The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

I get the feeling Lionel Shriver gets off on ruffling feathers. She's the kind of woman who gives herself a man's name, runs away to Belfast, writes books that aren't easy to market, and finds fame with a book about a teenage murderer. In her post-Orange Prize world, she writes controversial editorials about politics, abortion, childlessness, and continues to rankle. To be honest, in 2005 when I first became aware of Shriver, I had mixed feelings about her. But then I read We Need to Talk About Kevin, and my resistance went out the window. Lionel Shriver can really tell a story. She is blunt and doesn't shy from offense, but I'll read anything she's writing, and the odds are that I'll like it.

We Need to Talk About Kevin was Lionel Shriver's seventh book. None of its predecessors had been successful; Kevin itself-- brutal, disturbing and horrifying-- had a hard time finding a publisher. The book was sold partly on sensation, I think, but the story was stunningly told. I remember being interrupted during the final twist, and refusing to put the book down. Stuart read the book right after me, and I could hardly speak to him for fear of spoiling the ending, but I was dying to talk about it. We Need to Talk About Kevin was the most underrated overrated book I've ever encountered, and any writer would have a hard time following it up. And it was not as though Shriver was in the habit of writing sensation thriller-esque popular fiction. Though most of her earlier books are out of print, I did get my hands on a copy of her first novel The Female of the Species. A wonderful read, but quite unlike Kevin, and like Shriver herself, it seems, more than a bit odd.

So what was she to do next? I've read interviews from a year or two ago with Shriver acknowledging that some readers were bound to be disappointed in her next effort. Topping We Need to Talk About Kevin would be next to impossible, and with her new book The Post-Birthday World one gets the sense that she didn't even try. Instead Lionel Shriver sat down and wrote another book, a completely different one, but once again a good one.

The Post-Birthday World seems like a startling deviation from Kevin but it's not so much in comparison with Shriver's early work. Concerned with women's lives, emotions, relationships, sexuality. Fixated on sport, but snooker in this case in place of tennis (as in The Female of the Species and Double Fault). And the new book is really not so far from Kevin either-- so much of that story was concerned with the dynamic between Kevin's parents, and The Post-Birthday World examines intimacy in a similar way.

The Post-Birthday World is two books in one. Irina McGovern is an American established in London, a children's book illustrator, safely ensconced in a relationship with the dependable Lawrence. When she finds herself tempted to kiss their friend Ramsay-- a dashing geezer (in the British sense), a snooker champion no less-- she's faced with a choice. And at that instant, Shriver's narrative breaks into two and we find out what happens if Irina does or if she doesn't.

The two narratives operate in alternating chapaters, each unaware of the other. And it works; I didn't find myself rooting for one Irina more than the other, or rushing through one alternate universe to get to the better one. Though the two narratives function separately, they do operate together illustrating the vastly different trajectories a life can take. Certain objects exist in both worlds, certain words are echoed. The two stories demonstrate that there is no such thing as parallel lives, and that life is too complicated for such a concept. Each of Irina's decisions have different consequences, but not for the reasons you might expect. Life isn't a chain reaction so much as a mammoth muddle, and Irina has to find her way through the mess, no matter where she's headed. She illustrates a children's book with a similar premise, which allows Shriver some explanation of her own intentions. Irina explains, "The idea is that you don't have only one destiny...whichever direction you go, there are going to be upsides and downsides. You're dealing with a set of trade-offs, and not one perfect course in comparison to which all others are crap... In both, everything is all right, really. Everything is all right."

My one criticism was Shriver's overuse of some words that read conspicuously to me. The number of items which were "sumptuous" grew tiresome, as did the many "junctures" at which Irina found herself. I had never heard of "folderol" before, but Irina encountered an awful lot of it.

Where Shriver's writing excels is with dialogue in particular. Irina's exchanges with Lawrence and Ramsay are brilliant, quick, and demonstrate the differences in logic between characters. I also enjoyed the fullness of her characters' world (which seems a mark of her fiction). The cultures of snooker and children's book publishing are given full consideration, and as Lawrence is a terrorism expert for a think tank, discussions of world events are substantial (I noticed that many of Lawrence's opinions echo those Shriver has voiced in editorials such as this one). The lives in The Post-Birthday World are examined from all angles, so richly and wholly. This is fiction thoroughly engaged with the world in which it takes place.

