Saturday, April 23, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Review. Ciara Geraghty
Finding Mr Flood by Ciara Geraghty
Published by Hachette at €17.50
Reviewed by Sue Leonard.
A shorter version published in The Irish Examiner. April 9th 2011.
Ciara Geraghty leapt to prominence with her first novel, Saving Grace. Her writing, combining humour with a tincture of darkness got her compared to Marian Keyes. I adored that book, and though I was less impressed with the follow up, I was keen to see what Ciara would come up with next.
Finding Mr Flood opens with a night time phone call. This is followed by a dash to hospital, because there’s a kidney available for twenty something Angel. She’s a beauty who, in spite of her illness, lives life to the full. But when the kidney proves a mismatch, all that changes.
Convinced a kidney won’t come in time to save her, Angel sinks into a torpor. Retreating to her room, she ditches her adoring man, whilst her sister Dara watches helplessly.
Dara is the star of this book, and she couldn’t be further from the typical chick lit heroine. There are no designer clothes for Dara – she lives in baggy tracksuits. There’s no flash job, or glamorous lifestyle, either. As for self-esteem- Dara wouldn’t even recognise it. And she’s not only more believable because of these flaws; she’s a damn sight more lovable too.
Dara’s life had an unfortunate start. Her father went out for cigarettes just days before she was born, and he never returned. Dara has always blamed herself. Mr Flood is rarely mentioned in the household, but realising her father’s kidney could save the sister she adores, Dara sets out to find Mr Flood. She hires Stanley Flinter, a disorganised, but delightful private detective to help her.
Readers will love taking this journey with Dara. It’ll take them through the seediest areas in Ireland and England, but give them glamour in Paris. It’ll take them through emotional highs and lows, as Dara despairs of being able to help her sister.
There’s a wonderfully eccentric cast of characters in Dara’s inner circle. Characters like Anya and Tintin, who work in the dog pound with her. There’s Mrs Pettigrew- the sherry drinking old dear who lives next door to the Floods. She’s a recluse – and is terrified to leave the house, but she enjoys poking people, and exchanging tequila slammers on Facebook.
Then there are the dogs. Lots of them. Clouseau, Stanley Flinter’s hound, is as adorable as he’s uncontrollable. But Dara proves his match. There’s Edward, belonging to Mrs Pettigrew, and then there’s Lucky; badly named, because he’s surely the dog least likely to be homed that ever appeared in the pound.
Not all the characters are lovable. The detached Mrs Flood has failed Dara; but she’s nowhere near as bad as Ian Harte. Dara’s devious boyfriend is selfish beyond belief. Then there’s Cora, Stanley’s beautiful lost love, who ditched him for his eldest brother. All add colour, tension, and humour.
This 500 plus page doorstopper flows beautifully from start to finish. The writing never flags, and there’s humour bubbling through the pages. More importantly, the characters retain their authenticity.
So often, reading books in this genre, a reader can feel the hand of the author, as she manipulates the characters to serve the plot. With this book, Geraghty never falls into that trap. The characters develop – and as they do so, the plot moves on.
Finding Mr Flood is possibly the best book in this genre I have ever read. And yes, I’m including the books by that queen of the genre Marian Keyes. When I finished reading it, I missed the company of her eclectic characters. Ciara Geraghty has arrived.
Ends
Published by Hachette at €17.50
Reviewed by Sue Leonard.
A shorter version published in The Irish Examiner. April 9th 2011.
Ciara Geraghty leapt to prominence with her first novel, Saving Grace. Her writing, combining humour with a tincture of darkness got her compared to Marian Keyes. I adored that book, and though I was less impressed with the follow up, I was keen to see what Ciara would come up with next.
Finding Mr Flood opens with a night time phone call. This is followed by a dash to hospital, because there’s a kidney available for twenty something Angel. She’s a beauty who, in spite of her illness, lives life to the full. But when the kidney proves a mismatch, all that changes.
Convinced a kidney won’t come in time to save her, Angel sinks into a torpor. Retreating to her room, she ditches her adoring man, whilst her sister Dara watches helplessly.
Dara is the star of this book, and she couldn’t be further from the typical chick lit heroine. There are no designer clothes for Dara – she lives in baggy tracksuits. There’s no flash job, or glamorous lifestyle, either. As for self-esteem- Dara wouldn’t even recognise it. And she’s not only more believable because of these flaws; she’s a damn sight more lovable too.
Dara’s life had an unfortunate start. Her father went out for cigarettes just days before she was born, and he never returned. Dara has always blamed herself. Mr Flood is rarely mentioned in the household, but realising her father’s kidney could save the sister she adores, Dara sets out to find Mr Flood. She hires Stanley Flinter, a disorganised, but delightful private detective to help her.
