Bucked up by the success with Unit One, I finally got round to borrowing the acclaimed The Killing, series one, from my local DVD shop. I was convinced that I was hardened enough to try more Scandi noir. Except, oh dear. Grim though its cases often were, Unit One has done nothing to prepare me for the relentless gloom that is The Killing.
It's not, I think, the sheer beastliness of the committed crime, or the protracted suffering the luckless victim - a pretty, clever, sunny teenage girl - went through that proves that little bit too much for me, though it doesn't help. It's the wallowing in the grief of her family. These scenes are convincing and well played, but who wants to watch scenarios like these? For instance, we witness the girl's parents having to tell her small brothers of her death, and later the parents catch a glimpse of the horrible crime-scene pictures, which makes them start to realise just how many traumatic facts the police are keeping from them. The Killing seems to be a crime series made by people who hate the normal crime series-viewing public: we are being punished for our morbid interest in murders. Look, it seems to say, this is what murder is like in real life: it shatters lives.
Except, this isn't real life, is it? It's still fiction. It's a "thriller" made, one supposes, in order to entertain viewers. It's not an instruction video for grief counsellors. I fail to see why glum offerings like these are considered more worthwhile by fastidious critics than golden-agey whodunnits. Why is it more moral to revel in a nasty case like this than in a cleaner bump-on-the-head murder? It's hard not to feel that The Killing indulges bloodlust while simultaneously wagging a finger at it.
In Unit One, a kindly senior police officer has a conversation with a girl he's protecting, and she asks what murderers are like. He answers that in most cases, they're "just like you and me". Only, there is "something not quite right" which makes them cross the line and kill. (As it happens, in this particular case the murderer is a sadistic loon very far from the norm, but never mind.) I don't know if it's true, but as a working hypothesis it works well. I like a really juicy motive in a murder mystery, which makes me wonder if, in the same circumstances, I would be tempted. If the murderer is clearly a psycho, which must be the case in The Killing, then some of the interest of the murder case is lost. There can be no question of someone "just snapping".
That said, I want to know who did it now, so I'll probably watch this series until the end, even though I won't be giving series two and three a go. It's well made - the Danes are clearly good at this sort of stuff. Sarah Lund is a charismatic lead, and I'm mildly interested in what happens to her when her petulant Swedish boyfriend ditches her, which is surely only a question of time (Swedes are rarely good news in Danish series, it seems). Will sparks fly between her and her new Dirty Harryish colleague? Or maybe the smooth politician is, for once, a good guy who's in with a chance?
But there are limits to my interest. If Lund's fate is undecided at the end of the series, I'll not sit through another case as gruelling as this just to know what happens to her. Her sweaters really are nice, though.
Tuesday, 30 September 2014
Wednesday, 17 September 2014
I fancy a villain, who's played by an actor, who also plays...
Unit One, then, aka Mordkommissionen, aka Rejseholdet. I'm not going to blog at length about this series, as I suspect that not many outside of Scandinavia have seen it, and as it's nearly fifteen years old, even those who know it might not remember it well. However, I see that it's available on English DVD and can highly recommend it. I'm not usually that wild about police procedurals, but this had me hooked - and not only because of the cute coppers.
Unit One can serve as a starting point, though, for some thoughts on a state of mind I'm afflicted by all too often. I call it the "I danced with a man who danced with a girl" syndrome, after the song about the society girl who was in raptures because she'd danced with a man, who danced with a girl, who danced with the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII). Briefly, this syndrome entails warming to - or even fancying - characters whom you might not otherwise have noticed, because they happen to be played by the same actor who has succesfully played your favourite character elsewhere. In my case, the favourite character in question is invariably a villain.
Taking the first step towards this odd sort of behaviour is common enough. Here another syndrome comes into play, the Lucky Luke audience syndrome, which I think I've mentioned before. In one Lucky Luke album, a group of players tours the Wild West with a lurid melodrama called The White Knight. The audiences in the small towns they visit always mix up fact and fiction, treating the hero of the play as a hero in real life while cold-shouldering the villain actor ("child-murderers don't get served here", one barman tells him). As it turns out, if I remember rightly, all the players are crooks. The point is, we all know the Lucky Luke audience approach is idiotic and unsophisticated but, however hard you try to tell yourself that a well-played character and his/her actor are completely separate persons, it's difficult to make the distinction completely. I mean, they look the same, they sound the same... I for one, having other tastes than Wild West audiences, always feel more warmly towards an actor after he's made a particularly good job of playing a villain. It can lead to some seriously silly behaviour - as when I watch an interview with an actor gushing "oooh, he's so nice", when my interest in him rests on him playing a character who's not nice. Strangely enough, I want villain actors to be perfect darlings off-stage, and am disappointed if the opposite is in any way hinted (that doesn't happen often: villain actors are for the most part character actors, who know how to behave). Daft as the LLA syndrome is, I think it's OK to indulge in it as long as the effects are benign. When you find that you don't like an able actor just because he/she's played a character you don't approve of, that's when you should rein in and give yourself a talking-to.