This is good fiction: words, symbols, stories, lives.

Dangerous Territory

The Guardian Books Blog seems to be all down with everything I wrote papers on in my "Authorship and its Institutions" class last year. Like this on acknowledgements pages (though my paper was way better). And this response. Oh yeah-- I also wrote a paper called "Oh No! Not Another Portmanteau!" about blooks, which the Guardian blog has nothing to say about (so 2006) but I justed wanted to let you know about that fine title.

Anyway. A Guardian blogger defended chick lit last week. Oh chick lit, you are indeed "much maligned" and the topic of my final paper "Writing in the Shadow of a Hungry Genre". Now, I don't seek out chick lit usually, though I have read some excellent books in my time which fortunately or unfortunately fall into that genre. Just to give you my chick lit cred, I've enjoyed books including Don't You Want Me? and My Life on a Plate by India Knight; Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner (and I love her blog). I've been known to read the novels of Jenny Colgan as well.

So I'm not a complete snob; I've read around a bit, and I think chick lit/lit is divided more than anything by the use of language. It is not subject matter, plot or character (though there are patterns relating to these in chick lit). Just because there are similarities between the plots of The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver and Me vs. Me by Sarah Mlynowski does not demean one nor heighten the other. And you know what? I am going to read both these books in the next month and let you know if my hunch is right-- that in terms of language, they're worlds apart. (Thanks Ragdoll for that link). I will let you know.

I do agree with the Guardian blogger that chick lit needs no defending. I think chick lit and lit fic could coexist quite happily, could support each other even, that women deserve a wide range of books to choose from and there's nothing wrong with a novel you can drop in the tub. But. My title was about "the hungry genre", because chick-lit is a cannibal! Female literary fiction writers (and their readers) have good reason to be threatened by a genre that tries to force all women's writing into a narrow pigeonhole for the sake of marketibility (and forget about those who don't fit). It is this pigeonholing that connects Lionel Shriver to "chick-lit" at all (for her last book, she got "anti-chick lit"; her new book is "the next step after chick lit"). Have you ever read Lionel Shriver? I've never read anything less "chicky" in my life! And all of this blurring of distinctions would be not so terrible if there wasn't so much chick lit churned out that's absolute garbage. My crux/thesis statement? That chick lit is "no longer just a genre of popular fiction, but instead has become the touchstone by which almost all contemporary fiction written by women is gauged". And I don't think that this is good for anyone.

And it's the garbage that is the main problem, undermining Jenny Colgan's quite chick-litty but good (I think) books; putting crabby brilliant Lionel Shriver up against writers it would be beneath her to spit on; giving India Knight pink covers and cartoons even though the woman is a serious comic genius; re-doing Nancy Mitford with all the chick-lit frills (and see Shriver spitting point). I just wish that readers would demand more of their reading. I wish that different kinds of writers didn't need to feel threatened by one another. But as I concluded my paper (and with the aid a thesaurus, I can see): "Anti-chick lit's corybantic gestures and the force of its criticism are a direct response to chick lit's literary cannibalism, and a last ditch effort not to be eaten alive".

ReReading Kevin

I had a feeling that We Need to Talk About Kevin would be an important book to reread. First read two years ago after a whole lot of Orange Prize and political hoopla, I was doubtful I would like it. It had been cast as variously feminist and anti-feminist depending on who was talking, and employed as a polarizing weapon in the mommy wars. But when I started reading, I realized that easy issues of polarity weren't what Lionel Shriver was on about, and that she wasn't spouting rhetoric as much as asking questions. What I remember most about finishing this book the first time was an urgent need to find somebody else with whom to discuss it.

And so to approach it two years later would be interesting. First, that I'd know the big twist was coming-- could this book be about more than its sensation? And also reading it in the context of Shriver's other work, which I've become familiar with. Nearly halfway in, I am pleased to report that the work has been even more resonant the second time around. A certain poignancy is offered, reading in light of what has not yet been revealed. Eva's character is easier understood, her tragedy more pointed. And I see also that while this is definitely Shriver's most accomplished work to date, it is in no way a departure from her usual. In all her books, Shriver has a tremendous ability to make unattractive characters realistic, evocative and impossibly sympathetic, even as you want to punch them all the while. This time I also see that, as with Double Fault and The Post-Birthday World, Kevin is ultimately not about motherhood and murder as much as marriage.

