They looked at it together in silence, feeling the strength and nobility of a long-dead beast, and wondering about the mind and eyes and hands that had crafted it into something more potent than life. In ennobling the bull, the artist had somehow ennobled the early men who had hunted it.
I stumbled on this title by chance and ordered it second-hand from Amazon. This is a really gripping novel that moves seamlessly through three time zones, each one enriching the others as the story unfolds. A fragment of a stone painting, 17,000 years old, surfaces at a London auction house, kept secret by a British officer serving in France during the Second World War. What happened fifty years ago in occupied France in the Caves of Perigord is about to be revealed.
Each character is well drawn: Malrand, Horst and Chlothilde, for example, and there are light touches in the blossoming romance between Manners and Lydia in contrast to much darker, sombre episodes portrayed during the history of the Resistance.
The undiscovered cave paintings near Lascaux have the last word: portraits of the first children of Perigord, our ancestors, whoever they were, as observed poignantly by an ageing Malrand, for perhaps his last time.
Friday, 19 November 2010
Friday, 12 November 2010
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
I read this novel when it won the Booker Prize in 1987 and now it has surfaced again at the local library book club I’m reading it again. Like most novels I admire, it is short by today’s standards (208 pages) and beautifully written.
She lies awake in the small hours. On the bedside table is a Moon Tiger. The Moon Tiger is a green coil that slowly burns all night, repelling mosquitoes, dropping away into lengths of grey ash, its glowing red eye a companion of the hot insect-rasping darkness. She lies there thinking of nothing, simply being, her whole body content.
The structure is masterful. Claudia, a successful and popular historian, is dying. From her hospital bed visitors come and go; fragments of streams of consciousness criss-cross back and forth: scenes from childhood, adolescence, all that has been and might have been had history not got in the way. Her lover Tom’s journal, sent to her after his death, is particularly poignant, even more so given that a dying woman, the woman he loved so fleetingly, would want to read it one last time.
I did not particularly care for Claudia but her relationship with Tom made her seem warmer somehow and perhaps excused her behaviour there after, having lost the love of her life.
Penelope Lively writes exquisitely about the every day, in contemporary London as in war-torn Egypt.
It is a grey winter afternoon, glittering with car lights, street lights, gold, red, emerald, the black rainy pavements gleaming, the shop windows glowing Wagnerian caves. He talks of events that have not yet come about and sees light and texture, the kaleidoscope of fruit outside a greengrocer, the mist of rain on a girl's cheek.
I saw the cluttered intense life of the fields and villages – and I saw the stark textural immensity of the desert, the sand carved by the wind, the glittering mirages, It has the delicacy of a water-colour – all soft grey-greens and pale blues and fawns and bright browns. I saw it through him and with him. Now, he and that place are one, fused in the head to a single presence of his voice and his touch, those sights and those smells.
My late father spent the war years in the Middle East and I find myself thinking of him and his time spent there. One day I too will visit Egypt and take a trip down the River Nile.
She lies awake in the small hours. On the bedside table is a Moon Tiger. The Moon Tiger is a green coil that slowly burns all night, repelling mosquitoes, dropping away into lengths of grey ash, its glowing red eye a companion of the hot insect-rasping darkness. She lies there thinking of nothing, simply being, her whole body content.
The structure is masterful. Claudia, a successful and popular historian, is dying. From her hospital bed visitors come and go; fragments of streams of consciousness criss-cross back and forth: scenes from childhood, adolescence, all that has been and might have been had history not got in the way. Her lover Tom’s journal, sent to her after his death, is particularly poignant, even more so given that a dying woman, the woman he loved so fleetingly, would want to read it one last time.
I did not particularly care for Claudia but her relationship with Tom made her seem warmer somehow and perhaps excused her behaviour there after, having lost the love of her life.
Penelope Lively writes exquisitely about the every day, in contemporary London as in war-torn Egypt.
It is a grey winter afternoon, glittering with car lights, street lights, gold, red, emerald, the black rainy pavements gleaming, the shop windows glowing Wagnerian caves. He talks of events that have not yet come about and sees light and texture, the kaleidoscope of fruit outside a greengrocer, the mist of rain on a girl's cheek.
