Outline is a novel about writing and writers that seems rather thin on plot and strong on philosophical reflection. It reads more like an extended metaphor than a novel. The main character, Faye, is a writer who has flown from London to Athens to spend a week teaching a writing course. Starting before she even boards the plane and continuing through her last day in Athens, Faye encounters individuals who tell their stories without much provocation. This gives Faye and author Cusk an opportunity to […]
It’s Not How You Start, It’s How You Finish
This final book in the Old Filth Trilogy gives us the story of Terry Veneering, lover of Betty Feathers, romantic and professional rival of Eddie/Filth. It also fleshes out a few of the secondary characters from the previous two novels, notably Dulcie Willy and Fred Fiscal-Smith. Gardam continues the recurring themes of being orphaned, alienated and lacking love within the context of pre- and post-war England (1930s into the 1950s). Each novel is told from the perspective of old age and end of life, which […]
The Problem with Keeping a Stiff Upper Lip
Book 2 of Jane Gardam’s Old Filth Trilogy focuses on Elisabeth “Betty” Macintosh, wife of Eddie Feathers (aka Filth). We know very little of Betty from Book 1, which was Eddie’s story. It’s strange because the reader might have expected a man married to one woman for 50 years to have had more to say about her. Yet, when we get Betty’s story, there is not much about Eddie either. What we see is that Eddie and Betty married each other as little more than […]
An Empire Orphan’s Story
For some reason, not at all planned, the first three books I’ve read this year have focused on childhood and the traumas that inform adulthood. Old Filth, the first book of Jane Gardam’s Old Filth Trilogy, is dedicated to “Raj Orphans and their parents”; also called “Empire orphans,” these children were born in the far flung reaches of the British Empire and then shipped back to England by the time they were 4 or 5 years old to be raised by foster parents while their […]
Kids — Keep Your Dirty Hands Off ’em
This is another graphic novel for tweens and older, but unlike Marzi, a memoir, War Brothers is a fictionalized account of real events that have occurred in contemporary Uganda. War Brothers is about the fates of four friends as they fall under the domination of Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army. The LRA fills its ranks with kidnapped children who are tortured and traumatized until they either die or become child soldiers for Kony, who thinks of himself as some sort of anointed representative […]
A 10-Year-Old’s View of Life Behind the Iron Curtain
This 2011 graphic novel, which is kid-friendly, is Marzena Sowa’s memoir of childhood in Poland in the 1980’s, the time of Lech Walesa, Solidarity, Pope John Paul II, Chernobyl, and the ordinary every day life of a 10 year old. It’s beautifully told with humor, sadness, and ultimately optimism. I think tweens would identify with Marzi’s hopes, joys and frustrations, while also getting an education about life behind the Iron Curtain just before it started to fall. In many ways, Marzi is a fairly typical […]
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