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I felt moved to post the following as a comment to a Guardian Comment is Free article. I just felt like sharing it. What do you think?
BEGINS
Over the last thirty years the big supermarket companies have pulled off one of the biggest con tricks ever perpetrated on the people of this country. They have passed themselves off as champions of the free market, while each operates much like a totalitarian state, and together they operate the kind of cartel that is anathema to the free-marketeers. Asda changes the price of butter, you can bet Tesco and Morrisons will fall into line within hours. Supermarkets preach the virtues of choice, but offer only their own brand and one pre-arranged associate brand. Supermarkets stress variety, but offer only what suits them (have you tried buying oatmeal, a staple of the traditional northern kitchen, in Tesco? They don't stock it). They fill the "fresh produce" shelves with horrible green mangoes that any self-respecting Indian street-trader would throw away, and those bizarre novelties "star-fruit" or "dragon-fruit" while such delights of the English summer as gooseberries and blackcurrants are conspicuously absent. Most insidious of all, they make a big song and dance about creating job opportunities when not only are they blighting other retail outlets in the vicinity, they are working hard on cutting their own labour requirements by moving towards self-service checkouts. The jobs they do offer are empty, deskilled jobs, checkout operators parroting their Marketing Department script, for example, diverging from it on pain of sacking. If I have to go to one of these places I make sure I position my twin jute shopping bags are there ready so the operator doesn't have to ask if I need help with my packing, but they still do so with a sadness in the eyes that says there's no room here for independent thinking. And can you negotiate a price with them? Do me a favour! The sites are set up so that it's a hassle to go to another shop, even another supermarket. It's so much easier to get everything where you are, even if you have a car (and the price of fuel being what it is must wipe out any price savings). And if you haven't, well, tough. You have to go to whichever one you can get to most easily on foot or, if you are really lucky, by a simple bus ride. Fine choice that is. I have been critical of so-called "free-market capitalism" in the past. But if that's what we had, I'd be all for it. The point of free markets is that they are accessible to anybody, and limiting it to favour those with the big money distorts the market. But what we actually have is a system where government and big supermarkets operate hand in hand, and the result is oligopoly. Some mock the 1960s 1970s before the "free-market revolution", but in the 1970s high streets had individuality and real choice and few if any boarded-up shops. In my dreams I imagine every community of any size having a butcher who knew what she was doing, and a cheesemonger and a greengrocer and a baker and a pub brewing its own beer, and if I don't like what they sell I can walk (or drive, or ride, or cycle) to the next town. Or go to a proper market where all these suppliers are vying with each other under one roof so I can compare and bargain. Other countries seem to manage this but I suspect that although we once had it in Britain it's not going to come back while the oligarchs have a stranglehold on government. Current Mood:  bitchy Current Music: some splendid C17 Polish music on R3 |
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 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Kathy H, a simple and likeable woman of 31, tells in a "talking heads" style monologue of her life so far, and in particular of her adolescence at Hailsham, a seemingly happy boarding school somewhere deep in the English countryside.
Kathy's style is of an everyday sort, artlessly constructed by the author to show her ordinary humanity. Her vocabulary is limited, her story repetitive and discursive; she's the sort of chatty young woman you might bump into any day of the week in Tesco or, in the course of her actual job, sitting over a coffee and doughnut in some impersonal motorway café as she flits her lonely way around the country. But, as we gradually learn, Kathy, her friends and her world are far from ordinary. The truth drips out little by little. Hailsham teaches its students to be creative, but not how to cope with life in the outside world. The nature of the terrible destiny planned for these children, carefully isolated from the everyday world outside, emerges only partly for them; a rumour here, a slip of the tongue there, now and then a glimpse of something far off. By the time Kathy, once a caring and compassionate child, is telling her story she has accepted her fate and is resigned to it.
Early in Kathy's narrative I wanted to give her a good slap and tell her to get to the point, but she never really does. The pace never changes, there are no great crises and no great climactic moments. It breaks all the rules of formula fiction. And yet to condemn Kathy's story for its humdrumness is to miss the point; it's carefully crafted that way to bring out the true horror behind it in the most chilling way possible.
