Novel covers: a gripe

Today I am mostly: irritated by book marketing. As in patronising, gendered, and belittling of women's work.

Let's examine a case study: 'The Sorrows of an American' by Siri Hustvedt. This is an important, elegant, intelligent literary novel whose scope includes the Scandinavian immigrant experience in early 20th Century America, the uses and limitations of psychoanalysis, stalking in its many forms, the love and silences between parents and children and brothers and sisters, art, photography, the cult of literary personality, and the ache of grief that comes with the loss of a parent or partner. It is brilliant, as is the other novel of hers I have read, 'What I Loved'. I have no idea why Siri Hustvedt is not on all those 'Great American novelist' lists with the likes of Philip Roth and Jonathan Franzen.

Here is the jacket of The Sorrows of an American:



Pretty. Maybe slightly sinister, given facelessness of girl, and the serpentine seething at the bottom of her dress. Quite appealing.

But I don't think you'd guess from this cover that the narrator of the book is a tall, forty-something male Norwegian psychologist mourning the death of his father.

But wait! There are some female characters in the book! Maybe it is one of them? narrator's love interest - who is black, and has short hair? No. His sister - a serious academic writer, just shy of fifty, given to smart suits? No. His elderly mother? No. The strange, reclusive old lady who holds a secret about his father's past? No. The friendly, overweight undertaker who favours elasticated slacks? No.

No, it's just a pretty, or at least slim and flowing-haired, girl in a slightly strange but pretty dress who bears no relation to the novel whatsoever. But women like books with girls in pretty dresses on the front don't they? So it doesn't really matter, as long as women buy it?

Any more ideas as to why why Hustvedt isn't taken seriously as a great American novelist?

I've Got My Hand In Your Head: Neuroscience / Music Monday Combo

I have just finished a fantastic book called The Brain That Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge. Perhaps surprisingly for someone with no knowledge of science at all (Physics GCSE and that's it), I am a real neuroscience nerd, and love nothing more than curling up with a good book all about horrific brain injuries. Cosy, eh? On my shelf you will find classic neuroscience tracts by the likes of Oliver Sacks, Steven Johnson and Paul Broks, and I impulsed-purchased The Brain That Changes Itself whilst hanging out in Waterstones before a meeting, and proceeded to inhale the whole thing over the weekend.

Basically, you should stop reading my review now and read the book instead. But seeing as how you are here, TBTCI is a fascinating exploration of the key emerging concept in brain science of neuroplasticity - the idea that far from being a fixed machine which, once damaged, cannot be repaired, the brain is a fluid, living entity where different functions compete for space. The things you do remap your brain; the things you do a lot remap your brain a lot. (I'm simplifying a tad.) And parts of your brain that might usually do one thing are capable of doing others, particularly if trained in the right ways, which gives immense hope to those who are brain damaged, by birth, accident, stroke and so on. Some of the stories here are, no pun intended, mind-blowing: from a woman born retarded who cured herself, to another who was born, and lives and functions, with only half a brain.

This then gives hope to those of us who are not brain damaged but who might have behavioural patterns we are unhappy with. By repeating the patterns, we've worn tracks in our minds which are hard to get out of, which explains why we keep doing the same harmful things over and over. But like any other kind of damage, we can train and practice and get our brains onto a better path. (When I say we, I do mean me, by the way, though perhaps you will recognise yourself also.) Does this sound self-helpy? It isn't meant to. More that the book provides a deep insight into what it actually means, at the level of your personal brain chemistry, when you think of who you are and what you might be trying to change. (There I go with you. I still mean me.)

It's utterly inspiring stuff. Though as a caveat, you will have to have a high tolerance for vivisection, as the researchers in the book are constantly severing monkeys' spinal nerves and sewing kittens' eyes shut. If you like the sound of it - the book, not the vivisection - there's more on the author's website and the book is available in all the usual places. Also, can we pause for a moment to admire this author photo, taken by Denise Grant? This is what a psychoanalyst should look like, no?



All this makes me think about how I'd like to read more non-fiction. I didn't go near the stuff after school and university because I thought it would be all like textbooks, but in recent years I've found I've missed all the learning I took for granted when I was growing up, and now I want to find out more about this world of ours, goddammit. (Not god damn the world. That would be a foolhardy invitation. It's just an expression.) Dearest blog friends, can you recommend some great non-fiction for me to read? Other books on diverse factual topics that I've read and loved have included The Shadow of the Sun (Kapuscinski), Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Biskind), The Age of Absurdity (Michael Foley) - that may be one for another blog post, in fact, so brilliant is it. But in the meantime, recommendations please.

Have just realised it's Monday. So here's a themed Music Monday - Hand In Your Head by Money Mark. Here's a fact for you: the first time I heard this, I thought the lyrics were "I've got my hand in your hair and I'm pulling out all of your mites."

Oi! Rushdie! Get Orf My Land!

Today I am mainly loving this.

He nicked my idea about those extra verses in the Koran as well.

November Book Swap

Last Book Swap of the year tomorrow! Except for the one that Scott is doing as part of the Peckham Literary Festival on the 25th, and the kids' one that Scott is doing, um, at some point (I'm sure he'll big both of them up over at his blog). I have no idea where Scott gets the energy. He has a job and everything. But it's *my* last Book Swap of the year and I hope you will join me as we have most excellent guests -

Maggie Gee, whose My Cleanerand My DriverI adored, and my aunt in Botswana will be getting for Christmas (it's OK, I have already told her) (it's also OK because it's the books my aunt is getting, not Maggie Gee)

- and -

Milton Crawford, whose The Hungover Cookbookis a Boxing Day and New Year's Day essential, for reasons I am certain are obvious, although I will be quizzing him closely on the veracity of his claims, as when I'm hungover all I can face is half a banana and a weak cup of mint tea, which inexplicably are not listed in his recipes.