While the equating of a character with an actor is fairly widespread, I wonder how many people are crazy enough to take it a step further, like I do, and extend extra sympathy towards other characters played by the same actors who play my villain fancies. This behaviour was particularly marked during my Bulstrode phase, when most characters played by the late Peter Jeffrey (well, he was the definitive Bulstrode) could count on my support. Of course The Grand Turk would have deserved to win in The Adventures of Baron von Münchhausen. What was Emma Peel thinking of, honey-trapping Prendergast? She was asking for a good scare, the cow. As for the lecherous politician Eric in Yes, Minister - well, all I can say is, I understood "the shady lady from Argentina" perfectly.
In the case of Unit One, Thomas la Cour (I know), played by Lars Brygmann, and Allan Fischer, played by Mads Mikkelsen, are very likeable and attractive characters. I don't think I would have been half as interested in them, though, if the actors who play them wouldn't have gone on to play ace villains. Similarly, though Fischer is the funny one, I prefer the squirrel-eyed la Cour, simply because Brygmann played Höxenhaven, who trumps Mikkelsen's Bond villain in the baddie stakes. Yep, it's a bit weird. But translate the situation to heroes, and at least some people might recognise the syndrome. Is it inconceivable that you would watch a film simply because "Matthew" or "Mr Darcy" was in it - and then root for his character?
Unit One can serve as a starting point, though, for some thoughts on a state of mind I'm afflicted by all too often. I call it the "I danced with a man who danced with a girl" syndrome, after the song about the society girl who was in raptures because she'd danced with a man, who danced with a girl, who danced with the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII). Briefly, this syndrome entails warming to - or even fancying - characters whom you might not otherwise have noticed, because they happen to be played by the same actor who has succesfully played your favourite character elsewhere. In my case, the favourite character in question is invariably a villain.
Taking the first step towards this odd sort of behaviour is common enough. Here another syndrome comes into play, the Lucky Luke audience syndrome, which I think I've mentioned before. In one Lucky Luke album, a group of players tours the Wild West with a lurid melodrama called The White Knight. The audiences in the small towns they visit always mix up fact and fiction, treating the hero of the play as a hero in real life while cold-shouldering the villain actor ("child-murderers don't get served here", one barman tells him). As it turns out, if I remember rightly, all the players are crooks. The point is, we all know the Lucky Luke audience approach is idiotic and unsophisticated but, however hard you try to tell yourself that a well-played character and his/her actor are completely separate persons, it's difficult to make the distinction completely. I mean, they look the same, they sound the same... I for one, having other tastes than Wild West audiences, always feel more warmly towards an actor after he's made a particularly good job of playing a villain. It can lead to some seriously silly behaviour - as when I watch an interview with an actor gushing "oooh, he's so nice", when my interest in him rests on him playing a character who's not nice. Strangely enough, I want villain actors to be perfect darlings off-stage, and am disappointed if the opposite is in any way hinted (that doesn't happen often: villain actors are for the most part character actors, who know how to behave). Daft as the LLA syndrome is, I think it's OK to indulge in it as long as the effects are benign. When you find that you don't like an able actor just because he/she's played a character you don't approve of, that's when you should rein in and give yourself a talking-to.
While the equating of a character with an actor is fairly widespread, I wonder how many people are crazy enough to take it a step further, like I do, and extend extra sympathy towards other characters played by the same actors who play my villain fancies. This behaviour was particularly marked during my Bulstrode phase, when most characters played by the late Peter Jeffrey (well, he was the definitive Bulstrode) could count on my support. Of course The Grand Turk would have deserved to win in The Adventures of Baron von Münchhausen. What was Emma Peel thinking of, honey-trapping Prendergast? She was asking for a good scare, the cow. As for the lecherous politician Eric in Yes, Minister - well, all I can say is, I understood "the shady lady from Argentina" perfectly.
In the case of Unit One, Thomas la Cour (I know), played by Lars Brygmann, and Allan Fischer, played by Mads Mikkelsen, are very likeable and attractive characters. I don't think I would have been half as interested in them, though, if the actors who play them wouldn't have gone on to play ace villains. Similarly, though Fischer is the funny one, I prefer the squirrel-eyed la Cour, simply because Brygmann played Höxenhaven, who trumps Mikkelsen's Bond villain in the baddie stakes. Yep, it's a bit weird. But translate the situation to heroes, and at least some people might recognise the syndrome. Is it inconceivable that you would watch a film simply because "Matthew" or "Mr Darcy" was in it - and then root for his character?
Monday, 8 September 2014
On a Beauman bender
I'm a bit impressed by my 2013 and 2012 selves. How did I manage to produce 3 blog posts in this, the cruellest month work-wise (or at least one of them)? September is survival month (as is October, for that matter), and that has its effect on TV and book consumption as well. I tend to stick with what I know I like, which means there's not much difference in my reading/TV watching pattern from one week to the next. And that in turn means fewer blogging themes.