I saw the cluttered intense life of the fields and villages – and I saw the stark textural immensity of the desert, the sand carved by the wind, the glittering mirages, It has the delicacy of a water-colour – all soft grey-greens and pale blues and fawns and bright browns. I saw it through him and with him. Now, he and that place are one, fused in the head to a single presence of his voice and his touch, those sights and those smells.
My late father spent the war years in the Middle East and I find myself thinking of him and his time spent there. One day I too will visit Egypt and take a trip down the River Nile.
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
The Maid’s Request by Michele Desbordes
He took the pen and trimmed it, tried it out on a corner of the page; sitting on the terrace he wrote in notebooks, drew, annotated drawings, went on doing what he had always done, he had always written in notebooks; in the evening he lined them up in a cupboard in his room, twenty-five small books and two bigger books and sixteen even bigger than that, six books bound in vellum, another covered in green chamois leather…
Beautifully written and translated from the French title, La Demande, this short novel tracks an elderly Italian painter’s journey across the Alps to a commission in the Loire Valley. Although unspoken, this is a fictitious story of Leonardo da Vinci and his close friendship with a French maid who cares for him. As they approach the twilight of their lives their proximity allows her to make an unusual request…
When he leaves a notebook in his bedroom or his studio, he asks her to go and get it. She rises to her feet and hurries, brings it back at arm’s length like the priest at the offertory handing the host to the faithful. In the corner of a page he adds an angel, curly hair, pale eyes.
In Italy they had talked about the angel, about the delicacy of the bruised and budding flower, the hollow of the shadow on the cheek, that sense of heat, of burning skin, emotion, pleasure; how one could tell, sometimes everything had been so magnificent.
The Maid’s Request is a slow, lingering tale to be read on a winter’s night, savouring one beautiful description after another.
Beautifully written and translated from the French title, La Demande, this short novel tracks an elderly Italian painter’s journey across the Alps to a commission in the Loire Valley. Although unspoken, this is a fictitious story of Leonardo da Vinci and his close friendship with a French maid who cares for him. As they approach the twilight of their lives their proximity allows her to make an unusual request…
When he leaves a notebook in his bedroom or his studio, he asks her to go and get it. She rises to her feet and hurries, brings it back at arm’s length like the priest at the offertory handing the host to the faithful. In the corner of a page he adds an angel, curly hair, pale eyes.
In Italy they had talked about the angel, about the delicacy of the bruised and budding flower, the hollow of the shadow on the cheek, that sense of heat, of burning skin, emotion, pleasure; how one could tell, sometimes everything had been so magnificent.
The Maid’s Request is a slow, lingering tale to be read on a winter’s night, savouring one beautiful description after another.
The Madonna of the Almonds by Marina Fiorato
I read a lot of historical fiction as a teenager: Jean Plaidy, Anya Seton et al and have read little since. But this is one I would go back to again and again.
Simonetta di Saronno has lost her husband at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 and subsequently falls in love with the young artist who paints her likeness for a fresco in the local church. Her fortune gone, she concocts a liqueur from the juice of almonds in memory of her new love…
Only then, when she let the remembrance of him help her, when she combined the bitter and the sweet, the very essence of their entire encounter, did she know she was done. She drank deeply of the finished draught, while she wrote rapidly with her quill the exact proportions and ingredients she had used. Her head nodded over her ink black fingers and as her brow touched the creamy pages of the ledger she thought of sharing a cup with him, laughing, somewhere where the sun warmed their skin as they drank in a way she knew could never be.
An intriguing, surprising yet satisfying read as characters’ lives criss-cross and take their own paths to an unimagined future.
This Christmas I will hunt down a bottle of Amaretto di Saronne, known as Disaronno Originale, and, one day, treat myself to a bottle of the limited edition perfume made by Floris in celebration of this stunning novel.