Yes. It will be good. Details as ever par ici. Also as ever, I will point out that Windsor is much closer to other places, like London and Oxford, than you might think. (Though it remians quite a long way from Canada.)

I'm on the List!

Doing a spot of vanity surfing, I noticed that Gods Behaving Badly has some new friends on Amazon. Usually, the 'Customers Who Bought This Title Also Bought' category is filled with light contemporary fiction and the odd similarly-themed novel such as 'Jitterbug Perfume' (which I haven't read, as I'm certain that reading similarly-themed novels is a one way ticket to unhealthy comparisons and depression or, possibly, triumphalism and unattractive crowing.) But suddenly, it's all 'Gods, Whores and Slaves; Woman in Classical Antiquity' and 'The Mirror of the Gods: Classical Mythology in Renaissance Art'. Ladies and gentlemen, it would appear that I am on a reading list. Students will be speeding through my novel as fast as they possibly can, reading only the first and last paragraph of each chapter and desperately hoping it won't come up in any essay questions in the exam! If they are anything like me anyway. I have to say it is genuinely exciting and flattering to think that somebody - somebody who presumably knows their onions - thought my book was worth recommending alongside the likes of Metamorphoses and Medea.

Where reading lists are found, googling surely is not far behind, so please do say hello if you have reached my blog because your university (or A level Classical Civilisations?) teacher forced you to read my book. On the one hand, I feel I should apologise because I don't think you're going to come out the other end magically empowered to storm through your dissertation. On the other hand, I'm guessing GBB will be a more fun read than The Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Enjoy! And just so you know, sadly by this stage the only honest answers I can ever give you to 'Why did you do x in your book?' is 'I don't know', 'I can't remember', 'It was the only way I could think of moving the plot along' or 'I nicked it from Ovid'.

On a completely separate note I can't help but notice that they are flogging the audio version of GBB for £45.50. For that money, I will come round and read it to you myself*.

*Disclaimer: no I won't.

Catch 22 (Bulgarian edition)

Just popped out to the local corner shop to get the paper and noticed a copy of my favourite novel, Catch 22, on the counter. I asked which of the two men was reading it, and the chap in question replied, in very broken English, that it was his favourite English-language book, that he had read it five or six times in Bulgarian translation, and was now making his way through it in English in order to improve his language skills. Needless to say I was bloody impressed. And also intrigued. If you had to recommend one novel and one novel only for someone to learn English from, which would you choose? I think Catch 22 is a bloody good one, difficult as it is. It's clever, it's funny, it's original and imaginative, plus alongside your English you can study the great British values of sarcasm, irritation with bureaucracy, and contempt for your inferior superiors. (I am, of course, aware that it is an American novel, but even so.) Any other suggestions?

In which I am patronised by a soup

Good morning! Today I am mostly: annoyed by soup.

Now, when I buy soup (and I am aware that it would be cheaper and more fulfilling to make my own: this too is an annoyance, but not the main one) I only really need to know two things about it: what's in it, and how long it takes to heat it up in the microwave. Soups have been providing this information since time immemorial (or perhaps since the invention of the domestic microwave oven in 1967), and I'm not exactly sure when they got bored of providing it in the traditional manner. But they have.

Thus to today's soup, a Tuscan Chicken and Orzo from Glorious Soups. I'm not sure who you think the market is for a Tuscan Chicken and Orzo soup, but I suspect it is someone quite middle class and pretentious who likes to think they are eating a sophisticated soup tailored for their sophisticated palate. Me, in other words. I therefore am the target audience for the following:

I've been carefully checked for bones, but you might still find a few small ones

and

I contain celery and gluten. I've been known to hang around near nuts, peanuts and sesame seeds and I may contain them as well

and

Freezing me? best do it right now and eat me within a month

and most egregious of all

Ouch! My pot can get a bit wobbly when it's hot, so stand me on a plate when you're reheating and stirring, and mind your fingers when you pick me up

(although actually I am put off my soup even more by

Made in the UK with three spoonfuls of love and a pinch of gusto

but it doesn't count because it's not in the sodding first person. And how many calories in a spoonful of love, eh? Tell me that.)

I am 34 years old. I left nursery school 30 years ago and that was the last time anyone saw fit to speak to me in this stupid, affected, patronising voice. And on that occasion it was a human being, not a fucking soup.

A message to the people of Glorious soups: I want to EAT the soup, not make friends with it. And in any case, when I'm hanging out with my friends (or "chilling", as in Let's chill. Keep me in the fridge) they very rarely exhort me to take off my lid and stand me on a plate in the microwave and make sure I'm nice and hot before serving. Because that would be WRONG. And a bit kinky.

[UPDATE: The soup was delicious. I don't know if that makes it more annoying or less.]

All of which reminds me of that brilliant scene in Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by the late, great, and apparently prophetic, Douglas Adams, when Arthur Dent meets the cow that is soon going to be his dinner:

A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox's table, a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its lips.

"Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.

Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"Something off the shoulder perhaps?" suggested the animal, "Braised in a white wine sauce?"

"Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper.