This autumn has been extreme, though. TV-wise, I'm completely hooked on a Danish series from 2000 called Rejseholdet in its original language (no, me neither), Mordkommissionen (The Murder Squad) in Swedish and Unit One in English, and I watch little else. More of this at another time, I expect: suffice to say, for now, that it features both Lars "Höx" Brygmann and Mads Mikkelsen, playing - as it happens - perfectly decent coppers. Book-wise, I'm reading through the back catalogue of Sally Beauman. Well, when someone writes a trilogy, it makes sense to read all the books in a row, right?
I have to confess, though it really is her "early work", that I still like Destiny and Dark Angel best. Beauman is a master storyteller, and the epic family saga is the ideal showcase for her. The Language of Love is also a family saga, but it is shorter than the early novels and considerably more melancholy, as the focus of the story is a grim tragedy (far worse than the admittedly bloody end of Shawcross in Dark Angel: honestly, even I, villain-lover that I am, thought he had it coming). The ending, though not suicide-inducing, does not have the same uplift as Destiny's and Dark Angel's either. The Language of Love feels like an attempt by Beauman to move upmarket and show she can do more than just feelgood stuff (not that everything is peaches and cream in the early novels). I must admit I prefer cheaper markets.
The Lovers and Liars trilogy from the 90s, by contrast, feels like a move downmarket compared to Beauman's two first novels. These books are a mixture of romance and thriller, and the genres do not gel a hundred per cent. The first novel, called Lovers and Liars (I wonder who thinks of Beauman's titles? They sound a bit publisher-fabricated) centres on a supposed sex scandal, which is a passably juicy theme, but novel two, Danger Zones, introduces plot-lines about drugs and a disturbed youth who absconds with impressionable adolescent girls - not that fun, in fact. Novel three, Sextet, starts promisingly, though, as it's set in the world of film.
The common denominator in these books, aside from the thrillerish tone, are the protagonists, journalist Genevieve "Gini" Hunter and photographer Pascal Lamartine. These ex-lovers meet up after fifteen years to work on a story in novel one. Does the old love linger? Wanna bet? A complication in the form of features editor Rowland McGuire, who is an almost ludicrous compilation of supposedly attractive male qualities, appears in novel two, where Gini's friend Lindsay also starts to play a larger part in proceedings. Sextet seems to focus more on Lindsay than on Gini so far, which is good news, as Lindsay is the more likeable character. A fashion editor, she is warm, rueful and not as full of her own importance as Gini, Pascal and occasionally Rowland. These three share a belief in journalism - and in Pascal's case, photography - as something that can make the world a better place. I'm not sure I don't find idealistic hacks more of a pain than the cynical just-looking-for-a-good-story ones. The idealists are almost as ready to print dirt about someone, only they will also moralise about their victims in a way the cynics don't. Granted, though, that once in a while an idealist can be made to stay his or her hand when a cynic would push ruthlessly on.
So far, I remain somewhat unconvinced by the trilogy's thriller element - yes, there are exciting scenes, but thriller plots aren't what Beauman does best. The solutions to the mysteries in Lovers and Liars felt a bit throwaway, when you thought you'd get a well-reasoned explanation of various intrigues. At the end, it almost became a conspiracy theory thriller. I prefer Beauman's epic tales - which doesn't mean I don't enjoy the Lovers and Liars trilogy very much. But next time I read a Beauman, I hope it's a family saga - and a not too sad one.
This autumn has been extreme, though. TV-wise, I'm completely hooked on a Danish series from 2000 called Rejseholdet in its original language (no, me neither), Mordkommissionen (The Murder Squad) in Swedish and Unit One in English, and I watch little else. More of this at another time, I expect: suffice to say, for now, that it features both Lars "Höx" Brygmann and Mads Mikkelsen, playing - as it happens - perfectly decent coppers. Book-wise, I'm reading through the back catalogue of Sally Beauman. Well, when someone writes a trilogy, it makes sense to read all the books in a row, right?
I have to confess, though it really is her "early work", that I still like Destiny and Dark Angel best. Beauman is a master storyteller, and the epic family saga is the ideal showcase for her. The Language of Love is also a family saga, but it is shorter than the early novels and considerably more melancholy, as the focus of the story is a grim tragedy (far worse than the admittedly bloody end of Shawcross in Dark Angel: honestly, even I, villain-lover that I am, thought he had it coming). The ending, though not suicide-inducing, does not have the same uplift as Destiny's and Dark Angel's either. The Language of Love feels like an attempt by Beauman to move upmarket and show she can do more than just feelgood stuff (not that everything is peaches and cream in the early novels). I must admit I prefer cheaper markets.
The Lovers and Liars trilogy from the 90s, by contrast, feels like a move downmarket compared to Beauman's two first novels. These books are a mixture of romance and thriller, and the genres do not gel a hundred per cent. The first novel, called Lovers and Liars (I wonder who thinks of Beauman's titles? They sound a bit publisher-fabricated) centres on a supposed sex scandal, which is a passably juicy theme, but novel two, Danger Zones, introduces plot-lines about drugs and a disturbed youth who absconds with impressionable adolescent girls - not that fun, in fact. Novel three, Sextet, starts promisingly, though, as it's set in the world of film.
