The Book Tower

From Booking Through Thursday.

Who’s the worst fictional villain you can think of? As in, the one you hate the most, find the most evil, are happiest to see defeated? Not the cardboard, two-dimensional variety, but the most deliciously-written, most entertaining, best villain? Not necessarily the most “evil,” so much as the best-conceived on the part of the author…oh, you know what I mean!

Of all the books I’ve read recently, my favourite literary villain has got to be Steerpike from the Gormenghast trilogy. He’s certainly evil, but he’s also deliciously conceived as you can really see his mind ticking over as he hatches his plots and schemes to get what he wants. When he meets his downfall you’ve been with him for a long time, over the course of two lengthy novels, and his passing creates a mixture of jubilation and regret.

The most evil villain I’ve recently encountered is Chigurh from Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men; devoid of any moustache twirling charm, but a captivating character nevertheless. He inhabits a world where the villain has certainly left the pantomime stage behind…

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I had it all planned out…

This is my favourite time of the year for lounging, and due to a combination of having the house to myself for a while and being in the middle of a transition period (I am starting a new job in August), I’d decided to take it easy over a long stretch of summer evenings, reading in the garden as the sun set in front of me…

Well it hasn’t quite turned out that way, and it’s mostly been snatched moments in between rain, wind and cold. It’s cold now, and although not yet seven o’ clock I’m inside. No sunset worth seeing tonight.

But the nights drawing in a little quicker than expected has meant that I’ve finally got round to seeing Pan’s Labyrinth. This is a film that caught my eye sometime ago, and following several passionate recommendations from the film critic Mark Kermode (a man I have the greatest respect for, despite his extraordinary hairstyle) I decided to rent the DVD.

Pan’s Labyrinth, or El Laberinto Del Fauno, is a Spanish language film by the director Guillermo del Toro. I was expecting out and out fantasy from the trailers I’d seen and this is satisfied by a large part of the film. There’s some extraordinary imaginary creatures, both charming and terrifying. Perhaps the most well known image from the film is … well … this one:

But this definitely isn’t for children; apart from the fantasy scenes being the stuff of disturbing nightmares there’s worse to come. The backdrop of the film is fascist Spain in 1944, and the fantasy world that a young girl called Ofelia buries herself in only hides her momentarily from brutal reality. Her mother is heavily pregnant and both are in the charge of a sadistic army captain called Vidal, brilliantly played by Sergi López. Rebels haunt the nearby woods and Vidal makes it his duty to destroy them, resulting in some unforgettably powerful scenes in recent cinema.

Pan’s Labyrinth is an incredible film; Ofelia is scolded for the books she loves reading and the fantasy world she creates, but I left the film wanting to join her to forget the terrible darkness of the Second World War. It also made me question myself; did I find fairytale scares as chilling as real human brutality, was I enjoying cinematic violence (both real and imaginary) in equal measures – what’s real and what’s imaginary on the cinema screen?

Ultimately this film asked me, if you indulge in fairy tales and then meet a real life bogeyman, what do you do? The most frightening thing to face of all…

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My apologies to Pat Barker for temporarily putting her new novel Life Class to one side. After letting my daughter tear open the Amazon packaging for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yesterday and officially declare its arrival in our house I have been unable to resist starting it. As hefty hardbacks with crisp, unspoilt pages go, this is one of the most attractive that’s fallen into my hands for a long time. And Rowling really does appear to be on top form.

On a shopping trip yesterday I wandered into Waterstones and was amused to see several people picking up copies of the book and reading the last page. Amusing because how could such a crazy action go anywhere in the region that is called enjoyable? I avoided these people and followed my tracks back into Marks and Spencer to find my family. There I spotted one or two people sitting on the floor, blocking out all the noise and mayhem and engrossed in the new Potter book. Surrounded by shoppers in a Summer sale frenzy, I wished I’d brought mine to read…

Two members of my family have already finished Harry Potter and the Deathy Hallows – I’ve retreated into self imposed exile to finish the book and am a slow third of the way through. I’m saving all of my thoughts for a spoiler-free review, coming hopefully before the end of the week…

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