Nie lubię przekazywać złych wiadomości. Tym bardziej, jeśli po pierwszej, w dodatku niespodziewanej, pojawiają się kolejne i wydaje się, że czarna seria nie będzie miała końca. Otóż dzisiaj zbankrutowało kolejne już pismo skierowane do nieheteroseksualnych odbiorców. Mowa o hiszpańskim “Zero”.

“Czarną serię” rozpoczęły dwa brytyjskie tytuły: skierowany do lesbijek “crAve” oraz tygodnik “Pink paper”. Ten drugi był zresztą jedyną gazetą środowisk LGBT wydawaną na Wyspach Brytyjskich. W tej chwili wprawdzie działa dalej, ale wyłącznie jako internetowy serwis newsowy. Upadek “Pink Paper” był o tyle niespodziewany, że stał za nim potężny koncern mediowy MPG (Millivres Prowler Group) – wydawca takich tytułów, jak choćby znana nam wszystkim “Diva” czy skierowany do panów “GT”. O ile przyszłość “crAve” nie wygląda dobrze i jego okładki już raczej nigdy nie zobaczymy w kiosku, o tyle wydawcy “Pink Paper” zapewniają, że przywrócą tytuł, jak tylko uspokoi się sytuacja na rynku.

Zaledwie kilkanaście dni temu, gdy wydawało się, że kryzys ekonomiczny powoli mija, bankructwo ogłosił najstarszy i największy wydawca gazet LGBT w Stanach Zjednoczonych – Window Media. Zamknięto sześć tytułów, między innymi wydawaną od 40 lat, najstarszą amerykańską gazetę LGBT “Washington Blade”. Nic nie wskazywało na to, że Window Media może mieć kłopoty- “Washington Blade” sprzedawał się co tydzień w nakładzie 23 tysięcy egzemplarzy i uznawany był przez specjalistów od mediów za najbardziej wpływowe pismo branżowe nie tylko w USA, ale na całym świecie.

Kolejna ofiarą nierentowności okazało się niezwykle sympatyczne brytyjskie pisemko “Velvet”. Cieniutki kwartalnik wydawany pod patronatem Stelli Duffy rozważa wprawdzie powołanie do życia wersji online, ale wersja drukowana zniknie bezpowrotnie. Szkoda, bo “Velvet” był jednym z niewielu pism lesbijskich na rynku, które tak silnie zorientowane było na kulturę, literaturę i sztukę.

Wszyscy mieli nadzieje, że to już koniec pogromu wśród tęczowej prasy. Niestety. Dziś upadłość ogłosiło pismo “Zero”, największy hiszpański miesięcznik LGBT. W grudniu do kiosków trafi ostatni, 120 numer. Redaktor naczelny Miguel Ángel López przyznaje, że winę ponosi kryzys gospodarczy. Dochody pisma z reklam spadły w ostatnim roku aż o 60%, w związku z czym wydawca zwyczajnie nie miał innego wyjścia, jak zamknąć tytuł.

Nie ukrywam, że kolejne upadające pisma i ogólna sytuacja na rynku wydawniczym bardzo mnie martwią. Tym bardziej, że comiesięczne przesyłki od moich ulubionych wydawców są coraz cieńsze, mniejsze, lżejsze… Martwi mnie, że pisma, jeśli nawet nie znikają z rynku, zmniejszają częstotliwość, z którą ukazują się w kioskach. Tak na przykład stało się z “The Advocate”, który jakiś czas temu przekształcił się z dwutygodnika w miesięcznik.

Nie przekonują mnie argumenty, że wszystko można znaleźć w Internecie. Nie można. Nie takiej jakości, jak we wspomnianym przed chwilą “The Advocate”. Nie w takich blokach tematycznych, jakie funduje nam co miesiąc “Diva”. Nie o takim zapachu, jaki ma papier, na którym drukowany jest “Curve”. Dlatego boję się dnia, gdy w skrzynce pocztowej, zamiast zwyczajowej porcji fantastycznych artykułów, wywiadów i zdjęć, znajdę list z zawiadomieniem, że mojego ulubionego wydawcę trafił szlag.

]]> http://fioletowawinda.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/goraca-setka-magazynu-out/ Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:43:07 +0000 black6ox http://fioletowawinda.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/goraca-setka-magazynu-out/

Jak co roku, w grudniowo-styczniowym numerze magazynu OUT opublikowana została gorąca setka osób związanych ze sceną LGBT. Wśród 100 postaci najbardziej zasłużonych dla środowisk lesbijsko-gejowskich Anno Domini 2009 znalazło się tylko 30 kobiet. Dziś zapraszam na pierwszą piątkę.

Na specjalne wyróżnienie zasłużyła sobie Wanda Sykes, uhonorowana w kategorii “komediant(ka) roku”. Oprócz tego, że gra dość wywrotową rolę w serialu “The new adventures of old Christine” (rozwiedzionej, heteroseksualnej kobiety, która bierze ślub ze swoją najlepszą przyjaciółką tylko po to, by dostać “zieloną kartę”), to jeszcze w związku z kampanią na rzecz odrzucenia słynnej “8 poprawki” wyautowała się publicznie na jednym z wieców zwolenników małżeństw homoseksualnych.

W tym miesiącu zadebiutowała z  własnym talk show – “The Wanda Sykes show”. Wróżę sukces. I życzę sukcesu.

Kolejne wyróżnienie otrzymała Cyndi Lauper, ogłoszona “Sojusznikiem(czką) roku”. Uhonorowano ją za szeroko zakrojone działania na rzecz osób o orientacji homoseksualnej: koncerty charytatywne, wystąpienia, domaganie się uznania zbrodni na homoseksualistach za zbrodnie nienawiści, a wreszcie założenie fundacji True Colors.

W tym roku organizacja Lauper stworzyła True Colors Residence, dom dla bezdomnej homoseksualistów od 18 do 24 roku życia, którzy znaleźli się na ulicy z powodu swojej orientacji seksualnej. Młodzież może w Rezydencji zamieszkać i zacząć życie od nowa.

Swoje miejsce w pierwszej setce znalazła też Kelly McGillis, amerykańska aktorka znana chociażby z ról w “Oskarżonych” czy “Top gun”. Ostatnio można było podziwiać ją w “The L Word”, w którym grała panią pułkownik bojącą się wyjść z szafy.

Na uwagę zasługuje fakt, że McGillis, mimo 52 lat, dopiero w tym roku przyznała się do homoseksualnej orientacji. Wcześniej miała trzech mężów, a z ostatnim rozwiodła się w 2002 roku.

Jako ciekawostkę mogę przytoczyć zabawne odniesienie do Kelly McGillis w książce Stelli Duffy “Calendar Girl”. Otóż przedstawiona jest tam ona jako ideał urody. Lesbijski ideał urody, dodam. I przypominam, że książka została napisana w 1994 roku, czyli 15 lat przed coming outem McGillis, gdy w najlepsze trwało jej trzecie małżeństwo…

Tammy Baldwin jest polityczką. Demokratką. Jest nawet członkinią amerykańskiego kongresu. No i jest też lesbijką. Ujawnienie sięw przypadku Baldwin mogło skończyć się załamaniem kariery, ona jednak nie wahała się ani chwili. Co więcej, jako pierwsza wyautowana lesbijka w kongresie odważnie walczy o legalizację małżeństw homoseksualnych. OUT wyróżnił ją również za zdecydowany sprzeciw wobec inwazji Stanów Zjednoczonych na Irak, jeszcze za czasów prezydenta Busha.

Piątą kobietą na liście OUT jest w tym roku Sarah Waters. Cieszę się, że znalazła się na niej choćby dlatego, że zrobiono jej z tej okazji poniższe zdjęcie:

Ten rok literacki należał do Waters. Wydała nową powieść “The Little Stranger” (przetłumaczoną na polski jako “Ktoś we mnie”), została nominowana do nagrody Bookera i znalazła się wśród finalistów, a wreszcie poinformowała media, że powstaną kolejne dwa filmy na podstawie jej tekstów: “The Night Watch” (Pod osłoną nocy”) i “The Little Stranger” właśnie. Pięć wydanych książek i pięć obrazów na ich kanwie. Nieźle, pani Waters!

