Wednesday 31 July 2013

One down!

I am pleased to report that I finished MacLaverty's The Anatomy School this evening, and don't know what form of boredom overtook the previous reviewer who gave up at page sixty.  I was fairly riveted, although this may be something to do with my Catholic past and Northern Irish Roman Catholic ancestry, and my recent reacquaintance with Macbeth, which is quoted extensively throughout. I enjoyed everything about this book apart from the swearing, blaspheming and adolescent male obsession with sex, which MacLaverty absolutely nails. The dialogue sounds authentic, both the filthy, irreverent banter between the three school friends who are the main characters, and the older authoritarian figures. The priests, especially Condor,are brilliant,and I love the way that the author ratchets up the tension as the all-important exams approach. At this stage in Part 1, I found I couldn't put the book down. 

I could see this making a great film, and don't know why it hasn't made it to the silver screen yet. There would be some fabulous characters for actors to get their teeth into.

Anyway, my advice is to find some MacLaverty and read it. I definitely want to check out his other stuff if he can write so well. Let me not get side-tracked though. It's back to the hessian bag for me, and my second choice: Douglas Coupland's  The Gum Thief. This was picked up from the sale table at a local branch library for 50p. Too good to resist!



Saturday 27 July 2013

First out of the bag....

First out of the bag was Bernard MacLaverty's The Anatomy School, picked up at a local charity shop recently for £1.50. 









A passing acquaintance with the author (who was Writer-in-Residence at Aberdeen University in the mid eighties, when I was a student there), was enough to persuade me to take it home. He used to hang out in the Roman Catholic Chaplaincy,where students could find the best tea and coffee facilities, super ploughman's lunches and a great little library fitted out with study tables. I remember him as a genial, funny, down-to-earth kind of guy, who had experienced a normal life before taking up writing.  If you don't know anything about him or his work, check out his website, where he has some amusing anecdotes, and a recommended reading list of personal favourites. www.bernardmaclaverty.com

 I am heartened by the fact that he confesses to not reading much at all until adulthood. It seems to be the opposite way round for me. I read loads as a child, often stuff that I was too young to appreciate, but seem to have lost the appetite for reading in mid-life! Anyway, if The Times is right, this is going to be a "zestfully funny" novel. I'm twelve pages in so far, and enjoying the irreverent Catholic humour, especially the priests. Lets see how I get on between here and page sixty, where one reviewer says she got bored and gave up!

Friday 26 July 2013

A Mixer and a mixed bag!

Buying a rather gorgeous Kitchen Aid mixer recently has moved precision engineering into my kitchen and my recipe books out of it. There's no way I would hide such a thing of beauty in a cupboard, but a solution had to be found for the books. Immediately, I set about removing two shelves of paperback novels from the Billy bookcase in our dining room to make room for Delia, Jamie, Nigel, Nigella and friends. However, I could not discard the paperbacks without knowing that I had read them all; rather ashamed of the fact that I ought to have read some of them, like Catch 22, a long time ago! So they are sitting in a cardboard box and a hessian bag awaiting removal to the charity shop AFTER I have read them. It's a very mixed bag. Some I have had for years, and their covers are like old friends. Others have been passed on to me by real friends. What they have in common is that I feel I would be missing something were I simply to bundle them into the boot of my car and distribute them around the charity shops in town. That something might be noble, or uplifting, or simply the possibility of a good laugh. Maybe in a really good novel it could be all three? 

So, here I am at the start of a long Summer holiday from my job as a teaching assistant, hoping that by the end of August I will be well-read, better informed, finely attuned to the human condition, and living in a tidier house! Now, where to begin........cardboard box, or hessian bag? Watch this space!