Tag: books

So you want to read Middle English lit?

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In honour of it soon being the Harrowing of Hell – the greatest episode in Piers Plowman, maybe tied with the dreams within dreams – here is my fun and somewhat irreverent guide to the big names of Medieval English literature. They’re in a subjective order of ascending difficulty when reading in Middle English, but when in translation, it’s similar except Gawain is easier and Piers Plowman is basically just as hard. Onwards, to knights and strange religious dream poems feat. weird Biblical apocrypha.

  • Morte Darthur (/other spellings/Works) by Thomas Malory – More fun than could be expected from a huge book (if you get the bright red complete works edition) written like a five year old tried to spell more modern English. Malory’s prose Arthurian stories have everything you might want from an epic – knights, fights, magic, the chosen one being too good for this world, Gawain recognising Lancelot from how he rides a horse – and some you might not – incest, doomed love affairs, accidentally killing people and starting all-consuming feuds.
  • Various medieval drama – Medieval plays, usually short and part of a cycle that was performed around a city for a special occasion, basically encompass the Bible from creation to the apocalypse. Don’t say they didn’t think big. There are anthologies of some of the best bits and you can find them online too (try the York cycle for a starting point). There’s weird comedy with Lucifer stealing God’s chair and jokes whilst Christ is being nailed to the cross. Really.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer – The big name. I’ve not specified a work first because it depends. Obviously there’s The Canterbury Tales, which true to its name is separate tales told by fictional pilgrims. Some are very dirty (try the Miller’s Tale if that’s your interest). Or read The Wife of Bath’s Prologue because she had a fun life. If you like Greek stuff/the Trojan War/Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, try Troilus and Criseyde, though it is quite long and you will get pissed off at Pandarus. Or if you like a crazy narrative involving retelling part of the Aeneid and also flying on the back of an eagle trying to explain physics to medieval people, go for my personal fave House of Fame.
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by (imaginatively) the Gawain poet – SGGK is a fantastic story told in a cinematic style, but it is also quite tough Middle English so good to read in translation first. Read it for the great descriptions or for the part where Gawain keeps having to kiss the Green Knight as part of a weird deal they made.
  • Piers Plowman by William Langland – On the surface, Piers Plowman doesn’t sound like much fun. A huge medieval dream poem in alliterative verse which features complex theology and dreams within dreams that are less heist-based than Inception. Once you read it, you’ll discover it still isn’t great fun, but it is also is, because it’s incredibly weird and features Christ jousting the devil in Hell.

Little Gold by Allie Rogers

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Growing up different in the 1980s: Little Gold by Allie Rogers

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Little Gold is a moving and tense novel about growing up, facing difficulties, and finding the words for problems. Set in Brighton in 1982, it shows a tough summer for Little Gold – who has cast off her too girlish name and is teased by other kids for being weird. She has left middle school, her dad is gone, and her mum will barely get out of bed. Her older brother and sister are caught in their own problems, but when she becomes friends with Peggy Baxter, the old woman from down the road, she finds a place to escape to. When things get even worse, Little Gold has to find a way to tell somebody what is going on before it is too late, but she might not have words to say it.

In Little Gold, Rogers has created a fantastic character, a girl on the brink of adolescence and trying to deal with being different. Much of the narrative is from her point of view and the style gets inside her head, leaving the reader tensely hoping that better will come for her. Peggy’s chapters are slower to get into, but as soon as her backstory starts to be revealed they become more gripping, with the visit of her former lover Vi a particularly touching part, especially when Little Gold joins them. The dark, abusive threat at the heart of the novel is carefully written, not for shock effect, but as part of a narrative showing how those in need of protection can be exploited and how problems can all become entangled.

This is a novel that touches upon a lot of issues, held together by an enchanting main character whose struggles with knowing who she is as she grows up are moving and relatable. Rogers creates an oppressive atmosphere showing the limits of being both young and old, a world where it is the middle aged adults who are the threat or let down, but also a positive novel that affirms that being different is okay and that friend and family connections can help even at the darkest times.

Quick book picks for April

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As the weather gets (vaguely) nicer, here are some books coming out in April, perfect for avoiding the burgeoning sun and staying indoors – with quick summaries and links to reviews.

Girlhood by Cat Clarke

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Sugar and spice and scars for life: Girlhood by Cat Clarke

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Girlhood is a dark and emotional YA novel about friendship, grief, and whether things are really as they seem. Harper goes to a boarding school in a remote part of Scotland, but she hasn’t always: before, she lived at home with her twin sister Jenna and her parents. After her sister’s death, however, she went to Duncraggan Academy and found a tight group of friends who have her back. When new girl Kirsty turns up, it seems like somebody might understand the secrets Harper keeps hidden. Kirsty is not quite as she seems, though, and Harper finds herself falling down a hole, unsure who she is anymore and what is true.