"But naturally my shoulder, sir," mooed the animal contentedly, "nobody else's is mine to offer."

Zaphod leapt to his feet and started prodding and feeling the animal's shoulder appreciatively.

"Or the rump is very good," murmured the animal. "I've been exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good meat there." It gave a mellow grunt, gurgled again and started to chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again.

"Or a casserole of me perhaps?" it added.

"You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?" whispered Trillian to Ford.

"Me?" said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes, "I don't mean anything."

"That's absolutely horrible," exclaimed Arthur, "the most revolting thing I've ever heard."

"What's the problem Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring his attention to the animal's enormous rump.

"I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing here inviting me to," said Arthur, "it's heartless."

"Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said Zaphod.

"That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. "Alright," he said, "maybe it is the point. I don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er ..."

The Universe raged about him in its death throes.

"I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered.

"May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months."

"A green salad," said Arthur emphatically.

"A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.

"Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't have green salad?"

"Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am."

It managed a very slight bow.

"Glass of water please," said Arthur.

"Look," said Zaphod, "we want to eat, we don't want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare steaks please, and hurry. We haven't eaten in five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years."

The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle.

"A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good," it said, "I'll just nip off and shoot myself."

He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur.

"Don't worry, sir," he said, "I'll be very humane."

Musical bookswap on a Monday

And why not? It's my blog.

I am SO BLOODY EXCITED about the Firestation Bookswap on Thursday. Here are some reasons you might want to get excited too:

1. It's the bookswap's first birthday! I might wear that transparent dress I accidentally wore on the first night, to celebrate. Then again, I might not.

2. We have had some amazing guests on the bookswap so far but it'd be hard to beat this month's line-up. I read Matt Rudd's William's Progressin one sitting, despite being filled with horror at its hilarious revelations about the truth about having young babies - yes I will now never have children and it is all Matt Rudd's fault, but I will forgive anybody who makes me laugh. Get a taste of his inimitable sense of humour at his blog. And Andrew Kaufmann's All My Friends are Superheroesis the only book that has ever made me cry from happiness. I read it less than a year ago, have already given away four copies (including Scott's - sorry Scott, if I can remember who I gave it to I might be able to get it back) and I love love LOVE it. In fact if you buy a copy you can find a quote from me on the back confirming this very thing. His latest, The Waterproof Bible, is similarly strange and wonderful. Andrew is interviewed on the Beat website by bookswap alumnus Aliya Whiteley and I defy you to read the interview and not want to meet the man in person.

3. For one month only, the bookswap is FREE. Free I hear you say? Why yes -



Hilarious. Could that video be any more 90s? And when did you last think of the Soup Dragons?

Bookswap Preview

Next Thursday is our regular Firestation Bookswap night and for once I have actually been sent the books far enough in advance to do a proper preview. Previous bookswap authors look away now... Gone? OK. The rest of you, usually I get the books so late I have to finish them on the train to Windsor. OK bookswap authors, you can look back now.

First up, we have Aliya Whiteley, author of Light Reading. Light Reading is a murder mystery - or is it? - in which two neglected air force wives stave off boredom and try to avoid thinking about their own problems by investigating a suspicious suicide in a sinister seaside resort. The cover, with its "A Lena and Pru Mystery!" sticker, makes it look like cheerful but conventional fun, but it's far darker and more unusual than that, and actually I can't figure out whether of the book's being missold or I'm missing the irony of the packaging. A question I'll be putting to Aliya.

Joining Aliya will be Bronia Kita, whose Wild West novel The Swansong of Wilbur McCrum reads like a cross between Forrest Gump and Little House on the Prairie. Wilbur McCrum, a cow-phobic, fit-ridden outlaw, narrates his peripatetic life story from the bottom of a well, where he is drowning after trying to escape a vengeful posse while disguised in women's clothes. No need to say more - that's a premise which sells itself.

STOP PRESS. At this point I wrote a whole lot of information which is now completely inaccurate. Like, as of five minutes after I posted. And which I will now delete. So I started off by saying that we're doing a bookswap at the London Review Bookshop on Thursday August 5th, which is still true, and then -

la la la la la la la -

He'll

[but who? The author who isn't coming, that's who. For entirely respectable reasons, I should add]

be joined by James Miller, whose book I don't yet have, but whose website promises the following:

Other than writing, my main passion is Jamaican and African-American music. I have a ridiculous collection of reggae, dub, dancehall, soul, blues and gospel music. My other obsessions include drinking coffee, wandering around London, going to Italy and taking pictures of buildings. I'm also interested in Civil Rights history, psycho-analysis, post-colonial theory, anti-capitalist protest, Middle East politics, Modern, pre-Raphaelite and Renaissance art, mega-cities and anything that might offer an insight into our present postmodern nightmare.

He doesn't mention cake. But clearly a man with plenty to talk about.

I think the LRB event is going to be fantastic, but please, please book ahead - I am fairly certain it will sell out. The event's not on their website quite yet (at time of writing anyway) but you could try calling them on 020 7269 9030. (Usual bookswap rules of free entry for those who bring home-baked cake will apply.)

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

Beatrice and Virgil is the aforementioned book I just finished, the one I thought was fantastic but has only been garnering lukewarm reviews.