!

Busy. We've got a second wedding to plan you see and in-laws due to visit in a week. I am going to begin a series of poems based on a old book we bought in Brighton about tiger hunting, and work on edits for my novel, which is now a hard copy for the first time in its life. In other news, I will be a student again in just over a month.

Regarding books, I finished "Small Island" by Andrea Levy and then read "Case Histories" by Kate Atkinson on Sunday. Yes, in one day, and it's not a short book, I just couldn't rest until I got to the end. Those two books, along with "We Need to talk about Kevin" by Lionel Shriver, constitute some of very best modern literature I've ever read. And now "the best by women" or "the best written recently". I mean it full stop. Shriver's book left me gasping and gutted at the final twist. Levy's book was just astounding, written from four points of view by four quite sympathetic/unsympathetic characters, depending on who was speaking and she bore right into their souls. To write a story so convincingly multi-dimensional in its narrative voice is a feat. It was also a very interesting book about Englishness and what it is to be an outsider in Britain. Atkinson's book was a whodunit with a litfic twist. I charged through the book, obsessed with finding out who had done it, and once all was known it was clear that the journey had been as good as the destination.

(I don't want to criticise but "Case Histories" broke down in one spot. There was a character who lived in Toronto and was thus a "Torontian" and had a cottage up in the wild ancient forests on Lake Ontario. I don't think so! I hate factual inaccuracies in books, because it undermines the storyteller's authority. It's a massive responsibility for a writer to get everything perfect, and sometimes it doesn't matter but often it does.)

In gleanings. Lauren Snyder writes about her Las Vegas wedding and why she didn't have religious marriage ceremony, explaining that "When I got married, I didn't want to be lying under oath." The ever-provocative Lionel Shriver on the troubles: "For the citizens of that province to have murdered one another for decades over a trifling border dispute is a scandal." The life and times of a dyslexic novelist here.

My image

Don't laugh, but I really like what Yoko Ono has to say about feminism, aging, wifedom and just life in general in this interview. It also recalls a few lines from her "Grapefruit" poems, with their "Imagine a raindrop", imagine imagine theme. Which went on to be the song "Imagine" of course. But I just made the connection now that this idea of "imagine" is very much a Japanese product. In Japan, the English world "imagine" has a certain resonance. People are often reluctant to think outside their own experience, and "imagine" is this sort of magical buzzword that allows anyone creative freedom. If we are setting up a role-play and everyone was a bit confused, all it took was one person to say to me, "Imagine?" and I'd nod. And then they'd all say "Ah so so so" and the scene would flow. They also say it differently than we do- it's like "image-in" rather than "imaa-gin" and when they speak of their own opinion or impression of something, they will say "My image is...". There is a certain profundity to Japanese imaginings, one that we would be more inclined to give to realised visions. Part of this is because it takes such effort to get them, whereas we take it for granted. Also, in Japan, dreams unrealised are just sort of accepted as they are, and moreso precious for that.

Lionel Shriver, Orange Prize Winner, writes about how uncomfortable women are with naked ambition. I wasn't prepared to like what she said. I personally find naked ambition tacky, and the reason most of this world is governed by scumbags. Anyone who feels they are entirely deserving of an honour will lack the humility to serve that honour respectfully. There was an article by Oliver James in the Observer Magazine yesterday about "imposter syndrome", when a person "get[s] good exam results or do well at sport or art, they do not think of themselves as bright or creative and believe they have simply fooled people. They put subsequent professional success down to luck, contacts or having to work harder than others, rather than to their own mental capacities." Apparently women are more likely to take on their neurosis than men, having a natural affinity for neuroses in general I believe, and being a bit less arrogant. I understand this. I am still waiting to hear from my graduate program to let me know I was admitted by an error, and am not in fact eligible to attend. I liked Shriver's take on this though. First of all, she was talking about a contest. I think in a contest, it's perfectly acceptable to want to win. That's probably the point. In an election, however, a ride up a career ladder, or for a limited place in a grad program, I think one's reasons for wanting to be there have to be more substantial than sheer ambition and you can't just expect that you deserve it. An inflated sense of entitlement is not attractive. Perhaps I am overtly idealistic about this, but I think someone has to be. There needs to be a balance to what Oliver James talks about, and Shriver prescribes that. She writes of "acting like a man" when she admitted her ambition, and then of her competitors who "acted like women" when they shook her hand afterwards in congratulations. Everyone needs a bit of both. Ambition for the sake of ambition is deplorable, but humility for its own sake is not so admirable either.