Readers will love taking this journey with Dara. It’ll take them through the seediest areas in Ireland and England, but give them glamour in Paris. It’ll take them through emotional highs and lows, as Dara despairs of being able to help her sister.
There’s a wonderfully eccentric cast of characters in Dara’s inner circle. Characters like Anya and Tintin, who work in the dog pound with her. There’s Mrs Pettigrew- the sherry drinking old dear who lives next door to the Floods. She’s a recluse – and is terrified to leave the house, but she enjoys poking people, and exchanging tequila slammers on Facebook.
Then there are the dogs. Lots of them. Clouseau, Stanley Flinter’s hound, is as adorable as he’s uncontrollable. But Dara proves his match. There’s Edward, belonging to Mrs Pettigrew, and then there’s Lucky; badly named, because he’s surely the dog least likely to be homed that ever appeared in the pound.
Not all the characters are lovable. The detached Mrs Flood has failed Dara; but she’s nowhere near as bad as Ian Harte. Dara’s devious boyfriend is selfish beyond belief. Then there’s Cora, Stanley’s beautiful lost love, who ditched him for his eldest brother. All add colour, tension, and humour.
This 500 plus page doorstopper flows beautifully from start to finish. The writing never flags, and there’s humour bubbling through the pages. More importantly, the characters retain their authenticity.
So often, reading books in this genre, a reader can feel the hand of the author, as she manipulates the characters to serve the plot. With this book, Geraghty never falls into that trap. The characters develop – and as they do so, the plot moves on.
Finding Mr Flood is possibly the best book in this genre I have ever read. And yes, I’m including the books by that queen of the genre Marian Keyes. When I finished reading it, I missed the company of her eclectic characters. Ciara Geraghty has arrived.
Ends
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Review. Your Voice in my Head. Emma Forrest
Your Voice in my Head
By Emma Forrest
Published by Bloomsbury at €19.80
Reviewed by Sue Leonard.
What’s your favourite way to spend at evening at home with the one you love? Do you watch a movie, perhaps, or listen quietly to music? Emma Forrest, a Los Angeles based writer, journalist and socialite enjoyed her evenings with Simon, in a rather more unusual way.
‘We cut together, several times,’ she recounts in her searingly honest memoir. And we’re talking bodies here. And the slashing of stomachs, thighs and arms. ‘Sometimes he goes too far,’ she writes. ‘Sometimes I do.’
Emma Forrest is, by any account a success. She had a column on the Sunday Times at sixteen. And by 21 was living the high life in New York, interviewing the famous and the great. She wrote two novels. So why, then, does she make a very real attempt to end her life?
Because, it seems, that sheen of success covers a mass of insecurity. Emma has been unhappy since she was fifteen. It’s not only the cutting. She’s bulimic too, and thinks constantly of killing herself. She attracts drama, and is compelled to mix with those who will cause her most pain.
Emma met a psychiatrist, Dr R, when she was at her very worst. And he saved her life. He listened. He made her understand her addiction to love, sex and the dangerous, and he told her, constantly, that she would be ok. He told her so convincingly, that she could only believe.
Your Voice in my Head charts Emma’s encounters with the great Dr R. And when he dies, without first warning her that he’s far from well, she feels betrayed. Needing to know why, she meets his widow; she encounters other patients; patients who suffered all manner of conditions, who admired the doctor just as much as she. All say that he saved their life.
The memoir is intended to be a tribute to Dr R. But it’s much more than that. It charts Emma’s high profile, but ultimately doomed relationship with our own Colin Farrell. (Referred to as GH – short for Gypsy Husband.) It includes an encounter with Monica Lewinski, who asks Emma for some diet-tips.
It’s a tough read at times. Even when Emma is ‘better,’ she thinks of suicide every day. ‘But as something softer, more like a scent.’ Perhaps more worrying, is her ‘romantic dream.’
‘Some people look into the future and imagine themselves at their daughter’s wedding. I always had this romantic dream, that when my daughter had a breakdown, I’d go uptown to see Dr R.’
Like many agony memoirs, this one is utterly self-indulgent. I suppose that’s inevitable, given that, in such extreme depression, sufferers have little room in their brain for empathy with others.
In portraying madness as somehow normal, I can’t decide whether this book is dangerous to other sufferers, or helpful in lifting the stigma. Whichever, it’s a surprisingly enjoyable read. Emma writes like a dream. Humour bubbles through the pain, and her portraits of her family are a delight.