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Tak wygląda pierwsza wyróżniona piątka. Też nie możecie doczekać się następnej?

PS Wszystkie zdjęcia pochodzą z magazynu OUT, który jest raczej pismem dla mężczyzn

As you will know from reading this blog I love today’s interviewee’s work very much. Add to that the fact that she is delightful in person as well as in prose and what more could you want from an author? Now if you haven’t read any Stella Duffy then more fool you and please head to your nearest store online or not and pic up some of her works if not all of them. Stella is multi-talented not only as an author of eleven novels also as an actress, performer and playwright. She has been up for the Orange Prize twice and last year won Stonewall Writer of the Year for ‘The Room of Lost Things’. You can follow her blog here and learn much more about her there too. So here is an interview especially for The Great Gay Reads from our first lady interviewee Stella Duffy…

Introduce yourself to the readers, tell us more about yourself…
Stella Duffy, 46, married to writer Shelley Silas, living in South London. Born in Woolwich SE18, youngest of 7, raised Catholic, practising Buddhist.
We moved to New Zealand/Aotearoa when I was a child. My father was a New Zealander, came here in World War 2, wireless op/gunner in Lancasters – therefore he was shot down quite early! – got together with my South London (Kennington) mother, had a bunch of kids, they took the two youngest of us back to NZ in ’68 when my father could no longer stay away from home.
I still think my mother, 48 at the time, was enormously brave to leave behind her older children, travel – by ship – on a one-way ticket to somewhere she had never seen, not knowing when she’d be back, and arriving with absolutely nothing but half a dozen tea chests that arrived six months later, not one without some damage to the contents. All we had in the lounge for ages was my Nana’s old carpet and two deckchairs for my Mum and dad to sit on! As it turned out, it was the right move for them, and certainly for the two of us who went there – not least because I then had access to great NZ education in the 70’s – but certainly NOT an easy thing for her to do. I also completely understand why my older siblings, late teens and early 20’s in ‘swinging’ London had no desire to do the same!
I grew up in small timber town in the central North Island, Tokoroa – often sneered at by the NZ city types but a brilliant place for an enquiring mind to grow up, not least because in 70’s approx 75% of the population was Maori/Polynesian and the town was therefore brilliantly multicultural (and all that was good about that) LONG before the concept became fashionable! It also taught me the value of small towns/rural life. Not that I choose to live rurally, loving London as I do, but that I know it, too, can be lovely.

How long have you been writing for?
First book published in 1994, was writing theatre/stories for at least 12 years before then, and all through school. I started out writing plays for us kids to perform, both as an actor and as a writer.

What made you want to write?
Liking reading, wanting to tell stories, wanting to share stories, wanting to change the world.

Who made you want to write?
Mostly my mother, a bit my father, and quite a bit Mr Shakespeare.

What were your favourite reads growing up?
The Trixie Belden books (not Nancy Drew), Narnia, Malory Towers/Chalet School/Angela Brazil, Bunty, Tammy, anything really – Mum and Dad belonged to book clubs, new books came through the letterbox every month … my Dad was a boiler man, it can be a dreadful job when something goes wrong, he’d come home from the night shift caked in gunge and shattered, having lost a stone in a night … but, if nothing went wrong he’d read a novel overnight. My Mum got a 20 min bus ride to and from work (also at the timber mill) every day, reading on the bus … I ended up reading whatever they had*. From Georgette Heyer to Charles Dickens to Erich von Daniken to Harold Robbins. Later on I discovered a world of writers, far outside the bookshelves of my home, but as a child it wasn’t so much about the style or the genre, it was about books, about stories. I think it mostly still is.
* My Dad’s books stank of the mill … pine/ply/pulp/salt-cake, a peculiarly Tokoroa smell.

Where there any books that really helped you growing up gay?
Sadly not. The early 70’s were a dreadful time to look for LGBT role models – not least from a small town in New Zealand!

How do you feel about the state of gay fiction today?
Fine. I know lots of people complain about the demise of the gay publishing houses, but actually, I think it serves us all to have mainstream publishers publishing us all – and while SOME of the gay publishers published great work, a good many of them published not very great or even dire work, merely because it was LGBT. And publishing bad work, merely to have LGBT characters doesn’t serve any of us well.
That said, I think there probably is a gap in the market for a good lesbian/bi-women publisher right now. There are certainly a lot more out women wanting to or actually writing. Maybe a recession’s a good time to try??!!

Do you feel that as a gay writer you are obligated to include gay characters in your work…
Not exactly obliged, but I do live in a world with LGBT people, so it would be odd not to have any LGBT characters in a book. It simply depends on the story, I wouldn’t put them in merely to have them there, if the story didn’t need them, but then again, nor can I imagine living in a world without LGBT people (like I don’t live in an entirely white world or female world or British world etc etc), so I don’t think it’s very likely I’d write a book with NO LGBT characters at all. (Never say never though!)

…Or to give something back to gay readers?
Gosh, don’t know about this one. I don’t mean to sound rude, but I truly don’t think about the reader that much when I’m writing. I think about the story I’m telling and I seriously believe that’s the most important thing. If I was thinking about the reader while I worked … well, which one? Surely we don’t think all gay readers want the same thing??!! It would make me crazy … so no, not to give something back to gay readers, not specifically, ‘all’ I want to give to readers is the best piece of work I can make.

What new gay authors do you think we should be looking out for in the future?
You Simon?
Paul Burston’s new book sounds brilliant. Out in May I think?
And I really enjoyed Mia Farlane’s first novel – Footnotes to Sex.
Looking forward to more from Karen McLeod too.

What are your thoughts on the ‘gay fiction’ section of book stores, shouldn’t it be all inclusive or is it a good device for people to be able to find gay fiction?
I want all my books to be everywhere! So I’m happy to be in Gay Sections BUT I don’t ever want to be ONLY in the ‘gay section’. As a young woman, I would have loved to be able to seek out a gay section in a book shop or library, but I similarly might have been shy to be seen there, so I’d want to find that same author on any other shelf as well. It helps publishers and booksellers (and sometimes the public) to categorise. I don’t mind that, I just don’t want to be ONLY in the ghetto.

What is your Great Gay Read of all time and why?
Oh I can’t just have one!
Patricia Highsmith’s Carol. Lovely, sad, happy, gorgeous, sexy. Brilliantly written of course, and far more appropriately a ‘first lesbian novel’ than the all-too-oft-cited Well of Loneliness.
Sarah Water’s Fingersmith is the ONLY book I have ever read that made me (literally) gasp aloud (at the ‘big twist’). I remain astonished at her audacity and skill in pulling that off.
Neil Bartlett’s Skin Lane. Neil Bartlett is a glorious writer and this is one of his best.

After having so loved State of Happiness this year I was really looking forward to reading Stella Duffy’s latest novel once more. Every so often you come across a book where you just think ‘what a great idea’ and ‘how the hell did they come up with that?’ This is the case of Stella Duffy’s latest novel ‘The Room of Lost Things’. As you will all probably know I am a fan of Stella’s work and re-reading this recently has made the book even better the second time round. Has that happened to any of you? I think first time I was simply devouring it and couldn’t gat enough of the characters and had to know what happened instantly. This time it was a much gentler devouring and I spotted a lot of things that I had possibly missed the first time round and characters that grew on me even more so this time.