Though Canadian Poet Wendy Morton's ambition is a bit admirable. She barters poems for free flights.

Yolk

Busy week here at Pickle Me This. 23 essays down, and I am pretty deranged. Life is dullsville at the moment as marking is almost all. This Easter weekend will be a fairly lacklustre affair, unfortunately. And the weather is absolute garbage. Which I guess is not the worst seeing as I have to spend most of it indoors.

I went to see Lionel Shriver and Jacqueline Baker read on Wednesday. I am looking forward to reading Baker's novel soon, and Lionel Shriver was so terribly nice and thoughtful toward those of us who approached her to get our books signed. She read with such authority, and I think she's such a fascinating woman. She reported being interested in depictions of contentment, and how such portrayals are received as "boring". She said she was going to making a point of reading us the "boring bits" of her novel that evening, and they were wonderful.

Long live Skegness

Djuna Barnes's Nightwood is another book I missed the point of as a teenager, and Jeanette Winterson's celebration inspires me to read it again. Ian McEwan profiled in The Globe, and reviewed (favourably!) in The Guardian. Lionel Shriver is reviewed less favourably, and though I take the reviewer's points about the troublesome language, I think she misses the nuances of the story. Further, this is a reviewer who disliked Shriver's last book and seems to be unaware of the six preceding it. I don't know if that is altogether fair. And though a subscription is required to read this article online, I did enjoy it in my print edition. How Britons don't appreciate their "crap towns", and a wee celebration of the British seaside. Long live Skegness.

Workaday Worlds

A frequent complaint about about contemporary fiction, or at least stories which aspire to become contemporary fiction, is that characters don't work. Whereas in the past, work might have dominated the narrative (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning comes to mind), modern characters' lives take place after hours. Interesting to note that two exceptions I've just thought of are about doctors: Saturday and Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures. I don't know what that means, however these doctors' idle contemporaries tend to be artists, academics, or documentary filmmakers, and their work is usually peripheral. Or so it's been said, but when I think back to the last nineteenth century novel I read (The Portrait of a Ladylast week, of course) nobody there did anything either, save for Henrietta Stackpole. And granted Henrietta's vocation did give her character particular appeal, and I realize James perhaps is a class thing, and these are all just thoughts to think about. Woolf's working characters were not usually at the forefront of her novels (or if they were, only subtly so ala Lily Briscoe, though of course she was an artist, which brings us back to the beginning). Many characters in books I read, particularly classics, seem to be bankers, but this tends to entail nothing beyond leaving the house in the morning and coming home in the eve.

I have two things to say about all these unformed thoughts, the first being that though none of this is new, what might be new is how positively unremarkable most modern jobs actually are. I cannot imagine what sort of narrative would grow up around the job I'm doing these days, or many I've had in the past. Prosaic is not even the word for many jobs around-- mind numbing, soul destroying, base and boring. I am fortunate that such is NOT my experience at the moment, but think of how many people must work in call centres. Think of all the stories that will never be written about call centres. I am not terribly convinced this is a bad thing.

The second thing is that Lionel Shriver, like my very favourite Margaret Drabble, always keeps her characters occupied. An anthropologist in The Female of the Species; pro-tennis players in Double Fault; illustrater, think-tankian, snooker player, variously in The Post-Birthday World; travel guide writer and advertising location scout in We Need to Talk About Kevin. Their occupations make Shriver's characters whole, their worlds rich, and give their stories legs to stand on. Her details are so fascinating, and I can't think of how much learning it must have taken to acquire them.

Chick-Lit/Lit-Fic Showdown

In this post from a couple of weeks back, I took offence at this kind of attempt to blur the chick-lit/lit fic divide. By all means chick lit deserves to thrive, but the divide is important, and essential. All lit is not created alike, said I, and when the plots of two books from different sides of the tracks are so similar, here is a chance to pinpoint what distinguishes a work of chick-lit from one of literary fiction. And I suspected the difference was language primarily, so I read both books to be sure.