Even in this, though, Emma has an unusual take. She describes her first abortion as one of the most touching experiences of her life. Because it brought everyone together from her family to her friends. And no, she doesn’t express even a tincture of remorse, or regret.
By the close, Emma’s in pretty good shape. She’s fallen out of love with madness, and has come to terms with the death of Dr R.
Sue Leonard is the author of Keys to the Cage. How people cope with depression. New Island. 2010.
Ends.
By Emma Forrest
Published by Bloomsbury at €19.80
Reviewed by Sue Leonard.
What’s your favourite way to spend at evening at home with the one you love? Do you watch a movie, perhaps, or listen quietly to music? Emma Forrest, a Los Angeles based writer, journalist and socialite enjoyed her evenings with Simon, in a rather more unusual way.
‘We cut together, several times,’ she recounts in her searingly honest memoir. And we’re talking bodies here. And the slashing of stomachs, thighs and arms. ‘Sometimes he goes too far,’ she writes. ‘Sometimes I do.’
Emma Forrest is, by any account a success. She had a column on the Sunday Times at sixteen. And by 21 was living the high life in New York, interviewing the famous and the great. She wrote two novels. So why, then, does she make a very real attempt to end her life?
Because, it seems, that sheen of success covers a mass of insecurity. Emma has been unhappy since she was fifteen. It’s not only the cutting. She’s bulimic too, and thinks constantly of killing herself. She attracts drama, and is compelled to mix with those who will cause her most pain.
Emma met a psychiatrist, Dr R, when she was at her very worst. And he saved her life. He listened. He made her understand her addiction to love, sex and the dangerous, and he told her, constantly, that she would be ok. He told her so convincingly, that she could only believe.
Your Voice in my Head charts Emma’s encounters with the great Dr R. And when he dies, without first warning her that he’s far from well, she feels betrayed. Needing to know why, she meets his widow; she encounters other patients; patients who suffered all manner of conditions, who admired the doctor just as much as she. All say that he saved their life.
The memoir is intended to be a tribute to Dr R. But it’s much more than that. It charts Emma’s high profile, but ultimately doomed relationship with our own Colin Farrell. (Referred to as GH – short for Gypsy Husband.) It includes an encounter with Monica Lewinski, who asks Emma for some diet-tips.
It’s a tough read at times. Even when Emma is ‘better,’ she thinks of suicide every day. ‘But as something softer, more like a scent.’ Perhaps more worrying, is her ‘romantic dream.’
‘Some people look into the future and imagine themselves at their daughter’s wedding. I always had this romantic dream, that when my daughter had a breakdown, I’d go uptown to see Dr R.’
Like many agony memoirs, this one is utterly self-indulgent. I suppose that’s inevitable, given that, in such extreme depression, sufferers have little room in their brain for empathy with others.
In portraying madness as somehow normal, I can’t decide whether this book is dangerous to other sufferers, or helpful in lifting the stigma. Whichever, it’s a surprisingly enjoyable read. Emma writes like a dream. Humour bubbles through the pain, and her portraits of her family are a delight.
Even in this, though, Emma has an unusual take. She describes her first abortion as one of the most touching experiences of her life. Because it brought everyone together from her family to her friends. And no, she doesn’t express even a tincture of remorse, or regret.
By the close, Emma’s in pretty good shape. She’s fallen out of love with madness, and has come to terms with the death of Dr R.
Sue Leonard is the author of Keys to the Cage. How people cope with depression. New Island. 2010.
Ends.
Howard Jacobson. December 2010
Howard Jacobson
Interviewed by Sue Leonard
Howard Jacobson is in ebullient mood. He’s extolling the merits of Dublin’s Brooke’s Hotel, saying it’s a far cry from the dump he was put up in on his last visit to Dublin, in 2005.
“I vowed, then, I’d never come back to Ireland,” he says, laughing.
Jacobson isn’t averse to changing his mind. He’s denounced the Man Booker Prize over the years, both for the ‘light’ quality of some of the winning books, and for the lack of literary prowess of some of the judging panels. But he admits with élan that his win this year, at 68, after decades of waiting, has, quite simply, changed his life. And he couldn’t be more pleased.
“It changes everything,” he says. “It changes your name and it changes your previous books. It’s like a vindication really. I was getting very sick of being described as an underrated writer. I was perfectly well known but there was this question mark.
“The Finkler Question,’ will probably end up selling more copies worldwide than all my other books put together. It’s sold to 23 countries so far. It’s sold to China. And to Israel, who, until now, have considered my books too Jewish.”
Jacobson is often compared to Philip Roth – and his literary comic-tragedies do have echoes of the American master, but once, in a fit of pique, Jacobson said he thought of himself more as a Jewish Jane Austen.