The story focuses on several characters but in particular Robert Sutton who is the keeper of the room of lost things. What is the room of lost things? Why it is a laundry in Loughborough Junction which he is leaving and where many people leave hints of their secrets in their pockets which Robert has collected. A laundry that he inherited from his mother Alice (one of my favourite names, I know not one horrid Alice) though sadly he himself has no Indeed the deal is very much done and he is handing the shop over to Akeel and his wife, meaning that he is packing up and dealing with his past and not only the secrets that other people have left in their laundry, but his own demons. All this whilst also training Akeel to do his job.

The rest of the book looks at the people in the area some of whom go into the laundrette and others who merely pass it day by day. Two of my favourite characters were the two homeless men who can often be found on the unwanted sofa on the street watching the world go by. Actually saying that I don’t think I had any favourites exactly I enjoyed all the characters and their tales and there is a huge scope in this novel be they the nanny who is having an affair with her boss, an old lady who has Alzheimer’s though doesn’t know it (that’s not a bad joke it’s the truth) or the commitment phobic dancer.

The latter is Stefan and he is a fabulous character, an ageing dancer and gay man on the cusp of middle age and scared to death of commitment. I actually think he is one of the most ‘real’ gay men I have read in a while. I don’t mean that all gay men are like him, though I may know some, he is just not your stereotypical gay man nor are his reactions to things. Through his character Stella covers the issue of homophobic crime… I won’t say more than that.

With a book filled with so many characters Stella Duffy’s additional skill is managing to give you insight into all their lives, relationships and stories without you feeling confused. There is really though one true star of the story and that is London and not the London that everyone knows and loves, not the tourist traps and the hustle and bustle of the West End. This is a truer London that those, like me, will know and love. Those of you who don’t will be entranced and will be left wanting to find the more hidden parts where tubes dare not tread when you next visit.

This book is in some ways a love letter (the prose is beautiful) to a part of London that Stella herself lives in and indeed loves. Though this is not a crime novel I feel Duffy has used her skills from her crime series to weave the plot whilst dropping hints and herrings along the way until you come to the end of the book. I want to say more about the ending but I shan’t as I could give things away, it’s a very well written and thought provoking ending is probably the best way to describe it. I was moved, I fell in love with London even more (especially as it was based on my side of the river) and I had read it before I realised it again, it just enveloped me. A wonderful book I whole heartedly recommend.

I don’t know about you but when you find an author that you love there is that mingled desire to read everything that they have ever written before you discovered them as quickly as possible. There is also the desire to savour these books and not have finished all of someone’s books before the next one is out. There can also be the niggling worry that you might not like it either at all or just not as much as the others. Which authors is it for you? For me there are a few authors that I have these thoughts with, I bet you could guess them, and those are Ian McEwan, Susan Hill, Kate Atkinson, Anne Tyler, Daphne Du Maurier, Tess Gerritsen and last but not least Stella Duffy. So I opened the first page of State Of Happiness with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

This book is amazing, simply stunning. I don’t know where to start a review exactly because I don’t want to give anything away so I will try and stick to the blurb with my additional babbling along the way. Jack (a Mancunian living in New York trying to make it in TV and the news) and Cindy (a mapmaker and published writer) meet at a mutual friend’s party and by the end of the evening know that they have both met someone special. What follows is the story of their relationship over the first five years moving from New York to LA and then dealing with the shocking blow when Cindy becomes incredibly ill.

The first half of the novel tells of the way relationships start and flow as they become more and more serious. The hesitations and customisations people have and make as they go through the new emotions and make room in their life for someone new, someone to become the other part of their life. I don’t know how she does it but Stella Duffy writes in a way that we see all these things in ourselves and smile at them. I kept thinking as I read on ‘oh yes, I have felt like that’ when she describes making space in your life for someone else and their habits. It’s written with a delightful realism that made me empathise with the characters which only made things harder in the second half of the novel.

Oddly when Cindy moves to be with Jack from the busy city and lights of New York to the sunny skies of LA the book becomes much darker. When Cindy falls sick (and I am not going to tell you what happens) you live the moments with her. I think my journey with her was so much harder because I liked her so much (I know books aren’t about characters we like but like her I did) and because someone close to me became very ill and it brought it back. I don’t think I have read such a spot on description of all the emotions you go through, the questions, the anger, the sadness and the laughter apart from in Helen Garner’s The Spare Room. ‘State of Happiness’ it is all encapsulated in less than two hundred and fifty pages.

The other thing that Duffy does that I thought was wonderful is relate all of these factors with mapping. Cindy herself is a cartographer as I mentioned, we read some of the excerpts of her book and possible future novel throughout the book, and how our lives are mapped and how the routes change as we go along is a big subject of the book. It’s the prose that gets me though frank yet poetic and subtle yet poignant. A friend of mine read the book just before me (and gave away the ending – tut) and summed it up in a sentence ‘a wonderful book, I have never read anything like it’ and she was spot on. This is a must read… must read.

I like crime fiction and though there are a few lesbian crime writers so far in my journey through reading crime I don’t think I have ever come across an openly lesbian detective. Until of course I read the delightful Stella Duffy’s ‘Calendar Girl’ and the private detective in question is Saz Martin.

Okay so I am on deadline until Friday so the next few days will be brief blogs or as this one is me giving you another review that I actually did on my other blog last year from an author I am very fond of… Stella Duffy. I read this after some fairy tales (oh the irony of that statement on here) and a few other Stella novels prior to this just so you know what I was rambling on about!

Another Stella Duffy book to add to the collection of books of hers this year and I loved it, I loved it, oh how I loved it. I saw Stella Duffy reading from this at this months Polari (a fabulous literary evening in London’s Soho) and the way it started like a fairytale or Greek myth made me move it straight to the top of my TBR. I am so glad that I did. As a child I devoured fairytales like they were going out of fashion and my mother taught classics so I was regularly read the Greek Myths and this novel has something of that magic in it also.

‘Singling Out The Couples’ is a magical modern fairytale. A princess from a land far beyond the tube system arrives in London. Cushla isn’t your average hard done by Princess, this Princess if different for she has no heart. In having no heart the one thing that Cushla hates above all other things is love, and in particular couples in love.

She sets out to break these couples up in anyway she can using her birth given magic. We watch as she separates first Jonathan and Sally (by sleeping with Jonathan), second Martin and Josh (by becoming one of the men’s first female lover) and thirdly Philip and Frances (by finding Frances’s inner lesbian) it’s a metro-sexual fable in its own way. However in the land that is far away not all is well and the king and queen send out her brother to stop her wild antics and to stop her from growing a heart. Does it like a fairytale of old have a happy ending? You will have to read it and find out and seriously you should read it.

Stella Duffy has a way with words, it cannot be put any other way. I don’t mean pretentiously I mean she seems to love words and uses them freely and quite unashamedly which is how it should be, it read slightly like poetry in its own way. That and the mixture of a fairytale is quite a heady mix. I am really surprised that this hasn’t been optioned for TV as I can imagine it making a great three part show (maybe I should get working on that) for winter weekend Sundays.

If you like to be taken to far away lands seeing London through strange stranger’s eyes like I do, then this is a book for you. I enjoyed it no end.

Singling Out The Couples is out now from Virago

A strange year for books, for me at least. Out of the 50 or so I read, only one stood out as outstanding – So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell, and that was first published  in 1980. Maxwell is one of my absolute favourite writers and here he doesn’t seem to put a word wrong – and anyone who can give expression, in what is basically a realistic novel,  to the thoughts and perceptions, albeit limited, of a dog, without throwing the book off kilter, clearly has skill to burn. 

Just before the end of the year, faced with a growing pile of new books still to be cracked, I picked up instead Thomas McGuane’s Nothing But Blue Skies, a novel I’d read and enjoyed at least twice before, and once begun I couldn’t put it down. I’d find it difficult to pin down exactly why McGuane is quite as good as he is – something to do with style and perception, the right mixture of fraility and humour – but I do enjoy reading, and re-reading, his work as much, if not more, than any other living writer.