I suppose I can see why. It's quite an unusual book and it's certainly not without problems. The central character, Henry, is a Yann Martel-esque writer, sent into a spin of writer's block when his publishers rubbish and reject his latest book, an experimental work about the Holocaust. He receives a strange letter which leads him to an even stranger taxidermist, also called Henry, who has written a play called Beatrice and Virgil, which also turns out to be an experimental work about the Holocaust. The play within the book and the framing device together form the book we are reading, which is, of course, an experimental work about the Holocaust, so it all ends up a bit like reading an Escher drawing.

The weakest part of the book is the story of the two Henrys, which is an odd mixture of autobiographical / naturalistic and improbable. But the play within the play is wonderful. Beatrice, a donkey, and Virgil, a monkey engage in a Waiting for Godot-like dialogue, which starts beautifully: Virgil describes a pear to Beatrice, who has never seen or eaten one. You can read that exchange over at the New York Times website, but to give you a flavour, as it were:

BEATRICE: And what does a pear taste like?

VIRGIL: Wait. You must smell it first. A ripe pear breathes a fragrance that is watery and subtle, its power lying in the lightness of its impression upon the olfactory sense. Can you imagine the smell of nutmeg or cinnamon?

BEATRICE: I can.

VIRGIL: The smell of a ripe pear has the same effect on the mind as these aromatic spices. The mind is arrested, spellbound, and a thousand and one memories and associations are thrown up as the mind burrows deep to understand the allure of this beguiling smell — which it never comes to understand, by the way.

BEATRICE: But how does it taste? I can't wait any longer.

VIRGIL: A ripe pear overflows with sweet juiciness.

BEATRICE: Oh, that sounds good.

VIRGIL: Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.

BEATRICE: I must have one.

But gradually the exchanges between Beatrice and Virgil become more sad, then more frightening, and the story around the play takes the same trajectory, leading, inexorably, to a pair of explosive endings. But these endings are nothing in comparison to the devastation of the postscript to the book, which had me putting the novel down in a state of shock.

Beatrice and Virgil is a much darker, much angrier, much messier book than Martel's Booker-winner 'Life of Pi', and I'm sure it will prove both less successful and less popular. But I preferred it. Maybe it's because the tale of a writer struggling to make his way forward after a big success resonated with me, whereas others may find it irritating; and maybe I am more forgiving of flawed novels that try for something unusual, because I know how hard it is to get something complicated right (it's hard enough to get something simple right.) But I think it's Beatrice and Virgil themselves; they broke my heart, just as they should, and the sadness their story created in me made the last part of the book hit harder than I could have imagined. I put this book down with a genuine sense of disquiet and a dark mood I found hard to shake for several hours. Nevertheless I recommend this book extremely highly, if you are prepared to forgive it its flaws.

Hay: preview

I have finished (read "finished") my book (why "finished"? Well there will be months worth of corrections once my editor gets hold of it, and that's assuming my publishers actually want this one, ladida I AM NOT THINKING ABOUT THAT) and am off to the Hay festival from where I intend to keep a regular blog presence, hurrah! (Please don't steal the laptop out of the car when I stop for petrol.) Hay is like one giant Start the Week and it's where I go to feel clever and knowledgeable about stuff I am neither clever nor knowledgeable about. Also, as luck would have it, it's a really great place to sit inside a marquee wishing it would stop raining. See you there! (Not literally. Especially if you are reading this from Canada.)

Introducing BBBB

A rare treat on the blog today, an interview with the delightful Stephanie Butland, Firestation Bookswap regular, blogger of Bah To Cancer fame, stupendous BBBB book giveaway organiser and cupcake baker extraordinaire - more on all of which can be found below. You should read right to the end of the interview unless you are on a really strict diet, in which case you might want to close the browser the moment that I mention cupcakes because it gets very tempting from there on in... But to start with, talk of BBBB and books in general.

Who are you and what is this BBBB of which you speak?

I'm Stephanie Butland and I was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2008. Since then I've had surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and ongoing drug therapy, and I've chronicled my dance with cancer at www.bahtocancer.com.
One thing I discovered during treatment was that my usual response to long days of not feeling well - curling up on the sofa with a book - didn't work. At first I put it down to poor attention span and watched a lot of daytime TV instead. But then someone gave me a Georgette Heyer novel and I devoured it. I realised that my usual books - dense, dark thrillers, complex small-print novels, modern fiction usually involving incest and other nastiness - just weren't the right books for me while I was trying to get better. So I started reading differently - Agatha Christie, Dick Francis, Lisa Jewell - and was re-reminded of what a healing thing a good book can be.
The BBBB - Bah! Brilliant Book Bonanza - was born from this experience. I've persuaded lots of lovely writers and publishers - including your fragrant self - to donate copies of their books, and I'm inviting anyone in need of a good, uplifting read (you don't need to have cancer) to come along and leave a 'pick me!' comment. So you can get a good, free, read if you need one, or you can make a small donation - I'm suggesting £2 - for every 'pick me' comment that you leave. So, if it works - and I'm going to look a complete twit if it doesn't - people in need of a good book will get one, and cancer charities will make a bit of money.

How can my lovely readers get involved with BBBB?

Readers can go to www.bahtocancer.com/bbbb and click on the 'May 2010 BBBB' link, read the list of available books - and there are some brilliant ones - leave a comment to say which one they'd like, and leave a 'pick me!' comment.

Writers who want to get involved with the BBBB can contact me via the site and tell me about the book they'd like to donate. It can be anything - fiction, biography, poetry, young adult books - so long as it leaves you with a smile on your face.

And now for some book questions. First book you remember reading / being read to you?

