Thus Far and No Further

This was a treat for myself and to plug a gap in my Rumer Godden collection. It was first published in 1946v as Rungli-Rungliot, then reissued in this edition under the title Thus Far and No Further in 1961. This is another book adapted from a diary. Godden and her two young daughters (plus various staff and servants, some who travelled with them and some who were acquired on the spot) spent only a few months in this isolated house on a tea plantation in Kashmir, but though their stay was brief, it made an indelible impression.

The events of their time in Kashmir also formed the basis for Godden's later novel, Kingfishers Catch Fire, but there is no whisper of that drama in these pages (one of their servants apparently tried to poison the family with ground glass). Instead, the focus is on the utter physical beauty of the mountains, the quiet serenity of their lives there, Godden's gradual calming after a turbulent period in her life. It's a very meditative book, short passages, sometimes no more than a sentence or two, or a brief snatch of dialogue. Godden reflected that this time was valuable in truly getting to know her children, and 'Rafael' and 'Sabrina' emerge as vibrant characters.

Godden returned again and again to this precious, brief time in her writing; it was obviously both a golden period of joy and beauty, and a harrowing crisis. Though she doesn't talk about the bad side, that emotional intensity colours Thus Far and No Further.
 

What The Dog Saw

Picked up from a local street library, What the Dog Saw is a collection of articles and essays published in 2009. For a few years I've been a fan of Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, Revisionist History, and the pieces in this volume are very similar in style -- I can hear Gladwell's voice in my inner ear while I'm reading.

Gladwell says he wants to provoke and challenge his readers (and now his listeners, presumably) to think about aspects of the world in a new way, and something from this broad range of topics will surely needle any given reader. The pieces here discuss everything from the seemingly trivial (why is it so hard to market different kinds of ketchup while many different styles of mustard flourish?) to the socially important (if it's actually easier, and cheaper, to solve the problem of homelessness by giving homeless people somewhere to live, why don't we do that?). I was slightly appalled to read Gladwell's efficient demolition of FBI crime profiling (nooo, Malcolm, don't tell me that Mindhunter is garbage!) and fascinated by his account of the way the contraceptive pill was developed to seem more 'natural' (to get the approval of the Catholic Church) when in fact it's not 'natural' at all to expect a modern woman to endure hundreds of periods over her lifetime.

The difference between panicking and choking; the evolution in strategies for selling hair dye to women (especially interesting if you happen to be re-watching Mad Men at the moment); the secrets of dog training; the flaws of the job interview system -- there is something here to amuse, puzzle and yes, challenge, every reader.