Six Degrees of Separation – from Wuthering Heights to Constable’s Skies

Posted by Kate W in Stuff and Nonsense and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up. Continue reading →

Two memoirs

Posted by Kate W in Non-fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Not quite sure what compelled me to read these two memoirs one after the other, given that both deal with the topic of suicide (although the focus of the Toews is on her writing and how her life experiences have shaped that – those experiences include the death of her father and her sister by suicide). Anyway, it wasn’t the cry-fest I anticipated. In fact, not a tear was shed. Partly because Li has quite a different perspective on suicide than others I’ve come across, and in reading Toews, I was marvellously distracted by her plans for a wind museum. Continue reading →

Literary Wives Club: Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , , , , ,

For the same reasons I enjoy the work of Richard Yates, I enjoyed Evan S. Connell’s novel, Mrs Bridge  – spare prose (not a single unnecessary word); intensely depressing; bleakly suburban; and satirical.

It does not go unnoticed that the protagonist, Mrs Bridge, has an exotic name – India – and that despite initially thinking to herself that ‘…she could get along very nicely without a husband’, she marries Walter (Mr Bridge) who promises her that ‘…one day he would take his wife on a tour of Europe.‘ Mr Bridge proceeds to focus on building his law practice, and providing well for his family (they have three children, Ruth, Carolyn (Corky), and Douglas). And India leads a very staid, conservative suburban life.

They had started off together to explore something that promised to be wonderful, and, of course, there had been wonderful times. And yet, thought Mrs Bridge, why is it that we haven’t – that nothing has – that whatever we–? Continue reading →

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dear Ann,

I am writing to congratulate you on your most recent novel, State of Wonder, which was given to me for my birthday by my brother…

Yes, the protagonist, Sybil Van Atwerp, is referring to Ann Patchett. She goes on to say that if Ann was to ever visit Annapolis, she’d be glad to host her. Sybil’s familiar tone (which she also employs in letters to Joan Didion and Kazuo Ishiguro) is wonderfully endearing and I’d like to imagine, disarming for the receivers of those letters.

However, letters to authors are just a small part of The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. Continue reading →

Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista

Posted by Kate W in Non-fiction and tagged with , , , , , , ,

There were corpses every night at the height of the killings. Seven, twelve, twenty-six, the brutality reduced to a paragraph, sometimes only a sentence each. The language failed as the body count rose.

When I think about the Philippines, the first thing that comes to mind is shoes. Remember how crazily astounding Imelda Marcos was? I was in primary school when Ferdinand Marcos was President but even then, I recognised an abuse of power.

Patricia Evangelista’s book, Some People Need Killing, begins with Marcos and then goes on to describe the military and public protests that led to the People Power Revolution, which removed Marcos and installed the popular Corazon Aquino as president. Aquino developed a new constitution which limited presidential power, including creating a single-term limit. Political instability followed and the fragility of the democratic institutions remained for decades afterwards, ultimately exploited under the regime of Rodrigo Duterte. Continue reading →