The Anglo Files: a field guide to the British

I went through a stage during which I romanticized pretty much everything about England and the English--except the food, of course. Being French, I never had any illusions about the English food, but, oh, the jolly camaraderie of the boarding schools, the witty repartee, the distant colonies and their literature, the whole stiff upper lip during the London Blitz, and the accent of course. Some of my favorite authors are British and I could not get enough, even traveling there several times as a kid.
Then something happened. I don't know what exactly, or when, but I began to notice that they were just like us. They ate crappy food in front of the telly (soccer instead of football), and the accents didn't really mean they were smarter...Anyway, the scales fell and I got on with my life.

Sarah Lyall's book The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British completely destroyed ANY lingering illusion I had about the joy and pleasure of living among the British and I loved this book. Lyall is an American, a journalist, married to a British writer, and she takes it upon herself to add to the somewhat crowded field of study loosely titled "What is up with our wacky cousins across the pond?"
She takes on the self-deprecation, the dry humor, the bizarre institution that was the House of Lords, the government in general, the British obsession with bad food and bad dental hygiene (yes, apparently some of this is by choice), the love of small animals (badgers and hedgehogs, though that's more of a love/hate thing), the cruelty of the school system that is rapidly being replaced by an overly touchy/feely system of recompense; sex, manliness (or lack thereof, depending on your definition).
On that last note, (and I start with this mainly because last night I watched the latest James Bond), Lyall writes: It seems to me that Daniel Craig in his role as Agent 007 [perfectly combines English mystery with American sensitivity]. He looks good in a dinner jacket, affects humorous insouciance in the face of peril, and knows the proper technique for injecting oneself in the heart when going into cardiac arrest. But he also understands that when a woman is slumped, weeping, in the shower, her evening gown covered in blood, what she really wants is a man with well-defined pectoral muscles to get in there beside her and slowly kiss her fingers, one by one."
Lyall's point is this: That's not going to happen in Britain. Ever. Not even once. (Of course, I'm assuming it doesn't happen in most countries--the blood, the evening gown shower...but I see what she means).

One of the best chapters (besides the one on sex--always entertaining) is Lyall's presentation of the government, but the House of Lords specifically. Until a very few years ago, these seats (some 700) were held by landed gentry, and handed down through the generations. That's right. they weren't elected, they didn't have to care about politics or other people, or even show up. They did get free parking in London, though, Always a perk in an expensive, crowded city. Basically The House of Lords consisted of mostly old men ("Lord X is 92 years old, but acts like a man twice his age" as one reporter put it) debating strange and sometimes less strange things while (mostly) drunk. They quote in Latin and French, they evoke a lost and sometimes mythical past to make points that are meaningless. Probably their best debate (other than the one on the existence--yes or no--of extraterrestrials) was when they had to debate whether or not they should have to give up their seats. (They did)
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, though I skimmed a chapter or two. This makes my top 10 of 2008. I close with a sample of the humor the British use to counter anything they are supposed to care about (according to Lyall's research and observation). Apparently there is one paper which loves printing corrections. They are rather slapdash in their writing and editing so there is a lot of opportunity (including apologizing for misspelling the word "misspelled" in one correction column. Here is one example:

"A Caption in Guardian Weekend...read "Binch of crappy travel mags." This should, of course, have been "bunch." But more to the point it should not have been there at all. It was meant as a dummy which we failed to replace with the real caption. It was not meant to be a comment on perfectly good travel brochures."

So Brave, Young, and Handsome

I loved Leif Enger's first novel, Peace Like a River, though I don't remember much about it now, so I was excited that he had a new one out (finally). I really wanted to like So Brave, Young and Handsome, and fell in love with the first 9 words: "Not to disappoint you, but my troubles are nothing--". but the rest of the paragraph (and chapter, really) is pretty generic. It's not until chapter 7 when Enger goes on about a giant snapping turtle (trust me), cycling back to the turtle even, that I loved the writing. I felt he finally hit his stride (or maybe I just got into it).