What kind of book is this anyway? Ishiguro makes no attempt to present any scientific basis of what's going on or to place it in any real way in our world, but that just makes it more achingly plausible. Children brought into the world with one particular purpose in mind, people who by class or caste are detached from civil society and give prescribed roles, nevertheless have a fundamental need for love and belonging and those who – no, we who have been outsiders can recognise the inevitable conflict that results. On one level this is fantasy; as allegory its premise can be extended to any number of isolated and excluded groups and ring with terrifying truth.
Does it work? Hell, yes! It's a long time since I read the last pages of any book through a film of tears. There are books you can't put down and there are books you eventually have to walk away from for a while to catch your breath. And maybe to spin it out for a little bit longer just as Kathy, alone now in the world, tries to defer the moment when she will walk away quietly to her fate.
Gobsmacking. Top marks all the way; a sure future classic and a Brave New World for our time.
View all my reviews
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 Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I was looking for a shabby little shocker. There's nothing wrong with a shabby little shocker of course (the term was first applied to my favourite opera after all), especially when one has been indulging in richer fare and wants to vary one's literary diet. This one was just shabby though.
Perhaps I'm being unfair. It's a first novel by the author. It takes on serious themes close to my heart, emotional abuse by a parent first and foremost. It's the first appearance in fiction that I've seen of that bizarre and rather sinister disorder Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy (MSP); this is not entirely a spoiler as I picked it up early on although it wasn't mentioned by name until later.
Everybody in this book is emotionally damaged. Maybe it's their environment; it takes place in the "boot-heel" of Missouri (I learned some US geography in the course of reading, a curious appendage at the bottom of Missouri separates Arkansas from Tennessee for no obvious reason) in the heart of rural Appalachia where the only industry is the huge pig factory owned by the protagonist's mother. The protagonist herself, a not-very-good journalist on an also-ran Chicago paper, has been sent to her home town to cover the murder of two adolescent girls. The result is something between Cold Comfort Farm (without the laughs), the Addams Family and Green Acres. Some shocking things happen, but the whole fails to shock. It's a long way from the white-knuckle ride I'd rather hoped for.
View all my reviewsCurrent Mood:  peaceful |
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Just heard on the news of the death of Reginald Hill, my favourite writer of crime fiction, the ever-playful creator of 'Fat Andy' Dalziel, smartarse DI Peter Pascoe, pig-ugly DS Edgar Wield, hapless PC Hector, DC Shirley 'Ivor' Novello, DC 'Hat' Bowler, and all the rest of the crew that has solved (or not) crime in Mid Yorkshire for over forty years with a mischievous wit that few if any others have come close to. And that's to say nothing of Joe Sixmith, black lathe-operator turned private eye, and a string of one-offs many of which were set in his beloved Lake District. Often the razor wit was combined with blistering social comment.
His last novel, The Woodcutter, was as fine a performace as any in his prolific career.
Reg, I'll miss you. But your books and their inhabitants will live on.Current Mood:  sad |
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 The Magical Maze: Seeing the World Through Mathematical Eyes by Ian Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I read this in between other things, in a Kindle edition that came free from Amazon.
This is something unusual: a book about mathematics which is aimed at a general audience but doesn't restrict itself to trivia. So it's a satisfying read for somebody like me, a non-mathematician who nevertheless has had more than a basic exposure to the subject and who continues to take an interest in it at more than a superficial level. That's a gap that there's all too little on the shelves to fill. Though there are few heavy formulae here, Professor Stewart probes more deeply into his material than most.
It follows that those without a mathematical background looking for an overview might find it heavy going. Not that I'd want to put anybody off who wants to make the effort – it's well worth while.
View all my reviewsCurrent Mood: relaxed |
| » Book Diary: Disgrace by JM Coetzee [Booker Prize 1999] |
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 Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The disgrace of the title is the state former university professor David Lurie has resigned himself to when he loses his post after an affair with a student. Or maybe the disgrace of his daughter Lucy after the violent attacks on father and daughter on Lucy's rural smallholding where David has been finding a sense of peace. Perhaps, too, it's the disgrace of the white people of South Africa, struggling to find their place and face the consequences in the inverted world where generations of oppression have been broken and a whole new set of rules apply.
