up the lose ends. 

Watch it if: You have a thing for fairytales and loved Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. You want to see Kristen Steward in a role that is a bit more Joan of Arc and a bit less damsel in distress. 

Move over Mary Poppins!

We've probably all been there - working as a nanny. Some of us only a few times, watching kids while their parents were out for dinner or at the cinema, others of you readers may have worked as au pairs or live-in nannies. Or some of you might be planning to. I have only done the occasional night of babysitting but I have a thing for nanny novels. I love reading about nannies, not sure why but I do. So here are three good nanny novels:

"What the Nanny Saw" by Fiona Neill
Ali is an English student fighting to make enough money to make it through university so when she spots an opportunity to take a year out from university and come back debt-free, she jumps at it. Soon she finds herself at the center of the family living in the most expensive villa on Holland Park Crescent in London. The Skinners are filthy rich and as both mum and dad works long hours in the world of finance, Ali is left with a lot of responsibility for the children: two teenagers and a pair of four-year-old twins. When the family's life is shook by the downfall of Lehman Brothers, Ali has to decide where her loyalty lies and fight to separate her own personal life from her job as a nanny.

"The Diary of an American Au Pair" by Marjorie Leet Ford
Newly jobless and with a wedding just cancelled, Melissa wants to make a real change in her life so she takes on a job as a live-in nanny with a London family. Arriving in the United Kingdom with a suitcase full of romantic fantasies about life in London, she soon realises that these are indeed just fantasies. She is regarded as a bit of a curiosity - an American girl - and finds it hard adjusting to a life which is very much led under the motto of "Make do or mend". Fresh bathwater and heating is seen as a luxury even though she gets to visit splendid castles and meet fascinating people. It is a steep learning curve and perfect if you are considering moving to the United Kingdom.

"The Nanny Diaries" by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
Manhattan mums seem to spend very little time actually mothering their children in this novel. Instead they get their hair and make-up done, have time for facials and shopping and spend large amounts of money decorating and re-decorating after which they host parties to show if the re-decorations and the new clothes. Nanny is a young lady who works as a nanny for one of these mums. Her charge is the cutest little boy whom a flux of nannies and a lack of maternal love has left insecure and lonely. As the story progresses, Nanny grows to love him and he learns to trust her as they both struggle to survive in a household where a nanny is worth less than a Hermes bag and where a little boy is just an accessory.

Review: "Cityboy" by Geraint Anderson

Ever wondered why bankers make so much money? This book won't give you the answer but it will tell you all sorts of other things about bankers... Stuff that seems too outrageous to be true. Now, I am not one for generalisations but Geraint Anderson, author of "Cityboy Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile" is quite a credible storyteller. He started writing the "Cityboy" column for a London newspaper, while working in banking and has years in the industry to use as material for what is a semi-biographical book.


"Cityboy" is the story of a young man, a real hippy with a German-inspired ponytail and an aspirational goatee, who is offered a job in the city as a stockbroker after a rather haphazard job interview that takes place in a noisy pub. He jumps on the chance to make some money but as the years roll by and he finds himself becoming more and more successful at work, he seems to lose himself more and more in a spiral of drugs, greed and gold diggers. 
Driven by a serious competitive streak, our hero fights his way through an incredibly large number of boozy lunches, dinners that turn into all-nighters and all-day drinking sessions that turn into cocain-fuelled mornings after. On this journey from innocent hippy to disillusioned professional, our hero meets some pretty stereotypical people who all represent a certain type of person that the author has met in his working life in city and they help illustrate the tale of craziness. From the self-made trader with a penchant for stripper and orange-tanned Essex golddiggers to the mathematical genius with no social skills, it is a parade of stereotypes but somehow it works. 


So what did I make of this book? It is somewhere in that strange grey zone between fact and fiction but most of all it is fun. Don't read it for the prose because in terms of writing, it's no beauty - at times it is even a bit annoying. Don't read it for the opinions on the world of finance, there are better books for that. Read it for the humour and the stereotypes. Read it to recognize people you meet on the tube in the morning and to appreciate your own colleagues more. 


