Unusually mocking review follows; apologies to those who like the book.
It is certain that the character least happy with the way events turn out here Unusually mocking review follows; apologies to those who like the book.
It is certain that the character least happy with the way events turn out here is Hermes the pig (view spoiler)[ who ends up on the menu, in so many different ways (hide spoiler)]. On the other trotter she might have been relieved, no longer burdened by a masculine name and some heavy mythological baggage.
The Restaurant of Love Regained is about food � in great detail and expertly described � but little else, especially elements which would benefit from exposition or expansion, or indeed characterisation.
Food enthusiast Rinko, living in the big city, wants nothing better than to run her own restaurant, especially with her Indian boyfriend, but he has disappeared before the story even begins, making off with the Le Creuset and all their high end cheffy gear and special ingredients- except he missed one, a hidden vase of salted rice–bran paste, although very little is made of this lone surviving treasure. Nothing is made of the Indian boyfriend who remains nameless and unknown. Why did he leave? Why did he empty the apartment? No explanation.
Like many in her circumstances, Rinko goes back to her village, populated by people of one or two dimensions: a dipsomaniacal, estranged mother, running a bar; the mother’s rich, rude boyfriend; mother’s old lover who left her without a word years before; the heart of gold old bloke who helps set up Rinko’s strange restaurant The Snail, which might be appropriately named given the pace of the story; a restaurant with only one sitting at a time (how does she make any money?) and powered by the healing qualities of her cooking, although exactly how this happens remains vague. Guests needing love feature a girl and her anorexic rescue rabbit, not yet destined for the pot, a gay couple, a shy pair needing to talk more, and ultimately Rinko’s mum in a conclusion in which a series of voltes face, turn things on their head and by which time I cared not.
Read and re-read a hundred times, this treasured book from my childhood is still with me all these years later, a little battered but still presentablRead and re-read a hundred times, this treasured book from my childhood is still with me all these years later, a little battered but still presentable with my name neatly lettered on the title page.
The show was one of the first on Australian television and it captured my imagination: exciting, adventurous, with outlaws living in the green wood and good triumphing over bad. A young boy's fantasy. The book, drawn from the television show, is lavishly illustrated in colour and black and white and the stories are well told with all the big ones included: Robin meeting Little John, eating and drinking with Friar Tuck, the archery contest, inveighing the Sheriff of Nottingham into Sherwood Forest to feast on the king's royal deer and of course featuring the beautiful Maid Marian in the person of Bernadette O'Farrell.
I enjoyed the show so much I can probably still sing the theme song: 'Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen...'...more
Who is the love of your life? The one you are with now after long searching, chosen with the benefit of maturity borne of long experience, both good aWho is the love of your life? The one you are with now after long searching, chosen with the benefit of maturity borne of long experience, both good and bad? Or is the love of your life someone from long ago? From a time of youthful idealism when the years ahead promised only emotional riches and lives stretching out together in blissful simpatico. Until something went wrong.
While the story goes back into the past and forward 30 years, these sojourns are brief: the main action takes place over calendar year 1938, from New Year’s eve, a fateful night when Katey and her alluring friend Eve Ross � ‘Her last-minute dress was a red silk number with a scooped neckline, and she had apparently traded up to her best support bra- because the tops of her breasts could be seen from fifty feet in a fog �(p47), meet Tinker Grey and thereafter, find themselves among the scions of serious privilege, the world of inherited wealth; the world of Club 21, chauffeur driven Bentleys, Central Park West addresses, shooting parties and lavish festivities in the Adirondacks. It is a world of trust funds, broking, banking and shopping at Bergdorfs and Saks. For Katey, from Miss Markham’s secretarial pool, it is a journey propelled by her talent and industry, but only made possible through her new connections, people who can smooth the way, open doors. It is a journey where she learns, painfully, the truth hiding behind facades but also how long it takes to separate the genuine from the illusory. Her friend Eve makes the most of a bad break.
The story is told by Amor Towles with the wordly skill of Anthony Doer at his best, All the Light We Cannot See, with character and dialogue to be savoured. Sometimes his idiom is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler, (of a white-jacketed waiter: ‘He had all the charm of a country club con artist� (p48) other times Scott Fitzgerald: when meeting her prospective new employer, Conde Nast editor Mason Tate, Katey is called into his corner office: ‘His accent was patently aristocratic- part prep school, part Brit, part prude. He pointed a commanding finger at one of the chairs, reserving the couch for himself.� (p159). The quite large cast is deftly drawn.
Towles has captured the sensibility of the year, with America recovering from the depression, but with the wounds still fresh. War is looming in Europe, and conflict is already raging in Spain; one of Katey’s new friends Wallace Wolcott feels compelled to join. It is the year of the first appearance of Superman and Captain America is not far away. All the right literary suspects are here, perhaps one or two too many, but nevertheless welcome: Woolf, Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald, back to Austen and Dickens, even Agatha Christie. One character looks forward to her next mystery.
