Books & Cats miscellany - Part 1

Or should that be cats & books miscellany? I'm sure Phoebe & Lucky would prefer it that way around.So, I'll begin with a photo of Lucky, sitting on the arm of a chair in the evening light one night last week.

I'm writing this post instead of a proper review because I haven't finished a book in the last week or so. I did finish reading The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade (cover picture from here) with my 19th century bookgroup but I'm not going to post about it. It was a very long book &, while I enjoyed the beginning & the end, the middle was just so discursive & so interminable that I can't even summarise the plot. I'm glad I've read it, if only because I won't get it mixed up in my mind with Dickens's Cricket on the Hearth, ever again. Cricket on the Hearth is much shorter, for one thing.

Very briefly, The Cloister and the Hearth is the story of Gerard & Margaret, 15th century lovers who are separated by the Church, an evil Burgomeister & Gerard's own family. Margaret stays at home in Holland while Gerard goes to Rome to avoid prison & earn enough money through his talent as an illuminator of manuscripts to take Margaret away & start a new life. Many hundreds of pages later, they are reunited but not in the way you might expect. The book is based on the true story of the parents of the philosopher, Erasmus, who was a friend of Sir Thomas More & lived in England for a time. If only I'd known about the 44 page comic book version (click on the link for the picture credit & you can read the whole story)! No, I'm joking, I did enjoy it, it kept me reading over six weeks, & I'm really pleased it was chosen for the bookgroup.

Next, we'll on to Inevitable by Louis Couperus. I loved The Hidden Force by Couperus which we read last year so I'm looking forward to this.

I've just started listening to Moby-Dick on audio, read by William Hootkins. I bought this lovely Penguin Deluxe edition a few months ago & thought that listening to the book on audio would be a good way to get me into the story. Well, it worked because I'm loving it. I didn't expect Ishmael to be so funny & William Hootkins' narration is excellent (the recording on Naxos won an Audie Award in 2006).

I also listen to a lot of podcasts & the one that has me, & millions of other people around the world, glued to their iPads, iPods & PCs at the moment is Serial. I heard about Serial on another podcast I listen to, Books on the Nightstand. Serial is an investigation into a murder that happened in Baltimore in 1999. 17 year old Hae Min Lee was murdered & her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was convicted of the crime & is serving a life sentence. Journalist Sarah Koenig was alerted to some of the inconsistencies in the prosecution's case & has been re-investigating it, talking to Adnan & the witnesses, friends of Adnan & Hae, retracing the steps of the police, reading the trial transcripts & listening to the tapes. The podcast has been running 9 weeks with another 3 to go & it's addictive. It's like reading an in-depth article into an investigation or watching a TV series one week at a time. It's suspenseful & brings up so many issues about justice, & our perceptions of guilt & innocence. Sarah Koenig's narration is so engaging as she takes the listener with her through all the twists & turns.  She often confesses that she doesn't know what she thinks about Adnan's guilt or innocence. The music score is also haunting & is now stuck in my mind. There's an article in the Wall Street Journal here & the website is here. If you decide to listen to Serial, you really need to begin at Episode 1.

I have a lot of DVD box sets waiting to be watched (there's another list I could create, tbw instead of tbr) & at the moment I'm watching An Age of Kings. This is the 1960 BBC production of Shakespeare's history plays from Richard II to Richard III. It was originally screened fortnightly in 15 episodes. Each play (except Henry VI Part 1) was spread over two episodes. It's wonderful. Shot in black & white & obviously shot in a studio, the performances have been wonderful with some well-known names among the cast. That's Eileen Atkins as Joan of Arc on the cover & Robert Hardy plays Prince Hal/Henry V. Sean Connery is a very effective & charismatic Hotspur & Judi Dench has one of her first roles as Princess Katherine in Henry V, which I've just finished watching. There are also lots of character actors in minor roles, from Hermione & Angela Baddeley as Mistress Quickly & Doll Tearsheet to Julian Glover as the Earl of Westmoreland (& I see that he also plays Edward IV later on) & Cyril Luckham as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Well, this post is much longer that I planned & I still haven't mentioned the short stories I've been reading or posted the latest photos of Phoebe. I'll have to leave you in suspense for a couple of days - although nothing like the level of suspense I experience between episodes of Serial - & post Part 2 on Thursday.