It's a long fall from David's comfortable and cocksure world of Romantic poetry and easy sex. He loses everything: his looks, his creativity, his reputation, his family. That's the price of his redemption. Not surprisingly this is a bleak and disturbing book. But it's never a dull one. It's deceptively easy to read and yet in a compact 220 pages it packs a devastating punch.
I'm conscious that what I've just written is a very shallow review of what is a deeply complex book. I think that may be because it's left me reeling somewhat. It's not the hard, dense read that one might expect from something that addresses just hard, dense issues, and perhaps that's part of its genius. Yet I don't know why it flowed so easily. It's got a scattering of gratuitous foreign: Italian, German, French, something that might reasonably be Xhosa. It's protagonist is distinctly unlikeable; he is emotionally frigid, arrogant, smug, contemptuous of the women he exploits without regard for the personal consequences for them. He is oblivious to his own flaws and to how they are perceived by those around him. In middle age he still wants to make moral decisions for his grown-up daughter. And yet Coetzee had me rooting for him by the end. Perhaps David Lurie deserved his fate, however much one might want to give him a good slap (but what he actually gets is far worse and far more cathartic). Yet he approaches his fate with quiet resignation, becoming like the subordinate people of the old order. Only once he has been stripped of everything can he be at peace with himself.
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10th Jan, 2012 @ 20:34
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| » Book Diary: Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid |
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 Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Another enjoyable if routine romp in the world of Tony Hill the emotionally-damaged psychologist and feisty detective Carol Jordan. Somebody is picking off apparently random teenagers by grooming them on a social networking group and then luring them to a messy demise. DCI Jordan is forbidden from consulting Dr Hill by her new Chief Constable and in any case Tony has been summoned to another part of the the country on an apparently unrelated case. But will they be able to work their magic together?
I have to say that, on the basis two pieces of information both available to Carol Jordan, I'd accurately done my own bit of profiling before much more than a hundred pages were up, but it took another 400 pages for Tony and Carol and her team to come up with a denouement. I have a strong sense that the author is hoist with her own petard; she intended Tony Hill to be a one off in The Mermaids Singing and by her won admission she'd said everything there was to know about Tony in that first book, but it's this series that brings the money in via television. The feeling of strain here is palpable. The dark and disturbing goings on of Mermaids is missing; our killer doesn't do torture but rather gives the victims a painless death before mutilating them. The focus is less on the murders and much more on the interactions and relationships between the investigators, and there's a clear leaning towards the much gentler Lindsay Gordon lesbian romance mysteries. There's a heart-warming if unconvincing subplot for Tony Hill, who feels more and more like an awkward extra in his own series, and there's a forgettable cold case to be resolved without adding anything to the whole. The whole caboodle is about 250 pages too long and I'm sure this is more a reflection of the marketing department's demands than Val's qualities as a writer.
View all my reviews
8th Jan, 2012 @ 21:46
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| » Jean Hipson RIP |
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Kay, the skipper of my bowls team, phone this morning with the sad news of the death of fellow bowler Jean "Hippo" Hipson. While few if any reading this knew her in life, I'd like to introduce her here.
The world of women's crown-green bowls can be a fiercely competitive place (I'm not even going to try to comment on the men's world, which can be vicious) and there's certainly a lot of bitchiness flying about sometimes, but Jean never had a bad word for anybody. She was gentle in personality and ruthless with the woods; I never knew her in her prime but I know she was a fine player by any standards. She was free with encouragement and economical with criticism, which was always constructive anyway. As a friend she was supportive and warm. In her last two seasons following a heart attack she slowed down a lot and towards the end needed to take the full amount of rest the rules allowed in her games, but even in her final illness she never gave up and never gave less than the best she could. For quite a while last year she topped the team rankings ahead of younger and fitter players.
The world is a poorer place for being without her, but a better one for her having been in it. Hippo, wherever you are now, may the greens be lush, fast and true!
7th Jan, 2012 @ 11:50
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| » Writer's Block: Words to Live by |
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We all have our faults and mine is being wicked
— James Thurber
4th Jan, 2012 @ 12:55
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| » Book Diary: Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner (Booker winner 1984) |
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 Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Although it's conspicuously short, this has sat on my shelf for quite a while now. I just didn't feel enticed by it, even as part of my self-imposed quest to read all the Booker winners. Maybe I should have remembered its achievement; after all it took the prize over Empire of the Sun, Flaubert's Parrot and Small World, fine reads all of them.