“I was bored with the comparison,” he says now. “I consider Roth the greatest living writer, but I’ve studied and taught English Literature all over the world. I’m a Dickens man; a George Eliot and Johnson man.
“A clever American once said, ‘what you are actually is Philip Roth and Jane Austen’s love child.” He smiles fondly. “I quite like that.”
Although fascinated with the Jewish faith in all its connotations, Jacobson wasn’t brought up as an orthodox Jew.
“Far from it. I didn’t know what faith was, and for a long time, I wasn’t interested in it. At Cambridge I would entertain gentile friends with Yiddish isms, but I got on with the business of being English and teaching literature.”
He didn’t mean his first novel to explore the Jewish faith, either. But writing a comic novel, he realised making his hero Jewish could emphasise his feeling of being on the outside of things. It helped the joke.
He’s written about it extensively ever since. Yet he feels as much of an outsider in the faith now, as he did when he was at Cambridge.
In ‘The Finkler Question,’ Julian Treslove, an ex BBC man, who has a chequered history with women, examines his friendship with his old school friend, the Jewish philosopher Sam Finkler, and their one time teacher, Libor. Watching his two friends cope with the death of their wives, Treslove turns from having a suspicion of Jewishness, to an envy of his friends religion. He starts to enmesh himself in the traditions, acquiring a Jewish girlfriend along the way.
“I can’t remember how that idea came about, but it is, I think, what makes the book work. It has made the Jewish stuff much more accessible to non-Jewish readers. It’s an easy road in.”
It’s an astonishing book; mesmerising, inestimably sad, yet laugh out loud funny. How did Jacobson get the idea for the book?
“I’m worried about getting old,” he says. “A lot of my friends have died. I’m worried about how I would cope with a really close loss, and with my own, when the death sentence comes. It could be tomorrow and I’m extremely scared. I have a fear of lying in the earth and a fear of burning. And I’ve no faith to help me out.
“I wanted to explore that, but I didn’t know how. Then two things happened. I was walking home from having dinner with friends when I saw a shadow in a doorway. It was a woman and I thought she was going to attack me. I wondered how I would protect myself – would I have the strength to? I decided to play with that.
“At the same time I was introduced to a man of 90 who had just lost his wife. He spoke with immense feeling about a woman he had loved for sixty years and made it sound such a desolating experience that you find yourself asking the questions that Julian Treslove asked Libor. Is it better never to have loved so much and have such a loss, or is it wonderful to have had that great love?
“He told me he’d had a piano teacher in so he could learn his wife’s favourite pieces. He then filled the house with her music. I stole that story, with permission, from him.”
Jacobson raises serious issues. He wrote the book when there was a backlash about the atrocities in Gaza. Jews in London were worried that this political issue would lead to Jew hating.
“There was an atmosphere of paranoia at the time. Jews were worried.”
The real strength of the book for me, though, was the enlightening way he describes the friendship between the men.
“I like to say the unsay able about men.” he says with a chuckle. “And their unreliability towards one another, their envy of one another, and the dirty tricks they play on each other. What’s your definition of a friend?” he quips. “It’s someone who sleeps with your wife. And what is a good friend? Someone who sleeps with her twice and buys her flowers.”
Jacobson is now married for the third and final time. He met Penny when she produced a programme for him at the BBC. His wives, he says, were all loyal and loving.
“They were better wives to me than I was husbands to them. But I did buy Penny a Mulberry handbag when The Finkler Question got onto the shortlist,” he muses.
The Booker was never an ambition.
“My aim was to write good novels that people read. I always wrote good novels. I now have readers and people like the books so that is fine.”
So he’s happy?
He nods. “But don’t say it! I’m like Treslove. I think if I go out walking I’ll bump into those pillars. I’ll slip on the ice, tumble into the traffic, and that will be the end of me. I have that fear, and I have it more when something good happens to me. Because God is spiteful, and will pay you back with one hand what he has given you with another. So, yes I feel life is very good, but I mustn’t say so.”
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson is published by Bloomsbury at €17.67.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard
Howard Jacobson is in ebullient mood. He’s extolling the merits of Dublin’s Brooke’s Hotel, saying it’s a far cry from the dump he was put up in on his last visit to Dublin, in 2005.
“I vowed, then, I’d never come back to Ireland,” he says, laughing.
Jacobson isn’t averse to changing his mind. He’s denounced the Man Booker Prize over the years, both for the ‘light’ quality of some of the winning books, and for the lack of literary prowess of some of the judging panels. But he admits with élan that his win this year, at 68, after decades of waiting, has, quite simply, changed his life. And he couldn’t be more pleased.