The Hidden Force - Louis Couperus

This is yet another excellent book that I would never have discovered if it hadn't been chosen by my 19th century bookgroup. The Hidden Force is set in late 19th century Java, part of the Dutch East Indies which is now Indonesia. It's a story of colonialism, of the essential lack of understanding between the rulers & the ruled & a story of family drama & tension.

Otto Van Oudijck is the District Commissioner of Labuwangi, a district of Java. He is a conscientious administrator, rather fond of his own importance, bur hard working. He lives with his second wife, Léonie, & the two grown-up children of his first marriage, Theo & Doddy. Léonie is a beautiful, languidly sensual woman. Younger than her husband, she lives for sensation & deceives him regularly. She spends months at a time in Surabaya or Batavia, the provincial capital, pursuing her affairs although she isn't shy of taking lovers at home, including her own stepson, Theo. Theo is an idle young man, content to allow his father to provide for him & increasingly obsessed with his affair with Léonie. Doddy is infatuated with Addy De Luce, a young man from a Eurasian family who have made their money in sugar. Addy is handsome & knows it. Every young woman in Lubuwangi is attracted to him & he takes advantage of it. He hasn't seduced Doddy because of her position as the Commissioner's daughter but Léonie is a different matter.

Van Oudijck's deputy is Onno Eldersma who, like all the Dutch in the Indies, works only for promotion. Promotion to a higher rank in a larger district will allow him to eventually retire to Holland where they all long to be. Elsersma's wife, Eva, is a cultured woman who has never grown accustomed to the Indies. The climate is unforgiving, the society is mediocre & she is bored. Only her friendship with Van Helderen, a colleague of her husband's. Léonie Van Oudijck is too lazy to carry out the social duties of her position so Eva has become the leader of their circle. She gives dinner parties that are as European as she can make them, organises charitable galas & theatrical entertainments, even agrees to a little table rapping to contact the spirit world when her guests are bored with everything else.

Van Oudijck has a cordial but patronising relationship with the former Prince of the district whose family was supplanted by the Dutch colonisers. He respected the prince's late father & the current Prince, Sunario, & his mother perform their ceremonial role with dignity. The prince's brother, however, is a disgrace. He drinks & gambles, spends the taxes he collects instead of passing the money on to the government. Tension between the Javanese & the Dutch intensifies when Van Oudijck decides that the prince's brother musty be removed from his position. This leads to an extraordinary scene where the old princess, his mother, prostrates herself before Van Oudijck, offering to become his slave if he will not dismiss her son. The loss of face she would suffer would be crushing.

This is the beginning of  a period of unrest where the delicate balance between rulers & ruled begins to disintegrate. Van Oudijck's blind adoration of  Léonie is affected by the anonymous letters he receives accusing her of having affairs. Mysterious happenings at the Commissioner's residence seem to have no logical explanation. Stones are thrown on to the roof, Léonie is attacked in her bathroom by a shower of betel juice spat all over her body but the source is never discovered. The servants leave & Van Oudijck is eventually left quite alone, growing more despairing & disaffected.

The Hidden Force is a fascinating exploration of colonial life. The rulers are determined to keep up their European standards. They dress for dinner, afraid that if they let their standards drop, they will be lost forever. The fear of "going native" is everywhere, although there are many mixed marriages, including Van Oudijck's own first marriage. The disapproval of Eurasians was, in part, a fear of the perceived taint of native blood. The Europeans never understood the people they ruled. The Javanese are polite & deferential yet their real thoughts are always hidden. There is a whole world, with its own aims & contempt for the colonisers seething underneath the surface. Couperus knew the Indies & lived there for many years. He captures the tropical intensity of the climate, the monsoon season that brings such humidity that clothes & books are covered in mould & the most correct European begins to relax their rigid standards. He also writes beautifully of the boredom of provincial society & of the tensions in relationships & families that result from living so far from what most of them think of as home. The Hidden Force  is yet another example of the richness of European literature that I would never have come across without the 19th century bookgroup. I enjoyed it very much.