The literary book was Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World, and I'm going to call the other book MVM. You can find the book's actual title by going back to my previous post, but I don't think it's fair for me to identify it and slag it off for being nothing more than what it purports to be-- chick-lit. Because the author of MVM makes no attempt to blur the lit divide. She publishes under an exclusively chick-lit imprint after all, and the genre seems to have been good to her.

Upon first glance MVM does bear a resemblance to The Post-Birthday World. In the first book, character G finds herself inhabiting two realities as she is unable to make the choice between marrying her boyfriend in Arizona, and pursuing her career in New York. Somehow she gets both options (through a wish upon a star, I believe), and hilarity ensues. In PBW, at the choice of to kiss another man or not to kiss, Irina's life splits in two and the reader follows each outcome in alternating chapters. As she is unaware of her dual realities, very little hilarity ensues, and as I wrote in my review post, what we have instead is an examination of intimacy, and the sombre reality that life is generally trying no matter which way you cut it.

I think it is unfair to compare MVM to PBW, but it wasn't my idea. And yes, my hypothesis that language is the great divide between these two novels is partially true. Partially, because that divide is a veritable grand canyon, but nonetheless. Lionel Shriver's book is a tad overwritten in places, and I did come away with a list of fourteen words I had to look up in the dictionary afterwards. Some of them were very good: post-prandial. Whereas in MVM the author does not rely so much upon words to emphasize ideas, but rather prefers to repeat phrases, in the manner of "He's funny. He's really really funny." Or preface unbelievable ideas with "Hello?", as in "The women make brunch while the men watch sports on TV. Hello, stereotype?" Which brings me to the question marks. Character G talks in permanent unspeak. Reading her first person narrative is sort of like eavesdropping upon the soliloquy of a rambling idiot.

There aren't a lot of metaphors in this book, but here's one: "I close my eyes, squeezing out the annoyance like that last drop of toothpaste". G is able to dismiss the challenges of her new life in New York with a simple "Whatever". She uses a similar ease to deal with the fact she is now inhabiting two alternate universes, consulting wikipedia to learn a bit about "quantum mechanics (whatever the hell that is)". She learns that there are many theories of alternate universes and therefore her own strange reality might have some precedent. She says, "You can't rule out something just because it can't be proven, can you? There are like a million religions and none of them can be proven!"

The PBW is quite unsentimentally full of sex, description and analysis, while MVM tends to gloss over it. I will give you a sex scene verbatim: "Afterward we go to bed and I seduce him immediately. 'That was fun,' he says afterward." Those two "afterwards" and an "immediately" in two sentences give you some sort of an idea of this books pacing, and the consideration allotted to its scenes. We have such devices as "As I sat waiting for my appointment, I thought about my entire life up till now just to get my reader up to speed without having to impart these details subtly". We learn what G's future mother-in-law thinks about her because the woman keeps expounding on G's flaws when G is standing just around the corner. We know the mother-in-law has bad taste because she is partial to orange. We know that characters are surprised when their jaws drop.

For the first two third of this book, I hated it, and I very nearly abandoned it except I thought maybe it got better. It didn't, really. I did like G's "psycho roomate" however, who was very funny, but hardly a developed character and her tricks wore thin eventually. I also liked the plot twist as G's maid-of-honour in one reality starts dating her ex-boyfriend in the other reality, and G's resentment bubbles into both worlds. However she only deals with this by ignoring her maid-of-honour altogether, which doesn't exactly make for compelling fiction. Oh, and the end? Hello, spoilers ahead! In the ends G learns that you can have it all and lives happily ever after. And (presumably) loses her best-friend/maid of honour.

This next paragraph would be diatribe on how truly crap is MVM, but I think I've made my point. PBW took me four days to read, and inspired me to think about the nature of choices, the possibility of destiny, different kinds of love and fulfillment, and what it means to share a life. I read MVM last evening and it made me depressed that such trite can pass for lit, chick or otherwise. As I said in my previous post, readers should demand better of themselves and their books.