I remember a book called 'A Child's Garden of Verses' which was a big, heavy, illustrated poetry book. And my Grandma had a book at her house that she read to me and I loved - called 'Jim and Mary and the Rocking Horse' about a rocking horse in a park that sometimes came to life. I remember my Dad reading to me a lot. And I remember always being a reader. The first time we went on a plane, I missed the whole experience because my Mum had bought me a new Malory Towers book to read on holiday and I wasn't allowed to start it until we got on the plane. So I spent the whole flight with my nose stuck in the book with my Mum periodically interrupting me to try to get me to look out of the window.

First book that had a significant impact on you and the way you saw the world?

I really wanted to say something really impressively intellectual here, but I have to be honest and say it was one of the Enid Blyton St. Clare's boarding school books. I forget the context exactly but the message was that everyone has something special about them - and one day you will discover what is special about you. I liked that. Still do.

Favourite obscure book that everyone should know about?

'Chatterton Square' by E. H. Young. The characters are just exquisite and the story so moving. And it's such a delight to read a book where all the main characters are middle aged and none the less interesting for that.

A book that everyone loves but which you just don't get?

'The Time Traveller's Wife'. I get that the conceit is clever but frankly, I just couldn't care less. I've recently given up on 'The Children's Book' by A S Byatt when I was 100 pages in and loathed everyone in it. I read 'Wolf Hall' and felt very 'So what?' at the end, although I've loved Hilary Mantel's other novels. Oh, and you can keep all of Dickens.

All-time favourite book (or books - as this can be like choosing between your children)?

'Middlemarch' by George Eliot for the sheer span of it, and for Dorothea Brooke
'Bel Canto' by Ann Patchett, which is simply faultless
'A Suitable Boy' by Vikram Seth - I do have a bit of a big book fetish and this is the top of my big book list
The Edith Wharton one with Lily Bart that I can't remember the name of. Oh, hang on, "The House of Mirth'. The inevitability of the ending breaks my heart every time
'Cloud Atlas' by David Mitchell which is so brilliant and so clever but the brilliance and the cleverness don't interfere with the fact that these are really good stories.
'A Month of Sundays' by John Updike, although frankly I'd pay to read Updike's shopping list.

A special BBBB question - what's the perfect uplifting read for when times get really tough?

For me, it's a Jane Austen novel, because I've read them all so often that I can read and enjoy them without too much effort, and they link me back through my past, and new things speak to me every time.

Last but not remotely least: you are famous amongst the Firestation Bookswap audience for your delicious cupcakes. Care to share a recipe with us?

Of course! Here is my 'Vanilla Variations' recipe.

To make a dozen cupcakes you will need:
- 125g butter at room temperature
- 125g golden caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 125g self raising flour
- a tablespoon of vanilla extract (not essence)
- a glug or two of full-fat milk
- muffin cases (not cupcake cases. This matters: it gives you the optimum cake to icing ratio.)

Heat the oven to 160 degrees celsius or so. Beat together the butter and sugar until it's really, really pale, or get a machine to do it for you. Add and egg and half the flour and beat it in slowly. Then the other egg and the other half of the flour, then the vanilla, then enough milk to make a soft dropping consistency - take a spoonful of the mixture, hold it sideways over the bowl, and if it falls off within 3 seconds that's what you've got.
Divide the mixture between the cases and put them in the oven. Take a look at them after 15 minutes: they should be pale gold and spring back to the touch. If in doubt, give them another 5 minutes. Remove the tray from the oven and leave the cakes in there until they are cool.

Now, the topping. This is where the variations come in. Try any of the following. As a general rule, the longer you mix the toppings for, the better they'll be.

Basic icing: 200g icing sugar and a little cold water. Vary this by replacing the water with lemon or orange juice, or adding a drop of rosewater. Golden caster sugar will give a hint of caramel.

Royal icing: start by whisking an egg white until it's foamy then add 200g icing sugar. This gives you a crunchier icing when it sets. You can add any flavouring to this one, and try it with golden caster sugar too.

Traditional frosting: use 100g cream cheese (such as Philadelphia), 50g butter, 200g icing sugar and a glug of vanilla extract.

Add 2 tablespoons of good quality cocoa powder to any of the above.

Try mixing lemoncurd with thick greek yoghurt and putting a raspberry on top, but you'll need to store these in the fridge and eat them quickly.

Beat 100g Nutella with 200g icing sugar.

Melt 200g good quality dark chocolate, 50g butter and 100g double cream. You'll need to leave this to thicken before you use it and keep these in the fridge.

Once you have the icing and the cakes are cool, put the icing on and spread it around, and put something yummy on the top. Raspberries, chocolate buttons, sugar roses, dolly mixtures, flaked almonds (good with rose icing), those chocolates in the shape of seashells - they're all good.

Enjoy!

Because I Am A Girl

Updating my website mariephillips.co.uk - which is pretty awful, by the way, mostly because I designed and maintain it myself, and I'm not exactly an expert at that kind of thing, and I sort of can't be bothered, ahem... The plan is to redo it when my next book comes out ("when", not "if", ever the optimist). Well, anyway: updating it, I realised I had completely forgotten to mention that I have a new publication out and an event to support it. (That's an event in addition to the flourishing Bookswap, every third Thursday of the month at the Windsor Firestation. It's £5 to get in and I believe we are the only literary event to let you in for free if you bring a home-baked cake. But moving on.)

The piece in question is called 'Change' and you can find it in the Plan International / Vintage anthology Because I am a Girl.