I also read again this year, Brian Thompson’s excellent Ladder of Angels, which I was proud to publish under the Slow Dancer imprint in 1999. Sardonic, insightful, tough and funny, with this book and its predecessor, Bad to the Bone [Viking, 1991], Thompson laid claim to being the crime writer to chronicle turn of the century  Britain in all its murky glory, and I only wish history and memoir hadn’t claimed him as soon as it did. Both books are now out of print, but with a little effort you can find them and you should.

Of the new books I read, Richard Price’s Lush Life probably gripped and entertained me the most and just sneaked ahead, in my estimation, of the rest, which are, in order of reading … 

• The Room of Lost Things: Stella Duffy
• The Road Home: Rose Tremain
• Mudbound: Hillary Jordan
• Stalin’s Ghost: Martin Cruz Smith
• The Widow’s Secret: Brian Thompson
• The Dawn Patrol: Don Winslow

Ok so looking at this logically how long have books been being written until now, ok change that how long have books that included gay themes or gay people been being written? Obviously I don’t know the actual answer but we are looking at well over a hundred years. So where do you start?

I decided to go with the aforementioned The Big Gay Read and see what made it into the top ten. From there I was pretty sure that an array of books would meet my eyes that would lead me on the path to getting some pretty good ideas of what to start reading first, who published what and contact them. So the top ten as it stood in 2006 was…

1. Tales of the City – Armistead Maupin
2. Tipping The Velvet – Sarah Waters
3. Oranges Are The Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
4. Trumpet – Jackie Kay
= 5. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
= 5. Calendar Girl – Stella Duffy
= 5. The Long Firm – Jake Arnott
6. At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
7. Brokeback Mountain – Annie Proulx
8. The Line Of Beauty – Alan Hollinghurst
9. Carol – Patricia Highsmith
= 10. Rubyfruit Jungle – Rita Mae Brown
= 10. Desert of the Heart – Jane Rule
= 10. Rough Music – Patrick Gale
= 10. Crocodile Soup – Julia Darling

From this list (and as a big book buyer) I knew of twelve, had read five, had tried and failed to read two, had never heard of two but was willing to read them all again. What I was shocked about was no sign of ‘Maurice’ by E.M. Forster and no Edmund White on the list people that I had read or wanted to read when I was a younger man growing up gay and wanting to read fiction that I felt I connected to.

On the site you can see other people’s additions (some was pleased to see and some excited to learn more about) and I am now forming quite the list. Am off now to do some more research via Amazon and Afterelton.com so shall keep this brief!

I know I probably don’t know half of the good book blogs out there in the ether. I have found some I love and there are several I subscribe to or drop in on, which have become favourites of mine and which you can see on the left under Bookish Blogs. What I haven’t really done which I think I will change is added Authors blogs. I don’t know about you but I do love a good blog regardless of the reason, ones by authors telling us how they create their craft and what they are all about sounds like heaven.

The blog that has got this blog started (is anyone else confused by that) is Not Writing But Blogging by the delightful Stella Duffy which I saw when catching up with Dove Grey Reader. Having only used minimal internet time whilst in Barcelona over New Years I had missed the launch of this, and I am sure an invite to the launch party. I have read a fair bit of Stella over the last twelve months and though a new find she is becoming one of my fav’s. Her, Kate Atkinson and Anne Tyler, who I don’t think have blogs sadly. If I am wrong please let me know and I will get reading them pronto. Without sounding sychophantic Stella is also just bloody lovely and her latest novel ‘The Room of Lost Things’ is out in Feb in paperback, do order it now! Anyways authors and their blogs… where are they all?

I know there was a slight snobbery towards book bloggers but authors I like such as Tess Gerritsen, Augusten Burroughs and Neil Gaiman have started them and I read avidly. I was a big fan of Susan Hill’s blog which one day was there and one day wasn’t and so if you know of any please wing them my way and I will get adding them. So that’s all really welcome to a new blogger, and let me know of any more author or just book wise that I am missing out on.

After arriving back from the joys of Spain I am too shattered to write more so apologies. I will say I had an amazing time I didn’t read anywhere near as much of Anna Karenina as I intended and I know its bad but am taking a break from her as had a lovely pile of new books from Vintage when I got home and one I have been wanting to read for ages… so off to bed with it now!

Saz Martin dostaje zlecenie. John Clark – najprzeciętniejszy z przeciętnych mężczyzna – chce odnaleźć przyjaciółkę. Pożyczył jej pieniądze, a ona zniknęła. Nie odzywa się od dłuższego czasu. To do niej niepodobne! John przyjaźni się z nią od kilku lat. W tym czasie stała się najbliższą mu osobą. Bliższą nawet niż żona. Jak wielkie więc jest zdziwienie Saz gdy dowiaduje się, że John nie zna nawet imienia zaginionej…

Tak właśnie Stella Duffy rozpoczyna powieść “Calendar girl”, pierwszą z pięciu o przygodach prywatnej detektyw Saz Martin. Seria zyskała sporą popularność, a Saz stała się kultową postacią wśród brytyjskich lesbijek.

Dlaczego właśnie Saz? A dlatego, że sama jest lesbijką. A w dodatku stawia czoła groźnym przestępcom, brutalnym mężczyznom, nieprawdopodobnym sytuacjom. I zawsze wychodzi z opresji obronną ręką.

Superkobieta, powiedziałby ktoś. Otóż nie do końca. Często bowiem popada w kłopoty, ale to przecież dosyć typowa cecha detektywów. Saz ma też mnóstwo wad, które czynią jej postać niezwykle realną, żeby nie powiedzieć – zwyczajną.

Lubi pić. Codziennie wczesnym rankiem budzi się z kacem tylko po to, żeby pobiegać. A potem śpi do południa.

Wiecznie coś jej się psuje w domu. Najczęściej akurat to, co jest najbardziej potrzebne. W “Calendar girl” jest to automatyczna sekretarka.

Miewa kłopoty finansowe. Na szczęście w trudnych momentach zjawiają się klienci i jakoś udaje jej się wyjść na prostą. Czasem nawet uda jej się złapać jakąś dorywczą pracę, dzięki której stać ją na zakup nawet kilku automatycznych sekretarek.

Ma poplątane relacje z rodziną. Niekiedy do nich dzwoni, od czasu do czasu nawet odwiedza, ale… to taka powierzchowna, pełna niedomówień relacja. Pierwszym niedomówieniem jest, oczywiście, orientacja seksualna Saz.

Jest sama. Nie może wyleczyć się z nieudanego związku z Caroline, w której była szaleńczo zakochana. Kto wie, może wciąż jest. Caroline jest dużo młodsza i niedojrzała. Zostawiła Saz dla innej, ale okazało się, że ten drugi związek nie przetrwał próby czasu. Caroline wyjeżdża więc do Nowego Jorku, by tam zacząć nowe życie. Saz wprawdzie ją odwiedza, mieszka z nią przez kilka dni i nawet śpią razem, ale… no właśnie – tylko śpią. Saz zresztą obiecała sobie, że resztę życia spędzi w celibacie.

Sama już postać Saz powinna być wystarczającym powodem, by sięgnąć po książki Stelli Duffy. Ale autorka ma o wiele więcej do zaoferowania.

Są, oczywiście, kryminały bardziej trzymające w napięciu i lepsze powieści obyczajowe, ale trzeba docenić doskonale prowadzoną narrację. Tę samą sytuację widzimy zawsze z kilku punktów widzenia. Czasami wchodzimy do środka i bezpośrednio bierzemy udział w akcji, innym razem natomiast przyjmujemy pozycję biernego obserwatora. Jest to zabieg angażujący czytelnika – czasami zaskakujący, czasami skłaniający do refleksji. Pozwala lepiej zrozumieć “tych złych” i bardziej współczuć “tym dobrym”.