Read it if: Your favourite book is "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis. Your or your partners works in banking. You are a part of the Occupy movement and want to hear the nasty tales from an insider. 

Italian books?

In less than two months, my boyfriend and I will be going to Italy on vacation and I cannot wait! So in (eager) anticipation I'm planning to read lots of books about Italy or by Italian authors but I have to admit that I find it difficult to find good ones. So this is an official call for help! Please please please recommend books that I can read to get in the dolce vita mode. 


So far, these are on my list to read: 

Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted by Annie Hawes

From amazon.co.uk: "Fed up with cold, foggy London and the high cost of real estate, Annie Hawes is persuaded by her sister Lucy to travel to Italy and graft roses for the winter. The sisters arrive in rural Liguria with some formal Italian, no knowledge of rose grafting, and visions of Mediterranean men and sun. What they find is a town full of hard-working, wary olive growers smack in the middle of an olive oil depression who think these two young Englishwomen are nuts. Extra Virgin tells the story of the sisters' acclimation--theirs to Liguria and Liguria to them--and how they fell in love with a crumbling farmhouse in the hills."

Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano

From amazon.co.uk: "Saviano has created a perfectly realized, morally compelling journey through the brutal world of contemporary Italian mob life in this ceaselessly violent tale of the Camorra, a network of thugs, exploiters and killers who run Naples and the surrounding countryside. Armed with a police band radio, Saviano visits one crime scene after another, recording the final words and circumstances of the dying and dead. The murders described are savage, cruel and senseless: The head... hadn't been cut off with a hatchet, a clean blow, but with a metal grinder: the kind of circular saw welders use to polish soldering. The worst possible tool, and thus the most obvious choice. Jewiss's translation of Saviano's intense prose flows beautifully from the pestilence and degradation of everyday life in the teeming Neapolitan slums to the futile efforts of the police to control the rich, organic chaos that is the only way the Camorra know how to live."

Review: "The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman

If you have never been to Rome, then please put it at the top if your to do list. It is the most amazing city, a city that you have to visit at least once in your life. In "The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman, Rome is almost more of a character than a setting. It seeps into every line and the smell of fresh pasta and sweet flowering jasmine almost pours of the pages, making me hungry for both Italian food and a Roman holiday.


This is a book where you get more than you bargain for. It is a novel - indeed the full title is "The Imperfectionists: A Novel" - but it is composed of eleven short stories that all interlink and makes the total more than the sum of the parts. The plot, or plots, center around the happenings at the office on an international newspaper. Founded by an eccentric businessman in 1950s, it has been through good times and bad times and in 2004, when the reader is introduced to the story, it is going through what is decidedly a bad time. A new young publisher has taken over and he is by all accounts more interested in walking his dog than in newspapers and businesses and everyone from the editor-in-chief, cool and collected Kathleen, to the hopeful freelancer in Cairo are feeling the pressure.


Every chapter follows a different character and where this could lead to disconnect and to a lack cohesion, it instead brings out the best and the worst in every character as we get to see them from a range of angles. At worst this is interesting, at best it is riveting. Just like even the dodgy, grimy parts of Rome have a unique, rustic charm, even the most frustrating of these characters have personality and trait that makes you root for them.


My personal favourite was Herman Cohen who relentlessly chases spelling mistakes, Abbey Pinnola also known as Accounts Payable, the finance director and single mother of three and Oliver Ott, the young publisher who is as devoted to his dog Schopenhauer as most men would only be to their mother or vintage car. These three characters somehow spoke to me more than the others and I almost cried in the final chapter that features the young and hapless Ott.
Other chapters made my stomach hurt with the descriptions of loneliness and human tragedy, especially the ones about copy editor Ruby Zaga, who becomes someone else and much less happy, as soon as she comes to work, and Athur Gopal whose life changes in the blink of a moment.


This a beautiful novel, home of a range of stories that are like pearls on a string: every single one is beautiful and unique and together they are a piece of art.


Read it if: You long for a week in Rome. You always dreamt of working at an international newspaper.  You like literary fiction with a little more oomph!