Animal Farm, book review. (George Orwell)

It’s been a while since I read this book but I needed something short and punchy to get me back reading again and so it was an obvious choice really.

Many of you will know the story of the uprising at Manor Farm and how the animals’ revolt usurps the farm’s owner, Mr Jones and that there is much rejoicing by those who have taken control but what I had forgotten was just how accurate the author’s prediction of the future was, that all those years ago – written in the mid-1940s remember – he could have guessed that the situation the world finds itself in now is so accurately depicted in this book.

I am of course referring to those regimes that suppress the masses with fear and punish those who choose to oppose with draconian measures but let us not forget ourselves, and this goes for wherever you live, for we are all to some extent, taught to fear – why else would the wealthy and selfish have cleared the supermarkets out at the beginning of the pandemic, if not for fear, queued at petrol stations for hours when they already had half a tank of petrol, gone diligently to their Covid vaccinations (I include myself in that one by the way, for the record), if not for fear - and it is fear and the subsequent suppression of the rights and freedoms of the animals that is the crux of this novel.

It starts in jubilation, the animals having liberated Manor Farm and for a while, a short while, there is harmony but not for long. Before long there are rules, rules that the animals all agree on but then, the pigs begin to take charge, which again is fine because most of the animals can’t read or write, can’t come up with fancy ideas about how to feed themselves through the winter, and so the pigs set the narrative.

The writing here is simple but effective, not a word is wasted or unnecessary and so it is a short book, more novella than novel, so you’ll speed through it, but the power each of those words holds, the images they depict, the subtleties they portray, are superb. You envisage the farm with ease, the windmill as it is built and then destroyed, the animals and their traits: the cat sloping off when work is mentioned, as any cat would, Boxer the Shire horse and Benjamin the donkey, who, due to his vast age has seen it all before, work hard and do virtually nothing in equal measure; the hens, who lay ever more eggs for them only to be sold for money - something all the animals at the beginning had agreed they would never deal with as it is a human vice and creates greed, and Napoleon, their self-appointed leader, surrounding himself with dogs and sowing fear through misinformation; everything that goes wrong apparently is down to the disgruntled and then banished pig, Snowball.

Napoleon and his clan continue to do less but take more, much, much more, and they gradually implement tighter controls on the others for ever greater reward, until Benjamin's doctrine of having seen it all before becomes reality again as Animal Farm becomes Manor Farm once more.

George Orwell was a genius (or he had a time machine) because, after everything I have discussed above and the war in Europe still raging, Animal Farm is as relevant today as the day it was first published, which is kind of scary.

Four and a half stars.

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Fahrenheit 451, book review. (Ray Bradbury)

A book that many of you are no doubt familiar with, even if you've never read it, but a book worthy of further investigation I feel.
It would be easy to label this as a dystopian novel or Sci-fi but I felt it was more than that. I felt it was more like an awakening, a dawning of a new era kind of novel, as Montag (our main protagonist), who, as a fireman, burns books as opposed to a fireman extinguishing fires, becomes self-aware when a lady whose house they are about to destroy, decides to die in the fire rather than live without her books - books are outlawed by the way.
This awakening has consequences for all (not least Montag, who, we find, has been stealing books from time to time and hiding them in his house), but for his wife, his Captain and more besides and then there's Clarisse. Beautiful, young - Montag might say naive - Clarisse, who sees the world differently. Who enjoys walking and talking, looking at nature as opposed to the majority of people who sit in their homes watching giant televisions on multiple walls totally oblivious to the real world - Montag's wife, Mildred, being one such person.
The writing is quite basic here but speeds you through - it isn't a long book either - which makes sense when you find out that the author wrote it in less than two weeks by pulling together several of his short story ideas and linking them into this single narrative.
I thought Montag was a bit wooden and I was frustrated by Clarisse being such a bit

player, although her influence on Montag and the story as a whole far outweighed her brief appearance, which was poignant. I liked Beatty, Montag's boss and how he seemed to know so much (too much really), for one who professed to uphold the law, and after his demise I wondered if one might find a secret stash of books at his house if one searched!
Mildred, who was always zoned out on what was happening on her televisions, was a bit of a bore, but the last part of this book, after she'd called the firemen to burn Montag's books and Montag goes on the run, having attacked his colleagues, was really rather good, genuinely exciting in fact.

