Reading The Time Traveller's Wife

So why am I reviewing a 3-year-old book that was huge and pretty much everyone already knows about?

One reason is that Niffenegger's big novel touches on just about everything - fate, memory, happiness, fear, bereavement, illness, disability, religion, the future, hope, love, self-destructive anger, sex, jealousy, self-centredness and existential problems about the self, including that feeling of being disconnected from something important. The author's genius is to not simply to create the bizarre concept of a man with a time-displacement disorder, slipping out of time to other points in his or his wife's lives, but the genius is in how she makes this situation human, and then uses it to explore the way we look at ourselves, our relationships, our lives.

In the course of its pages, which plot out the relationship between Henry de Tamble the time-traveller and his great love (and time-static) Clare, we identify with Clare, as she feels the distance in the relationship created by time, and also (for instance) as she struggles with commitment to Henry and feels guilt about that - and has to conquer her fears for their future, often through producing some quite bizarre, and physical, art. But we also appreciate Henry's often strange reflections on life and how it works, and we can understand the way he resents the other version of himself he meets in his future; Niffenegger knows how, during the confusing teenage years, we can have ambiguous, even hostile, feelings about ourselves and our bodies. What is more, in the way Henry studies his older self, Niffenegger clearly perceives our resentment of those who have a better sense of security than ourselves, and reflects on how us creative types want to be in control of our own lives, not merely feel we are fitting in to a pattern laid out for us.

The book is filled with astute observations of how we work. Often the author draws attention to the human body, I think to celebrate the excellence of the way we work, move, interact, reproduce, and sometimes showing how frail we are and the enormous problems caused by just one thing being wrong with us. It seems to warn us to make the most of our time, and not to play around with other people's lives, something we do when we are young and impatient with what life is giving us. Niffenegger uses all kinds of settings and situations (a club in Chicago, a Christmas day mass, the apartment Henry's dad has let deteriorate) to examine how we treat those around us, and the way our values change as we become older.

Although it is mostly concerned with Henry's survival, Clare's next big challenge and the love story, there is a section some time after the midway point where it becomes too much about representing their feelings abstractly, through dreams and other more obvious techniques. And the book bares all, including the ugly side of attempting to conceive a child, and some unhelpfully explicit details of their sex life (outrageously, the incredible gift of sex is exploited for our analysis and entertainment purposes when the sensation is designed to be shared between two people and not compared and dissected).

Having said that, Niffenegger clearly knows what makes a good yarn, and has read her Homer. The end of the novel is exceptionally well done, finding a neat (and intriguingly non-spiritual) solution which still leaves you feeling full of hope for the pair of lovers and for the time ahead, widening our own horizons: What things have we yet to see, and to discover? What are we holding on for?

Another heavy, epic, action anime to watch?

This anime should be worth watching (over 18s only please)! There seem to be more and more of these kind of projects - fusing Eastern artistic talent with Western ideas (here Dante's Inferno, which is all about Hell). See Batman: Gotham Knight and (especially) The Animatrix, for other interesting examples. (I liked the Batman one, it was a mixture of one-note shorts which were brutal, mysterious, and simple little stories.)

November tune-age

Here's a new playlist for your Spotify browser (because I enjoyed making the last one): November tunes. Discovering Vampire Weekend, White Lies (thanks Joe) and finding some classics from Goo Goo Dolls and Genesis have been the highlights this month. I must make more time for the Muse album, which sounds incredible. You will also find some Switchfoot, Killers and a track from Mark Ronson's album Version. Click on the tag "music-related" to find other music reviews from the blog's past, including Elbow, who have been on top form the last couple of years.

I've also written about the Killers and Jars of Clay. Let me know what music is catching your attention at the moment!

Visiting Penguin publishing in London

So last Thursday I travelled up to Penguin Books for a day called "Getting Into Publishing". As you can see, it wasn't hard to find the place :)

I met some fantastic people: editors, publicists, publishers, sales and finance and marketing and book production people, assistants, and students and graduates looking for work. It was exciting to be amongst so many great people who were really passionate about books.

