torsdag 27 september 2012

"Spoilers..."

There have been a lot of bookish blog entries lately, for the simple reason that there hasn't been much else to blog about. Yes, I've seen a film or two (My Week with Marilyn - but try spinning out the theme "I completely agree with Laurence Olivier" for a whole entry), but telly-wise: practically nothing. Oh, all right, Merlin season four started so unobtrusively three weeks ago that I missed the first part, and it still delivers, though I'm afraid it's starting to run a little out of steam. But otherwise, I've been reduced to casting envying glances in the direction of Great Britain, where they are currently showing or have just shown 1) the third series of Downton Abbey 2) Parade's End, which sounds frightfully upmarket but promising 3) last but not least, the very latest episodes of Doctor Who! The worst thing is that I can't even revel in the reviews, at least not for the last-mentioned show. Doctor Who reviews are, ironically if you think of River Song's tag line, full to bursting with spoilers.

TV reviews generally seem to have a sort of amnesty where plot reveals are concerned. I held back from reading the reviews on the last episode of Downton Abbey series two until I'd seen it, for instance, and that proved to be a smart move, because boy did they go to town on the solving of Matthew's... predicament. Nevertheless, Downton is not a very twist-sensitive series. With Doctor Who, on the other hand, the plot twists are important, and being surprised by them is supposed to be part of the fun. So why, oh why do reviewers have to reveal them, and in such detail too? Time and again I've been seduced into reading a TV feature about a currently running series of Doctor Who and found that the writer has given vital information away. The worst example was a review of the episode "Amy's Choice" with a line going roughly like this: "X (=absolutely vital plot twist) came as a genuine surprise". I'm happy for you mate, but now I won't be genuinely surprised by it, will I? "Amy's Choice" remains a great episode - few actors do understated nastiness so well as Toby Jones - but I'd have liked to have watched it once without knowing the twist.

Otherwise, it's an unwritten rule of reviewing that you shouldn't give too much away. Amazon are hard as nails about it (they didn't publish one of my reviews once because it gave away that the book had a happy ending - duh, it was a novel by Dickens). But with TV, it seems to be another matter, presumably because TV reviewers suppose that everyone has already watched the show they're discussing, so now they can have a good natter about it. Surely, it's not only we foreigners who have reason to feel miffed by this attitude? What about those people who watch the programmes online, or wherever, using the "play" service?

"Pot, meet kettle" you might think. True, I'm not too fussed about giving away plots myself - compare my blabbing about Through A Glass Darkly with the Amazon reviews, where Roger's unorthodox love interest is kept a big secret. And I do see how being secretive restricts you from discussing a book/film/TV programme as freely as you would dearly wish. But this is partly what blogs, web forums, book clubs etc.  are for. There's also the Long Analysing Culture Article which should have free reins to reveal all about the author/phenomenon it's treating with impunity (except, perhaps, who did it in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd). But proper newspaper reviews are a different story. I guess reviewers must be relieved when they are set to write about a classic play/book/film, because they can give away as much as they like about the plot without anyone going: "Wait a minute, Hamlet dies? Lizzy marries Mr Darcy?" Even if you don't know what happens in a classic, it is quietly understood that you shouldn't grumble if reviewers take it as read that you do.

But what about those who read reviews about something they have seen/read, and really would like to know as much as possible about the reviewer's own thoughts on vital plot matters (and I often fall into this category myself)? The Times has an online section I haven't explored yet called The Spoiler Club. If it is what it sounds like then it's a terrific idea - an area where you can read analyses unfettered by the need to keep plot developments secret. Whereas if you haven't seen/read what's discussed there, you are warned to steer well clear. If this is not what this section's about at all, someone else should be giving the idea a try.

But "X came as a genuine surprise"? Surely that's just plain mean?             

onsdag 19 september 2012

The villain as hero

Phew. I've finished Bring Up the Bodies, and I can certainly understand why Hilary Mantel, in the end, decided to break off after the Boleyn affair and save the rest of Cromwell's career for a later novel. You really do need some time to digest his behaviour before you're ready to engage in what happens next to Mantel's hard-hitting protagonist. But at least now we know the excuse he had for (on Henry's orders) sending six people to their death on trumped-up charges.

There isn't any.

It came as quite a shock to me. I was counting on understanding Cromwell's point of view better after reading this book. Instead, the opposite happened. Big baby Henry wants out of his marriage, Cromwell's there to help, and at the same time he wants to get his own back on a couple of courtiers who were mean to the dear departed Wolsey... Is this really it? That's not nearly good enough, and to make things worse, Cromwell allies himself with the Catholic groupings at court to achieve his aims. How clever is that? I can hear the thump of a Master Secretary being dropped by his new mates even now.

What disturbed me even more was my own squeamish reaction to Cromwell's dealings. I found the scenes where he uses mental torture to get a confession out of poor Mark Smeaton deeply unpleasant. Now why? I mean, these scenes are deeply unpleasant even objectively speaking, but I've admired villains who've been up to far worse things than scaring a dandyish lute-player out of his senses. Compared to, say, Scarpia in Tosca, Cromwell's a pussycat. But while I hardly spared a thought for Cavaradossi's cracking ribs on the rack, the stratagem of locking Mark in a room with a "ghost" really gets to me.