Clarke’s novel is gripping, exactly the kind to read in a day or two, devouring the narrative. It is full of emotional tension, dealing with teenage problems of all sizes whilst also having a thriller-like sense of mystery. Harper’s first person narration gives an insight into someone dealing with guilt and grief, and how these issues help to blind her to the lies that start to appear. The intense friendships throughout the novel feel very real and varied, showing how groups of friends can be very different people and still get along, whereas when somebody seems exactly the same, that may not be the case after all. Indeed, they are the kind of characters that make the reader want to continue reading after the words are over and find out what they do next as they grow up. Harper and her best friend Rowan’s relationship in particular was a highlight, showing how falling out doesn’t stop a person caring and how sometimes the stakes end up bigger than realised.

Girlhood is a fantastic novel, not only for teenagers but for anyone who enjoys books centred on tension and female friendships. It is incredibly difficult to put down and manages to deal with big issues in a light and often funny way whilst also having a darkly compulsive narrative.

Shakespeare For Freedom by Ewan Fernie

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Why Shakespeare’s Plays Matter: Shakespeare For Freedom by Ewan Fernie

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Shakespeare For Freedom is a book – yet another – proclaiming to say why Shakespeare matters, why his plays still matter today. In this case, the lens through which Shakespeare’s relevance is viewed is ‘freedom’, a concept which Fernie opens up to mean personal freedom and freedom of identity. Though the title sounds like a kind of political call, Fernie’s book looks at freedom as more of an affirmation of life than a political or societal concept. Different chapters look at historical examples of the connection between Shakespeare’s works and freedom, examine Romeo and Juliet in light of freedom, and construct critical and historical narratives about Shakespeare, freedom, and identity.

Fernie’s introduction makes the salient point that after numerous cultural celebrations of Shakespeare in the past five years – with the Olympic opening ceremony and different anniversaries – it is important to restate why he matters, particularly to non-academics. He positions the book as coming after Jonathan Bate’s The Genius of Shakespeare in this regard, though Fernie’s book has less of an approachable feel, with a chapter on Hegel’s writing and a general assumption that anyone reading is already sold on Shakespeare mattering a lot. Despite this, Fernie raises interesting points about freedom, including the distinction between freedom to be who you are and freedom to be different, which he then uses to interrogate Romeo and Juliet through the title characters and through Mercutio. His argument that Ganymede in As You Like It should be mourned as a ‘death’ that is a loss of freedom shows this focus on identity and opens up fascinating potential.

Most of the questions raised in Shakespeare For Freedom seem to be answered with ‘freedom’, it being the reason to read Shakespeare and the reason to continue doing Shakespearean criticism. Thankfully a later chapter provides an opposing point, highlighting examples including Lincoln’s assassination and Tolstoy’s attack on Shakespeare to show that freedom and Shakespeare are not always straightforward. This leads well into the concluding point that we should learn freedom from Shakespeare, not a simple kind of freedom but an ambiguous one.

Fernie emphasises politics and personal identity at different points, suggesting that this Shakespearean idea of freedom is varied and therefore easily adaptable to different situations, as his variety of examples show. Ultimately, these examples are not groundbreaking, but Shakespeare For Freedom provides a varied look at historical events and critical arguments that shape this concept of freedom. Ferne certainly makes the case for Shakespeare’s plays as inviting everyone to look at their own personal and political freedom, though it may feel like a naive concept at times.

Dragon’s Green by Scarlett Thomas

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Magical bookishness: Dragon’s Green by Scarlett Thomas

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Dragon’s Green is a charming new children’s novel about magic, books, and friendship. Since the ‘worldquake’, magic has been seeping into the world and technology no longer cooperating. After Effie Truelove’s grandfather is attacked and his precious magical library becomes threatened, she discovers her own connection to this magic, and so do her new school friends from the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled, and Strange.

The narrative of the novel follows Effie and her new friends discovering their powers and some of the rules of the magic that exists in their world and in the mysterious Otherworld and using these to battle to save her grandfather’s library. The emphasis amongst the characters is very much about their burgeoning friendships and it is clear that the series will continue to explore how their magic and friendship are tied together.