This has thrown up some more questions for me: I love working with words, ideas and communicating the best aspects of a book, the experience I've had with it, the fresh take it gives on big themes. So do I want to work in marketing, focusing on how to promote a book through its cover, informing the trade press, writing newsletters, etc. Or do I want to work on actually producing the books themselves? And then, there's other questions, such as children's or adult? Fiction or non-fiction?

Hearing how publicists make opportunities to spotlight books by generating news stories was interesting, and explains a lot. I guess this fuels the book industry, and gives newspapers a lighter story or a story in a completely different area that wouldn't have come up otherwise. Of course it also helps sales in independent book shops (which are struggling) as well as helping Penguin make money!

It was a really interesting day, and hopefully not the last time I visit Penguin. They gave us lot of tips about how to start with Penguin, and generally in publishing. We were also given some books, including "Twitterature" which is so WRONG but so FUNNY.

Graphic novel: Silverfish

Now I am not a big fan of horror, although I do enjoy some of the darker and more violent crime thrillers in Hollywood, such as Kiss the Girls or even the classic, The Fugitive. Here's another exception.

In this black-and-white graphic novel, we are taken on a movie-like journey through Hitchcock suspicion and mystery, through the tension of the "serial-killer-is-lurking" territory, to a high-stakes, high-adrenaline, almost-teen slasher climax. And it all works - particularly as the creator adds something that could only be done in comics: the bizarre 'silverfish' which seem to be fantasy breaking in on our reality. And we are still left with some questions tantalisingly unanswered. What really drove the villain to kill? (There are many suggested reasons.) And what do others know about the strange titular 'fish'?

A good read. In my book, not quite a must-have comic - but that reflects more on my philosophy that it owning stuff isn't everything than this book's quality.

I'm off to visit Penguin Books tomorrow, on a numbers-restricted Open Day. Let's hope this leads to something...

Reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

One book I'm enjoying at the moment is The Book Thief - a rich, warm but at times uncomfortable novel about the life of a girl Liesel and how she lives through many adventures in Nazi Germany, suffering after her mother leaves her and her brother dies, growing up with a new family, fighting, living in poverty, having to march along with the Hitler Youth, learning how to read and steal and keep secrets from the Fuhrer.

Although it has taken me some pages to get into it, I am now appreciating how it works on lots of levels. The book is told from the point of view of Death, which is ominous, but this version of Death is almost child-like in his curiousity. Like the children in the book, Death is uncomprehending of the true import of some of the episodes in the book. But we well know the barbarities of the time.

At other times Death is very perceptive and shows he does know the world, having walked its paths and seen how people have acted. It makes you see how bizarre and painful the Jewish persecutions were, coming from men and women who used to live next door to Jews, speak with them, visit their businesses. And Zusak is keen to show the great levellers - our interest in one another, our personality, our appreciation of art and music, the things that go beyond mere tribe or race to the very heart of man, woman and child.

All this makes the book one which is eager to explore good and evil, where men and women are detailed with strange but likeable characteristics and stubborn, wilful natures. The potential to be destructive is there right on the edge of the characters - and their anger, as it develops, is an excellent way to express the outrage we all feel at the way people were treated and killed by Nazis. (There is definitely some similarity with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, especially in Liesel's relationship with her "papa" Hans, who is upright and wise like Atticus Finch - although The Book Thief is more focused on private struggles and the effects of trauma on a young girl, and on Death as well.)

Here is an interview with the author about the book - he refers to humanity being part "pure beauty" and part "pure destruction" - a pretty astute observation. I think the Bible (and so God) would agree with that.

Where is our love? And how we can relate to God

Check out this interview with a fellow worker from my time with UCCF. It's pretty encouraging - and one of several things which have been reminding me how little I do for God and how I must not try to approach him on the basis that I am "so good" - because I'm really not! He is the one who rules and is good - and He is the one who provides a way wide open for us to know Him - through Jesus.

This also links with these excellent talks which cover what the Reformation was about, and Song of Songs (the only part of the Bible that comes totally under the genre of love poetry).

