Paradoxical Undressing

Earlier in the week I saw Kristin Hersh, lead singer of Throwing Muses, at the Book Festival. More by accident than by design I saw her on two nights, the first performing some of her songs and reading from her memoir Paradoxical Undressing, and the second reading again and discussing the book with Hannah McGill.

The memoir, based on her diaries, is of a single year of her life when she is eighteen. In that year she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Throwing Muses sign with 4AD and make their first album, and Hersh becomes pregnant. The book is most fascinating when it explores Hersh's creative process - she hears songs, rather than creating them, and feels her best songs are those that she meddles with least - and most moving as it explores her journey through pregnancy and how she struggles to reconcile her protectiveness for her unborn child with an honest response to the 'evil' that she perceives in her music.

In her Book Festival session Hersh talked about the struggle to get the voice right for each section of the book, something she ultimately did very successfully. The voices of the young, vulnerable Hersh of the book's first season and the pregnant Hersh of the final season are particularly well realised. The relationships between the band members and their response to what they see as the absurdities of the music industry are also beautifully portrayed.

In person Hersh was a really engaging speaker and reader, something I didn't necessarily expect given the ambivalent feelings about performing that she portrays in her book. She had originally agreed to a biography but wrote the book herself because she could not bear the alternative of a stranger delving into her psyche and her past. She has clearly fallen in love with writing, with another two books, one a further memoir, currently on the go. On the evidence of this book they will be something to look forward to.

Hairy Maclary

We took our boys to see Hairy Maclary at the Fringe today.  We'd heard good things about it and the boys both enjoyed it. It was nicely put together and the kids in the audience responded enthusiastically to the familiar characters.  We have the first Hairy Maclary book which is a joy to read, but watching the performance made me reflect that it is the combination of language, rhythm and pictures, rather than the story, that makes it so pleasurable and the show suffered a bit from a lack of plot.

The show was fun but it couldn't match some other things we've seen for charm and imagination.  We saw the lovely Potato Needs a Bath at the Imaginate Festival earlier in the year. It was quirky and fun and had the audience transfixed.  I'd also like to try Julia Donaldson's Stick Man which has been getting great reviews.

After Hairy Maclary we ventured into the amazing Mirazozo, a giant inflatable structure of domes and tunnels, illuminated by natural light.  It was a fascinating construction, using natural light to reflect different colours and patterns.  Apparently the designers hope it will provide a place of quiet contemplation.  Mmm...I can see why, but only if they ban small children.  If my toddler's amazed and joyful reaction is anything to go by, for them it's more like soft play on acid.

The 19th Wife

I've just finished reading The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff.  It combines the story of Ann Eliza Young, the 19th wife of Brigham Young, 19th Century prophet and leader of the Mormon Church, with the story of a murder that takes place in modern day polygamous sect.

If you get past the Richard and Judy Book Club sticker on the cover it's an interesting if not entirely successful read. The story of Ann Eliza Young is the stronger one. Based on her real life memoirs of her life with and separation from Brigham Young and her campaign to end polygamy, it explores the reasons why women would accept polygamy and the impact that it had on them. The modern day tale is less gripping. Centring on a murder in a secretive polygamous sect, it is told from the point of view of the victim's son, who has been thrown out of the sect some years before and whose mother is accused of the murder. The book does need the modern day contrast but the story is not as convincing as that of the nineteenth wife and the ending feels contrived. 

A theme of the book is that history is subjective. The novel includes a fictional version of Ann Eliza Young's memoir, a young scholar's paper on her history, and memoirs and letters of other characters. In the end though I found the point about subjectivity was overlaboured. Rather than relying on the different accounts to make his point the author has several of his characters explicitly comment that Ann Eliza's account has its biases. It felt more tell than show.  The book also felt too long, it would have been more readable and focused if it had lost 100 pages.

It was still an interesting read though. Knowing virtually nothing about the Mormon church I found the history of the church and polygamy fascinating. The fact that women and children in the twenty-first century are still subject to polygamy, their lives at the whim of men, is deeply depressing.

To Kindle or not to Kindle?

I love my Kindle.  I was given one as a birthday present and had no idea how much I would fall in love with this piece of technology.  I was sceptical that it would feel like reading a book, I thought I would miss the lovely physical thing that a book is.  But no.  Soon I was so absorbed I was trying to turn the pages of my Kindle.  I love the access that it gives me to whatever I want to read, pretty much whenever I want to read it. I love the fact that I can keep everything I read without having to find more and more space for bookshelves.  I'll no longer take a pile of books to the charity shop, only to regret it a few weeks later.  I love how light it is to carry around. I love being able to download trial chapters for free.

But of course there are downsides to the Kindle.  Book shops are already suffering.  Waterstones has closed shops, Borders has closed altogether. What happens to those who do not want to buy books (print or electronic) online? And will the rise in electronic books lead to print books becoming more expensive?  Robert McCrum in the Observer suggests that owning printed books might become synonymous with collecting them, noting that Malcolm Gladwell has suggested that the future for printed books may be the higher priced hardback. So perhaps the future of the physical book shop may be the independent book shop selling specialist and collectible books?