The common denominator in these books, aside from the thrillerish tone, are the protagonists, journalist Genevieve "Gini" Hunter and photographer Pascal Lamartine. These ex-lovers meet up after fifteen years to work on a story in novel one. Does the old love linger? Wanna bet? A complication in the form of features editor Rowland McGuire, who is an almost ludicrous compilation of supposedly attractive male qualities, appears in novel two, where Gini's friend Lindsay also starts to play a larger part in proceedings. Sextet seems to focus more on Lindsay than on Gini so far, which is good news, as Lindsay is the more likeable character. A fashion editor, she is warm, rueful and not as full of her own importance as Gini, Pascal and occasionally Rowland. These three share a belief in journalism - and in Pascal's case, photography - as something that can make the world a better place. I'm not sure I don't find idealistic hacks more of a pain than the cynical just-looking-for-a-good-story ones. The idealists are almost as ready to print dirt about someone, only they will also moralise about their victims in a way the cynics don't. Granted, though, that once in a while an idealist can be made to stay his or her hand when a cynic would push ruthlessly on.
So far, I remain somewhat unconvinced by the trilogy's thriller element - yes, there are exciting scenes, but thriller plots aren't what Beauman does best. The solutions to the mysteries in Lovers and Liars felt a bit throwaway, when you thought you'd get a well-reasoned explanation of various intrigues. At the end, it almost became a conspiracy theory thriller. I prefer Beauman's epic tales - which doesn't mean I don't enjoy the Lovers and Liars trilogy very much. But next time I read a Beauman, I hope it's a family saga - and a not too sad one.
Tuesday, 26 August 2014
The continuing problems with Christie adaptations
I've previously mentioned that Agatha Christie's books are hard to film. I still hold to that, but at the same time I must admit to having seen enough good adaptations of Christie novels by now to know that it is doable. For years, I've avoided buying Poirot box sets (with David Suchet as the detective), because I've seen some of these films on TV and found them boring. I don't even think I managed to get through Murder in Mesopotamia. However, after stumbling across quite watchable adaptations of Five Little Pigs and The Hollow (the latter on a long plane journey), and as I was curious about how the last Poirot adventure Curtain would be handled, I resolved to give the series another try. I bought the last box set in the series which included Curtain, and was satisfied by the latest films. After that, I've carefully worked my way backwards, assuming that the really sleep-inducing adaptations are among the early Poirots. There are several good films here, but I haven't been convinced by all of them. Whether early or late, the Poirot series remains a mixed bag.
David Suchet is of course as good a Poirot as one could wish for - that the character seems a little shallow sometimes is hardly his fault. But these adaptations have to walk the same tightrope as the latest Miss Marple adaptations: if you stay too close to the books, a plot that works well in a novel can become staid and static on screen; if you depart too much from the book, Christie fans (like me) will ask in disgust why you didn't just pen an episode of Midsomer Murders instead of foisting your own plot and characters unto a Christie story.
I can take rather a lot of tinkering with Christie's plots nowadays as I've seen how inert some faithful adaptations are. So where to draw the line? If the inspiration is a short story or a series of short stories (As in the Marple mystery Greenshaw's Folly and the Poirot film The Labours of Hercules), I'm inclined to be very magnanimous and see the film as something inspired by rather than based on Christie's work. I didn't mind the added twist in The Big Four either, as it was so very Christie-like. The problem starts when there is a perfectly serviceable coherent plot in one of her novels, and the adapter chooses to completely ignore it in favour of some lurid tale of his/her own.
There are some big offenders of this kind in the Miss Marple series. I've mentioned The Secret of Chimney's before; apart from that, Murder is Easy and Why Didn't They Ask Evans are the most glaring examples. The three novels have one thing in common: they're not Miss Marple novels. The insertion of Miss Marple isn't the problem in any of these cases, though. In Murder is Easy, it is perfectly credible that a worried old lady on a train should talk to Miss Marple (rather than a young ex-copper), and there's fun to be hand in Evans when Frankie's dismay at Miss Marple's meddling in her an Bobby's detective game becomes all too clear. No, the problem with Murder is Easy and Why Didn't They Ask Evans is that the films veer spectacularly off course plot-wise.
Admittedly, Murder is Easy is a book which has aged badly. The solid-oak hero and his gold-digging love interest aren't a very attractive couple; I gave a bit of a gasp when it was hinted that Superintendent Battle was actually going to book the entertainingly affected antique dealer Ellsworthy (and not for the silly black masses, I bet); last but not least, I can't be the only one who finds the bare-faced snobbery in the treatment of self-made man Lord Whitfield objectionable. But for all that, the main storyline is neat. There was no reason at all to change it in favour of a melodramatic incest story. Moreover, many of the characters were unrecognisable and some weren't included at all. There was no Ellsworthy, and, even more serious, no Lord Whitfield, though some of his characteristics had been given to Major Horton. Talk about Hamlet without the Prince. As for Why Didn't They Ask Evans, the book's a charming caper, which could very well have been adapted as it was without muddying the waters with a new outlandish back-story for the villains. It's a strange piece: up until Frankie arrives at the Bassington-ffrenches' place, the adaptation is straight-forward enough, then everything changes. A shame, and a good cast wasted.
