I read mostly classics around the world in August: Madame Bovary from France, three plays by Chekhov from Russia, Picnic at Hanging Rock, a modern classic from Australia, and half of Gilead from the US. Two recent novels: Twenty Thousand Saints from Wales and My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologies from Sweden. Lastly, a Christian non-fiction book called The Heart of Anger by Christopher Ash and Steve Midgley.
There are some curious things in common between this month’s books. In the centre of both My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologies and Gilead is the relationship between an older person, a person in their 70s and a child, in both books, age 7. The thing that starts off both Picnic at Hanging Rock and Twenty Thousand Saints is that some people have gone missing. Madame Bovary and Chekhov’s plays discuss the ways to achieve happiness and satisfaction. Let’s look at them one by one.
My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologies
The author Fredrik Backman is Swedish, so I presume the story is set somewhere in Sweden, it could be anywhere really.
In the first chapter, we are introduced to the little protagonist the 7-year-old Elsa and her 77-year-old Granny. They are in the police station under arrest because Granny has attacked the policemen with something unspeakable in the middle of the night in a zoo. Elsa is a bit too clever and sharp and doesn’t fit in at school. Granny is a bit too large and heroic for ordinary everyday life and a bit chaotic and crazy. They are very close friends: they have a secret language, and they have fairy tales about kingdoms they made up.
Granny sends Elsa on a series of quests. We soon find out the book is about the loneliness of a 7-year-old child hiding in an adventure story. It’s also about the loneliness of everyone in the house and how Elsa’s adventure brings people together. The random fairytales are actually real stories about real people. The quests are as much Granny’s last effort to bring the neighbours together as to bring friends to Elsa. I love how granny help Elsa make sense of harsh reality using fairy tales and how she makes immense regrets, grief and sorrow gentle and beautiful.
I love the Harry Potter references, not just in passing, but proper, very important to the plot line kind of reference. I love the language, it’s a 7-year-old’s style of narrative, which is a bit rambly and makes me smile. e.g.
Britt-Marie lives one floor down from Granny. And really Britt-Marie also lives one floor down from Elsa’s mum, because Elsa’s mum lives next door to Elsa’s granny. And Elsa obviously also lives next door to Granny, because Elsa lives with her mum. Except every other weekend, when she lives with Dad and Lisette. And of course George is also Granny’s neighbour, because he lives with Mum. It’s a bit all over the place.
It’s heartwarming, clever and kind. A lot of humour, a lot of wisdom. The way the author deals with the messiness of relationships makes me think he must be a kind person. I hope he is.
Twenty Thousand Saints
It’s set on a tiny island off the coast of North Wales called Bardsey. A woman tries to make a documentary about how a woman went missing years ago, while this missing woman’s son is doing excavation on the island with a small group of women volunteers. An ex-convict who was said to have murdered the missing woman suddenly arrived on the island. There are romantic relationships forming and falling apart. In the end, it’s about the Wales independence movement.
I’m not interested in politics so couldn’t quite understand the feeling of someone who is passionate about it enough to ruin one’s own or other’s entire life. I like the description of the various relationships, but not the overall story.
Madam Bovary
It’s a 19-century classic set in France by Gustave Flaubert.
I made a video about this novel when I was halfway into the book and I had three questions for the second half of the novel: How will she achieve her dream life? How will her husband deal with her when he finds out about her affairs? What kind of ending will the author give her? To answer those questions, I’d like to compare her to Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair for a few minutes. They have a lot of similarities definitely, the dissatisfaction I mentioned in my video for one, but they’re very different in other aspects.
What I’m going to say next is going to spoil the story. Please jump to the next section if you care.
To answer those three questions: she didn’t achieve her dream life, her husband didn’t find out about her affairs until after she died so there was no reckoning, and the author gave her a horrible death in disgrace and poverty.
So compared to Becky Sharp, Madame Bovary was terrible at plotting and planning, she pined and she failed; Becky Sharp raised herself from a governess nobody all the way to be presented to His Majesty the King. Both men loved their wives loyally, both were ill-used, both men’s lives were ruined and cut short by their wives.
Thackeray is very kind to his heroine, a disloyal friend, a scheming parasite, a wicked liar and a murderer. Think of all the wrongs she did to others, it’s shocking how lightly Thackeray let her off, especially for a Victorian author. He not only lets her live in peace, he even makes the readers like her. She has such life and spirit in her.
Flaubert, I’d say ends the novel in a more morally-correct way for his era. Madame Bovary’s life was a waste. She did no one any good. No one was going to remember her or miss her when she died.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay is certainly the most unusual and intriguing book this month, it might be the most unusual and intriguing book this whole year!
Usually I think of Halloween books as spooky and creepy, set in a castle or a big house, like Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, but also as dark and cold because of the time of year. But this story is set in February in Australia which is one of the hottest summer months and the picnic happens in the middle of an afternoon when the sun is bright over their heads. It still manages to be spooky and creepy.
The story is about a group of school girls who went for a picnic at Hanging Rock on Valentine’s Day. Three of the older ones wanted to get a bit closer for some sketches and some materials for their essay next week, and one younger girl tagged along. But some of them never came back. All these happen in the first three chapters. The rest of the book is about what happens next. Obviously, policemen were called, parents had to be told, and news reporters started to turn up at the boarding school. What happened to the missing girls? How would the fellow students react? How would the teachers and the servants react?