The problem, I think, is that is impossible to offer a synopsis briefer than 'A romantic novelist in an out-of-season Swiss hotel reflects on life and love' without giving too much away. Hardly the stuff to set the pulse racing is it? And that's exactly where it starts, with Edith who has been banished for some terrible social transgression. And then slowly, very slowly, we get to know the hotel, unknown to travel agents although "[C]ertain doctors knew it, many solicitors knew it, brokers and accountants knew it", and its other guests: the beautiful, rich and self-obsessed Mrs Pusey with her emotionally-retarded daughter Jennifer; the aristocratic Lady X with the incontinent lapdog who escapes to a nearby café to gorge on cake all day; frail Mme Bonneuil, parked there for half of every year by a son who takes her out occasionally; the sinister, amoral Mr Neville. With immaculate pacing, the truth emerges about this bunch of oddballs and the true nature of Edith's dreadful faux pas only becomes apparent towards the end.
Anita Brookner was a well-known art historian in her day job, so it's not surprising that her writing is full of subtle symbolism. No doubt this is a book which will reward repeated re-reading. First time through, although I found it hard at first to get into, it's packed with a very subtle humour. Not laugh-out-loud humour, because that would be out of keeping with its setting, but a discreet, refined and sharply barbed wit which tempers a big dose of pathos.
View all my reviews
4th Jan, 2012 @ 11:26
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swanofkennet's journal
Over the last thirty years the big supermarket companies have pulled off one of the biggest con tricks ever perpetrated on the people of this country. They have passed themselves off as champions of the free market, while each operates much like a totalitarian state, and together they operate the kind of cartel that is anathema to the free-marketeers. Asda changes the price of butter, you can bet Tesco and Morrisons will fall into line within hours. Supermarkets preach the virtues of choice, but offer only their own brand and one pre-arranged associate brand. Supermarkets stress variety, but offer only what suits them (have you tried buying oatmeal, a staple of the traditional northern kitchen, in Tesco? They don't stock it). They fill the "fresh produce" shelves with horrible green mangoes that any self-respecting Indian street-trader would throw away, and those bizarre novelties "star-fruit" or "dragon-fruit" while such delights of the English summer as gooseberries and blackcurrants are conspicuously absent.
Most insidious of all, they make a big song and dance about creating job opportunities when not only are they blighting other retail outlets in the vicinity, they are working hard on cutting their own labour requirements by moving towards self-service checkouts. The jobs they do offer are empty, deskilled jobs, checkout operators parroting their Marketing Department script, for example, diverging from it on pain of sacking. If I have to go to one of these places I make sure I position my twin jute shopping bags are there ready so the operator doesn't have to ask if I need help with my packing, but they still do so with a sadness in the eyes that says there's no room here for independent thinking. And can you negotiate a price with them? Do me a favour!
The sites are set up so that it's a hassle to go to another shop, even another supermarket. It's so much easier to get everything where you are, even if you have a car (and the price of fuel being what it is must wipe out any price savings). And if you haven't, well, tough. You have to go to whichever one you can get to most easily on foot or, if you are really lucky, by a simple bus ride. Fine choice that is.
I have been critical of so-called "free-market capitalism" in the past. But if that's what we had, I'd be all for it. The point of free markets is that they are accessible to anybody, and limiting it to favour those with the big money distorts the market. But what we actually have is a system where government and big supermarkets operate hand in hand, and the result is oligopoly. Some mock the 1960s 1970s before the "free-market revolution", but in the 1970s high streets had individuality and real choice and few if any boarded-up shops.
In my dreams I imagine every community of any size having a butcher who knew what she was doing, and a cheesemonger and a greengrocer and a baker and a pub brewing its own beer, and if I don't like what they sell I can walk (or drive, or ride, or cycle) to the next town. Or go to a proper market where all these suppliers are vying with each other under one roof so I can compare and bargain. Other countries seem to manage this but I suspect that although we once had it in Britain it's not going to come back while the oligarchs have a stranglehold on government.