The other issue of course is that Amazon manufactures the Kindle, as well as selling Kindle ebooks, giving it a monopoly which has allowed it to drive prices down - although publisher resistance has now forced Amazon to adopt a model where publishers set the prices instead.  Still it has led to Kindle ebook prices being generally lower than print prices and while I like a cheap book as much as the next person I think William Skidelsky makes some interesting points in his Guardian blog about the value of the "text itself".

So to Kindle or not to Kindle?  Well despite everything I can't help loving mine.  It's a bit like my Tesco online shop.  I know I shouldn't like it, but it's so damn convenient.

Edinburgh book festivals

Edinburgh in August inspires mixed feelings.  Lots of lovely things to do, see and listen to, but also lots of (I'm sure, lovely) people to get in the way as you try to go about the dull everyday demands of actually living in the city. It's hard not to get a bit grumpy at crowded buses, people walking very slowly when you're late for work and not being able to get a seat in your favourite cafe.

Still the good outweighs the bad and there are lots of great book things to do in Edinburgh in August.  The Edinburgh International Book Festival is the obvious one, and, despite losing a lot of my goodwill during four hours online trying to book tickets and even getting them in my basket only to see them disappear for ever, I'll be taking at trip or two down there.  While a lot of the well known authors are sold out, there's usually something interesting still available on the day and also some unticketed events.  One that's worth checking out is Unbound, a series of free evening events in the Book Festival's Spiegeltent.  The programme includes spoken word, music and psychic experiments...The Spiegeltent is also home to Story Shop, a showcase for new writers and new writing from Edinburgh, taking place at 4pm each day.

As well as the main Book Festival, the Edinburgh Book Fringe takes place at Word Power Books.  The Book Fringe is being launched by Alasdair Gray, author of Lanark.  Sadly I think real life (i.e. looking after my children) will get in the way of me going to the launch but there's lots of other interesting stuff going on there.

The Inky Fingers Minifest is also running from 8-13 August and features readings and performance poetry, an all day writing and performance marathon and FlashFictionMob appearing around the city.

Alasdair Gray's Lanark

My last book group read was Lanark by Alasdair Gray.  It has been described as 'a modern classic' and 'the best in Scottish Literature in the twentieth century'.  So, no raised expectations clearly.

I approached it with some trepidation and put off starting it for so long that it was a good thing my book group was postponed and I got an extra couple of weeks to read it. When I finally opened it, it was much more readable than I expected. Despite the way the novel plays with structure, text and concepts, the narrative voice is straightforward and clear. I was surprised to find that I preferred Lanark's fantastical story to the more realist books about Duncan Thaw.

Lanark is packed with interesting ideas but when I got to the end I wasn't sure if I thought that what it was trying to say was coherent.  When I thought about it, it sort of unravelled in my head. Part of the problem lies with me as a reader.  When you read in a fragmented way (five minutes while standing at a bus stop, twenty minutes before you fall asleep at night), it's sometimes hard to see a novel as a whole, particularly when that whole is as long and challenging as Lanark.  Still, it gave me a lot to think about and played with my expectations and perspective.  Perhaps that's enough for now.

Science in fiction

I caught a few minutes of Radio 4's Front Row this evening where they were discussing Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science, published by Comma Press.  It's an intriguing idea, a set of specially commissioned short stories inspired by breakthroughs in modern science and written in consultation with scientists and historians.  An afterward to each story provides the science behind the fiction.

The collection takes the idea that we engage with science through stories - Archimedes and his bath, Newton and his apple - and uses fiction to explore more recent scientific breakthroughs.  Definitely sounds like it's worth a look.

For more science-related fiction I would recommend Allegra Goodman's Intuition, a fascinating exploration of human motivations, values and relationships set in the context of a scientific research lab with its rivalries and pressure.

Reading Hemingway

I recently finished The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.  It's a fictional memoir in the voice of Ernest Hemingway's first wife Hadley.  It has a fantastic setting, 1920s Paris, and a fascinating cast list (Gertrude Stein & Alice B Toklas, Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, etc.).  McLain's Hadley is a sympathetic character and her love and support for Hemingway and anguish at losing him are movingly portrayed.

Reading The Paris Wife has inspired me to have another go at reading Hemingway.  The only Hemingway I've read was The Old Man and the Sea which I read a few years ago when I was on holiday in Cuba. To be honest I preferred Our Man in Havana which was my other choice of suitably themed reading that holiday.

I did, however, see an adaptation of The Sun Also Rises at the Edinburgh International Festival last year.  It was by experimental American theatre company, the Elevator Repair Service, who are known for their six hour word-for-word version of The Great Gatsby.  Fortunately The Sun Also Rises was abridged to a mere three hours forty minutes, but my heart did sink when I realised what I had let myself in for after blithely agreeing to go with a friend (it's not often I get a night out so I said yes first and checked out the production second).  I was surprised that I really enjoyed its depiction of the self-destructive characters against the backdrop of bull-fighting.  I was fascinated to read, in The Paris Wife, about the real life events on which the novel was based.

So I've ordered A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's own memoir of his Paris years, from the library.  And I may just give The Sun Also Rises a go as well.