I read it as a crime thriller and noted down a lot of unnatural or suspicious things along the way. For example, no spoiler to the storyline, only one of the three girl’s surnames, was given right away, it reads on page 8, ‘The three senior girls, Miranda, Irma and Marion Quade’. Irma Leopold’s surname was given on page 27. We never found out Miranda’s surname! There is a lot of these kinds of small subtle and off-balance things, which I think create the eerie unsettling feeling.
in addition to being a gothic novel, it’s also historical fiction. It was written in 1967 and set in 1900. If you know the history of Australia a little, Australia became its own nation in 1901. Therefore 1900 was the last year when Australia was a colony of Britain. So keep that fact number one in mind.
And you look at the school, Appleyard College, it’s an extremely English thing. We don’t know if the headmistress had any experience in education, but she “looked precisely what the parents expected of an English Headmistress”. One of the girls was an English heiress. The author brought to our attention the noble ancestors and old family line of an English man. Even the Gardener was English. Now Hanging Rock is a real place. When these girls from a very old-fashioned English school left their orderly school room in Edwardian white muslin dresses and went on a picnic trip to Hanging Rock, a place of native landscape and wildness. You have a jarring image of disharmony. So that’s fact number two.
I have to give a spoiler warning at this point. One thing I found puzzling and incredible is the loss of memory of various people when they went up the Hanging Rock. It’s so repetitive, it couldn’t have been laziness or lack of ideas on the author’s part, it must have been deliberate.
Edith Horton, the younger girl that was tagging along, came back from the exploration alone in hysterics and couldn’t remember where the other three went.
Irma Leopold, the one who was found unconscious and rescued a whole week later, couldn’t remember what happened to herself or any of the others.
Mike, woke up from his accident in a daze and barely remembered anything.
It was so frustrating! Why could no one remember anything? It was like there was a magnetic field of some ancient magic around the Hanging Rock. All their watches stopped. Hanging Rock didn’t want anyone to retell the story, the wild nature didn’t like the intrusion of these civilised people. It ate some of them up without a trace, it spat some out but kept back their memory.
Because I read it as a crime thriller and expected a resolution at the end, I was really shocked and disappointed because there wasn’t one! Now, as I was doing the research for this video, I came across the deleted last chapter by the author! It actually tells you what happened to the missing girls and the teacher on Hanging Rock. It’s very weird, but worth having a read!
The Seagull, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard
I didn’t have these in my planning but fancied reading them halfway into the month. I read the Oxford World Classics edition while listening to the Audible Theatre recording and quickly realised the two are translated differently. I read English classics mostly and often forget about the translation factor when it comes to world classics. The book is translated by Ronald Hingley in the 60s. I can’t find out who translated the version that is used by the Audible Theatre. Audible is not very good at giving info about translators. I had the same problem with Anna Karenina. But whichever version it is, I preferred the audible one. If you know who the translator is, please let me know.
These are amazing stories performed by a group of amazing actors from the Wireless Theatre Company. It’s unbelievable what voice acting and sound design can do.
I can’t possibly cramp all I want to say about these plays into this wrap up. Just mention one theme that I picked up was idleness and work, and how those things are related to happiness.
Gilead
I have been really surprised by how much I’m enjoying it. Why am I so surprised? Reason 1, I read Housekeeping by the same author Marilynne Robinson and couldn’t follow at all; Reason 2, it’s such a slow and quiet book. There are no chapter breaks either, the entire book is one long narrative. I’ve been thinking how did she keep me reading with so little happening?
Gilead is an old pastor, Reverend John Ames’ letter and diary written to his very young son, because he is sick and dying and wouldn’t be able to get to know his son as he grows up.
One thing I love is how the old pastor talks about people and events in the Bible like they are old acquaintances and past events of his own life. The Bible and the Christian belief are so part of his heart and mind, that he speaks about them like the most natural thing in the world, like having toast for breakfast, or watching a sunset. There’s no clunky gear change. If he’s a fish, Christian faith is the water he lives in. It’s transparent, but it’s everywhere.
I compared Gilead to My Grandmother at the very beginning. It’s interesting if we carry that train of thought a bit further. The old father is writing this letter about some pretty weighty matter and he hopes one day when his son is old enough, he’ll read it and understand him. But why didn’t he talk to his son now? He watches him play, he feeds him, he let the child sit on his lap. But apart from the opening scene, the readers hear very little direct conversation. Why didn’t they talk, like Granny and Elsa? Judging by the way he interacts with his son, I’d thought the boy was a toddler. But we are told the boy was seven. Elsa was seven and she understands a great deal. She is a lot closer to Granny than the son is to the old father. She loves her Granny and will not forget her. But I’m not sure how much the boy is going to remember his old father, a vague figure writing all day in his study.
But it’s also interesting to note, even though Elsa and Granny are best of friends, Granny didn’t tell Elsa about her past. They got up to all sorts of mischief but there are a lot of things they don’t talk about. Granny also chose to reveal her past little by little via letters, just like Reverend John Ames.
The Heart of Anger
It’s a Christian non-fiction book about the emotion of anger. Where does it come from? What does it reveal about our heart? One thing I was made aware of for the very first time, there are so many angry people in the Bible!
At the beginning of chapter 1, it says
The triggers that set off anger vary. But the rage that is triggered always reveals in someway what the angry person truly values and treasures. Anger rises in my heart when something I value is either threatened or taken from me.
Understanding why people are angry is so helpful. People are not just nasty for no reason, they have worries and fears. It helps me to examine my heart when I’m angry, and it also helps me to understand and communicate with angry people.
Happy reading!
A Day of Small Things 