Here's an Isaac Watts hymn that picks up on some of the things Phil talks about in the interview. We had it read out to us at church at the end of an emotional, challenging talk, and it showed us just how worthy God is of our praise. Our devotion is so small, so quickly exhausted, but He is love. Jesus came from God, God as man, willing even to go to death to win us to Him. Such amazing grace!

Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,
With all Thy quick’ning powers;
Kindle a flame of sacred love
In these cold hearts of ours.

Look how we grovel here below,
Fond of these trifling toys;
Our souls can neither fly nor go
To reach eternal joys.

In vain we tune our formal songs,
In vain we strive to rise;
Hosannas languish on our tongues,
And our devotion dies.

Dear Lord! and shall we ever live
At this poor dying rate?
Our love so faint, so cold to Thee,
And Thine to us so great!

Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,
With all Thy quick’ning powers;
Come, shed abroad the Savior’s love
And that shall kindle ours.

A poem about knowing God and other thoughts

With all that's going on with everyone looking for work, finding the best deals, hearing the latest blame game on the news and keeping up with the latest entertainment releases, it can be easy to totally miss the bigger questions in life that are actually the important ones. What kind of politics do we want? What would make things better? Or, bigger than that, what am I living for?

This is one reason I like poetry which, in a few phrases, can provoke and suggest big things for us to ponder on. Here's a poem I wrote today:

A watch in my pocket-
A tension or two-
Elaborate curving traffic queue

A stifle and a shout-
Lions running free-
Huge encouragement to turn about

Too far to travel-
High ends and aims-
Categorizing nameless days

Protests escape-
What's in it for me-
Affection seizes up all my duty

Washing hangs up-
Curtains tear apart-
The feeling of being plunged in light.

This is a poem basically about getting things wrong in the Christian life, and is at least partly inspired by some ideas I've been hearing about about what it really means to be united to Jesus. But I didn't want it to sound too religion-y either. It reflects more on our frustrations and sense of ambition in religion, which really show we are (most likely) failing to start at the most central part of Christianity - seeing Jesus in his glorious goodness, his power and his saving grace, and having our hearts changed in love towards Him.

Incredibly, believers and followers of Jesus are given a totally new status in Jesus, one we don't earn, or try to conjure up from our own effort. We are forgiven, made right with God, as a gift of God's loving kindness. We only must receive this gift, to be able to stand secure and right before Him, in Him, with Him. How great is this! As one speaker puts it - "Getting this gives massive happy boldness to the believer. And it removes the terror and the religiosity of a false gospel".

As Martin Luther put it: 

"When the devil throws our sins up at us and says we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus: I admit that I deserve death and hell – what of it? Does that mean I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means! For I know one who has suffered and made satisfaction in my behalf – his name is Jesus Christ the Son of God. Where he is I shall be also."

Both quotes came from the first of these helpful talks from the always-passionate UCCF worker Mike Reeves.

Authors' websites

As I continue my quest to track down (and capture) that most elusive of phenomenon: a job in publishing, I occasionally come across an author's website that is so wildly different, you want to share it around. Try this weird one, from Colin Cotterill, a well-travelled writer and cartoonist, now living in Thailand - and evidently enjoying riding his bike up the Doi Suthep mountain. He has some strange thoughts.

Anyone else know a good author's website they want to recommend?


Book reviews (and perhaps a new poem) to come soon on this blog - so keep checking back!

Pixar's Up - a brief review

Here's the thing about Up: It is, I think, a fantasy-slash-drama, rather than a kid's film - and its subject? Moving on after a bereavement, escaping into the clouds and finding true freedom in the process.

The main two characters, brilliantly animated, are put in situations which somehow show us emotions which people struggle with every day. Loss, bitterness, bewilderment, a sense of being left behind, acceptance, empowerment, joy, hope, victory. It's pretty powerful stuff, tied up in a story perhaps as symbolic as Finding Nemo seems to be.

It is a tour de force for Pixar, who are showing Hollywood what worthwhile cinema is. As my first experience of the new 3-D film technology, it did impress on that score too, with a few stand-out effects.

Up is also exciting, surreal, and laugh-out-loud funny, especially when it involves the dog Kevin, or the tracker dogs who come after Karl and his floating house. This one ranks as an unmissable film, and one of Pixar's best.