Effie is a great narrator, inquisitive and brave, and having a female hero figure is one of the great selling points of Thomas’ novel. Another is the use of books and magical power, which comes not only from what can be learnt from them, but also from different kinds of magic, as Effie finds out. This bookish element of Dragon’s Green is part of what makes it an enjoyable read for grown up children too, with references to classic literature peppered around (my personal favourite was the Rossetti-esque goblins selling fruit). Thomas’ method of explaining the magical interference with technology, down to children using old phones just as calculators and torches, was another endearing element, a kind of retro tech comeback that gave the parts set in the ‘real world’ a kind of magical realism feel.

Comparisons to Harry Potter are obvious, with a fated main character discovering magic with new school friends, but Dragon’s Green is quite different, with travelling between worlds and magical objects – called ‘boons’ – revealing magical specialities in people. It feels like a children’s fantasy novel infused with a love of reading, and the gang of main characters are a group that will capture the imagination and make children (and adults) hope for the next book to come soon.

White Tears by Hari Kunzru

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Claustrophobic musical horror: White Tears by Hari Kunzru

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White Tears is a literary horror story about music, race, and the hidden stories in America’s history. It starts off showing two music-obsessed friends, Seth and Carter, with Carter’s trust fund allowing them to delve into musical history and attempt to buy long forgotten records. This obsession with the past becomes something darker, something which defies conventional senses of past, present, and reality, until they are caught in a world without the freedom they are used to.

Kunzu’s novel begins slowly and initially feels like a story of rich and poor, a rich obsessive and his poorer friend, but abruptly turns into something much more interesting, the search for the origins of an elusive and unexpected track that seems to be haunting them. This track and other music and sounds are carefully written into the novel until it feels as if they are playing in the background as the characters are drawn deeper into a lost musical world that is deeply embedded in America’s past. It is not until later in the novel that it becomes apparent how Kunzru’s style and narrative have been setting up a chillingly inevitable dark world for the characters.

The combination of specific music recording terminology and a narrative that gradually erodes the difference of time means that the book may not appeal to everybody, but its transformation from a stereotypical New York opening to a ghost story about race and forgotten history is something to be experienced.

Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves

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Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves by Rachel Malik

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Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves is a heartwarming and intriguing historical novel about the relationship between the eponymous women and how an unexpected houseguest made for a drastic situation for them both. When Elsie Boston gets Rene Hargreaves as her Land Girl during the Second World War to help run her family’s farm, now entirely left under her control, she doesn’t foresee that from then on, they will share their lives together. Inspired by true details about the author’s grandmother, the novel is a character focused story of life, hardship, and a sudden crime.

After a mysterious prologue, the book starts off like a wartime home front historical novel, showing how Elsie and Rene meet and work together, but when Elsie loses her farm and they are forced to move around as farmworkers, it turns into something else, a saga of their lives together and how they end up with an uncongenial visitor and the weight of the law and the press against them. The core of the novel is the two characters, with Malik slowing building up detail about them. Rene’s past and her escape from her husband and children is classic historical novel material, but it is also at how the war could change lives in ways that would be irrevocably different when it was over. It is not a war novel however, but one more focused upon a longer span of time and on how the characters lived their lives and didn’t quite adapt to the modern world. The writing style is straightforward and detailed, building at a slow pace that really unfurls a vivid world, a world in which most other people are excluded.

This is a slowly revealed and moving novel full of small details, with an appeal that stretches beyond its historical setting to anyone who enjoys reading about characters and carefully drawn relationships. Heartwarming and at times tense, this is the kind of novel to curl up with and escape the modern world.

New Boy by Tracy Chevalier

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Othello retold through schoolyard drama: New Boy by Tracy Chevalier

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New Boy is the latest book in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, a modern retelling of Othello with the action transported to a schoolyard in 1970s Washington. Osei is the new boy and the only black kid in a suburban school. He meets Dee, Ian, Mimi, Casper, and Blanca and the stage is set for a first day unlike others. These sixth graders are the big fish in a small pond and their dramas are fast-paced, with relationships and arguments made and broken between lessons. Chevalier uses this setting to make her novel a tense exposition of jealousy, anger, and race, showing how Othello’s themes do not only defy time, but also age.

The book is structured around a single day, with the weird sense of time matching Shakespeare’s strange timeline in Othello and making the novel seem like a play, with far more limited movement of place than in the original text. The characters are bound by the edges of the school grounds, making a claustrophobic setting that cannot contain Osei’s eventual anger or Ian’s manipulation. The presence of the teachers on the edges is similar to the officials and outsiders in Othello who appear but are never able to halt the action. In the case of New Boy, the teachers’ implied and overt racism and uncertainty about how to deal with Osei’s presence actively encourage the pupils in some ways, like Brabantio’s initial opinions of Othello in the play.

