Two thirds of the way into July so I'd better post this before it gets any further into the month.
I have already recorded that I didn't read any books for leisure throughout May, so it seems that throughout June I made up for last time. I finished Amanda Foreman's A World on Fire, her history of the complex, paradoxical, and often retaliatory relationship between Britain and America during the American Civil War; it was thoroughly, thoroughly excellent. I would review it but I lack the ability to do it justice; indeed, it is such a long book that a comprehensive review would take longer to write than I have time on my hands. Foreman has done a wonderful job; the inclusion of cartoons from Punch spread throughout the book alongside the text was an inspired decision.
I also read Alexander Masters' Stuart: A Life Backwards, which was what they call a moving read. This sensational biography of Stuart Shorter, a homeless man, is novel for starting with the end of his life and moving backwards into his past to show what influenced him to become the man he was by the time of his death. The idea is to look at Shorter's life as a kind of murder mystery: what killed the innocent boy he once was? The device works, and the final third of the book is extremely bleak indeed.
There were some duds. Through work I received a copy of David Almond's new book, The Monster Billy Dean, which disappointed me. It's a post-apocalyptical story about a boy brought up in near-isolation, taught about Christianity but not about the outside world; Billy Dean is special for being able to communicate with the dead. Words are spelt almost phonetically throughout the book which contributes to the sense of Billy Dean's isolation. Unfortunately, I didn't think that the story quite lived up to what was promised by its cover and the publisher's letter. I think I was expecting something darkly atmospheric, something bloodcurdling enough to be a little trashy, yet with enough pretensions that it might be literary. I wanted to be reminded of the eerier moments in Susanna Clark's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I wanted a sub-Shirley Jackson story - perhaps something about feral children. The book didn't do any of these things for me, and I think that my dissatisfaction irreparably clouded my enjoyment.
Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell - the story of an Ozarks girl on the hunt for her meth-cooking father to turn into the police - was rather murky. It was well-written - and far more atmospheric than Billy Dean - but ultimately forgettable. It did have some engaging details that I wish the film had retained - Ree's loss of virginity, her relationship with her best friend, the horror of her uncle's face destroyed by an accident while cooking meth - but it's not one that I'd rush out to buy again.
I read Diana Wynne Jones' final book, Earwig and the Witch, which was as entertaining as anything else she wrote. I adore Jones' writing - Fire and Hemlock is a regular "top tenner" when listing my favourite books - and this last of hers managed to strike the right note of being "darkly adorable" (the illustrations help). It was the story of an orphan girl called Earwig who's adopted and enslaved by a woman called Bella Yaga, who only wants her around to help with her spells; Earwig, a girl used to getting her own way at the orphanage, now decides to scheme her way into becoming a witch herself. Only the ending felt a little rushed - I got the feeling that perhaps it was finished by well-intentioned family and editors after Jones' death - but I still loved it.
In fact, I was all set to make Earwig and the Witch the main focus of this post, even though it was written for young children - but then I read John Fowles' The Collector. I thought it was an absolutely wonderful book - sort of as if Nabokov had written Emma Donoghue's Room. Set in the 1960s, a young man is obsessed with an art student, whom he abducts and keeps locked up in the cellar of his isolated cottage, storing her like one of the butterfly specimens he also collects. I imagine it was an extremely difficult book to write - Frederick Clegg actually seems almost reasonable during his narration. It is only in the second half of the book, told through a series of diary entries written by the kidnapped Miranda, that Clegg's "weirdness" is put into perspective.
In spite of any sympathy owed to her awful situation, Miranda herself is not wholly likeable - she's snobbish ("The ordinary man is the curse of civilization" (127)) hypocritical, self-obsessed - but I was impressed by how much her imperfections made me appreciate her, and to her credit, she frequently recognises the flaws in her character, reflecting on what she's written and done and criticising poor behaviour. We talk about "real" characters in books - she seemed real to me. I certainly appreciated her interest in and ability to discuss literature - she was able to compare herself and her situation to other literary moments. Halfway through the novel she thinks, "I am Emma Woodhouse" (157) - I am Miranda - or at least, I was when I was her age, twenty.
Curiously, there wasn't - or I didn't catch - a reference to Pamela, an obvious example of captivity in the western canon, and considering the frequent allusions to Emma, Sense and Sensibility, The Catcher in the Rye, Romeo and Juliet, Robinson Crusoe, various paintings, and (most notably) The Tempest, this omission appears to be an oversight. Perhaps Miranda simply wasn't familiar with the work. Clegg certainly wouldn't have been.
Religion is a modest-running theme throughout The Collector; not the prevailing subject (that's class) but it appeared often enough to interest me. There are frequent references to Clegg's semi-religious upbringing; he was "brought up in the atmosphere" (13) of Christianity in spite of his nonconformist aunt and still retains the loosely puritanical beliefs of childhood. Certain things are "not nice", such as sexual promiscuity in women.
Miranda does not appear to have had a particularly religious upbringing - at most, we can imagine that it was vaguely Church of England, in the way that most girls of her class in the 1960s were vaguely Church of England. She believes in God - and even prays to him occasionally - although a Christian God is not a defining aspect of her life until the end. Early on in the story she asserts herself as a Buddhist, although she does not repeat this belief. It appears to be part of her self-identification with the Left.
Yet religious lifestyles are far more important to Clegg and Miranda than either of them seem to realise. Each of them unconsciously follows a religious path. Clegg, surprisingly, aligns himself with western Buddhism, which as I understand it, promotes the acceptance of situations for what they are. Clegg is unwilling to alter his own lifestyle unless necessary and cannot understand why Miranda can't come to loves him. In fact, most of Clegg's motivation throughout the book comes from the belief that if Miranda contemplates her situation properly, she will realise that she loves him. He is unwavering in this principle and his position at the end of the book is much the same as it was at the beginning. Miranda's failure to love him is her fault, with her "la-di-da ideas and clever tricks" (282).
By contrast, Miranda, for all her modern views, is demonstrative of one of the ideals behind western Christianity: that a person is imperfect and must strive for self-improvement. Her development is only partly spiritual, going from subservience to God to hatred - "he's a great loathsome spider in the darkness…God is impotent…I hate beyond hate" (255). Similarly, her experience with violence until her capture has been observant - the "H-bomb" and teddy-boys harassing Indians - and the idea of violence makes her "feel weak". Yet eventually a physical attack is something she must do.
Her experience has aspects of a religious retreat - albeit one of luxury. Being kept in isolation in a cellar for months, she has time to think and reflect. She must discard her former principles and compromise her beliefs in order to have a chance at survival and escape. Unlike Clegg, she does go through several transformations. Enlightenment is perhaps too strong a word for her path but her development throughout the book, her ability to think and question herself, are certainly increased. Would it be too hideous to retain the butterfly metaphor here?