Simonetta di Saronno has lost her husband at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 and subsequently falls in love with the young artist who paints her likeness for a fresco in the local church. Her fortune gone, she concocts a liqueur from the juice of almonds in memory of her new love…
Only then, when she let the remembrance of him help her, when she combined the bitter and the sweet, the very essence of their entire encounter, did she know she was done. She drank deeply of the finished draught, while she wrote rapidly with her quill the exact proportions and ingredients she had used. Her head nodded over her ink black fingers and as her brow touched the creamy pages of the ledger she thought of sharing a cup with him, laughing, somewhere where the sun warmed their skin as they drank in a way she knew could never be.
An intriguing, surprising yet satisfying read as characters’ lives criss-cross and take their own paths to an unimagined future.
This Christmas I will hunt down a bottle of Amaretto di Saronne, known as Disaronno Originale, and, one day, treat myself to a bottle of the limited edition perfume made by Floris in celebration of this stunning novel.
Monday, 8 November 2010
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
Every year I use a hardback desk diary for planning and recording writing projects. Instead of buying a brand new one for next year I found an unused one that would be suitable with quotations from Frances Mayes’s book and beautiful accompanying photographs of sun-drenched Italy. A couple of days later my husband was home late from a fishing trip so I watched a film I hadn’t seen before based on that bestselling memoir of la dolce vita. And now I’ve read the book again. It’s an inspirational account of a divorced writer from San Francisco buying an old villa called Bramasole near Cortona and finding a new life there, abundant with pleasures associated with living in Italy.
Frances Mayes writes beautifully; no wonder her book was made into a film.
When I first saw Bramasole, I immediately wanted to hang my summer clothes in an armadio and arrange my books under one of those windows looking out over the valley.
At nine, a slab of sunlight falls into my study from the side window, my favourite window in the house for its framed view over the cypresses, the groves in the valley, and out into the Apennines.
When it rains or when the light changes, the façade of the house turns gold, sienna, ochre; a previous scarlet paint job seeps through in rosy spots like a box of crayons left to melt in the sun.
Poppies have lingered and the fragrance of spiky yellow broom is intense.
I like cut flowers in the house every day. We both love the currents of scents swimming through the garden and how they rise to the house early in the morning.
Magic. I simply fell in love – like you fall in love with a person – and schemed to find a way to stay there.
It is late afternoon, just after a thunderstorm, when the light turns that luminous gold I wish I could bottle and keep.
The Tuscan sun has warmed me to the marrow.
I think this will all keep me going very nicely and keep me writing in the new year ahead.
Frances Mayes writes beautifully; no wonder her book was made into a film.
When I first saw Bramasole, I immediately wanted to hang my summer clothes in an armadio and arrange my books under one of those windows looking out over the valley.
At nine, a slab of sunlight falls into my study from the side window, my favourite window in the house for its framed view over the cypresses, the groves in the valley, and out into the Apennines.
When it rains or when the light changes, the façade of the house turns gold, sienna, ochre; a previous scarlet paint job seeps through in rosy spots like a box of crayons left to melt in the sun.
Poppies have lingered and the fragrance of spiky yellow broom is intense.
I like cut flowers in the house every day. We both love the currents of scents swimming through the garden and how they rise to the house early in the morning.
Magic. I simply fell in love – like you fall in love with a person – and schemed to find a way to stay there.
It is late afternoon, just after a thunderstorm, when the light turns that luminous gold I wish I could bottle and keep.
The Tuscan sun has warmed me to the marrow.
I think this will all keep me going very nicely and keep me writing in the new year ahead.
Friday, 5 November 2010
Memory Maps by Lisa St. Aubin de Teran
I am a wanderer: one with a hoarder’s love of houses and things… I am tracing here a memory map of all the places that have stayed with me and, since this is also a map of all the voyages of discovery, this is also the story of getting to those places.
I have followed this writer’s exotic life over the years through magazine and newspaper articles and, of course, her books, both fact and fiction. She is perhaps one of few writers left I would like to hear talk about her work.
Memory Maps trawls through a lifetime of travel and living abroad including South America, Venice, Umbria, the Caribbean and finally Montmartre. She writes beautifully, wistfully about leaving Venice and then the Villa Quarata in the Umbrian village of Morra. It was not meant to end in tears:
‘I thought I would live and die here, and yet, per forza, as they say in Italian, I am moving on.’