I really didn't like Monte Becket, the narrator, for most of the story, which I always have a hard time with. He finally gets some backbone (which is the point, of course) and then I sort of like him. But the other characters are interesting and unusual. I especially like the enthusiastically doomed young Hood Roberts, bursting with the thrill of the outlaw life in the waning days of cowboys (1915). "Suppose we hear gunshots? What'll we do then?" He asks when the "evil" ex-Pinkerton detective is hot on their outlaw friend's tail. "Suppose Glendon overcomes him [the detective] by guile and brings him back hogtied and blindfolded..."

Serious Monte replies, "Untie him and let him go. What do you mean blindfolded? Why would he blindfold him?"

Monte only writes romances, doesn't really know how to live them and he's adrift in this new life he's chosen, away from his wife, helping a former outlaw escape the law. Unlike Hood Roberts, who takes to the life like a shot, Monte is not much of a cowboy, though he has written a book. He admits to an aversion to horses, calling them "sinister" and correctly understands that "the only thing a horse wants from you is your absence."

And so these men, in groups of two or three or even one, chase their way across the dying West, following along on Glendon's mission to apologize to his long-ago wife for his life of misdeeds. Along for the ride is a version of The Law and it's ugly and pathetic, but the men understand its necessity. There's something both sad and heroic about this journey, a lot like what I picture cowboy life to be like now, in this modern age of machines and cars and internet and TV. You still want to believe in the solitary "Marlboro Man", but we all know what happened to him. I suppose 1915 already seemed to signal the end to that kind of life.


The writing is nice and I suppose it's my sloppy reading that leaves me perplexed as to the meaning behind the title. I mean, yeah, I get it---America, cowboys, youth, blah blah blah...I don't put much stock in titles anyways and often find myself disappointed when I find the title of a book repeated within the story. Seems cheap or lazy.



Nice line: He did not seem to struggle against death, nor did he appear surprised. Death arrived easy as the train; [He] just climbed aboard, like the capable traveler he was.

Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat

Yes, this is a kids' book. Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat by Lynne Jonell came across my desk in a work-related incident and I was intrigued. It's on the Great Stone Face list which, for all you non-New Hampshire natives, is a list of books from which 4th-6th graders vote to choose the "best" book.
Emmy doesn't quite transcend kid lit to become a book for the ages, but it is appealingly packaged, including a wonderful "flip book" format in which we see a rat falling into the hands of a child. The names are Dickensian, which I'm not sure most 4th graders would get (or 6th graders, for that matter). The evil nanny (and aren't those always wonderful characters?) is named Miss Barmy and the rodent expert is Professor Capybara. Emmy is the good girl who longs to live her own life and then befriends a talking rat who has his own woes along with a secret power.
Mayhem ensues, the bad are punished, the good rewarded, people grow and shrink as needed for plot purposes, and a good time is had by all. Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat is a fun little romp with an old-fashioned appeal and sometimes I like to dash through a middle school book because it's easy and fun. It's nice to have the excuse of work to read this sort of thing.

When Will There Be Good News?

There was another great character in Olive Kitteredge that I forgot to write about. She seemed at first like someone to ridicule or even dislike because she was really into crafts and not so warm and fuzzy towards her husband. I guess she just seemed like a "type." But Strout gave her a great voice so that I ended up really enjoying her and so here I am still thinking about her, a book later. She was cranky about the name of the Grateful Dead, thought it just seemed disrespectful, and when told that the lead singer was dead, this relentlessly cheerful, afghan-knitter, announces, "Well, I hope he's grateful!"

In Kate Atkinson's latest, When Will There Be Good News? there are a ton of lines like this, funny, throw away lines or images that just stop me. One character is pretending to be a tourist while he's kind of up to no good so he ends up having to admire the local natural wonder as cover for his story. He decides 10 minutes is the minimum for authenticity and Atkinson writes: "He wished he still smoked. He wouldn't mind a drink.If you didn't smoke and you didn't drink, then standing by a waterfall for ten minutes with nothing to do was something that could really get to you..."

I really loved Atkinson's last book, One Good Turn, and I really disliked her other thriller with the same characters (Case Histories). Her other books are somewhere on the spectrum though they are ALL weird. This one was good. I like the characters, I like her writing, and everyone more or less ends up where they're supposed to be (some dead, some avenged, some rewarded, etc.). There are some dissatisfying moments towards the end and the train accident is a bit over the top, but you just have to let that go. I did get fairly annoyed reading about Chief Inspector Louise's qualms about her new marriage. Who cares? I hate reading about women who get themselves into a situation (in this case a good one) and just churn around in their own mess until they muck everything up.