Post-Birthday Republic

What a funny world books are, and what connections are made just by chance of choosing. I'm currently inhabiting a buzzy bliss coming off reading Carol Shields' The Republic of Love which was just absolutely extraordinary. The buzzy bliss of actually reading it was intoxicating. This was one of the many books I first read as a teenager when I was not altogether thoughtful, and when I encounter them now I'm not quite sure what it was about books I enjoyed then, seeing as I missed the point of everything. Anyway, it was strange to read The Republic of Love on the back of The Post-Birthday World. It never occured to me how compatible they'd be, or how much Carol Shields and Lionel Shriver actually have in common. Think about it: both transplanted Americans, dealing with various labels of "women's fiction", and though Shields' early career did come with some acclaim, both hit gold with their seventh novels. And The Post-Birthday World and The Republic of Love both consider those same quotidian details of intimacy and love. Women's sexual lives feature prominently; neither author shies away from salty language. (I had forgotten how raunchy Carol Shields could get). Both writers embed their characters in careers and interests which inform the novels with a non-fictional dose of fact. The characters themselves are those "ordinary people" which Barbara Amiel figured in a 1977 review of Shields' The Box Garden "will be the undoing of contemporary literature" (and thirty years later, I'd say undone looks pretty good). Lionel Shriver is often a difficult writer to know what to do with, but perhaps considering her in this light makes a great deal of sense.

We need to talk about...

Yea! My essay is finished and will be printed tonight and handed in tomorrow. And then there will be four homework free months ahead, to read, and write, and hang out with Stuart. We are celebrating by going to the Library Bar at the Royal York Friday for posh martinis. I am looking forward to this weekend. What else, lots of Toronto fun, food and adventure on account of Stuart's mum visit. We went to the zoo on Friday and it was wonderful. I liked the butterfly house, and a gorilla who climbed right up to the viewing window, sat down and stared right into my eyes. It was an incredibly moment, and a bit frightening, but quite profound. And then the gorilla defecated, which sort of put a stop to all that but still. I also liked the flamingos.

I am now reading The Female of the Species by Lionel Shriver, who wrote We Need to Talk About Kevin, which you might know was the best book I read in 2005. The Female of the Species is Shriver's first book (I think) and like all her books before Kevin, not altogether successful. It started slow, and I resisted it for a chapter or two. But now I am enveloped and can't wait to get to the end. I also read For the Time Being by Annie Dillard, which exists more to be read than to be explained. But what she does with form is really quite incredible, and it's chock-a-block with stuff that should be known. The Jewish mysticism threw me a little bit, but then again it usually does.

My friend Sarah is off on her Siberian Adventure. The website hasn't been updated for a few days, and according to it, they haven't left yet. How does one update a blog from the Trans-Siberian Railroad? They are travelling by land from Japan to London, and I can't wait to travel along as a vicariate. In other news, as you probably know, Jane Jacobs has died, which means it's about time I read The Death and Life of America's Great Cities- and so I will. Camilla Gibb takes the Trillium Prize for Sweetness in the Belly, which just might be my favourite book of 2006. The Spears/Federlines are pregnant again, well according to US, but it will be exciting for them to have another child around the house to neglect. Curtis Sittenfeld didn't make the Orange Prize shortlist, thank goodness. I'm awfully fond of The Accidental by Ali Smith, but I like Hilary Mantel and Zadie S. too. Exciting!

Am disturbed by Flight 93. I saw the preview in the theatre a few weeks back, and it was so profoundly upsetting. I can't imagine sitting through the whole film. And I disagree with the woman whose daughter died on the flight that "The public needs to know, they need to remember and know what the families have gone through". I am sorry, but I don't think they do. To many people this film might exist as a memorial of sorts, celluloid proof the people they loved died for a reason, but there is something terribly self-indulgent about that. A film like this exploits our society's preoccupation with outward acts of mourning and our yearning for communal experience and connection. But it is such a shallow connection. And no amount of reenactment will really allow us to comprehend what happened that day; only distance can possibly provide for that, and some perspective.

Collect

I enjoyed reading "An English Professor's Credo", the Victoria College Baccalaureate Address by my former professor C. Anderson Silber. A very odd but interesting article by Lionel Shriver, whose "We Need to Talk About Kevin" I finished this afternoon. Oh my, what a book. You wouldn't think a book that you know from the start winds up in a school massacre would be able to twist so far at the end, but it did. Lionel Shriver, politics aside, is an absolute genius. On the Things I Miss About Britain list is celebrity chefs; Zoe Williams skewers Nigella on the telly. Matt Seaton. who wrote a book about cycling that I actually enjoyed, recommends his ten best cycling books. I don't know if I'll go so far as to read them. AS Byatt on the still life as metaphor.