With the fire department's mechanical hound, several helicopters filming and the masses glued to their televisions, all in on the chase, it was hit or miss as to whether Montag would escape, and that last part of the book was gone in a flash.
So, a dystopian novel it may be but one with more to it I think. In fact, the thing I took away from this book were the feelings, the emotions it portrayed: the sadness of Clarisse, the cunning of Beatty, Montag's fear of being exposed, killed, and these feeling overshadowed the characters to which they belonged, diminishing them all to bit players. And the strongest emotion . . .?
Hope.
Three and a half stars.

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Mrs de Winter, book review. (Susan Hill)

Having just reread Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (see 27/6/21 post), loving it just as much

as I did the first time, and being thoroughly in awe of the author once again - My Cousin Rachel and Frenchman's Creek having cemented my love for her books even more - I thought I would reread this, Susan Hill's sequel, straight after.

With Susan Hill also in my top ten authors, I had high hopes, and coming off of the back of Rebecca, with all that went on at Manderley fresh in my mind, it was the right thing to do.

So, over a decade has passed since our unnamed narrator and her husband (and murderer) Max de Winter fled to Europe. The authorities do not pursue them, for the death of his first wife Rebecca was deemed an accident, but the memories of her death, the burning of Manderley, the bribery attempt by Rebecca's cousin, Jack Favell and the cold icy fear that Mrs Danvers installed in the first book, still do, so they stay away, far, far away, until . . .
They are summonsed back to England for a funeral.
Max's sister has died.

They arrive back in the nick of time, planning to stay only a shot while - only long enough to settle some affairs, put the estate in order et cetera, but Frank Crawley, Max's right-hand man from Manderley is there, and he is well and enjoying life in the highlands of Scotland, so they must visit him before they depart - take flight! - surely?

As with Rebecca, the tension in this book is subtle at first: our narrator being concerned for Max's health if they return, what people might say and think; that everyone will remember the outcome of the inquest into Rebecca's death but possibly have had their heads turned in their absence, but when those fears do not materialise and they find an idyllic but somewhat neglected Manor House in the Cotswolds, all seems well with the world.
Then, Jack Favell! Rebecca's cousin and lover.
The chance encounter with Favell in London brings to the fore our narrator's fears, and the lies she tells as to why she's there, along with the demands for money that begin to arrive a few weeks later, create more tension, and her and Max's relationship becomes tense, and then . . .
Mrs Danvers, and the De Winter's relationship hardens further, the garden party that Mrs de Winter was so looking forward too ceases to hold interest - painful memories of the Manderley ball come flooding back - trust is lost and secrets are revealed and . . . and . . .

Susan Hill's writing is as always, exemplary, but I did find some elements of the story a little drawn out, not quite as punchy as they could have been and I wondered whether a shorter book might have been better, but with passages like, 'It was not the the flowers at which I started, in horror, not the printed words that chilled me, splintered the sky and fractured the song of the blackbird, darkened the sun. It was the single handwritten letter, black and strong, tall and sloping. R,' you can see why I hold the author in such high esteem.

Three and a half stars for Mrs de Winter then. A thoroughly good read.

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Rebecca, book review (Daphne du Maurier)

Opening with one of the most famous lines in the history of literature, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca will be no stranger to many of you, as it wasn't for me, but with my memory for all things past being somewhat vague, and the passage of time since I first picked up this masterpiece being rather long, I thought it only right to add it to my 'year of the reread' list.

Beginning with a short dream - the one of Manderley - before being whisked off to Monte Carlo where our unnamed narrator is the bored and rather put-upon companion to a Mrs Van Hopper (a rich but rather crude woman, who quickly falls ill), she soon finds herself lunching, riding around in a motor car, and falling in love with the recently widowed Mr de Winter.

There is a distinct difference in their ages, upbringing (read: breeding) and social standing, but a connection has been formed, and so, when Mrs Van Hopper discovers that she has to leave post-haste for New York, a decision has to be made and Mr de Winter proposes.

They honeymoon for several weeks before returning home but with the bride having no family to return home to, they head for Cornwall, to Manderley.