Friend Denise and I don't agree much on mysteries--though she has the advantage over me of having read them for years. I am too picky, I suppose, but I feel that Atkinson's books are an easy way into this genre if you're a novice or nervous about trying a "mystery' (for whatever reason). Maybe I just like skirting the edges of the genre.

I did notice that just about every character had at least one family member (sometimes several)that had died in weird ways (or died, anyway). There were several car crashes, murders (obviously), and long hair getting caught in pool drains (ooookaaay...). I know the story centers around police and sordid lives, but really, how many people die so dramatically in one place? Maybe this is always happening in mysteries and thrillers. Doesn't make me want to move to Edinburgh, anyway.

I'm working on Leif Enger's So Brave, Young, and Handsome. I'll see how far I get with a man's voice.

Olive Kitteridge

In my last blog, I pretty much admitted that I am a snob, but after reading Elizabeth Strout's latest book, Olive Kitteridge, I realize there is hope for me to become a more tolerant, if not better person. The bad news is, I might have to wait until I'm 74.
It takes Olive about that long to let down her guard and become the sort of person who can get along with others. Apparently her inability to do so hasn't really crimped her style in her years in the small town of Crosby, Maine. Olive is the center of this collection of linked short stories. She is like the relative that everyone fears or tries to avoid at Thanksgiving, but grudgingly admires for speaking her mind and she is a piece of work in this book.
Olive's husband, Henry is the one everyone loves, and he loves Olive in spite of the fact that she is the sort of woman who would steal clothes from her new daughter-in-law just BECAUSE SHE CAN (oh yes, and because her son has chosen the wrong sort of woman for Olive...oh, I mean for himself). The sabotaging of the first daughter-in-law is horrifying(the theft is not the worst of it) and hard to read because I wanted to like Olive, to see what Henry sees, but we have to wait a long time for that.
The other characters in here are interesting (I only skimmed through one story) though the connection to Olive can often seem contrived. If not everyone is old, they mostly seem old so I would say Strout didn't vary her voices enough. There's a lot there, though.
What if you came back to your hometown to kill yourself and had to save someone instead? What if your mother was a former beauty queen who insisted on still living as she did when she was a hardscrabble trailer kid(complete with "weird' plumbing and a shotgun)? What if you found yourself happily in retirement and in love and you found out your husband had had an affair (and not too long ago)? Or what if he suddenly suffers a massive stroke, just on an ordinary day and you had to realize no one really likes you without him?
But Olive comes out all right in the end, even if she does end up friends with a...gasp!...Republican.

Nice image: "They had fun these days...It was as if marriage had been a long, complicated meal, and now there was this lovely dessert."

The Lucky Ones (Part 2)

So, I opened my Entertainment Weekly (which did used to have a pretty good BOOKS section) and discovered that Nicholas Sparks has a book called The Lucky One. So, now not only there's a movie not named after Rachel Cusk's novel, but there's also a Sparks novel with a similar title. I realize this happens all the time and that's not really what this post is about.
THIS post should really be titled ??????!!!??!!??! because APPARENTLY Nicolas Sparks--he of the schmaltzy novels (okay, full disclosure, I haven't read any, just seen the previews)--CLAIMS to read 125 books per year. ONE TWENTY FIVE!

Am I jealous, just snarky (what kind of "books" is he talking about?) or highly skeptical? A fourth possibility is that I needed a topic for a post because I'm strangely slow reading this month.

while you wait...

My friend Liz was a bit scared off by the blog format, but she is a reader you can trust so I've reprinted her suggestions to me (via email) for good reads. We aren't always attracted to the same books, but I've never been steered wrong when I DID pick up one of her suggestions.

From Liz: Great books I've read recently are Mudbound by Hillary Jordan, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, and I'm now reading a delightful, unique novel newly published on this side of the Atlantic but which has been a best seller in Europe (came out there in 2006), The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (translated from the French)....a paperback original, at least over here.

Liz has been talking about the potato peel book for awhile and it's definitely on my list, but right now I'm in the middle of Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (finally! And more on that later, when I'm done). After that I definitely need to get out of the domestic fiction genre that I've been rolling through.