Barbara Gowdy is a Canadian author who is treasured in her native country, but I hadn’t heard of her until I came across some Canadian bloggers. Writer’s Pet was the person who finally persuaded me to read one of her books and I’m really pleased I did – she is so original!

The White Bone is narrated by elephants. The book follows a herd of elephants as they wander across the East African plains. We see their every day lives and then the tragedy of an attack by poachers.

The book is very well researched and I loved learning all the little facts about elephants. I occasionally found that the footnotes ruined the flow of the story for me, but the added knowledge they gave me almost made up for this.

My main problem with the book was the names of the elephants. Each herd was named using a different letter of the alphabet, with the group being referred to as the She-S’s or the She-D’s. It is silly really, but for some reason the names really irritated me.

She-Screams begins to weep out loud, and then all the She-S’s, even She-Snorts, even Swamp, are weeping out loud, urinating and defecating, streaming temporin. The She-D’s step aside from the commotion and are silent until She-Scares recovers herself enough to ask, “How is it that you were spared?”
“We ran,” She-Demands says simply.
“We ran and ran,” She-Distracts sing-songs.

It makes sense for herds to be named in this way, so perhaps I am just too used to reading about humans!

By the end of the book I felt as though I knew what it was like to be an elephant – Barbara Gowdy had managed to explain their way of life in beautiful detail.

The books brings home the shocking way in which elephants are killed for their tusks and the gentle nature of these giant animals.

Recommended to anyone looking for something a bit different in their fiction, especially if you have an interest in elephants.

Have you read anything written by Barbara Gowdy?

Which of her books do you recommend I try next?

If you have any interest in child birth then this is the book for you. Ever since the birth of my son four years ago I have been fascinated by the different approaches to child birth around the world, but this book gave me a new perspective – the way things have changed through time.

The Birth of Love combines a present day birthing experience with flashbacks to Vienna in 1865, a time when thousands of mothers died simply because doctors didn’t think to wash their hands between performing an autopsy and helping with a birth. We discover how Professor Semmelweis, the first man to suggest that doctors should wash their hands regularly, was imprisoned in a lunatic asylum. He was driven mad by his realisation that he had killed so many women by spreading disease between them. 

The book also gives a scary prediction for the future, suggesting that in 2153 no one will give birth – all babies will be grown in special genetically screened baby farms.

There isn’t much plot in this book, but I found the text gripping. The emotions of childbirth were captured perfectly:

She closes her eyes again, trying to sink into the stillness. The suspense is the worst part, being in the middle of something and knowing that it will end, somehow, but not knowing what the ending will be. The hours will flow along, but Brigid longs to escape them, to accelerate to the conclusion.

The period atmosphere was excellent – I was instantly able to tell which time period the section was referring too without having to be told.  The way everything was tied up at the end was equally impressive.

It is amazing to think how much things have changed in the last 150 years, but I struggle to believe Joanna Kavenna’s vision for the future. Can you foresee a time when women don’t give birth? This book would be a fantastic choice for a book group, particularly one containing lots of new mothers – I’d love to discuss her ideas with other people.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the themes of motherhood.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of those classics that I always felt I should have read, but for some reason I hadn’t got round to it. It wasn’t until I started reading the book that I appreciated how much it has crept into our society – the pages were packed with quotes that I recognised.

Dorian Gray is a vain young man enjoying the pleasures of high society. One day an artist paints his portrait and Dorian realises that his good looks will not last forever. Desperate to retain his youth Dorian exchanges his soul for an assurance that the portrait will age rather than himself. Unfortunately other people get a bit suspicious when he doesn’t age and so Dorian starts to experience a few problems!

I never know what to expect from these classics, but I was impressed by how readable The Picture of Dorian Gray was. It had a light, almost humorous tone and I was quickly drawn into Dorian’s life.  I loved discovering all the quotes that I already knew and the countless bits of wisdom:

‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘that is one of the great secrets of life. Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.’

I lost interest slightly in the middle section, but the plot picked up again towards the end. I thought the ending, although predictable, was very good.

Recommended, if only so you can appreciate how many quotes from this book we use in everyday life.

I also watched the DVD as part of C.B. James’ Read The Book, See the Movie Challenge

Dorian Gray DVD

The DVD had a very different feel to the book. The film was dark and menacing, so the charm of the book was lost under this evil sense of foreboding. Most of the wonderful quotes were not included and so the majority of the things I enjoyed about the book were missing.