There are four main characters in this novel: Rebecca, Mr de Winter, our narrator and Manderley - sorry Mrs Danvers - with its imposing mile long drive, its vast grounds, mazes of passageways and unseen doors, and of course, let us not forget, The West Wing - where Rebecca used to reside before her unfortunate accident at sea. However, where the house oozes a charm and warmth but with a sense of foreboding, Mrs Danvers dispenses with the former as she robotically runs the house, and she is very much the 'other woman', sometimes spooking the new Mrs de Winter by turning up when least expected, and her presence, her constant niggling, her suggestion on what dress her new mistress might wear to the upcoming fancy dress ball, the fact that she keeps the West Wing as a homage to Rebecca - her old possessions, even down to her hair brushes, remain as they were the night she died - all adds to the sense that Rebecca has never left; that she's still there, alive in the walls, the furnishings, in the flowers that grow outside or are cut and placed in vases around the house.

There's also Frank Crawley, the estate manager, Bee and Giles, Maxim de Winter's sister and brother-in-law and Jack Favell, Rebecca's cousin and all round bad egg, but the really clever thing about this book is how the characters with no real voice - Rebecca is dead remember and a house can't talk - monopolise the narrative. Of course, Mrs Danvers plays a key roll in unsettling the new Mrs de Winter by reminding her how beautiful Rebecca was, how organised and successful her running of the house was, how much everyone loved her, flocked to her, held her in the highest esteem, which speeds you through the book in no time.

Du Maurier writes with such skill and passion throughout this book that even when we encounter the mundane, those elements of daily life like: walking the dog, eating breakfast, reading the paper, you are still enveloped in the scene, to the extent that you can almost hear the ticking of the carriage-clock, the creek of a floorboard, the rustle of a folding newspaper, and it is this skill, along with her amazing ability to create tension out of nothing, like the change in the weather, a thunderstorm with no rain, Maxim de Winter confessing his crime two thirds of the way through but leaving Rebecca's secret, the fate of Maxim and Manderley to the end, that elevates the author and this novel to one of the best I have read.

Five stars then for Rebecca and a commitment to continue working my way through the author's extensive back catalogue.

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, book review. (Ken Kesey)

I'm not going to lie to you; I found the first half of this book hard going. (Hence the Whisky!) I don't know what it is about classic American literature, but I always seem to struggle with it, be it F Scott Fitzgerald, Steinbeck or Salinger, there just seems to be a disconnect.

Many of you will have seen the film with Jack Nicholson, and therefore know the basic story - McMurphy is a wise cracking, gambler, who has avoided gaol (jail) for what he thinks is going to be a few easy months in a mental hospital, and he brings turmoil and discord to what was once a peaceful, psychiatric ward.

From what I remember, the film was really quite good, but I saw it too long ago to make any meaningful connection with the book; which I felt dragged, to the point where I had to put it to one side and read something else, before coming back to it.

I suppose, being told in the first person by an American Indian, who pretends to be deaf and dumb, is regularly drugged and resides in a mental institute, may have had something to do with that, but it's not until a fishing trip, (about half way through the book) that I felt it really started to get interesting.

There are flashes of greatness here, some of the group therapy sessions are tense and leave you guessing. McMurphy's ability to talk everyone around to his way of thinking, are intriguing but soon grow tiresome; the Chief's flashbacks of home are convincing and come with a hint of sadness, but his visions of a hidden world, a world where everything is controlled by the Combine, are lacklustre.

I think perseverance is the key with this book. I'm glad I stuck with it, and in the end I can see why some of you might like it, but for me, I can't recommend it.

Just scrapes three stars for those flashes of excellence then, the fishing trip being the one true highlight, but without that scene, it really don't think it would have been worth my while.

Never let me go, book review. (Kazuo Ishiguro)

Very thought provoking.
This book is so much more than just a love story.
It is about the vulnerability of children, about how we treat our fellow man (or woman), and with the thousands or refugees fleeing the wars in the middle east at the moment, is quite poignant. Like our fellow man, escaping persecution and death, there is a constant undertone of negative inevitability in this book, it's as if it doesn't matter what happens to the characters, their fate is sealed.
The book is not long, almost a weekend read, but due to it's atmospheric eloquence, strong characters and a convincing sense of foreboding, it will stay with you for longer.
Hailsham school is a places I will never forget, and for many different reasons, mainly because I now know what went on their, before they closed it down!
As you may know, the book was made into a film, which was shot beautifully, with convincing performances from all the lead actors; and it was in fact the film that led me to the book in the first place, and I was not disappointed.
A solid four stars then, (four and a half if I could) and inspiration enough for me to acquire 'The Remains of the Day, by the same author.