My rule of thumb to Christie adapters would be: don't change the who, don't change the why and don't change the how. Otherwise, I can allow for quite a lot of jiggering with the plot and adding of characters. Sometimes, when I know a book well, a new twist can even be welcome. I accepted the many changes in the Poirot mystery Cards on The Table like a lamb, though I doubt Christie would have approved of some of them. On the other hand, I thought they went too far in Appointment With Death, where the murder motive is changed, the murderer is unrecognisable and where there is suddenly an accomplice as well, which ruins one of the novel's happy endings.
Much hinges on the quality of the scriptwriting, of course. Nick Dear, who wrote the screenplay to the Amanda Root adaptation of Persuasion and whose play Power I once saw in London and still bore my acquaintances by praising, is a safe bet where Poirot adaptations are concerned, as is Sherlock and Doctor Who veteran Mark "Mycroft" Gatiss. Otherwise, Christie adaptations remain a bit of a gamble. I'll probably be buying more Poirot, though: I can't help wondering how Hickory Dickory Dock turned out.
David Suchet is of course as good a Poirot as one could wish for - that the character seems a little shallow sometimes is hardly his fault. But these adaptations have to walk the same tightrope as the latest Miss Marple adaptations: if you stay too close to the books, a plot that works well in a novel can become staid and static on screen; if you depart too much from the book, Christie fans (like me) will ask in disgust why you didn't just pen an episode of Midsomer Murders instead of foisting your own plot and characters unto a Christie story.
I can take rather a lot of tinkering with Christie's plots nowadays as I've seen how inert some faithful adaptations are. So where to draw the line? If the inspiration is a short story or a series of short stories (As in the Marple mystery Greenshaw's Folly and the Poirot film The Labours of Hercules), I'm inclined to be very magnanimous and see the film as something inspired by rather than based on Christie's work. I didn't mind the added twist in The Big Four either, as it was so very Christie-like. The problem starts when there is a perfectly serviceable coherent plot in one of her novels, and the adapter chooses to completely ignore it in favour of some lurid tale of his/her own.
There are some big offenders of this kind in the Miss Marple series. I've mentioned The Secret of Chimney's before; apart from that, Murder is Easy and Why Didn't They Ask Evans are the most glaring examples. The three novels have one thing in common: they're not Miss Marple novels. The insertion of Miss Marple isn't the problem in any of these cases, though. In Murder is Easy, it is perfectly credible that a worried old lady on a train should talk to Miss Marple (rather than a young ex-copper), and there's fun to be hand in Evans when Frankie's dismay at Miss Marple's meddling in her an Bobby's detective game becomes all too clear. No, the problem with Murder is Easy and Why Didn't They Ask Evans is that the films veer spectacularly off course plot-wise.
Admittedly, Murder is Easy is a book which has aged badly. The solid-oak hero and his gold-digging love interest aren't a very attractive couple; I gave a bit of a gasp when it was hinted that Superintendent Battle was actually going to book the entertainingly affected antique dealer Ellsworthy (and not for the silly black masses, I bet); last but not least, I can't be the only one who finds the bare-faced snobbery in the treatment of self-made man Lord Whitfield objectionable. But for all that, the main storyline is neat. There was no reason at all to change it in favour of a melodramatic incest story. Moreover, many of the characters were unrecognisable and some weren't included at all. There was no Ellsworthy, and, even more serious, no Lord Whitfield, though some of his characteristics had been given to Major Horton. Talk about Hamlet without the Prince. As for Why Didn't They Ask Evans, the book's a charming caper, which could very well have been adapted as it was without muddying the waters with a new outlandish back-story for the villains. It's a strange piece: up until Frankie arrives at the Bassington-ffrenches' place, the adaptation is straight-forward enough, then everything changes. A shame, and a good cast wasted.
My rule of thumb to Christie adapters would be: don't change the who, don't change the why and don't change the how. Otherwise, I can allow for quite a lot of jiggering with the plot and adding of characters. Sometimes, when I know a book well, a new twist can even be welcome. I accepted the many changes in the Poirot mystery Cards on The Table like a lamb, though I doubt Christie would have approved of some of them. On the other hand, I thought they went too far in Appointment With Death, where the murder motive is changed, the murderer is unrecognisable and where there is suddenly an accomplice as well, which ruins one of the novel's happy endings.
Much hinges on the quality of the scriptwriting, of course. Nick Dear, who wrote the screenplay to the Amanda Root adaptation of Persuasion and whose play Power I once saw in London and still bore my acquaintances by praising, is a safe bet where Poirot adaptations are concerned, as is Sherlock and Doctor Who veteran Mark "Mycroft" Gatiss. Otherwise, Christie adaptations remain a bit of a gamble. I'll probably be buying more Poirot, though: I can't help wondering how Hickory Dickory Dock turned out.
Thursday, 14 August 2014
The return of Bridget
Weight: who's counting? Number of tight jeans: approx. 12, number of ultra-synthetic ice-cream lollies eaten so far: 0 (ha!), number of ice-cream lollies will have eaten before bed-time: 2 (bad), number of vaguely Höx-like cute men in Borgen series three: 1, number of vaguely Höx-like cute men with any interest in women whatsoever: 0 (huh).