(I notice Amazon are selling it at a discount. Hmm. All the profits go to Plan, so...)

'Change' is an account of my visit to Uganda to witness Plan International's work there. Without wishing to spoil the story, I was so appalled, and say as much, that Plan had to publish an official retraction straight after my piece in the book. There's a cracking review of it over here - thank you, Independent on Sunday.

What's that? You want an extract, you say? Oh god, I'm probably not allowed. But here you go, as long as you promise to buy the book. It's my first day in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and I have been taken to visit a project which works with prostitutes there:

The streets of Kampala are not a safe place to sell sex. The women complained of rape from clients, rape from the police who periodically round them up to clean up the streets. Then there are the other risks, notably from HIV and AIDS. Condom use is not popular amongst johns in Uganda, and even if the prostitutes insist on it, it’s easy to get around the issue by insisting on sex in a dark corner and then lying about the condom. And anyway, as one pointed out: “You can get a man to use a condom but you are still a sex worker.” These are not happy hookers. The only time anybody laughed was when my Plan chaperone mentioned the Dutch model of legalised and regulated brothels, which reduced the entire group to hysterics.

The Moonlight Stars project aims to provide sex workers with healthcare - AIDS tests, condoms and so on - as well as training and financial support to help them set up their own businesses outside the sex industry, such as baking or hairdressing. But the funding has run out. So while Moonlight Stars aims to provide healthcare, financial support and training, what it actually provides is “outreach”. I asked the women what outreach is. They told me that it’s going out and telling other prostitutes about what Moonlight Stars aims to provide. It’s not my last encounter with “outreach” in Uganda. This is probably the right place to mention: outreach is cheap.

Before we left, the women asked us to give them money for the project. We explained that it doesn’t work that way, that we have to report back to Plan in London who make the funding decisions. They were not impressed. In my notes I have written: “I felt as if they were thinking: who the fuck are you and what are you here for if you’re not going to give us any money?”

Cheerful stuff, as you can see. The talk's on Thursday March 4th at Central United Reformed Church, Grove St, Bath, 6.15pm, £7 / £6 concessions, and my fellow speakers will be Deborah Moggach and Xiaolu Guo. You can get more info and buy tickets here. It should be an interesting, challenging, controversial evening. Hope to see some of you there.

Desperately Seeking Canadian Ereader

My novel Gods Behaving Badly has come out in about 20 countries so far. In some places it has done well (my home turf of UK, for example.) In other countries less so (people of Holland, why hast thou forsaken me?) The country it has done best in so far is Canada. To my astonishment and I'd guess that of my publishers too, it went to number 1 in the fiction charts and I had great fun a while back doing a lightning book tour round Toronto and Vancouver, appearing in all kinds of newspapers and on radio and TV. I try to repay Canada in my own small way, for example by having the theme tune to The Littlest Hobo on my iPod and by really, really liking the word Saskatchewan.

I am guessing that Canada is not at the forefront of the ereader revolution, though, because according to my most recent royalty statement, I have sold a grand total of one electronic copy of Gods Behaving Badly in Canada since its release in December 2007. One. More may have been sold since, as that statement only went up to the end of September, but even so. One.

Here's the thing. I really want to know who I have sold that one ebook to. Who is this intrepid Canuck? What made them decide to download my book rather than buy a hard copy? Are they typically a maverick, renegade kind of person, or is this the first time that they have - to their knowledge - done something that the whole of the rest of Canada has not yet done? I guess it's possible, being - as they evidently are - at the cutting edge of digitisation, this individual might have made it as far as my blog. It might even be you. I'm guessing it probably isn't though. But it could be you. Hello.

I am now officially on the search for my one electronic reader in Canada. If I can find him or her - perhaps with the help of some friendly blog or Twitter mentions, hint hint - I will offer them an old-fashioned paper Canadian edition, signed. (Will ereaders kill the signed edition? Discuss.) I don't know how they'll prove their identity but I'm sure we can figure that out. A download receipt, maybe? Anyway, I'd really love to hear from you, Canadian ereader, so if you make it this far, leave me a comment with your e-mail address... and I hope you enjoyed the book.

Notice anything?

In today's Guardian Review's habitual summary of book reviews, here are the names of the writers across various papers who have reviewed Martin Amis's latest, 'The Pregnant Widow': Aravind Adiga, Philip Hensher, Harry Mount, Richard Bradford, Bharat Tandon. And here are the names of the people who have reviewed Andrea Levy's new novel 'The Long Song': Ruth Scurr, Kate Kellaway, Amanda Craig. As my old maths teacher used to say: notice anything?

MEN AND WOMEN OF BRITAIN: YOU CAN NEVER ENJOY OR APPRECIATE ANY NOVEL WRITTEN BY THE OPPOSITE GENDER. GET IN YOUR COLOUR-CODED CARS AND GO HOME.

Sebastian Barry: The Secret Scripture

As mentioned a while back, I'm not too well at the moment, and one of the symptoms is being extraordinarily tired much of the time, so I am spending several hours a day in bed reading.

Yes, you're right. It could be a lot worse.

First up for discussion is Sebastian Barry's 'The Secret Scripture'. This is the second Sebastian Barry book I've read, the first being the heartrendingly brilliant 'A Long, Long Way', his account of a young Irish soldier in the First World War. That one was on the Booker shortlist in 2005, and lost to John Banville's 'The Sea', and I can't say whether that was fair as I have not read the latter, but I find it hard to believe it could be much better than 'A Long, Long Way' which is the best book by far I've ever read about WW1, and I have read many of the usual suspects (Pat Barker trilogy, 'Birdsong' etc.)