The film did benefit from some great Victorian costumes and sets, but spotting some tarmac road ruined the atmosphere a bit for me!

I can’t fault the acting, but some of the casting was a bit dubious. The actors didn’t match up to the pictures I’d built in my head when reading the book – especially Rachel Hurd-Wood. This wasn’t a major problem, overall the actors were probably the best thing about this film.

My main problem was with the ending – it was far too dramatic. Sometimes it is best to leave things to the imagination, but the film showed us everything. It was needless action for the sake of trying to attract a different audience to the film.

Overall I’d say that this is one of those films that just shouldn’t have been made. Some books just don’t work on the big screen.

Have you read The Picture of Dorian Gray?

What did you think of the film?

Last year I raved about The Ghosts of Eden. It is a wonderful book about twin boys growing up in Uganda. The author, Andrew Sharp, is a medical doctor and so it is packed with all those intelligent observations about life that doctors seem to acquire in abundance. The book ended up on my top ten of 2009 list, but a quick Internet search has leads me to believe that no other bloggers have reviewed it yet. I am saddened that such a wonderful book is slipping under the radar. Can I be the only person in the world that loved this book? Well, luckily it seems not!

I’m delighted to announce that The Ghosts of Eden has just won the 2009/2010 Waverton Good Read Award.

Don’t worry – I’d never heard of the Waverton Award before either, but after doing a bit of research I think it is a prize worth following.

Waverton is a beautiful village in Cheshire, England where local readers have got together to form their own literary award.

The award is for debut novels written by British or Irish authors, published for the first time between 1st September 2009 and 31st August 2010.

100 keen readers score each book that they read and from all the books submitted a short list of 5 is produced. These 5 books are then distributed around the village and everyone is invited to read them. Ballot papers are sent out, votes are cast and then the winner is announced at the village fete. I love it!! I want to move to Waverton!!

Apart from being a wonderful way to celebrate books and bring a community together it seems as though the people of Waverton are very good at discovering the best new talent.

A quick flick through the previous winners reveals several books that you may have heard of:

2004 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

2005 Boy A – Jonathan Trigell

2006 A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycka

2007 The Killing Jar – Nicola Monaghan

2008 Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – Paul Torday

2009 Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith

It is wonderful to know that a whole community of readers loved The Ghosts of Eden as much as I did and I hope that word of mouth will ensure that this book reaches the audience it deserves.

Have I persuaded you to:

a) Read The Ghosts of Eden?

b) Think about moving to Waverton?

c) Set up your own literary award?!!

d) None of the above 🙁

White is for Witching has been dividing the opinion of readers for a while. I am always intrigued by books that create a love-hate divide and so set out to find out which side of the fence I’d fall.

White is for Witching is supposed to be a creepy book. Unfortunately I was too confused to feel any ghostly chills, but there were a lot of strange happenings in this short novel.

The book centres on a pair of twins, Eliot and Miranda, who move into their ancestral home – a crumbling house on the cliffs of Dover. The twins are mourning the death of their mother, but the house does more to scare than comfort them.

The book is narrated by four different characters, one of which is the house. This was a great idea, but I found the narrative to be disjointed and confusing. I felt that the experimental writing style was given priority over plot.

There were frequent sections of beautiful writing, but the lack of any real plot meant that I frequently lost interest in the book and had to force myself to pick it up again.

The sun was setting into storm clouds; there was a smoky brightness outside, as if the world was being inspected by candlelight. I saw the woman who’d brushed me on the stairs the first time I’d gone up them. This time when I saw her I knew she wasn’t a house guest. She was standing under one of the trees, standing so deep in the ground that the earth levelled around her ankles.  As if she had no feet, as if she was growing.

I think this is one of those books that would benefit from re-reading, but although some things would probably become clearer there would still be a lot of questions left unanswered. Some people think this ambiguity is spooky, but I just found it frustrating – when I finish a book I like to have some idea of what happened!

If you’re the sort of person who loves reading modern fairy tales and gets excited by the appearance of unexplained apples then you could be one of the people who love this book. Unfortunately I prefer books with a more conventional narrative. 

The thoughts of other bloggers:

I could seriously go on and on about all the things I loved in the book A Striped Armchair

…as confused as I may have been, I was also in awe of Oyeyemi’s fresh voice… The Indextrious Reader

 I really didn’t have a clue as to what was going on for the majority of the book. Serendipity

…a little too much structural experiment for my liking… Stuck in a Book

Did you enjoy White is for Witching?