[theatre] The Last Days of Troy, Globe, 17-Jun-14

Framed by Zeus and Hera looking back from exile – if exile is modern-day Turkey – Simon Armitage’s 3-hour remix of the Iliad is full of resonant language. (I especially liked Hector ‘glinting and gloating on the walls of Troy’. Of Helen: ‘you’ll be on the arm of the man giving the victory speech, with a cemetery in the background. Downwind.’) ( Read more... )

2014/20-25: The Mountjoy books -- Elizabeth Aston

The Mountjoy books -- Elizabeth Aston

There’s an England that lurks in the imagination as much as in reality; an England of villages nestling among green hills, each with its inn, a church, a splendid manor house, Georgian houses and tiny thatched cottages, grouped around a village green.
The England of Agatha Christie and Miss Marple. The England of P G Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle, with imposters lurking within its imposing walls, of Downton Abbey with its family tensions and Gosford Park, full of scheming servants.
Trollope’s England, too, with sly or eccentric clerics, dangerous bishops and gentry families leading tranquil lives on the surface, but seething with disharmony and emotional turmoil within.
And also the England of Evelyn Waugh, of Nancy Mitford and Patrick O’Brian, a land that readers love to visit, an enchanting, deceiving landscape, rich with intrigue and scandal and a life so different from ours.
Imperfect, intriguing, full of ghosts and eccentrics and family values that startle modern minds – this is the England I’ve created for the Mountjoy novels. [from the author's website]

I had a sudden urge to reread these, and Kindle books make it easy to indulge such urges. True, the books are published under the name 'Elizabeth Aston' rather than 'Elizabeth Pewsey'; there are some conversion errors ('nave' instead of naïve, 'corning' instead of coming); and Amazon have unaccountably retitled Divine Comedy as The World, the Flesh and the Bishop (which, come to think of it, is slightly spoilery). But I do still love the slightly supernatural, often ironic portrayal of the English gentry.( non-spoilery reflections )

2014/26: A Monster Calls -- Patrick Ness

A Monster Calls -- Patrick Ness

Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both. [loc. 1727]

Conor O'Malley, whose mother has cancer, whose father has emigrated to America with his new family and no place for Conor, whose best friend told everyone at school about Conor's mum being ill, which isolated him ... Conor is visited, at seven minutes past midnight, by a monster. It's not the nightmare-spawned monster he was expecting, though: it's something like a yew tree, something like an old god, and it wants to tell Conor three stories and have him tell one, truthful, story in return.( slightly spoilery review )

2014/29: The Calling -- Alison Bruce

The Calling -- Alison Bruce

‘I have this book too, and most of these in fact, and that picture, and at least half of your videos…’
‘And so does [my boyfriend].’
‘But I had them first. And I’ve watched him with you, and with your replacement, and now with the latest one. And he’s taken us all to the same places and tried to make us the same.’ [loc.2280]

( not significantly spoilery review )