Right. Must blog about newest Bridget Jones book Mad about The Boy as have not blogged for ages, also as owe duty to readers who have heard about it but been scared off by bad reviews. Must stress readability of book, preferably moving on to philosophical discussion about whether people really change or (like Bridget) stay exactly the same whether thirty-three or fifty-one. Hmmm. Maybe I'll just have one ice cream first.
Yes, Bridget's back, and she's instantly recognisable: same accident-proneness, same staccato diary style (which is v. catching). Many reviewers seemed to think that she was a little too recognisable. After all, the Bridget in Mad About the Boy is fifty-one years old. After so many years, two kids and a traumatising bereavement, shouldn't she have, well, matured a little?
I can see their point to some extent. The story-line where Bridget is writing a modern screenplay adaptation of Hedda Gabler called Wine Leaves in His Hair while not knowing how the play's spelled (she calls it Hedda Gabbler) nor that it was written by Ibsen (she thinks it was Chekhov) is pretty silly. If she knows the plot and the line about wine leaves, it stands to reason that she should know other basic facts - and besides, would her first step before writing a screenplay not be to google the play? Otherwise, though, I'm OK with Bridget's bumblingness. One, I really don't think people change that much: if you're bumbling at thirty-three, chances are you'll still be at it twenty years later, though you might be able to hide it better. Two, the starting point of the Bridget diaries is that they record what she actually does think and feel at a given time, rather than reflecting the more sophisticated version of herself that she would like others to see. Your immediate reaction to Twitter followers (or lack of them), dating problems or school mums who seem too good to be true may well be childish whatever your age. Only, these reactions are usually kept to yourself. Bridget's diaries are completely uncensored, and that's why she can come across as a bit of a dope. You identify with her, while at the same time feeling a bit superior ("well, I'm not quite as ditzy as that at any rate") which makes for a very pleasing reading experience.
I don't think Helen Fielding has lost her sparkle: I wolfed down the novel in just a few days. Once I even read it while breakfasting, instead of the morning papers, which normally never happens (books are simply not designed for breakfast). Fielding's light touch is as enjoyable as ever and yes, with time, this reader - like Bridget - got over the fact that Fielding has killed off Mark Darcy in order to involve Bridget in new dating scenarios. The set-up reminded me a little of the killing-off of Matthew in Downton: although that was due to the defection of Stevens, it has had the same effect on Lady Mary's love life as Mark Darcy's untimely demise (eventually) has on Bridget's. In both cases, killing the poor girls' Mr Right was the only way they'd ever be made to look at another man. I half expected Bridget to see the parallel and mope in consequence (she's a Matthew fan), but no, she seems to have lived through the Christmas special of 2012 unscathed.
There's a welcome return of characters from the other Bridget books, including Daniel Cleaver who, I'm pleased to report, was eventually reconciled to Mark. There are heart-warming references to events and exchanges in the Bridget Jones films: here's one author who's so fine with the film adaptations of her books that she's actually made them part of book Bridget's universe. All right, she had a hand with the screenplays, but even so - that's not an attitude you see every day.
What's not to like? Mad About the Boy is the perfect read if, like me, you're back at work after the holidays and need a pick-me-up in novel form. This is probably the last we see of Bridget, but I hope Fielding comes up with a new beguiling franchise soon. What happened to the (admittedly somewhat too perfect) Olivia Joules?
Right. Must blog about newest Bridget Jones book Mad about The Boy as have not blogged for ages, also as owe duty to readers who have heard about it but been scared off by bad reviews. Must stress readability of book, preferably moving on to philosophical discussion about whether people really change or (like Bridget) stay exactly the same whether thirty-three or fifty-one. Hmmm. Maybe I'll just have one ice cream first.
Yes, Bridget's back, and she's instantly recognisable: same accident-proneness, same staccato diary style (which is v. catching). Many reviewers seemed to think that she was a little too recognisable. After all, the Bridget in Mad About the Boy is fifty-one years old. After so many years, two kids and a traumatising bereavement, shouldn't she have, well, matured a little?
I can see their point to some extent. The story-line where Bridget is writing a modern screenplay adaptation of Hedda Gabler called Wine Leaves in His Hair while not knowing how the play's spelled (she calls it Hedda Gabbler) nor that it was written by Ibsen (she thinks it was Chekhov) is pretty silly. If she knows the plot and the line about wine leaves, it stands to reason that she should know other basic facts - and besides, would her first step before writing a screenplay not be to google the play? Otherwise, though, I'm OK with Bridget's bumblingness. One, I really don't think people change that much: if you're bumbling at thirty-three, chances are you'll still be at it twenty years later, though you might be able to hide it better. Two, the starting point of the Bridget diaries is that they record what she actually does think and feel at a given time, rather than reflecting the more sophisticated version of herself that she would like others to see. Your immediate reaction to Twitter followers (or lack of them), dating problems or school mums who seem too good to be true may well be childish whatever your age. Only, these reactions are usually kept to yourself. Bridget's diaries are completely uncensored, and that's why she can come across as a bit of a dope. You identify with her, while at the same time feeling a bit superior ("well, I'm not quite as ditzy as that at any rate") which makes for a very pleasing reading experience.