Having read A Valley in Italy, an inspiring memoir of renovating a ‘half-ruined palace in the woods’ I too felt devastated when she was forced to sell the home she loved.
Lisa St. Aubin de Teran writes movingly of failed marriages and crushed dreams but her spirit is intact:
‘Sorting out the maps and memories has been the large stage of clearing my decks.
I find as Anne Frank did before me, that, 'In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart'. Sometimes that goodness is buried so deep it takes a shovel to unearth it.
I used to think I was different. Now I feel I am not so different from anyone else: the time and the places have been different, that is all.’
I have followed this writer’s exotic life over the years through magazine and newspaper articles and, of course, her books, both fact and fiction. She is perhaps one of few writers left I would like to hear talk about her work.
Memory Maps trawls through a lifetime of travel and living abroad including South America, Venice, Umbria, the Caribbean and finally Montmartre. She writes beautifully, wistfully about leaving Venice and then the Villa Quarata in the Umbrian village of Morra. It was not meant to end in tears:
‘I thought I would live and die here, and yet, per forza, as they say in Italian, I am moving on.’
Having read A Valley in Italy, an inspiring memoir of renovating a ‘half-ruined palace in the woods’ I too felt devastated when she was forced to sell the home she loved.
Lisa St. Aubin de Teran writes movingly of failed marriages and crushed dreams but her spirit is intact:
‘Sorting out the maps and memories has been the large stage of clearing my decks.
I find as Anne Frank did before me, that, 'In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart'. Sometimes that goodness is buried so deep it takes a shovel to unearth it.
I used to think I was different. Now I feel I am not so different from anyone else: the time and the places have been different, that is all.’
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
A Chance to Sit Down by Meredith Daneman
Just back from the Diaghhilev exhibition at the V and A and realised how much I loved ballet. I must have seen most ballets over the years and remembered Nureyev performing Nijinsky's roles: Spectre de la Rose, Petrouchka, L'Apres-midi d'un Faun. A favourite ballet was Ashton's A Month in the Country and anything choreographed by Kenneth Macmillan.
I love A Chance to Sit Down (1971) and have reread it many times. It allows the reader to go backstage and experience the blood, sweat and tears involved in being a professional dancer, seen through the eyes of Barbara who rebels against the restrictive discipline imposed. George, the set designer whom she marries is as lovely as Jack, her temperamental ex-lover and rising star of the company, is hateful. This novel was recommended to me years ago by a friend who had been a ballet dancer and it was spot on.
Curtain Fall by Jean Ure (1978) is equally poignant. A ballet dancer returns to England and meets her ex-lover and stage partner now suffering from MS. He wants to have nothing to do with her but when she refuses to be cast aside he lets her back into his life again. I especially love the scene when they go to the cinema, heavily disguised, to watch a film in which they were both starring at the peak of their careers. A wonderfully heart-breaking romantic story - the one paperback I would save from a fire to keep rereading!
Both these novels are probably out of print by now but are still available second-hand from Amazon.
I love A Chance to Sit Down (1971) and have reread it many times. It allows the reader to go backstage and experience the blood, sweat and tears involved in being a professional dancer, seen through the eyes of Barbara who rebels against the restrictive discipline imposed. George, the set designer whom she marries is as lovely as Jack, her temperamental ex-lover and rising star of the company, is hateful. This novel was recommended to me years ago by a friend who had been a ballet dancer and it was spot on.
Curtain Fall by Jean Ure (1978) is equally poignant. A ballet dancer returns to England and meets her ex-lover and stage partner now suffering from MS. He wants to have nothing to do with her but when she refuses to be cast aside he lets her back into his life again. I especially love the scene when they go to the cinema, heavily disguised, to watch a film in which they were both starring at the peak of their careers. A wonderfully heart-breaking romantic story - the one paperback I would save from a fire to keep rereading!
Both these novels are probably out of print by now but are still available second-hand from Amazon.
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