Have organised my photo albums, CDs, and am getting started on all the rest. We are streamlining my collection of collections. I had half a Dairy Queen Blizzard Yesterday for the first time in two years, and it was brilliant. We are going to Toronto from Thursday until Sunday. Canada is a very good place.

The only character who really gets to talk

(Via The Pop Triad) Lionel Shriver on quotation marks and why their absence is off-putting: "The appearance of authorial self-involvement in much modern literary fiction puts off what might otherwise comprise a larger audience. By stifling the action of speech, by burying characters' verbal conflicts within a blurred, all-encompassing über-voice, the author does not seem to believe in action -- and many readers are already frustrated with literary fiction's paucity of plot. When dialogue makes no sound, the only character who really gets to talk is the writer."

Making It Up

Time has been running away from me lately-- a symptom of June. I am now reading Lionel Shriver's Double Fault and loving it. It's my take-out book (paperback) whilst I'm reading A Memoir of Friendship, which is too big to carry around with me and really I'd just like to stay home until I finished it.

And last week I had the great pleasure of reading Penelope Lively's Making It Up. I've never read anything else like it, nor was I originally compelled by the premise, but I had to read it anyway because, after all, Penelope Lively is one of my favourites. And fail me she didn't-- she never has.

Billed as "an anti-memoir" in our very age of memoirs, and I loved that idea. Lively takes pivotal points in her life and contemplates could-have-beens. What if her family had escaped Egypt via another route, and gone down in a boat sunk by the Germans? What if she'd gotten pregnant at eighteen? What if she had emigrated to America? But I was concerned as to how this would function in practice; how could this stand up as a book beyond the novelty of it all? And really I just wanted to read a Penelope Lively novel. Why couldn't she just have written one?

But as I've already said, Penelope Lively is not in the business of disappointing. What the anti-memoir tag fails to convey is how truly "anti" these memoirs are; Lively herself is peripheral in most stories, absent from others, long dead in one. In fact this is more a collection of short stories, each with differerent characters, no continuity, and Lively herself as a character doesn't ever appear. She understands that different versions of herself along other roads would have been someone else altogether. And so she has invented these people, as well as the people surrounding them.

These fictions are build upon the very opposite of fact, and are therefore the ultimate feat of imagination. Conjuring notions of story, of fate, what we are constructed from and where we go, as well as being a solid collection of stories in their own right. And I loved them for that, and for everything. For their authenticity, and for Penelope Lively's nerve-- to tell stories-- which are more honest that any truth I've ever been told.

Woke up this morning feeling fine

Japan was in the news last week, mostly unfortunately through this murder which has been sensationalized by the red-tops in Britain. I appreciated measured responses to the hype here in The Guardian, and here inThe Times. (Judging from reader comments, clearly not everyone appreciated the first article as much as I did. The venom it unleashed was sort of baffling, but then a lot of people don't like to call racism by its name). More positively, Top Ten Books Set in Japan by Fiona Campbell who has just published Death of a Salaryman. (Incidentally, I've only read number 10 but plan to read Kitchen someday soon.)

Lionel Shriver happily reviews Nora Ephron. I want to read Julie Burchill's book on Brighton. Rounding up responses to Didion on stage. This review makes me so excited to read the new McEwan. I love this: Sunday Morning Music.

Now rereading The Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble, for kicks.

I've marked thirty essays, and as I've only done four and three today and yesterday, the weekend has contained some aspects of nice. Yesterday we partook in lattes over the paper in Kensington, and today we ate our delightful M&S Easter Treats from England. But otherwise, yes, not much has occurred. Life continues on hold. The notable event of the weekend continues to be that I brought a very large object into our home, oh and mustn't forget the startling revelation (to the sound of Herman's Hermits) that I dance like my dad.

Fun at the Guardians Books Blog, and elsewhere.