I think part of the answer lies in the fact that I've got difficulties with the "villain as hero" wheeze. From the top of my head, I can't think of a single instance where it has actually worked for me. It should be a dream come true, shouldn't it? And it feels desperately shallow only to fancy villains when you're not supposed to, letting your reaction be led by their function in their plot rather than by their wonderfully sinister personality. But somehow, the moment the villain moves to the centre of the plot and the events are filtered entirely through his consciousness, I feel myself backing away. That's why I was never a fan of the Francis Urquhart series, in spite of the late lamented Fouché-lookalike Ian Richardson in the main role. I can't quite explain it - perhaps the lack of a moralising hero or narrator somehow forces the reader, very unwillingly, to do his/her own moralising. You watch the villain behaving very badly indeed without any real sense of compunction, and you wonder: what, am I supposed to cheer? To find it funny? To think "Ha, serves the little squirt right"? But this isn't funny, this is wrong.

It's a sad thing daring to contemplate even for a moment that though villains are often clever, charming, entertaining, uncomfortable-truth-telling, undeniably hard-done by and a myriad of other things they are seldom right. And as long as we don't have full disclosure of their thoughts, we can fondly imagine that they are, somehow, aware of the fact themselves.

This could be the reason why I feel more comfortable with shifty Cromwell in Henry VIII or fanatical monk-bashing Cromwell in The Tudors than with Mantel's somewhat smug Cromwell who's in denial about having done anything villainous whatsoever. Still, he did make sure that Anne's "suitors" got killed cleanly with an axe instead of being hung, drawn and quartered, even commoner Mark, because "when he was under my roof I offered him mercy, and this is all the mercy I can deliver". What a nice man.                 

onsdag 5 september 2012

Bankable good reads

Oversized paperbacks, of the kind that's often published now instead of/at the same time as the hardback, are a bit useless. They are just as heavy and awkward to carry around as a hardback, but they don't have the hardback glamour, the kind that proclaims: "look at me, I'm a real book lover". And yet I've bought two of these oversized monsters lately: the already mentioned The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan and, in spite of my firm intention of waiting for the (real, packable) paperback, Bring Up the Bodies  by Hilary Mantel.

So why do it? Lack of patience plays a part, of course, but another factor is the longing for a read you know will be good, a sure thing. Morgan is one of the surest things going. I know I've said earlier that I prefer his Regency Romances to his more serious based-on-a-true-story historical fiction, but I'm starting to change my mind. True, in the more serious stuff you sometimes come across a somewhat too deep-seeming passage or a bewildering metaphor, but most of the time the author is spot-on, and he has a convincing quality that makes you think "yes, I bet X (=historical personage) was just like that". I gobbled up Secret Life in no time and wished it had been longer, especially as the action ends a bit abruptly.

I normally approve of Morgan's endings - for instance, he humanely chose to end The Taste of Sorrow with Charlotte Brontë contentedly married to Arthur Bell Nicholls instead of with her death - but here, I would have preferred him to go on, even if it did mean that he had to end at a less harmonious time in his subjects' life. Morgan tells part of the story from Mrs Shakespeare's, Anne's, point of view, and you have a feeling that he has an earnest wish for the Shakespeares' marriage to work out (which might explain why his Will is more than usually uxorious, only playing away after his marriage has broken down, if not quite irretrievably). When the book ends, it looks like the couple will be able to solve their differences, which is sweet in a way, but I mean - Will wasn't even done writing yet! I can't help feeling that there are more important things than his getting on with the little woman, who in spite of Morgan's best efforts still comes across as a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. And what about Ben Jonson, another important character in the book? He's left high and dry after suffering a great personal loss. I can think of more uplifting places to leave off a story, though Morgan's Jonson is so unshakeably self-confident you assume he'll bounce back from anything.

I realise that I, as a reader, may be partly responsible for the fact that Secret Life ends when it does. Morgan is probably one of those authors on a one-book-a-year contract, which means he can't go on spinning a yarn forever. And who demands such a punishing schedule from our favourite authors? We readers, that's who. Still, he could solve the problem by writing a sequel or, if necessary, a trilogy, which is what Mantel is doing with her Cromwell novels.

After Secret Life, I tried a historical novel with a Dickens theme, that turned out to be so flat I gave up in despair after only 50 pages. Then, I tried a novel by Joanna Trollope, The Men and the Girls - this one was well written, but not what you want to curl up with after a stressful day at work. The last thing you want to read about, when trying to forget your mundane but annoying problems, is other peoples' mundande but annoying problems. Fine for the lunch hour, but not for the bedside table. Enter oversized paperback number two, Bring Up the Bodies.

Oh, the bliss of reading something you actively enjoy. So far, I like Bring Up the Bodies even more than Mantel's first Cromwell novel Wolf Hall. Maybe it's because there's less ground to cover - only Anne Boleyn's fall from grace and the period leading up to it. I do miss Wolsey - long dead, but still fondly remembered by Cromwell - but bitchy Anne is always good fun. I can't say, this far, that the novel is as much of a white-wash of Thomas Cromwell as has been claimed. Yes, it does make a good deal of his good points - model father, kind employer, oh, and he has a social conscience too - but you still sense the full extent of his ruthlessness. And on the subject of Wolsey: Cromwell carries a grudge against all sorts of luckless bit-players who had anything to do with the cardinal's disgrace, but in the end, who carries the largest part of the blame? King Henry himself. So where's the seething revenge plot meant to bring him down?

The sweetest character in Bring Up the Bodies is Cromwell's son Gregory, tender and a bit gullible (though not as much as people think). Hm, hard-nosed dad, softie son - is this a family curse or what?