No właśnie – “źli” i “dobrzy”. Regułą jest, że w powieści kryminalnej świat jest “zero-jedynkowy”. Nie u Duffy. Mamy tu pełną paletę “szarości”. Do samego końca nie sposób stwierdzić, kto tak naprawdę jest czarnym charakterem, a kto tylko go udaje. Nie ma też postaci krystalicznie czystych. Nawet Saz ma niejedno na sumieniu…

Książki o Saz Martin nie pozbawione są też humoru. Czasem jest to czarny humor, czasem śmiejemy się przez łzy. Ale są też niezwykle zabawne momenty, które mogłyby znaleźć się w dowolnym brytyjskim sitcomie. Wystarczy wspomnieć kłótnie między dwoma policjantkami-lesbijkami, Helen i Judith, które pomagają Saz w rozszyfrowaniu zagadek.

No właśnie. Lesbijki. Książki o detektyw Martin są pełne lesbijek. Można przyczepić się, że nie odzwierciedlają rzeczywistości. No bo jak to? Jak to możliwe, że gdziekolwiek się nie obejrzysz, tam lesbijka? No więc to JEST możliwe! Powiem więcej – bardzo prawdopodobne. Duffy w mistrzowski sposób wykorzystuje (i troszkę wyśmiewa) stereotyp, że w lesbijskim świecie każda zna każdą, a twoja dziewczyna to najlepsza przyjaciółka ex dziewczyny byłej dziewczyny koleżanki twojej przyjaciółki. Wiecie, o czym mówię? Oczywiście, że wiecie.

Dlatego Saz zna wszystkich, a nawet jeśli nie zna, to zna kogoś, kto zna. Dobrze to wytłumaczyłam?

Książki są też pełne scen seksu między dwoma kobietami. Bardzo plastyczne i zmysłowe. Czuć, że Duffy wie, o czym pisze. Należy też zwrócić uwagę na to, że sceny seksu nie są tylko zbędnym ozdobnikiem. Nie zostały napisane tylko po to, by zachęcić do lektury rzesze lesbijek i napalonych facetów. Nie. Seks odzwierciedla stan emocjonalny bohaterek, czasem nawet “popycha” akcję do przodu. Wyeliminowanie go spowodowałoby, że motywacja bohaterek nie byłaby zrozumiała, czasem nawet nie miałaby sensu. To wielka sztuka w taki sposób wkomponować miłość fizyczną do powieści.

Chyba nie ma wątpliwości, że gorąco polecam lekturę serii o Saz Martin autorstwa Stelli duffy. Składa się na nią pięć książek: “Calendar Girl” (1994), “Wavewalker” (1996), “Beneath the Blonde” (1997), “Fresh Flesh” (1999), “Mouths of babes” (2005). Jak nietrudno się domyślić, cykl nie został przełożony na język Polski. Jeszcze nie wiem, czemu: ze względu na lesbijski temat? Ze względu na seks między kobietami? Ze względu na brak zapotrzebowania na kolejne powieści kryminalne?

Nie bez przyczyny napisałam, że “jeszcze nie wiem”. Uważam bowiem, iż książki Duffy są na tyle ciekawe, dobrze napisane i nowatorskie, że zasługują na polskie tłumaczenie. Którego obiecuję się podjąć.

Now today is of course Thursday and by now those of you who pop by regularily would normally have seen me write a Booking Through Thursday but it arrived later than normal and so now you get two posts today instead of one after my earlier post about Tuck Everlasting, aren’t you the lucky ones? Today’s question is more of a theme and simply asks us to write about something we have wanted to discuss with a lot of fellow book lovers.

So I thought and thought about what there was that I have always wanted to discuss with you all. Was there one thing I have always wanted to discuss and haven’t yet? Well even though we do have lots of wonderful discussions on here there were actually a few (which is good as this blog would dry up sharpish if not), is reading the entire works of an author or an entire series. It will make sense I promise if you bear with me.

I love several authors such as Margaret Atwood, Susan Hill, Stella Duffy, Colm Toibin (very recently), Sophie Hannah, Daphne Du Maurier… the list could go on. I have never read all of any authors work, not even some of my favourites mentioned and the same applies with a series of books. I love all of the Isles and Rizzoli series of Tess Gerritsen’s, The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency, Miss Marple, Agatha Raisin (again I could go on)  but I don’t ever quite catch up with the latest books in these series or ‘the one book I haven’t read’ by a specific author… why?

Mainly I think it’s because I fear that the one I haven’t read, or the latest in the series is going to be the last one and that really worries me. If authors are living its less likely, once I read the last Daphne Du Maurier I can get my mitts on I won’t have any left so what would I do? How would I cope? It’s like with my sensation season, I am not reading all of them as then there would be none left, I have made sure some gems are still lying in wait to be discovered in years to come.

I also worry that an author I love might write a new book I don’t like, or have a real dud in their back catalogue. You can for give it once, maybe twice but then I would loose a favourite author. Mind you if they wrote that many books I didn’t like they wouldn’t be a favourite author would they? It is a worry and so I always leave one, or two, or ten. Is there anyone else out there who does this?

So that leaves me with lots of questions for you all and I am excited about the answers already, though I think its going to play absolute havoc with my recently whittled down TBR. Which series must I simply read? Which author’s entire works would you demand must be purchased and devoured now? Do you hold back on reading everything in a series or by an author or do you think life’s too short and if you love them read them now and not hold back? Who has finished a series and knows the agonising wait, or is enduring one now, for the next book? Who has read everything by an author and is now bereft not knowing which author to turn to next? I will leave the floor, or in this case the blog, open for you all to discuss…

‘Bocche di donna’ di Stella Duffy, pubblicato in Italia da Marsilio Editori, è l’ultimo episodio della fortunata serie con protagonista Saz Martin.

L’autrice in questo nuovo romanzo propone la storia di come i nostri antichi peccati tornino sempre a perseguitarci, e fa riflettere su come sia possibile credere ancora ai nostri eroi – e ai nostri amanti – quando le loro debolezze sono impietosamente messe a nudo.

Una lettura estremamente avvincente e insieme un romanzo che affronta con brio i dilemmi morali del nostro tempo.
—
Libri News segnala:

—

Bocche di donna di Stella Duffy - Marsilio Editori

Titolo: Bocche di donna
Genere: Gialli, Horror, Thriller, Noir
Autore: Stella Duffy
Traduzione: Marta Mazzola
Anno: 2009
Collana: Farfalle
Informazioni: pg. 252
Codice EAN: 9788831797399

Prezzo Book Shop: € 12,80
Prezzo di listino: € 16,00
Sconto: € 3,20 (20%)

IL LIBRO – Nel cortile della scuola i bulli sono spietati. Insulti e angherie si ripetono senza tregua. Poi, un giorno, la tragedia. Di chi è la colpa? Cos’è realmente successo nel cortile quel drammatico giorno di tanti anni prima? Saz Martin sta sperimentando le gioie e le difficoltà della maternità insieme alla compagna Molly e alla loro figlioletta Matilda.

Saz ha promesso di rinunciare per sempre al suo lavoro di investigatrice privata, per cui spesso e volentieri ha messo a rischio la vita. Ma quando riceve la telefonata del suo ex compagno di scuola Will Gallagher – diventato nel frattempo un famoso presentatore televisivo – nulla può impedirle di venire risucchiata nelle zone più buie del suo stesso passato.

L’AUTORE - Stella Duffy, nata in Inghilterra e cresciuta in Nuova Zelanda, vive a Londra da oltre quindici anni. Oltre alla serie di noir con Saz Martin come protagonista – tradotta in cinque lingue – ha pubblicato altri romanzi. È anche commediografa, attrice, cabarettista e occasionalmente presentatrice radiofonica. I precedenti romanzi della serie di Saz Martin, tutti pubblicati da Marsilio, sono: Calendar Girl, La settima onda, Beneath the Blonde, Carne fresca.

.