In 1969 Katey, who by my calculation is 55 at this point, looks back on that fateful year, 1938, pronounces her satisfaction with her life in publishing and her love for patrician husband Val and their twenty year marriage but (view spoiler)[the name once again on her lips of a morning? ‘Tinker�. (hide spoiler)]...more
Nat listened to the tearing sound of splintering wood, and wondered how many million years of memory were stored in those little brains, in the stabbiNat listened to the tearing sound of splintering wood, and wondered how many million years of memory were stored in those little brains, in the stabbing beaks, the piercing eyes, now giving them this instinct to destroy mankind with all the deft precision of machines. (p38)
The Birds is the rightly famous story of an avian apocalypse on the bleak Cornish coast as the sudden coming of winter co-insides with ferocious attacks by birds small and large. du Maurier knows her county, the value of detailed description and the power of providing no explanation for the phenomenon. A masterpiece, a mere 40 pages, of ever increasing tension and ever diminishing hope. Reviewed more fully here.
du Maurier stories, at least the six in this collection, are quite varied in content and style, although nothing ever ends well. Mostly she refrains from explaining what is going on, allowing us to use our imaginations, though The Apple Tree does suggest both the possibility of re-incarnation and the inability of a bitter and twisted personality to change.
Monte Verita is a strangely dated razor’s edge tale, of considerable weirdness about a wife, of a minimalist bent, who is under the mysterious thrall of a higher calling; her bereft husband laments his loss forever. In contrast The Old Man ends in a good twist, which goes some way to understanding his earlier behaviour.
The Little Photographer suggests just how unfulfilling a rich and pampered life might be as a member of the nobility. But if you are going to thoughtlessly allow your beauty to infatuate an Italian photographer, remember once the plates are developed there is evidence.
Kiss Me Again, Stranger, which I wrongly thought was turning into a ghost story, is one that is explained, rather unnecessarily, but is a powerful reminder that war affects people in strange and sad ways, even one, or especially one, as striking as the girl in the picture palace, who has after all, lost everyone dear to her :
She had copper hair, page-boy style I think they call it, and blue eyes, the kind that look short-sighted but see further than you think, and go dark by night, nearly black, and her mouth was sulky looking, as if she was fed up, and it would take someone giving her the world to make her smile. She hadn’t freckles, nor a milky skin, but warmer than that, more like a peach, and natural too. She was small and slim, and her velvet coat - blue it was � fitted her close, and the cap on the back of her head showed up her copper hair. (p207)
In his lifetime Sir Dirk Bogarde was an actor, artist, memoirist and novelist. He was an Englishman, but lived for many years in France.
He was a gay mIn his lifetime Sir Dirk Bogarde was an actor, artist, memoirist and novelist. He was an Englishman, but lived for many years in France.
He was a gay man who spent the first half of his film career as a handsome romantic leading man. Not so much a man of contradictions as someone who pretended to be someone he wasn’t. Pretending is at the heart of this pleasant, amusing but undemanding novel; pretending and guarding secrets.
The story focusses on identity, the one you have and the one you might create. It is about acquiring a mask to protect yourself from discovery, to escape your past or your heritage.
There’s the handsome lad who escapes his dysfunctional home where his parents entertain delusions about their theatrical talent. Moving to the big city his work is to pretend to be figures of enticement in saucy photos. His German girlfriend is the biggest pretender of all, denying her heritage, her lofty station in life, almost her country, in an effort to deny her aristocracy and upbringing. This is an effort that ultimately proves too much for her to maintain.
This pair is pampered by an elderly English couple who represent displacement. One of them has at least two secrets, which seriously affects their behaviour. These expatriates are long-time resident in the south of France, but remain resolutely English. Their villa provides the stage for most of the goings on, the most hilarious of which centre on a vacuous, voluptuous and voracious film star of limited English and less brain and an Italian film director with an oversized yacht, who is more Benito Mussolini than Federico Fellini. I wondered who he might be based on, but I hope he is just an amalgam of the worst characteristics of directors Bogarde knew.
Delightful stories simply told with a magical flavour containing moral messages without being too stodgy about it.
Like children’s tales throughout theDelightful stories simply told with a magical flavour containing moral messages without being too stodgy about it.
Like children’s tales throughout the world, these contain familiar elements and characters: farmers, usually old; woodcutters kind and woodcutters mean; an ogre, bad; a variety of birds and animals, many with special skills like a talented spider who can turn into a beautiful girl who weaves like mad, grateful to a young (rare) farmer who had saved the spider from a snake. The spider is saved again, this time by ‘Old Man Sun�, who along with the moon, from to time intervenes in earthly matters.
Along with the spider and the snake, there are rabbits and monkeys and jellyfish and crabs with tales to tell. Plus goblins and shape-changing Tanukis. Plus riches for rewarding goodness, wealthy beneficent lords and of course the childless couple who are miraculously blessed.
