Why Are We Like This?

Another recommendation via the Radio National book countdown -- Robin Williams, the long time host of The Science Show, which I've been listening to on a Saturday morning for as long as I can remember, suggested Why Are We Like This? by Zoe Kean, who has worked as a science journalist with the ABC, so there might be a touch of nepotism here! I do enjoy a spot of popular science, and Kean writes in a clear, lively style that meant that I understood almost all the science she was explaining.

Why Are We Like This? poses some big questions about human behaviour and genetic heritage: why do we have sex? Why do we sleep? Why do we age? and more, and takes an evolutionary approach to nutting out the answers. Not all these questions are solved, and Kean does a great job of setting out the various scientific debates, as well as honestly letting us know her own opinion. It shows science as an area of energetic but respectful conflict, motivated by curiosity and the advance of knowledge, which is something unspeakably valuable in these times where science is being ruthlessly devalued and misunderstood. We need many more books like these and many more writers like Zoe Kean who can help dumdums like me grope towards a rough comprehension of what science does, as well as its hard-won conclusions.
 

Bel Canto

Ann Patchett's 2001 Bel Canto came onto my radar through the Radio National Top 100 Books of the 21st century; it ended up at number 64, but the description of the story made it sound a lot more interesting and quite different from what I'd expected. 

This is a juicy, layered, rewarding novel. In an unnamed South American country, guerilla fighters storm an event at the Vice Presidential mansion and take hostage all the party guests -- most of the women and all the staff are then released, apart from the famous American opera singer Roxane Coss. Because the guests are from a variety of countries, everyone relies heavily on the Japanese translator, Gen. It turns out that the guerilla soldiers are mostly teenagers, with a couple of girls among them, including the very beautiful Carmen. Inevitably, as days of captivity turn into months, bonds start to form across the divide between the guerillas and their prisoners, and Roxane's music binds them together into a kind of dreamy trance-world. Of course the ending, when it comes, is shattering.

I don't think I've read any of Ann Patchett's novels before, but now I understand why she is such a popular and respected writer. At least in Bel Canto, she treads the line between literary and popular fiction perfectly.
 

Charlotte Sometimes

I was so riled up by Ian McEwan's dismissal of children's books as not proper literature that I pulled out an old favourite to see if it would stand up to scrutiny. Penelope Farmer's 1969 masterpiece, Charlotte Sometimes, is less than 200 pages long, and yet it packs a punch more powerful than some novels twice the length. Every time I read it, it seems darker: the dank November weather, the austere boarding school corridors, the grieving Chisel Brown family in their cold dark house, in mourning for their soldier son, the neglected Japanese garden -- it all adds up to an eerie, haunting story, quite apart from the creepiness and gnawing anxiety of Charlotte's helpless swap with Clare from 1918.

Charlotte Sometimes is an evocative exploration of identity, fragmentation and fate. In some ways, it's a very small story -- at first, only Charlotte and Clare are aware of what's happened to them as they mysteriously swap places, though later Clare's sister Emily and Charlotte's friend Elizabeth also learn the secret. The sinking horror when Charlotte realises that she is trapped in the past, because of adult whims, and her utter helplessness to change the fact, is genuinely terrifying. Not much happens: Charlotte and Emily try unsuccessfully to get Charlotte into the magical bed one night, they gatecrash the Chisel Brown's seance, they are caught up in street celebrations at the end of the war -- but none of these events directly change the narrative. By denying agency to the protagonist, Charlotte Sometimes seems to break every rule of writing for children; perhaps this is what makes it stand out as genuine literature!

One of the absolute classics of the time-slip tradition, Charlotte Sometimes remains as vivid and disturbing as ever.
 

The Daydreamer

 

Take a look at this cover. What kind of book do you think this is? A horror novel? Some kind of weird erotic adult furry fantasy? No, it's a children's book. I'm pleased to note that later editions dial back the weird and have much more appealing, kid-friendly covers, so someone eventually realised this one was doing them no favours, with the intended readers at least, though I could see Ian McEwan's adult fans picking it up.

I must confess that I did not greet The Daydreamer in the right spirit. For a start, the first sixteen pages are printed twice -- okay, not McEwan's fault, but it's sloppy (I expect better from Vintage). But then, get this -- from the Preface:

We all love the idea of bedtime stories... But do adults really like children's literature? I've always thought the enthusiasm was a little overstated, even desperate... Do we really mean it, do we really still enjoy them, or are we speaking up for, and keeping the lines open to, our lost, nearly forgotten selves? ... What we like about children's books is our children's pleasure in them, and this is less to do with literature and more to do with love.  

Well, I respectfully disagree, Ian. And how is the gall of the man, to say this with such confident authority, in the preface of a book written for children? He may as well say, kids' book are crap, here's a crap book I've written, hope you like it. It all reinforces my view that this first edition at least, was pitched  squarely at adult readers of McEwan, not children themselves.

The Daydreamer is not bad. Peter has an active imagination and he finds himself caught up in all sorts of hypothetical situations. Three of the seven stories involve body swaps: with a cat, a baby and an adult. In other adventures, he makes his family disappear with vanishing cream, tricks a burglar and defeats a school bully (using cruelty rather than violence -- though he feels bad about it afterwards). Because this is Ian McEwan, there is a definite creepy undertone to some of the stories, especially the one where his sister's dolls come to life. But the final story, where Peter finds himself suddenly grown up and in love, doesn't seem aimed at children but at nostalgic adults, and I suspect the whole book was really written from this point of view.

 

Not Just a Witch and Dial a Ghost

I've now read almost all of Eva Ibbotson's novels for adults, but not so many of her books aimed for children. I found these two in one volume in a secondhand shop. Not Just a Witch was first published in 1989, Dial a Ghost in 1996, but they are both the kind of timeless, old-fashioned middle grade story that retain a lot of, as the kids say now, 'charm.'

There's a satisfying (but not too graphic) amount of gore and creepiness in both these novels, and child protagonists are firmly to the fore. Not Just a Witch centres on two witches, one who can turn people into animals, another who can turn people in to stone, and their child friends who foil a dastardly plot to take advantage of them both. Dial a Ghost features a friendly family of phantoms, an orphaned heir, a ghost and haunting matchmaking agency, and two pairs of obnoxious villains (one alive and one dead). Both novels would make great bedtime read-alouds for a child with a sense of humour and an appreciation of the macabre -- maybe not one who's susceptible to nightmares!