Something of a slightly different blog post for you all today as its not a  readers rambling’s or a book review but actually a review of a bookish event. As you may all be aware Kimbofo and I have set up a Book Club (which starts on Thursday) after my researching that London didn’t seem to have many or any. I contacted libraries which of course run them and a few as mentioned on Bookgroup.info and tried a few but nothing stuck, in fact I didn’t get any replies at all from some people I contacted.

Randomly, after having organised the new book group, my lovely friend Lotte emailed me saying that there was a night that we simply must try. The night was called ‘The Book Club Boutique’ and so last night we decided that in the name of ‘book group research’ aka ‘being a bit nosey’ we would go and check it out.

The Book Group Boutique is “London’s newest literary salon and Soho’s only free weekly spoken-word book club. It was created by the notorious poet and raconteur Salena Godden and her partner-in-crime Rachel Rayner in ‘Dick’s Bar’, the cosy basement bar at 23, Romily Street. The salon brings poets, authors and book lovers together to hear new and established writers, spoken word acts, and eclectic music in an informal speakeasy environment. This is no square affair; there is dancing, merriment and mingling over cocktails from the infamous Dick Bradsell and a different DJ every week.” Sounded perfection, something a bit different where book lovers could get together listen to poets and writers and natter endlessly about books!

Though in reality it wasn’t actually a book group, as in reading and nattering about books kind of group, it was a fun night. I did worry a little at the start when someone started singing ‘welcome to the book club boutique’ with a bass guitar over and over again but I needn’t have as there were several highlights. Two in particular… I am not the biggest fan of poetry I will admit but Mark Walton was fantastic, funny, emotive, just wonderful raw poetry. I will be buying a copy pronto and I never buy poetry. There was of course one more major highlight for me and that was…

Savidge Reads Meets Stella Duffy... outside a bar!

… The delight that is Stella Duffy! Who took to the stage to read a very funny poem before doing a reading from the wonderful ‘Singling Out The Couples’ and then later from her Saz Martin crime series. In fact that reminds me I need to read the second of those as I loved ‘Calendar Girl’. You all know how I am a huge fan (without verging on being a stalker) of Stella’s and it was lovely to see her and have a good old natter over some wine. So if your in London and fancy a very unique and interesting night then I would say drop in to ‘The Book Club Boutique’ and give it a whirl. It made me wonder what other literary events there are out there especially after yesterday and discussing the Daphne Du Maurier festival in Fowey after my review of Justine Picardie’s ‘Daphne’. I would love, love, love to go to that… what other great bookish events do you know of I might be missing out on?

It’s all going a little bit wrong in the land of Blogger which I am finding quite annoying as it isn’t seeming to let me do any blogs before today when I want it to (additional note this should have been posted successfully at 11am not almost 11pm) and I am fairly unimpressed as I am desperately trying to get my Orange thoughts to you before tomorrow. Burnt Shadows finally seems to be up but it’s not letting me do two more which is really irritating! What I may have to do is put the reviews up in advance and you can get my full thoughts on the list on Wednesday and reviews of the final two afterwards, that cant be considered cheating as frankly I have read them and done the time. It is also annoying when you are trying to write a week worth of blogs so that while you are away magically there is something fun for your readers daily! I have to admit I am seriously thinking about moving blog provider when I come back from Switzerland or will that confuse things even more? Any advice or thoughts would be much appreciated.

Anyway onto happier things I am off on holiday, in fact by the time this goes up I will be there… or even back who knows (I mustn’t think of that or I will worry while I am away and am on an internet break) and so of course I need to have some books to take on my travels. I think I have shown you how I do this before, in fact I have, but I base my travelling choices like this…

a) Something big I have been meaning to read for ages
b) A guilty pleasure read in case the above really just doesn’t work out, you know something slightly erm… un-literary??!!
c) Something by one of my favourite authors
d) Something brand spanking new ‘just in’ as you never know
e) A good crime novel
f) Something that has been hovering on my TBR pile and reading radar for sometime

Now because I am away for a week and doing a lot of train travelling across the Swiss landscape there will therefore be a lot of dragging of suitcases, so I have limited myself to five but some of them fit in several categories! So my Swiss TBR pile is looking very much like this…

Vanish – Tess Gerritsen
I love Tess as and author and frankly I have been holding of the next in the series for as long as physically possible. She’s becoming less and less of a guilty pleasure and more and more of an open obsession plus its crime and something that should keep my mind off being up in the air in a plane which I hate with a passion.

Wavewalker – Stella Duffy
You know that I love Stella’s work and this is the second in her crime series. I really enjoyed the first and so have high hopes for this, I will be saving it for my flight back as think it will take my mind of being in a tin can so many miles above the earth. Moving swiftly on…

Daphne – Justine Picardie
I have now said I will take this with me and read it on three holidays and its getting out of hand. A book all about the wonderful Daphne Du Maurier and The Bronte’s really is a must read, shame on me. I have just realised I still haven’t done a review of the new Daphne short stories so I will sort that out when I am back.

The Devil’s Paintbrush – Jake Arnott
This sees Jake leave the crime Genre and go all historical on us. I don’t have too much of an insight into what it’s about as I am desperate for it to be a surprise. It’s also been on a travel trip with me and come back unread, second time lucky let’s hope.

The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters
How could I not, I have managed to hold of the whole way through the Orange shortlist and I refuse to hold off any longer. That is all I have to say on it for the matter. A few of you seem quite divided on this book which has made me all the more intrigued.

…Now tell me London City Airport doesn’t have a book shop does it that could be lethal with time to kill and nerves galore!?! Oh and additional comment, please don’t be offended if I don’t visit your blogs or comment back on here while I am away, I will do so with gusto when I am back!

Not content with spilling a few beans on Frances Finn’s Radio Nottingham’s Guilty Pleasures show the other morning, there I am, sharing the How We Met feature in today’s Independent on Sunday’s New Review, with my pal and fellow writer, Stella Duffy  – not only giving a few more details of our early friendship than strictly necessary, but photographed standing in profile, up against the living room arch. In profile! Any misconceptions I might have had that I was keeping myself reasonably trim are shattered therewith. Trim? In a pale blue t-shirt that has taken on the appearance of a tent! Forty minutes posing in a variety of odd positions and they had to choose that one. Well, thanks very much. The diet starts here. Tomorrow, actually. I’ve already bought the steak and kidney  pie. But after that things have to change. No more Snickers bars, for one. No more nipping across to Sainsbury’s Local for a mid-morning pain au raisin. It’s all got to stop. And no more photographs until I’ve lost at least half a stone. Okay. Okay?

What I love about Booking Through Thursday is that it always makes me think. I generally end up waffling on (as I am sure I will do today) and find varying tangents to discuss. It makes me think out the box though and this weeks question “Which is worse… finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author, or reading a completely disappointing book by an author that you love?” has not only made me think more about books and what I have read but also how I read.

Out of the two I don’t think I could say which is worse because of some ‘reading rules’ I have, in fact I think I may have to do a blog in the near future on reading and reviewing rules I have, though they aren’t set in stone. If I read one book I absolutely love by an author I will undoubtedly pick another of their books up but it might take me weeks, months even years for me to read another of their books or for them to write another if it’s their debut. If I couldn’t wait (very rare that that happens) and the next one was rubbish I would sadly probably write them off. There is a clause in that statement though in respect of if someone whose opinion I trust raved about another of their works I would possibly give them a second chance.

So what about an author I love who releases a dud book? Well in order to love an author I have to have read more than three/four of their books. If one of them was a dud before that the rule above would apply so they wouldn’t be an author I love. I only at present have authors like that Daphne Du Maurier, Ian McEwan, Stella Duffy, Tess Gerritsen and Susan Hill all who so far with all their varying writing styles and genres haven’t failed me once.

