Rebecca's Tale

I've just finished Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beauman and, well, hmm. It was OK. The writing was good and the plot had strength and direction, but it revealed too much, and in revealing too much it lacked the mystery of the original, and therefore a lot of its charm. The book is written in four sections with four separate narrators: Colonel Julyan, Terence Grey, Rebecca herself and the colonel's daughter, Ellie.

I've said this before but I find Rebecca exasperating and intriguing, perhaps in equal measure. The book's two central characters - Rebecca and the second Mrs de Winter - are compelling because we know so little about them. I've always found the second Mrs de Winter quite creepy - she's so knowingly naive, so consciously gauche, so trenchantly aware of her and others' positions in society, and so quick to point out her youth and naivety. And, for me, any sympathy for her was lost when she so easily - and happily - accepts Maxim's reasons for killing his wife, and understands them, too. I think Daphne du Maurier intends the reader to feel uncomfortable with this acceptance. There's a surface morality of Rebecca which is essentially misogynisitic, dictating that an unfaithful woman deserves what is coming to her - whether it be terminal cancer of the womb or murder. But again, I don't think du Maurier agrees with that morality - look who's espousing it - the fundamentally flawed second Mrs de Winter.

There's no ambiguous morality in Rebecca's Tale, though. In fact, Sally Beauman just skims the surface of the moral issues of the book, and imposes 1990s morality - the ready acceptance homosexuality, for example - on the books' characters, who are living in fifties' Cornwall. Sure, Beauman gives a convincing version of Rebecca's early life, but giving her a voice I think was the author's biggest mistake. Although we've been told how charismatic Rebecca is, the section where she 'speaks' to her unborn child (which is actually a tumour - is it bad that by this stage of the book I found that funny?) is - well - kind of boring. Rather than the charismatic woman we expect, we just get a series of explanations and revelations, most of which we already know.

And that's the thing about Rebecca's Tale - it simply does not stand alone, you need to have read Rebecca to understand most of it, unlike Stephen King's Bag of Bones, a reworking of Rebecca, (which is itself a reworking of Jane Eyre). Bag of Bones has Mike Noonan as a latter-day Max de Winter, who is grieving his possibly unfaithful dead wife, and taking an interest in a case that involves a young single mother. The horror in Bag of Bones doesn't come from the ghosts and ghoulies that inhabit the house at the centre of the book, Sarah Laughs, but from a terrible crime that happened almost a century earlier, and the town's unwillingness to stand accountable for that crime. It's a great book, and you don't need to have read Rebecca to understand it.

So - Rebecca's Tale - not a particularly amazing book to start off my year of reading! It's a shame, because I really liked The Landscape of Love, the only other Sally Beauman book I've read.

Happy New Year

As this is a recent blog, I'm sure that there's not many people reading, although I do know of one - Hi, Tricia! Anyway, I'd like to wish everyone who has passed by a very happy New Year, and I hope you brought it in in the way you wanted. We had a blast - more details on my main blog, Elevenses.

I'm still reading Rebecca's Tale, which I'll finish this week. However, I wanted to mention two books that I'll definitely be reading throughout the year.

I first read The World of the Short Story one summer over ten years ago. It's a great collection, now out of print and hard to find, but I picked up a used library copy from AbeBooks for about a fiver. I remember loving this book - it introduced me to Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro, amongst others. It'll be interesting to read it again now, to see what I remember and what stories appeal to me now. And - conveniently - there are 62 stories, so that's a story or two a week.

I don't read much poetry - although I like it, I feel slightly intimidated by it, but hopefully Ruth Padel's 52 Ways Of Looking At A Poem will address that. This book came out of an Independent on Sunday column and sounds great. It's been yellowing away on my bookshelves ever since it was published in 2002, so as 2009 is turning out to be the year of self-improvement, it seemed right to take it down.

As for what else I'll be reading? Well, I'm looking to read as much of I can from what's on my bookshelves already - I'd like to read at least ten books before I buy any more. I'd also like to read more from before the nineteenth century, as well as tackling some non-fiction. After Rebecca's Tale, I'd like to read either The Poisonwood Bible or the new Michael Holroyd, A Strange Eventful History, which Steve gave to me for Christmas (with help from Kaboodle!).

Tricia alerted me to the fact that you can't yet leave comments on this blog! Oh noes! I'm trying to resolve this, but it involves knowing much more about coding than I do. I think I'm getting there, so hold tight...
You can now comment! Woo hoo!

Interim reading before the big 52 in 52 - Rebecca's Tale

In the middle of the New Year, I reread Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. I've always had a few problems with the book: the narrator is a little too knowingly naive; the revelation at the end a little too pat. I think I've always felt more on Rebecca's side than any other character; her absence makes the idea of her all the more compelling, there is something vital and engaging about her which everyone else in the book - perhaps with the exception of the wicked Mrs Danvers - lacks.

I've been meaning to read Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beauman for a while now. The main action of the book takes place twenty years after Rebecca's death and is narrated by Colonel Julyan, a minor character in Rebecca, his daughter Ellie, the mysterious Terence Grey and - it seems - a section narrated by Rebecca herself, though I haven't read up to that point yet.

Thoughts so far? Well, the writing is pretty good and the story has me hooked. I hope, however, that the various threads in the put aren't tied up too quickly, and that there are still some questions left unanswered. I'll let you know...

meme

This book meme was doing the rounds of knitting blogs recently. I'm normally useless with memes, but here's mine.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Underline those you intend to read.
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare – I’ve read quite a few, but by no means all
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks (this book is the main reason why I really don't like Sebastian Faulks)
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding (it's crazy that I've never read this book)
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I've counted 73 - so I've read almost three quarters of the list... not bad, I guess. There are some books I'd never read in here - The Five People You Meet in Heaven, for example. But like all these lists it's very arbitrary and subjective... I'd have Iris Murdoch in here somewhere, as well as Haruki Murakami...

Back to books...

There was a time when I used to read two or three books a week, and that was on top of all the reading I used to do as an editor at a well-known publishing house.

And then I decided to go freelance, which was the right decision, and got back into knitting - which was great - but my book reading slipped. I work on a lot of books a year for work and became a bit jaded, I think, and it’s difficult to concentrate on a complicated knitting pattern and turn pages at the same time.

But I really, really miss reading.

I got into audiobooks - and they’re great - but I miss the actual act of reading, and sometimes you don’t quite catch the nuances of the language when you’re not actually looking at the words on the page. Audiobooks will feature - probably heavily - but I want to get back to the physical object. I love the smell of books old and new, the way they feel in your hands - the weight of them - how handsome they look lined up in a shelf. There’s a physicality to books that you don’t get with the audio versions. Not that I’m going to eschew the audio versions together! Got to listen to something while I knit!

So, can I do it? Can I read fifty-two books in a year?