I don't think Helen Fielding has lost her sparkle: I wolfed down the novel in just a few days. Once I even read it while breakfasting, instead of the morning papers, which normally never happens (books are simply not designed for breakfast). Fielding's light touch is as enjoyable as ever and yes, with time, this reader - like Bridget - got over the fact that Fielding has killed off Mark Darcy in order to involve Bridget in new dating scenarios. The set-up reminded me a little of the killing-off of Matthew in Downton: although that was due to the defection of Stevens, it has had the same effect on Lady Mary's love life as Mark Darcy's untimely demise (eventually) has on Bridget's. In both cases, killing the poor girls' Mr Right was the only way they'd ever be made to look at another man. I half expected Bridget to see the parallel and mope in consequence (she's a Matthew fan), but no, she seems to have lived through the Christmas special of 2012 unscathed.
There's a welcome return of characters from the other Bridget books, including Daniel Cleaver who, I'm pleased to report, was eventually reconciled to Mark. There are heart-warming references to events and exchanges in the Bridget Jones films: here's one author who's so fine with the film adaptations of her books that she's actually made them part of book Bridget's universe. All right, she had a hand with the screenplays, but even so - that's not an attitude you see every day.
What's not to like? Mad About the Boy is the perfect read if, like me, you're back at work after the holidays and need a pick-me-up in novel form. This is probably the last we see of Bridget, but I hope Fielding comes up with a new beguiling franchise soon. What happened to the (admittedly somewhat too perfect) Olivia Joules?
Thursday, 31 July 2014
High-brow reading that pays dividends
When post-holiday depression hits you even before the summer holiday is over, you know you’re in trouble. Let’s see if I can ward it off with some blogging on further summer reading (nothing much happens on the TV front in summer). I’ve managed one single Ambitious Book Project among all the self-indulgence reading this summer: The Stranger’s Child, by Alan Hollinghurst.
As I’ve argued before, summer is not an ideal time to take on something ambitious in the way of reading. In the case of The Stranger’s Child, though, it worked pretty well. I don’t think it would have been ideal to read it in half-hour-sized chunks during lunch hours, plus a page or two on the bus. Unhurried reading sprawled on the bed seemed the right way to consume it; granted, autumn showers outside would have been preferable to sweltering heat, but when do you have hours of uninterrupted reading time in the autumn? It’s an elegant and beautifully written novel, as well as enjoyable. But it is high-brow. Once more, as when I watched Parade’s End, I felt a bit like an uncultured lout. But at least this time, I was a lout who appreciated the high-brow product in question in my own caveman-like way.
Many of the best classics work on two levels: one for the unsophisticated reader/audience who simply wants a straightforward story – for instance, when you’re a child and encounter the stories in question for the first time – and one for the reader who wants a little more. I first came across David Copperfield when my mother read an abridged version to me: I was eleven or twelve at the time. During this reading, I never doubted that Micawber was a good egg, and I was scared of Uriah. When I read the complete novel later, I realised the plot and characters were not as clear-cut as they appeared (I suspect, however, that Dickens would have approved more of my child-self’s judgement of the characters than my present one). Since becoming a grown-up, I thought I was well able to find hidden nuances in a novel and read it on a fairly sophisticated level. And so it was a little troubling when I found myself reading The Stranger’s Child very much as if I were a child myself, taking everything at face value.
On face value, the novel starts like a classic country-house novel. In 1913, George Sawle brings home his university friend and secret lover Cecil Valance, eldest son of a fairly newly-created aristocratic family, for a summer visit. Cecil writes poetry and George’s sixteen-year old sister, Daphne, is set on falling in love with him. Naturally she knows nothing of his affair with her brother. The two first parts of the novel are set thirteen years apart, but they both concern the interactions between the Sawle and Valance families. When the novel skips forward forty-one years to 1967, and concentrates on two young men who only tangentially have anything to do with the Sawles and Valances, I for one felt a little disorientated at first. The story moves back to these families eventually, though, only now they are seen from an outsider perspective. Later, in 1980, one of the young men – Paul Bryant – attempts to write a biography of Cecil, but he finds it uphill work to get anything out of the surviving witnesses, including Daphne. The only one forthcoming is the indiscreet George.
Favourable reviews of The Stranger’s Child, cited at the front of the book, concentrate on such matters as the passing of time and the nature of memory. These abstract themes, you feel, are meant to be more important than the plot/character part of the story; many of the most dramatic events happen off-stage. So when I say that I felt for Paul in his tribulations as (admittedly nosy) biographer – social awkwardness is a trait that immediately elicits sympathy if you’ve ever felt socially awkward yourself – and that, as a consequence, I lost much of the sisterly sympathy I’d previously stored up for Daphne, I’m at the same time aware of somehow missing the point. This is not the kind of novel where you should really spend much time debating whether you like a certain character or not. That said, the novel works for us plot/character nuts too, and the author himself seems disposed to think kindly and tolerantly of his characters, which for me is a big plus. For instance, Paul – in spite of not being such an innocent abroad as he seems – does rather better than expected, and a story of a secondary character’s unrequited love that petered out in the book’s first part is touchingly wound up in the last part.