So I was very excited about reading 'The Secret Scripture', also Booker shortlisted, this time in 2008. This one is about a 100-year-old Irish woman, Roseanne, who has been in a lunatic asylum since the 1950s, and the doctor who is trying to determine her mental state to see if she is fit for release when said asylum is scheduled for demolition. The book moves between the diaries of both characters, that of Roseanne detailing her upbringing in early 20th century Ireland and the events that led to her incarceration, and that of the Doctor describing his attempts to uncover the truth about her, and his sadness at the recent loss of his wife.

So far so good, and it is wonderfully written and evocative, if not quite to the heights of 'A Long, Long Way'. But I had a dim memory of one of the Booker judges having broken ranks and saying that the reason that 'The Secret Scriptures' had missed out on the Booker win (to Arvind Adiga's 'The White Tiger') was that it had an incredibly bad ending. Of course I was intrigued to see if that would turn out to be the case.

Well, let me tell you. 'The Secret Scripture' has the most stupid, ridiculous, laughable, demented, throw-the-book-out-of-the-window endings I have ever come across. It is awful. It is insane. You wonder what the hell possessed Sebastian Barry, and what makes it worse is I don't think that this was a help-what-do-I-do-to-finish-this, I-know, it-was-all-a-dream ending, I think this ending was planned right from the very start. And it is also completely unnecessary. You could have had exactly the same book with a vastly different ending, barely changing anything else about it, and it would have been a fantastic book about which I would not have had a word of criticism. How did this get past his agent and his editor? How?

I don't know whether to recommend that you read it but skip the last 50 pages, read it and relish in the horror of the terrible ending, or just don't read it at all. I'm inclined to point you in the direction of 'A Long, Long Way' instead, as well as Maggie O'Farrell's similarly-themed 'The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox'.

Ironically enough, 'A Long, Long Way' has an exceptional ending, indeed one of my favourite endings of an book, that had me sobbing my little heart out.

Sebastian Barry: see me after class.

More book reviews to come.

Strictlywatch 2009: Brucie Bonus

I have come up with a new, brilliant, theory, though I say so myself, and I didn't even need an apple to fall on my head: the BBC don't know when to say "enough". They kept adding episodes of Eastenders until there were so many that keeping up with it was a full-time job - so I quit. And now they've added so many couples to Strictly that it now goes on for about half the year so that even the [Karen] Hardiest of us die of boredom before it's done. BBC! Less Strictly is more! I speak as Strictly's biggest* fan when I say: FEWER COUPLES NEXT YEAR.

Here is the song I think might be going around the BBC's head at all times when it comes to Strictly. Listen to the lyrics, look at the outfit, look at the hair. BELIEVE. And then imagine me doing the Cha Cha Cha to it once I have written a book that makes me famous enough / married and divorced a Rolling Stone:



*I may not actually be Strictly's biggest fan, but I think I might be the one wearing the nicest burgundy top today.

Firestation Bookswap: November Preview

Over on his brilliant blog, Robert Hudson does a lovely job of publicising next month's Firestation Bookswap, in which he is appearing with Richard Asplin. I think it's going to be a particularly good one this month, if you can make it, which is not to diss the particularly good ones we've had so far, but it's too late for you to make those. Also, audience members have started baking and bringing cakes. Rumour has it there is going to be parkin, there will almost certainly be cupcakes and I am hoping for a repeat of last month's flapjacks. (Those links all take you to the bakers thereof.) That's in addition to cakes from varied family members of Scott's, and I might even get some brownies made myself this time. I aint promising anything. But you never know.

Oh yeah, and books. Bring one, swap one, talk about lots. You know the drill.

Tickets here.

The Bloomsbury Group

From time to time I get sent a book by one of my lovely blog readers who also works for Bloomsbury Publishers (hello Bloomsbury! And hello other publishers who read this blog. You could send me stuff too, if you liked.) I don't always like the books that I get sent, in which case I keep schtum about them - I may as well just say in big letters I THINK I WRITE BETTER THAN THIS, which is emphatically not cool - but other times I do like the books, so the decision to write about them is very easy, and sometimes I sort of like and sort of dislike them, which is trickier, but I have decided to try my hand at "the mixed review" and so step forward two books from the Bloomsbury Group list at Bloomsbury, 'Henrietta's War' by Joyce Denys, and 'The Brontes Went to Woolworths' by Rachel Ferguson. Both of the authors are dead by now, which makes being critical about the books rather easier.

The Bloomsbury Group is Bloomsbury's take on Persephone Books, a list which - as someone pithily described it to me - might have been Celia Johnson's bedside reading in Brief Encounter. In other words, lost early-20th century novels, female-oriented, intelligent but none too demanding. (Incidentally, from a Googling point of view, naming your imprint The Bloomsbury Group is not very helpful, as, inevitably, the first six million search results are all about Virginia Woolf, who was both intelligent and very demanding in every way.) There's a whole bunch of them with pretty matching covers in cheerful pastel shades, as per above.