I do get nervous reading the next of their works though that it might be the one book by them that will really bad or put me off them (in my head for some reason I am thinking of McEwan’s ‘Saturday’ instantly which I haven’t tried yet but worries me in advance) as yet none of them have written a bad word. If one did… I would be disappointed but I would forgive them. It has happened with one author who would have made my favourite readers amount to six not five and that is Kate Atkinson whose books I love only I had a really, really hard time with ‘Behind The Scenes At The Museum’ which was the second book I read of hers after ‘Human Croquet’. I didn’t get on with ‘Behind The Scenes…’ and so much so, though I am going to try again, I was tempted not to bother with her again. Luckily three people recommended ‘Case Histories’ to me and my oneside relationship with Kate has never looked back.

So not only has today’s blog made me think about my reading in a different way its also made me look at my reading pattern (is that what you call it) as I have noticed I have quite a lot of books I have absolutely loved and either not read another word by that author yet or (like Margaret Atwood) read the second one a year or so down the line. I am thinking maybe I need to start reading the whole works of some authors such as Margaret Atwood, Anne Tyler… oooh who else? Any recommendations, what about all of you?

I just finished this short story and thinking about it I am surprised it affected me as much as it does.  The premise is simple: husband kills himself and the wife learns about his gambling addiction and huge debts afterward.  The widow decides, after being pushed into financial ruin by those same creditors, to seek revenge on all of those creditors.  What is most telling about the story though is the writing.  Duffy really has some great turns of phrase and her description of an all-encompassing grief is he most powerful and accurate accounting I have ever seen.

As she learns about her husband’s former life there is this little gem:

That was something else I had not known.  His weakness.  His soft, pathetic fear.  Scared to tell me, scared to face he facts, scared to acknowledge the mess he had made of it all, scared to look at himself and his truths.  Chicken.  Why did the chicken cross the road?  Becasue he saw a truck coming. (38)

Let us aleave aside for a moment that the truck really is an object worthy of avoiding, but this passage is really well done.  The punctuation drives home the varied fears, even though it is just one fear (which Duffy arrives at the end of the story) and the insight is valuable.  I can see some of myself in this description and I do not think I ever before realized some of these fears and how damaging they can be to a relationship.  There are always unsaid things, but the question is not about what is unsaid but why they are so.

The writing in this story is great, but I also love the implicit criticism of capitalism within.  The widow admits and never shifts all the blame off of her husband, but to think that he had no accomplices is ridiculous, and this is what the story sets out to demonstrate.  It is not, for Duffy, even that capitalism needs to be dissolved, but rather reformed/humanized.

Imagine if someone, anyone, just once, had been kind to him.  Had told him gently to take care.  Had not threatened him with reveltation and recriminiation.  Had helped him find a way back. (43)

And the story ends.  Well.  Predictably well.  About half way through the reader has a moment of “wait a minute, there’s a problem here.”  Duffy sees the problem and resolves it the only it can be.  There were some other ways out, and maybe they could have been explored to their unfulfilling end, but the way Duffy does it is nice.

Duffy, Stella.  (2007).  Payment in kind.  In M. Szereto, ed. (2007).  Getting even: Revenge stories (35-43).  London: Serpent’s Tail.

After having so loved State of Happiness earlier this year I was really looking forward to reading Stella Duffy’s latest novel once more. Every so often you come across a book where you just think ‘what a great idea’ and ‘how the hell did they come up with that?’ This is the case of Stella Duffy’s latest novel ‘The Room of Lost Things’. As you will all probably know I am a fan of Stella’s work and re-reading this recently has made the book even better the second time round. Has that happened to any of you? I think first time I was simply devouring it and couldn’t gat enough of the characters and had to know what happened instantly. This time it was a much gentler devouring and I spotted a lot of things that I had possibly missed the first time round and characters that grew on me even more so this time.

The story focuses on several characters but in particular Robert Sutton who is the keeper of the room of lost things. What is the room of lost things? Why it is a laundry in Loughborough Junction which he is leaving and where many people leave hints of their secrets in their pockets which Robert has collected. A laundry that he inherited from his mother Alice (one of my favourite names, I know not one horrid Alice) though sadly he himself has no Indeed the deal is very much done and he is handing the shop over to Akeel and his wife, meaning that he is packing up and dealing with his past and not only the secrets that other people have left in their laundry, but his own demons. All this whilst also training Akeel to do his job.

The rest of the book looks at the people in the area some of whom go into the laundrette and others who merely pass it day by day. Two of my favourite characters were the two homeless men who can often be found on the unwanted sofa on the street watching the world go by. Actually saying that I don’t think I had any favourites exactly I enjoyed all the characters and their tales and there is a huge scope in this novel be they the nanny who is having an affair with her boss, an old lady who has Alzheimer’s though doesn’t know it (that’s not a bad joke it’s the truth) or the commitment phobic dancer.

With a book filled with so many characters Stella Duffy’s additional skill is managing to give you insight into all their lives, relationships and stories without you feeling confused. There is really though one true star of the story and that is London and not the London that everyone knows and loves, not the tourist traps and the hustle and bustle of the West End. This is a truer London that those, like me, will know and love. Those of you who don’t will be entranced and will be left wanting to find the more hidden parts where tubes dare not tread when you next visit.
This book is in some ways a love letter (the prose is beautiful) to a part of London that Stella herself lives in and indeed loves. Though this is not a crime novel I feel Duffy has used her skills from her crime series to weave the plot whilst dropping hints and herrings along the way until you come to the end of the book. I want to say more about the ending but I shan’t as I could give things away, it’s a very well written and thought provoking ending is probably the best way to describe it.

I was moved, I fell in love with London even more (especially as it was based on my side of the river) and I had read it before I realised it again, it just enveloped me. A wonderful book I whole heartedly recommend. All in all this is a really accomplished and human novel that tells of some of the residents of Loughborough Junction and celebrates the often forgotten ‘south of the river’ part of London. I really loved this book and not just for the real characters but for the idea of the room of lost things. This is more proof that Stella is a wonderful writer, and one I hope will be doing an interview for Savidge Reads in the forthcoming weeks. I need to get begging. So in the hope she does and you have any questions for her or questions you have always wanted an author to answer then let me know!

*Note* if you are looking for my Booking Through Thursday it is here… I had done a similar topic last month!

Can you believe March has almost been and gone, is it me or is this year going incredibly quickly? So as with February here is my review of the month as a whole. It has to be said on the whole it was a really good reading month, a very diverse range of authors and genres of books. March has been quite influenced by Richard and Judy looking back, mind you now their reads are over next month will be quite different, I still have The Cellist of Sarajevo to go though. I have also travelled a lot going to Los Angeles, New York three times, Russia under Stalin’s regime and the aftermath, Germany during both wars, in the land of theatre twice, strolled through Paris with Edmund White and been to Wonderland. It’s no wonder that I am shattered.

Books read: 12 which I think is a record.
Books added to the TBR Pile: 46 though I have absolutely no idea how that happened.
New author I tried and want to read ‘the works of’: Tom Rob Smith, and I did, all two.
Character of the month: Lilly Aphrodite
Best crime: Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith
Best non-fiction: The Flaneur – Edmund White
Surprise of the month: The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite – Beatrice Colin
Book of the month: Ok this month there are three. The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite by Beatrice Colin, Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith and The State of Happiness by Stella Duffy which you all have to read.