Shakespeare’s characters are mapped pretty straightforwardly onto their playground equivalents, though Chevalier is able through the form to give them greater internal lives and backstories, particularly the girls. Dee’s desire for something exciting explains her sudden interest in more worldly Osei, who has lived around the world and whose older sister has given him an awareness of Black Power and other political movements. Ian’s quest for power over fellow students and his desire for self-control are clear, manifesting themselves in his manipulative actions when interfering with schoolyard activities and his anger at his own failings. The stand out character is Mimi, an uncertain girl prone to headaches who, uncomfortable with Ian’s attention, helps him out and later regrets it. She is Shakespeare’s Emilia given more of a chance to have thoughts and emotions about Ian’s actions and about her friend Dee.

The narrative too is obviously that of Othello, with details changed yet the stakes still feeling high. From the vivid picture of childhood jealousies and fears that Chevalier paints, it is easy to be drawn into the world and feel that the reputations and relationships at stake are real to the characters, not just childish preoccupations but how they see their place in the world. Some scenes are clear updates of Shakespearean ones, for example when Mimi re-plaits Dee’s hair whilst they sing along to ‘Killing Me Softly’ and talking about how confusing boys are. This scene is Shakespeare’s made into a 1970s image of two white girls singing along to a song sung by a black woman, not fully aware with how this intersects with exactly what is going on that day.

As part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, New Boy is fairly typical – updating character names, mentioning Shakespeare and his plays in a casual way, changing plot points but giving them the same tension in the narrative as the original – but it is the way in which Chevalier creates a claustrophobic world of childhood jealousy and mistrust set within the larger adult world that makes the novel stand out. It isn’t news that the racism, jealousy, and power struggles in Othello have not lost their relevance four hundred years later, but in New Boy it is glaringly obvious that such issues can be incited to escalation in all kinds of environments. The tragedy of Othello becomes both the tragedy of one dramatic schoolyard in 1970s Washington and the tragedy of how Othello just cannot seem to lose its societal comparisons.

Timing is (sometimes) everything

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Sometimes, in reading as in life, timing is everything. When you read a book can have a huge effect on how you experience it. You can read a book at the exact right time, maybe the right age or the right point in your life or the right time of year or day, and it just feels right, it makes sense. Other books are read at the wrong time: too early, too late, when the subject matter feels too close to home or too remote.

For example, when I first read The Secret History by Donna Tartt, about privileged Classics students whose actions get out of hand, I was in my second year at Oxford, spending the Easter holidays trying to read a lot of Romantic poetry and long eighteenth century novels. I read it as a treat whilst I was reading Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (a 1500 page long epistolary novel) and it was exactly what I needed. Not only was the style a far cry from eighteenth century prose, but the world of Henry Winters et al was pretty recognisable. Their tea drinking and meal eating with their professor Julian wasn’t all that different from classes with my tutors. It was easily believable that a group of students could do terrible things inspired by their reading because that was the kind of rumour you heard around Oxford. The Secret History made sense.

I first read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein too early, expecting something more horror-based like the image of the monster in popular culture. Its brooding, gothic Romanticism and meditations on the spark of life went right over my head. Thankfully, I had to read it during my degree and, armed with context and different expectations, I rediscovered it as a fantastic novel. On the other hand, I read Under The Dome by Stephen King too late, after my phase of reading his books was over, and I had no interest in the long story about characters I didn’t care about. The same is probably true of The Hunger Games, which I spent all three books being annoyed that because it was a first person narrator I knew she wouldn’t die, ruining the stakes somewhat.

These are all novels, but I think that poetry is also very caught up with timing. The first poem I loved was Simon Armitage’s ‘Kid’, which I studied at GCSE and became obsessed with how it used Batman and poetic sound to suggest growing up. It helped that this was around the release of The Dark Knight too. Later it was Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’; again, I loved how it sounded, but also the way it was caught between comprehensibility and confusion (I was seventeen, which may explain that).

I still always thought I wasn’t ‘good’ at poetry until it turned out the answer was that I needed narrative poetry. I get along very well with Milton and Byron. I didn’t read Byron until I was halfway through my degree so instead of being put off by the length of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (took me until the summer to get to Don Juan, which I read partly in Rome because I’m very pretentious), I discovered his dramatic way of summing up a concept in a single line and constant flirting with whether he is his narrator, his hero, both, or neither. Earlier and I might not have enjoyed it.

There’s plenty of other examples. What I’m trying to show is that sometimes it isn’t as simple as reading a great book or a terrible book, but reading those books at a time that makes them work or not work as the case may be. Reading is personal, not only in your response, but in the factors that affect that response. I should add as a final note that sometimes it makes very little difference – I read Ulysses whilst revising for my AS exams aged seventeen and I have no strong feelings about it either way.