My favourite blog Maud Newton has had a makeover! Fun stuff at the GBB- is it wrong to throw old books away? I now make a point of pruning my shelves twice a year, and any books I don't love go to the Vic Book Sale or to someone I know who just might love it. In spite of this editing of my collection, the collection continues to grow but at a rate that is partially manageable (ie we only needed to get one new bookcase last year). On how to sell a book by its cover, namely call it after a penguin.? On favouritizing books, and oh I wouldn't know where to start. On poetry reading misgivings. Lionel Shriver comments. Honours for Bookstart, which is the organization in the world I most want to work for.

Prairie Fiction should come with a warning label

I had book trauma this weekend. I don't mean this lightly. As I have mentioned before, reading prairie fiction sends me into despair. Which I always forget about until I've nearly finished the book and am filled with deep sadness for the human condition. And I never stopped to think that Obasan is actually prairie fiction too, as well being, well, Obasan. Which, when read following my recent Burmese prison tale rendered the world pretty bleak. And the sky was the colour of paper, and I kept staring out the window pondering the meaning of it all. So in other words I was in dire need of a good slap, and around people far too kind to administer one. Luckily life got better.

First, I'm now reading Orphan Island by Rose Macaulay which is a delightful and interesting romp. You can read the 1925 review from Time Magazine here (ain't the tinternet grand?) I've not read Macaulay's novels before, though her Pleasure of Ruins is the most beautiful book I own, and I loved her essay on English "Catchwords and Claptrap" (which you can read here). I am reading this novel on the recommendation of Decca who acknowledged it in one of her letters as a favourite. It's simply lovely.

And next up is The Post Birthday World by Lionel Shriver (who I hope to go see read at Harbourfront next week).

Second, I watched Stranger Than Fiction last night, and I can't think of the last time I enjoyed a movie so much. And it's a bookish film, but I watched it with two boys who are a little less bookish than I, and they liked it as much as I did. I found it purely enjoyable from start to finish, I didn't get bored once, and part of the reason I was so engaged was I had no idea how the plot would sort itself out. But it did perfectly, and all of us were so engrossed in the story that when we feared one character would meet an untimely (or timely, in this case, I do suppose) demise, we were out of our minds with agony. And I like a movie that allows you to care so much. Lately we've renting movies last minute with little selection, and then yelling at the screen begging the characters to off themselves so we wouldn't have to watch them any longer. So it was very nice to feel differently, and of course the bookishness was ace. Six thumbs up.

The sky is still the colour of paper, but my outlook has greatly improved.

Go outside

Lionel Shriver, you are so famous these days! And I am rather pissed that when I went to see you a few weeks ago I only brought your new book to sign, and not your very first book which I own and, according to this profile, is worth a good sum. I find people who arrive at signings with stacks and stacks a bit obnoxious, but perhaps there is method? Our national paper shamed me with its lameness this weekend, although Rex Murphy's column was extraordinary. Celebrate Muriel Spark.

Now go outside.

Heft

To me, England is the land of books, and we came home with our carry-on full. From the bottom, shall we? The last three acquired at the airport Waterstones on 3 for 2, as we had pounds stirling to burn. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka, which I've been meaning to get to for two years now, and comes recommended by my sister in law. Stuart chose The Book of Dave by Will Self, and I imagine I shall read it too. And Ian McEwan's Atonement, because I've fallen in love with him and everyone says that this is the best.

Next we come to the 3 for 2s we got in Lancaster. Double Fault by Lionel Shriver who I adore. Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North by Stuart Maconie, because we're on our Northern kick. And So Many Ways to Begin by Jon McGregor, because I loved his last book, the reviews were great, and plus he lives in Nottingham.

Continuing on to my Persephone books, gifts from Bronwyn who must have read my mind. I got Hetty Dorval, the first novel by our very own Ethel Wilson. Also Kay Smallshaw's guide How to Run Your Home Without Help, which I suspect will mingle useful, hilarious, and relictness. And It's Hard to be Hip Over Thirty, poems by Judith Viorst (who wrote Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day).

Next we've got Making It Up by Penelope Lively, which was her newest book until quite recently, and I picked that one up in the Oxfam book shop in Lancaster. The last two books are also gifts from Bronwyn: How to be a Bad Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes, and more poetry with Mean Time by Carol Ann Duffy.

The shelves are bursting with delight.

Now reading

Now reading: Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, my April classic. Next up is Certainty by Madeleine Thien. And I'm looking forward to hearing Jacqueline Baker and Lionel Shriver read at Harbourfront on Wednesday.