Of the two I read, both had a fair bit of charm. 'Henrietta's War' was the more inconsequential, a collection of wartime columns featuring pleasantly illustrated, uplifting anecdotes from the Home Front, written in the form of letters from a middle-aged woman to her friend who is away at war. Fun, with barely a hint of wartime darkness, and nothing that EM Delafield didn't do far better in her Provincial Lady books. This isn't really Bloomsbury's fault, as EM Delafield isn't in the least bit forgotten, and thus can't be rediscovered and reissued in a cheerful pastel cover, and one must read something when one has exhausted one's supply of Delafield. Don't, I beg you, read this in preference to Delafield, but if you have a soft spot for wartime anecdotes and are something of a completeist, you will enjoy this.

'The Brontes Went to Woolworths' is an altogether stranger beast. Written and set in the 1930s, it's the story of an impossibly over-imaginative family of mother and three daughters, father sadly deceased. They keep themselves cheerful with invented stories about various London figures who they pretend are their friends, but their cocooned fantasy existence is threatened, in order of weirdness, firstly by their new, genuine friendship with one of their imaginary friends Judge Toddington; secondly by the encroaching, jealous misery of the youngest sister's governess; and thirdly by the ghosts of the Brontes, who turn up towards the end of the book for no good reason that I could tell, and have very little to do with Woolworths. It's distinctly odd and structurally the book is all over the place and makes almost no sense. On the other hand it's brilliantly atmospheric about the 1930s, lively and honest and quite revealing about the class system, the role of women, the problem of sex, and all kinds of other topics you might be surprised to find in a book so apparently light and slight. It also invokes the aching nostalgia that always comes when reading books written between the wars, when the author thinks that the worst is over and has no sense of the darkness to come. I recommend this one more strongly, as a bizarre but enjoyable period piece, particularly if you already have an interest in this historical era.

Overall I'm not sure either book was strong enough to get me seeking out more books from the Bloomsbury Group range, but it's a good idea, and the books are well-priced (£5.99) and very appealingly produced, making particularly nice gifts, so hopefully some of the other titles in the range live up to the presentation more convincingly.

For Richer, For Poorer, by Victoria Coren

(Typo alert: I just wrote For Richer, For Pooper, which would be a very different type of book.)

For Richer, For Poorer is Victoria Coren's memoir of playing poker, from childhood games with her brother's friends to winning a million dollars in the European Poker Championships. It is also a more general memoir of growing up, and of losing her father.

(Oh, FFS. It is impossible to be interesting while writing book reviews. How does anybody else manage it? This is why I never review books. Anyway.)

Is it any good? Yes, it's bloody good. It will make you desperately want to play poker for a start. This may not be a good thing, as gambling destroys lives etc etc, but if you are anything like me you will have got to the end when Coren finally explains the rules, having got very confused for the whole of the rest of it (I still don't get the stuff about blinds) and then gone onto a poker site where you can play for free, but not even played one hand because you got too scared, so called your friend who also read (and loved) the book, agreed to schedule a poker night, except we're only going to play for buttons, only we're not sure how many buttons everyone should start with, and neither of us understand the blinds so maybe we won't have them, nor do we understand pot odds but maybe that doesn't matter if neither of us do, but we will wear visors and put cigarettes behind our ears even though we don't smoke, and we will invite our friends to join in even though one of them is a maths teacher and can probably therefore count and is thus at an unfair advantage, although maybe she can explain pot odds, which would be helpful, and then the whole discussion descends into what food it is appropriate to eat during poker (chicken wings, we think, and maybe pizza).

(Hmm. This may be the other reason I never review books.)

Anyway, the reason that you will get obsessed with poker reading this book is that it is all about poker, which may sound obvious. You spend almost the entire book at once poker game or another, whether it's in someone's front room, at a seedy London club, in a TV studio, or in Vegas. You get the impression that Coren never does anything else (and if you follow her on Twitter this is an impression that will certainly be reinforced) but that can't entirely be true as I know how long it takes to write a book (ages) and she's written this one, and another one, and maybe others I haven't noticed. Also newspaper articles and so on. But describing yourself writing books is boring, whereas describing yourself playing poker - the wins, the losses, the nerves, the adrenaline, the excitement, the sleep deprivation, the people called things like Huckleberry Seed and The Sweep - is a lot more fun. It's also a lot of fun to read, especially with Coren as your warm, honest, deadpan guide, and you can, and do, start playing along in your head, and next thing you know you are seriously considering buying a packet of cigarettes just so you can put one behind your ear.

As it happens, while I did think it was great, I didn't enjoy For Richer, For Poorer quite as much as I enjoyed Once More With Feeling, Coren's book (with Charlie Skelton) about making a porn movie, but that was one of the funniest books I had ever read, which is a tough act to follow. For Richer, For Poorer (I have not managed to successfully type Poorer on the first attempt once this entire review) is less funny, but it's more thoughtful and more moving, and you get a far better insight into what kind of person Coren is (bright, self-deprecating, sensible, or at least as sensible as someone with a massive gambling habit can be) BUT you do not get a photograph of a man with a pixelated semi-erection, wearing only an 18th century wig, on a break from shooting a porn film, reaching for carrot batons at a buffet table next to the fully-dressed son of a vicar.

In conclusion: if you love poker, would like to love poker, don't love porn, or have already read Once More With Feeling, you should absolutely read For Richer, for Poorer.

If, on the other hand, you love porn, would like to love porn, don't love porn but do love funny books which really aren't as yucky as a book about making porn sounds, and in any case there's a whole bit in the middle about poker anyway - read Once More, with Feeling.

If you love Victoria Coren, would like to love Victoria Coren, or just have plenty of time on your hands, read both.

If you're my mother, read neither.

Hope this helps.