“It changes everything,” he says. “It changes your name and it changes your previous books. It’s like a vindication really. I was getting very sick of being described as an underrated writer. I was perfectly well known but there was this question mark.
“The Finkler Question,’ will probably end up selling more copies worldwide than all my other books put together. It’s sold to 23 countries so far. It’s sold to China. And to Israel, who, until now, have considered my books too Jewish.”
Jacobson is often compared to Philip Roth – and his literary comic-tragedies do have echoes of the American master, but once, in a fit of pique, Jacobson said he thought of himself more as a Jewish Jane Austen.
“I was bored with the comparison,” he says now. “I consider Roth the greatest living writer, but I’ve studied and taught English Literature all over the world. I’m a Dickens man; a George Eliot and Johnson man.
“A clever American once said, ‘what you are actually is Philip Roth and Jane Austen’s love child.” He smiles fondly. “I quite like that.”
Although fascinated with the Jewish faith in all its connotations, Jacobson wasn’t brought up as an orthodox Jew.
“Far from it. I didn’t know what faith was, and for a long time, I wasn’t interested in it. At Cambridge I would entertain gentile friends with Yiddish isms, but I got on with the business of being English and teaching literature.”
He didn’t mean his first novel to explore the Jewish faith, either. But writing a comic novel, he realised making his hero Jewish could emphasise his feeling of being on the outside of things. It helped the joke.
He’s written about it extensively ever since. Yet he feels as much of an outsider in the faith now, as he did when he was at Cambridge.
In ‘The Finkler Question,’ Julian Treslove, an ex BBC man, who has a chequered history with women, examines his friendship with his old school friend, the Jewish philosopher Sam Finkler, and their one time teacher, Libor. Watching his two friends cope with the death of their wives, Treslove turns from having a suspicion of Jewishness, to an envy of his friends religion. He starts to enmesh himself in the traditions, acquiring a Jewish girlfriend along the way.
“I can’t remember how that idea came about, but it is, I think, what makes the book work. It has made the Jewish stuff much more accessible to non-Jewish readers. It’s an easy road in.”
It’s an astonishing book; mesmerising, inestimably sad, yet laugh out loud funny. How did Jacobson get the idea for the book?
“I’m worried about getting old,” he says. “A lot of my friends have died. I’m worried about how I would cope with a really close loss, and with my own, when the death sentence comes. It could be tomorrow and I’m extremely scared. I have a fear of lying in the earth and a fear of burning. And I’ve no faith to help me out.
“I wanted to explore that, but I didn’t know how. Then two things happened. I was walking home from having dinner with friends when I saw a shadow in a doorway. It was a woman and I thought she was going to attack me. I wondered how I would protect myself – would I have the strength to? I decided to play with that.
“At the same time I was introduced to a man of 90 who had just lost his wife. He spoke with immense feeling about a woman he had loved for sixty years and made it sound such a desolating experience that you find yourself asking the questions that Julian Treslove asked Libor. Is it better never to have loved so much and have such a loss, or is it wonderful to have had that great love?
“He told me he’d had a piano teacher in so he could learn his wife’s favourite pieces. He then filled the house with her music. I stole that story, with permission, from him.”
Jacobson raises serious issues. He wrote the book when there was a backlash about the atrocities in Gaza. Jews in London were worried that this political issue would lead to Jew hating.
“There was an atmosphere of paranoia at the time. Jews were worried.”
The real strength of the book for me, though, was the enlightening way he describes the friendship between the men.
“I like to say the unsay able about men.” he says with a chuckle. “And their unreliability towards one another, their envy of one another, and the dirty tricks they play on each other. What’s your definition of a friend?” he quips. “It’s someone who sleeps with your wife. And what is a good friend? Someone who sleeps with her twice and buys her flowers.”
Jacobson is now married for the third and final time. He met Penny when she produced a programme for him at the BBC. His wives, he says, were all loyal and loving.
“They were better wives to me than I was husbands to them. But I did buy Penny a Mulberry handbag when The Finkler Question got onto the shortlist,” he muses.
The Booker was never an ambition.
“My aim was to write good novels that people read. I always wrote good novels. I now have readers and people like the books so that is fine.”
So he’s happy?
He nods. “But don’t say it! I’m like Treslove. I think if I go out walking I’ll bump into those pillars. I’ll slip on the ice, tumble into the traffic, and that will be the end of me. I have that fear, and I have it more when something good happens to me. Because God is spiteful, and will pay you back with one hand what he has given you with another. So, yes I feel life is very good, but I mustn’t say so.”
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson is published by Bloomsbury at €17.67.
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