It is the nature of these stories to feature recognisable themes and a certain similarity in plotlines but this is a small matter. The collection owes it initial publication in 1959 to English–language publisher in japan, Florence Sakade. The stories are much enhanced by the original illustrations by Yoshisuke Kurosaki....more
…at midday, he would pause and eat the pasty that his wife had baked for him, and sitting on the cliff’s edge would watch the bids. (p1) Nat Hocken, …at midday, he would pause and eat the pasty that his wife had baked for him, and sitting on the cliff’s edge would watch the bids. (p1) Nat Hocken, part-time farm worker, on the Cornish coast
This is a masterpiece of rapidly building apprehension, the skilful deployment of a deeply plausible threat, and ingenious plotting to convey a coming apocalypse with intimate economy, using one small cottage, a nearby farm and about six speaking parts mainly Nat, his unnamed wife and their young children Jill and Johnny.
The well-known threat is avian, masses of gulls and other birds riding the tide just off the Cornish coast, observed by Nat who spends his solitary time overlooking the sea. He knows the habits of the birds, migratory and otherwise.
The land has been snap-frozen after a mild autumn; the first attack on Nat’s cottage is swift and terrifying as the massed birds attack with suicidal ferocity. Practical Nat boards up the windows and all but the kitchen chimney, ready for the next wave.
The action never leaves the neighbourhood. The malevolence of the birds is obvious when Nat cautiously ventures out and sees the carnage at the farm. Increasingly serious radio broadcasts convey the scale of the apocalypse, then the airwaves go silent. It is apparent no help will be coming anytime soon.
The bleak dark maritime coast of Cornwall is an ideal setting, one that du Maurier knew intimately. She also knew her feathered protagonists, about which I have provided an appendix below.
This is a spellbinding story, even if you know what's going to happen.
***
If you doubt the capacity of birds to create such destruction and death, take a look at an eagle’s eye. In Australia aggressive noisy minors push out other birds, magpies dive bomb people during nesting season, usually from behind and aiming for the head (I have been wounded twice). In contrast we have befriended a magpie mum who each year brings her youngster to feed in the grass of our sheltered back yard: there is a photo in my profile.
A cunning silver gull sweeping over my shoulder at Circular Quay stole from my hand half the pie I was eating. I have also heard of a couple in Canberra who had a backyard timber deck, on which they feed sulphur crested cockatoos. The couple went on holiday for three weeks and returned to find the deck destroyed. No just damaged, destroyed. Sulphur crested cockatoos are big powerful parrots who operate in large noisy flocks. The deck was hardwood.
And who knows what the bin-chickens are planning�
Be kind to the birds.
Appendix: Daphne du Maurier’s birds � The initial wave of attacking birds was mixed: jackdaws, gulls, starlings, finches and larks. � The seabirds riding the tide: in addition to the gulls there were oyster catchers, redshank, sanderling and curlew. � At the cottage window: robins, finches and larks again, sparrows, blue tits, bramblings and wrens. � For some reason, no sign of missel-thrush or blackbirds. � Rooks and jackdaws. � Gulls at the beach. � Over London: blackbirds, thrush, sparrows, pigeons and starlings. � Then in Cornwall, the bigger birds: black-headed gulls, magpies, jays, crows, herring gulls and gannets. � Finally the apex predators shredding the cottage: buzzards, hawks, kestrels and falcons....more
‘But you have to understand that even if I have some inkling about a person, I don’t tell them anything. People find meaning in the bonus gifts for th‘But you have to understand that even if I have some inkling about a person, I don’t tell them anything. People find meaning in the bonus gifts for themselves. It’s the same with books. Readers make their own personal connection to the words, irrespective of the writer’s intentions, and each reader gains something unique.� (p243) � Reference Librarian Sayuri Komachi to recent retiree Masao Gonno
A simple book, some might say simplistic, of modern fables: five almost self-contained stories, loosely connected by the presence each time of the large, pale Reference Librarian Sayuri Komachi and her effervescent assistant Nozomi Morinaga, custodians of the Hatori Community House, connected to the local elementary school.
Each of our five individuals has reached an impasse of one sort or another, making them unhappy: young shop assistant Tomoka; accounts man Ryo; former magazine editor Natsumi; idle disappointed illustrator Hiroya and Masao, our retiree, who is somewhat lost.
Like Kieslowski’s Decalogue, characters flit in and out of each of the stories, the central conceit of which is helpfulness in the form of a list books provided by Ms Komachi to each of the five, relating to their ostensible pursuit or question but including an outlier which might be a children’s tale, a book of poetry or a guide to astrology. These instinctively chosen titles plus a felted bonus gift are the catalyst for adjustment and change in each case, especially coming to the realisation that change happens all the time, you can’t do anything to stop it, so altering your perspective is the best response. (view spoiler)[This works for our illustrator who learns his drawings are not worthless, Ryo stands up for himself, the erstwhile editor finds a better fitting place in the world after having a baby later in life and retiree Masao comes to understand himself, his wife and his daughter more clearly. In the most affecting story, the first one, Tomoka doesn’t change her job where she feels intimidated by customers and colleagues alike, but adjusts her attitude after acquiring a new understanding of the perspective of other people and applying considerable emotional intelligence. (hide spoiler)]
The limitation of the Goodread’s star rating system means this work receives three stars, but it is smack bang in the middle of two and three. The rules of rounding up, and charity, dictate three. Ah well, having used stars since 2014, I am not brave enough to dismantle them now and review without stars like the wise Fionnuala...more
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