In other words, if you’d like to read something in the Booker Prize league but not be weighed down by language experiments or dismal content, this is a good bet. But be prepared, if you find yourself discussing it afterwards, that observations like “isn’t that Dudley a perfect pain” could cause a few raised eyebrows.
Friday, 18 July 2014
Middle-class (female) morality
Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s feckless father, is very scathing about “middle-class morality” in Pygmalion (and in My Fair Lady, which actually is better). I don’t have any problems with it myself: as moralities go, the middle-class one is pretty reasonable, though eulogies on the rewards of hard work aren’t always easy to relate to. However, after having spent a great deal of time reading popular fiction set in an affluent and predominately female environment, I’m starting to feel a little Doolittleish. What gets my goat is when middle-class women blithely dismiss aspects of life that contribute to making their own lives – and that of a great deal of other people – comfortable. There’s a hint of Mrs Merdle, the financier’s wife in Little Dorrit who wishes we could all live like savages, about it.
Lately, I’ve read Jenny Colgan’s Meet Me at the Cupcake Café and Gill Hornby’s The Hive, and I’m now in the middle of Lovers by Judith Krantz (in my defence, these are my summer holidays, and I bought it at a book stand during a week in London for 50 pence). They are three wildly different novels by three wildly different authors, but they have some things in common. They’re within the realms of popular fiction, and from a female viewpoint. Cupcake Café and The Hive both focus on a female-dominated group of people. Here, you find again the old opinions on what is good and bad in this world which I recognise from a hundred and one gentle romantic films.
Creativity is good. Consequently, cooking and baking are good things, because there you actually make something. Farming is also a good thing, in its down-to-earth naturalness. Children are quite simply the best thing ever. Bad things are: City types and City jobs; impersonal environments that lack that special warm, lived-in, quirky woman’s touch; too much focus on your career (and to be fair, this is frowned upon in men and women alike).
Cases in point: the heroine in Cupcafe Café, Izzy, is made redundant from her admin job in the City where she spent an inordinate amount of time updating her Facebook status, and uses the opportunity to start the eponymous café. The bastard on-off boyfriend whom her friends are trying to convince her to get rid of is a City type – a property developer, no less. Izzy’s employee, Pearl, has an adorable toddler whom she tries to bring up more or less single-handedly and over whom all of the book’s women swoon. A children’s party at the café where the little mites learn to bake is one of the set pieces. The novel also contains some hand-wringing over beastly “gentrification” of neighbourhoods (honestly, don’t get me started on that one). Izzy’s new love interest is a banker – wow, innovation! – but he is an adviser for a local branch, always tousled and disorganised because he’s bringing up his little brother after their parents died in a car accident. So that’s all right then.
In The Hive, one of the characters you are supposed to like, Georgina aka Georgie, gives up a high-flying career as a lawyer to marry a farmer and start a large family. She’s as happy as Larry, and is always relieved to find herself pregnant yet again: like Rachel, another sort-of-goodie, she despises “me-time”. Georgie once had an au-pair, but her immaculate housework split up the family unit; now, the children muck in (whopee – because as a kid, you simply love chores, don’t you?), and everything is chaotic but lovely. Oh, and of course Georgie still gets plenty of sex from her manly farmer husband. When Rachel looks after Georgie’s good-natured, quietly sleeping toddler for one afternoon, she muses on “what a positive thing it was to have a little one around the place; how they imprinted their wholesome routine upon the days of everyone around them […] Where did it come from, this idea that it was small children who killed your fun and tied you down?” Hold on – that must be satire, right?
I feel I’m being a bit unfair, because I enjoyed both The Hive and Cupcake Café very much. And I realise that the world must be peopled, and that it’s only fair to depict bringing up children as something else than a hard slog once in a while – there are contented housewives out there, why deny it? But it does get a bit cloying if you’re not into all that earth-mother stuff.
However, there are upsides to middle-class female morality. This is where Lovers comes in (where there is, incidentally, a City-type villain, a bitch whose bitchiness stems from her mother’s neglect, and a benevolent matriarch who “over-engages” in her twins’ upbringing although she has a full-time nanny). A good old-fashioned bonkbuster, published in the 1990s, the good characters in it nevertheless adhere to a moral code. No goodie ever uses sex as a weapon for personal gain or in order to do someone down. As one character says, defending her polygamous past: “I never slept with a man I didn’t genuinely like. I never slept with a man to get anything out of it but pleasure. I never deceived them.” And after you’ve found your great love, it goes without saying that there’s no more sleeping around. This sense of fair play is a great source of relief in a novel like this, because then you know that the characters you should root for – in spite of being miles more attractive than most people, including yourself – will not abuse their power and do something you’d find hard to forgive them.
I recently read an article lambasting the “good girl” ethos which I found curiously unconvincing. I don’t mind good girls, really. If only they could stop chirping about their sprogs all the time, enjoy the perks of modern urban life without guilt – and maybe give that City guy a break.
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