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31 Jan
8:38pm, 31 Jan 2025
55,009 posts
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McGoohan
Bob Fleming writes:
If your soil is a bit lacking in phosphorus or calcium you might want to dig in some bonemeal. Bonemeal also contains iron, magnesium and zinc all of which are good for the soil and let your plants grow with good support... herm... ahurgh... Sorry about that. If no bonemeal is readily available, you might want to drive your plow over the bones of the dead. It's all fertiliser at the end of the day. Ahuuurgh...
Excuse me. Just got a bit... aahurgh... huh... hurgh... just got a bit of a tickle in my ... ahurgh.. hugrgh... tickle in my throat there...
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4 Feb
6:17pm, 4 Feb 2025
22,633 posts
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Chrisull
FYI: As mentioned before, I saw this in the theatre first (so good, I've not been to the theatre since), and large parts of the play seem to just take portions of the text verbatim, which works, and which first drew me to the rhythmical aspect of the prose.
What I liked and still like, is its simple approachability. There are plenty of nominees for the Nobel Prize for Literature that require huge amounts of patience and perserverance (László Krasznahorkai I'm looking at you) to untangle. The narrator Janina dispenses homilies on astrology, the inappropriateness of birthnames and how badly our bodies are put together with the breeziness of a pub drunk.
For instance, one of my favourite asides - on "the Writer" (and writers in general natch) "In a way people like her, those who wield a pen, can be dangerous. At once a suspicion of fakery comes to mind - that such a person is not him or herself, but an eye that's constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality - its inexpressibility"
Anyway back to reading it...
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4 Feb
6:26pm, 4 Feb 2025
77,340 posts
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GlennR
Noticed this by chance. As it happens I read the book a while back.
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17 Feb
12:11pm, 17 Feb 2025
22,657 posts
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Chrisull
Have finished this now, the chapter titled the photograph for me still packs the emotional force it had in the theatre.
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17 Feb
12:11pm, 17 Feb 2025
22,658 posts
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Chrisull
Will write about in due course....
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23 Feb
10:00pm, 23 Feb 2025
22,664 posts
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Chrisull
This turned out to be my favourite book I have thus far chosen. It's fable like aspect for me resembles a lot of East European literature, in particular Hasek's Good Soldier Svejk and Janina Duszejko is every bit as much a fully drawn character as Svejk, whether rambling on about astrology, William Blake poetry translations or why people's names are so often inappropriate for who they are. So little of this book is throwaway or unthought out, whether the William Blake epigraphs that frame each chapter to the casual mentions of ghosts in the boiler room, or the contents of the bag she carries around, everything has its part.
Of course she is also a wildly deceptive and unreliable narrator, whose duplicity you come to suspect sooner or later. She moves invisibly through the landscape, in no little part to her age and gender, although not entirely unremarked on, Oddball picks up on the sinister contents of her car. And the woven motif, her little girls, souce of her aching loss, appearing first as occasional flickers of light, and re-appearing more brightly with each mention. Described as an existential thriller, you begin to wonder if indeed the animals might actually be taking revenge for the injustices suffered.
The asides on the monk Barthélemy de Chasseneuz, who did actually really represent a group of rats in the 1500s accused of destroying a village's crops, and St Huberts paradoxical status as a patron saint of hunting who renounced hunting to live at one in nature are more than interesting historical tidbits, they are the beating heart of this novel, a crie de coeur for the unheard, the marginalised, the voiceless, I've not seen (my) vegetarianism so eloquently and poetically defended. And description of the photograph, that Kathryn Hunter recited on stage like a rising storm, or symphonic crescendo, is as beautfiul and soul destroying reveal as any I can remember.
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23 Feb
11:04pm, 23 Feb 2025
77,476 posts
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GlennR
Yes, it’s a great book. Glad you enjoyed it.
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Book Group
Mar 2025