Book Reviews

 The Siege

Helen Dunmore

I enoyed this  historical novel the second time I read it: Dunmore's exposition and empathetic understanding about the siege of Leningrad (her text and sub-text) was well drawn and historically accurate. The masterful way Dunmore developed her characters (based on the real political/historical situation/characters) was equisite, though it took two readings for me to see that. I missed it first time around. Why?  I felt the threat of the characters and the political threat second time around, the danger in the character's every thought and move in the precarious political conext in which they had to workand live. One could project forward to the climax. There was a threatening throughout.  My first reading left me feeling, though I sensed and felt threat and the political context, that I had not engaged with the novel in the way I normally do. I irritated some of my fellow readers' group members by my comments--that I could not smell, feel, dislike or empathise with some of the characters, others I could. On second reading I didn't feel this at all--it just shows the mood, context of ones' own life, previous historical texts, expectation, or even timing of the reading task colours one's own reaction to any novel: there is more than one reading anyway--depending on these variables. To me, this novel is a dark watercolour of an historical point in time, the plot deterministic just as the politics were at the time; I see on second reading that I had missed the subtleties of plot and characterisation on fist reading--was that to do with speed reading so I had something to say about the book at my group meeting?  A lesson learned--take more time. or, was it that I had my own expectations of the historical novel, expecially Russian novels-- the heavies one might say. I think now it was both and that I was rather insensitive to the writers style and purpose because I read it too quickly and unlike the classics this was historyfor broader audiences.                          

Jacob’s Room

Virginia Woolf

I had not read Jacob's Room although I have read all of VW's work. I was delighted when it began in Scarborough. My mum, as a young widow, always took us to Scarborough for one week in August each year; we loved it. I remain fond of Scarborough and my love of opera started here too in the park in the open air. I recognised VW's descriptions. It is likely that VW happened on Scarborough on one of her trips north with Leonard as he made many political speaking trips to Yorkshire.

The Speckled People

Hugo Hamilton

Unwittingly the book is a case study on R.D. Laing's divided self. It is an excellent case study of children being raised in a divided environment with the risk of becoming divided selves; the risk of schizophrenia never far from sight. It was the mother who, somehow, in her gentle philosophical way saved these children from such a fate even though she was a troubled soul herself.