The Household Guide To Dying – Debra Adelaide (Harper Collins)
Girl in a Blue Dress – Gaynor Arnold (Tindal Street Press)
Their Finest Hour and a Half – Lissa Evans (Doubleday)
Blonde Roots – Bernadine Evaristo (Penguin)
Scottbro – Ellen Feldman (Picador)
Strange Music – Laura Fish (Jonathan Cape)
Love Marriage – V.V. Ganeshananthan (Orion)
Intuition – Allegra Goodman (Atlantic)
The Wilderness – Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape)
The Invention of Everything Else – Samantha Hunt (Vintage)
The Lost Dog – Michelle De Krester (Vintage)
Molly Fox’s Birthday – Diedre Madden (Faber & Faber)
A Mercy – Toni Morrison (Vintage)
The Russian Dreambook of Colour & Flight – Gina Oschner (Portobello Books)
Home – Marilynne Robinson (Virago)
Evening Is The Whole Day – Preeta Samarasan (Fourth Estate)
Burnt Shadows – Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury)
American Life – Curtis Sittenfeld (Doubleday)
The Flying Troutmans – Miriam Toews (Faber & Faber)
The Personal History of Rachel DuPree – Ann Weisgarber (Pan MacMillan)

They sound like a real mixture of books and I so want to read every single one. Is anyone planning on doing the Orange Challenge and reading the whole long list or will people be waiting until the short list is announced?

Some disagreement between my friend and fellow writer Stella Duffy and myself at a recent Detection Cub dinner over the relative values of Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf. [It's the kind of intellectual banter that occurs in those elevated surroundings.] Stella was all for Mansfield to the denigration of Woolf, whereas it seemed to me that admiring one didn’t mean you had to dismiss the other; surely they were both exceptional. And even if Woolf was, in her snobby way, pretty vile about Mansfield as a person, she was in no doubt about her abilities as a writer. At her best – in stories like “The Garden Party”, “Bliss”, ‘At the Bay” and “The Daughters 0f the Late Colonel” – Mansfield is, I think, unsurpassable. 

What occured to me later was the fact that it was teaching Virginia Woolf’s novels to sixth form students – “The Waves”, “Mrs. Dalloway”, “To the Lighthouse”, that brought to a better appreciation of their qualities and a deeper understanding of how they work. I suppose if you’re going to teach others how a novel works, you have to understand its structures yourself first – a bit like, I imagine, though I’ve never done it, stripping down an engine before you can show someone else how it functions. And the same happened with “The Wasteland” and “Malone Dies” and “Moby Dick”, which I taught both at sixth form and, briefly, at university level – the students may not all have learned a great deal, but I certainly did. Now if only I’d got to teach Faulkner …

Stella Duffy, by the way, has a most entertaining blog, Not Writing But Blogging.

I don’t know about you but when you find an author that you love there is that mingled desire to read everything that they have ever written before you discovered them as quickly as possible. There is also the desire to savour these books and not have finished all of someone’s books before the next one is out. There can also be the niggling worry that you might not like it either at all or just not as much as the others. Which authors is it for you? For me there are a few authors that I have these thoughts with, I bet you could guess them, and those are Ian McEwan, Susan Hill, Kate Atkinson, Anne Tyler, Daphne Du Maurier, Tess Gerritsen and last but not least Stella Duffy. So I opened the first page of State Of Happiness with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

This book is amazing, simply stunning. I don’t know where to start a review exactly because I don’t want to give anything away so I will try and stick to the blurb with my additional babbling along the way. Jack (a Mancunian living in New York trying to make it in TV and the news) and Cindy (a mapmaker and published writer) meet at a mutual friend’s party and by the end of the evening know that they have both met someone special. What follows is the story of their relationship over the first five years moving from New York to LA and then dealing with the shocking blow when Cindy becomes incredibly ill.

The first half of the novel tells of the way relationships start and flow as they become more and more serious. The hesitations and customisations people have and make as they go through the new emotions and make room in their life for someone new, someone to become the other part of their life. I don’t know how she does it but Stella Duffy writes in a way that we see all these things in ourselves and smile at them. I kept thinking as I read on ‘oh yes, I have felt like that’ when she describes making space in your life for someone else and their habits. It’s written with a delightful realism that made me empathise with the characters which only made things harder in the second half of the novel.

Oddly when Cindy moves to be with Jack from the busy city and lights of New York to the sunny skies of LA the book becomes much darker. When Cindy falls sick (and I am not going to tell you what happens) you live the moments with her. I think my journey with her was so much harder because I liked her so much (I know books aren’t about characters we like but like her I did) and because someone close to me became very ill and it brought it back. I don’t think I have read such a spot on description of all the emotions you go through, the questions, the anger, the sadness and the laughter apart from in Helen Garner’s The Spare Room. ‘State of Happiness’ has it all encapsulated in less than two hundred and fifty pages.

The other thing that Duffy does that I thought was wonderful is relate all of these factors with mapping. Cindy herself is a cartographer as I mentioned, we read some of the excerpts of her book and possible future novel throughout the book, and how our lives are mapped and how the routes change as we go along is a big subject of the book. It’s the prose that gets me though frank yet poetic and subtle yet poignant. A friend of mine read the book just before me (and gave away the ending – tut) and summed it up in a sentence ‘a wonderful book, I have never read anything like it’ and she was spot on. This is a must read… must read.

Now you may all know that I am quite a Susan Hill fan, in fact I was surprised (only partly not hugely) when I saw realised she is the author with the most books on my bookshelves, and as you will see from yesterdays post I only put books on my shelves I have actually read. Therefore not only is she one of my favourites she’s actually my most read (followed closely by Daphne Du Maurier, Kate Atkinson, Stella Duffy and Tess Gerritsen), that was a long winded way of saying I like her work a lot basically. I started with her ghost stories, The Woman in Black being on of my all time favourite reads. Bizarrely as my mind started to develop a fondness for crime she started writing her Simon Serrailler Series. I have just finished the third ‘The Risk of Darkness’ and I think that so far it’s my favourite of the three.

If you haven’t read any of the other Simon Serrailler series such as The Various Haunts of Men or The Pure in Heart, I actually would recommend you start with them. While they can stand alone, in particular the first, I think you’ll get the most out of the book if you read them in order, though there is ‘what happened so far’ intro in The Risk of Darkness. I have to say personally I can’t read a series in the wrong order I don’t know why this is I just can’t. Simon Serrailler is a Detective in the city/town (I always imagine it’s a town but having a cathedral it must be a city – in fact in my head its very like Salisbury) of Lafferton, he is also an artist and this novel sees him weighing up the two careers. He is quite a complex character being a bit of a loner and having serious issues with women along the way. His family all live in Lafferton except on of his triplets who remains hidden in Australia, I always think something is going to happen with that story.

As for the plot I don’t want to say very much as if you haven’t read the previous two I could give quite a lot away. I will say this novel deals with the dark subject of female mass murderers which is one that isn’t tackled that often in crime. Well in my limited experience anyway. In all Hills ‘crime novels’ she deals with big subjects she wants to talk about. In this novel its not only female murderers but what might make someone who you would never think a killer become one, and in this novel there is a separate storyline discussing just that. We also gain more insight into Simon’s personality in this novel as he meets the new priest Jane Fitzroy. Could there be a happy ending for the two? In this particular series of Hill’s it would be most unlikely but that is what is great about Hill’s writing she is unpredictable and takes you to places and subjects you didn’t think she would.

This is a really good novel regardless of fiction genre. I don’t really label these as crimes like I don’t label Kate Atkinson’s Broadie novels as crimes though Atkinson’s have a lot more humour in them. It’s dark fiction with quite a lot of chaos, quite a lot of death which also looks at what makes people who they are and why. Apparently this is now the end of the trilogy but we do have the new Serrailler novel The Vows of Silence to look forward to which I will be reading in the next couple of weeks.

If I have missed any then I apologise to the publishers I have just been swamped with new books but here are the most reecent, I won’t put the blurb of everyone as I think that might make for dull reading! But heres whats come of late…

Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith
The Stone Gods – Jeanette Winterson
The Confessions of Max Tivoli – Andrew Sean Greer
State of Happiness – Stella Duffy
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
The Swimming Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
Death in Venice & Other Stories – Thomas Mann
The Secret Scripture – Sebastian Barry
Hotel de Dream – Edmund White
Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
Breakfast At Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
The Indian Clerk – David Leavitt

How should I order them on my TBR, which ones can you recommend? Actually I should really concentrate on getting my current reads all finished.