The Book Tower

Despite being exhausted from a hectic weekend, I valiantly sat up on Sunday night to watch the Bafta awards. I was glad I did, as most of my favourites from the last year received some recognition. Javier Bardem was named Best Supporting Actor for No Country For Old Men, Control received a screenwriting award and Atonement was named Best Film. I was also glad to see that Shane Meadows was given the award for Best British Film for This Is England. I’ve followed Meadows’ career for years, from his early short films including Small Time through to Twenty Four Seven and the excellent A Room For Romeo Brass and Dead Man’s Shoes. Like all of his work, This Is England is set in his native Midlands and follows a schoolboy’s experience of skinhead culture in 1983.

I watched This Is England the night after I’d seen the exhausting Ashes to Ashes, a new over the top TV series set in 1981 – a 1981 writ large with new romantics everywhere and a soundtrack of synthesised pop to drive you crazy. Although my classroom memories are probably more attuned to new romanticism than skinheads, I appreciated Shane Meadows film much more than Ashes to Ashes because it chose not to ram the 1980s culture, in this case mostly ugly, in my face. There was some attention to get the detail of the period correct, and, like Ashes to Ashes This Is England featured shots of clunky early computers and the fashions – skinhead or otherwise – are shockingly dated. There is also an effective montage opening the film that brought the real horror of the early 80s back for me – the Falklands War. Margaret Thatcher. But the film eavesdropped on a set of characters that are probably evident in any time; the vulnerable, the easily led and the bullies.

Tempted by the friendship and shared culture of the local skinheads, Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is attracted by the uniform, music and petty vandalism that his new comrades can provide. This is until the edgy and unpredictible Combo (Steven Graham) returns to the gang following a spell in prison. His presence causes a rift, with particular consequences on Shaun.

Like all of Meadows’ films, there is some difficult and uncomfortable subject matter, made – like A Room For Romeo Brass – more disturbing by the involvement of impressionable children. Bleak at times This Is England does offer some hope at the end, and although it brought to mind Alan Clarke’s Made In Britain – itself made in 1983 – it wasn’t nearly as depressing in outlook. Perhaps times really have changed for the better.

None of This Is England‘s cast received awards on Sunday night and the Best Actor went to Daniel Day Lewis for There Will Be Blood, who himself appeared in another slice of social realism in My Beautiful Laundrette. This 1985 film was much lauded although I’ve always found it unrealistic – especially Day Lewis. A little too much style over content. More Ashes to Ashes than This Is England.

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3 Stars

Since closing the last page of Cold Mountain I’ve been considering quietly forgetting this book, leaving a small gap and then swiftly moving onto the next. Charles Frazier’s novel was highly recommended to me, both by fellow bloggers and by friends. The problem I had wasn’t obvious at first, but then it was clear, vivid and eventually spoilt my enjoyment of the book.

My problem was Cormac McCarthy. Just when I decide to leave the author alone for a while I pick up another writer who is so clearly influenced by him that it hurts. What stopped me from enjoying Cold Mountain was the realisation that – take McCarthy out of the equation – and you have no book. In fact never before have I found one writer to be so heavily influenced by another. Frazier copies McCarthy’s unique writing style to the letter, the landscape, the detailed descriptions of chance encounters, characters careful preparations of food (where every meal could be their last), despicable individuals you can’t help liking (Veasey) – and the senseless deaths. And the style of dialogue – the ironic humour – the characters asking themselves what they aim to do – is all McCarthy.

Sorry to be like this. There is a great novel in there somewhere, but reading Cold Mountain was like listening to an Oasis album. Okay, but it’s been done before – and better. Cold Mountain is the best novel Cormac McCarthy never wrote – and I can guarantee someone’s already said that before.

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4 Stars

I do not know what you are expected to do with memories like these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on.

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones is about the effect that Great Expectations has on a particular individual. Appreciation of Dickens’ novel is preferred but not essential to read Mister Pip – it is about how a book can shape our lives in how we make sense of our own place in the world when we compare it to fiction, and about how others may choose to interpret a book for us and how we might come to find the faults in a story. Any story – told well or badly. It might not be Dickens for everyone, but I think we all have books that has made such a mark on us. Or even stories told to us by the forgotten.

On the South Pacific island of Bougainville in 1991, a vague yet threatening war casts a worrying shadow. Mr Watts, also known as Pop Eye, assumes the role of school teacher in an attempt to keep normality flowing. He has only only one text book to hand – Great Expectations. He invites the locals to provide improvised lessons to fill the gaps; the rest of the time he reads Dickens to his class. Mister Pip is in turn narrated by Matilda, who becomes fascinated by the world of Pip, Magwitch, Estella, Miss Havisham … and Mr Watts. As she grows older she turns from Dickens student to scholar, and along the way the narrative also turns – from well observed humour to darker meditation on human cruelty.

What I liked most about Mister Pip was the subtle charting of Matilda’s maturity. It’s not education that saves her – Mr Watts can’t provide education in the conventional sense – but the wisdom she gains as an observer. Fiction from a child’s point of view doesn’t always work, but Jones manages to pull it off. So much so that I didn’t question this voice of a young girl, ready to consume the world but instead facing terrible tragedy.

For a slim work, Mister Pip has great depth. The mystery of Pop Eye’s history is slowly unravelled for Matilda, and through his eccentricity and sadness she does, oddly, learn a lot. This made me think about my own teachers and how, quite frankly, useless they were in the great scheme of my life. Sometimes the oddest characters we encounter can teach us the most. Whether the classic, like Joe Gargary or Philip Pirrip in Great Expectations, or the forgotten, like Mr Watts.

A book to be treasured.

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