Dooney'sWorld

Thursday Morning

The light on the river was so soft and pretty this morning, all purples and blues and soft pastels.  

 

An Elegy

 I've been sitting in the family room with Sam on my lap listening to music and knitting.   We were listening to Tchaikovsky's Trio in A Minor, op 50, from this collection of recordings by the Beaux Arts Trio.

There are a couple of mournful cello solos in the work, and each time one of these would begin, Sam would let out a deep sigh and slump against my leg, hanging his head over my knee.  I am not sure if cats respond to music, or if he was just responding to subtle movements I was making in response to the music, but it struck me as particularly poignant, in no small part because Sam was never been much of lap cat, much preferring to curl up with his sister Tori, who passed away last week.

While we listened to this rather brooding and incredibly lyrical (and incredibly difficult) work the fog over the river lifted and the sun came out, greeting us with promises of a bright sunny day.

More Books

I've done some reading:  

 Early this morning, I finished the last few pages of Kaylie Jones memoir, Lies my Mother Never told Me  which left me stunned.   

 

In fact, it took me a little while to warm up to the book and at one point I was wondering why I was reading as the early sections seemed to be in danger of becoming just another example of a “child of celebrity” writing about the dark underbelly of life with famous drunks.  It was not that it was badly written; Jones’ direct style and sometimes shockingly spare prose serves the material well.  The book is often moving and is filled with moments of humor even in the midst of madness and despair. 

 

But as the author slowly began to find her own self, her own voice, her own place in the world I became more and more wrapped up in the book.  As Kaylie begins to learn and accept that she is first the child of an alcoholic, and as she moves from this discovery onto the discovery that she herself is an alcoholic, she also learns that so much of what she has always known in life is shaped by this terrible childhood, or even in some ways this lack of having a complete childhood.  Ms. Jones is very good and delving into this aspect of her own awakening, explaining it and conveying it with a very real sense.  Her relationship to her alcoholic mother may be textbook, but even textbook cases are painful and often not recognized by those who are living them.  Kaylie Jones brings great humanity to her journey.  The journey is brutal and the story seems to be told with unflinching honesty. 

 

I think that although there is much here for any one who has grown up with an alcoholic parent, whatever the situation, this well-written, compellingly honest memoir also has much to offer any reader who is interested in trying to understand the difficulties faced by children of alcoholics, or in fact anyone whose childhood had profound impact on their ability to become their own “selves” in adulthood. 

 Then later this evening, I read John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which had been on and off my list for quite a while.  I actually have mixed feelings about this as a book for young readers as I tend to see this as an adult's book masquerading as a young-adult book.  This does not mean I think it is inappropriate, but I would think it would depend on the child and how it was presented, as well as how well it was supported. I certainly would have read it, and gotten a lot out of it, although also perhaps have found it quite upsetting.  (well that might apply now as well).  I definitely think this is a book for teens or adults, although I tend to think some adults would be put off my its apparent over-simplification of the characters and story, thereby missing an important point. 

The naivete of the protagonist, Bruno, does not bother me particularly, although I can see how some would find it off-putting, and I certainly cannot imagine such naivete in the nine-year-olds of my acquaintance.  And yet, I was far more naive at nine, than these children of today, and I do believe that is possible for priveleged and sheltered child of the time to be completely  unaware of the darker things happening in the world around him.  The extreme naivete of the protagonist is a very good tool here, silhouetting much in Bruno's life about which adults prefer to turn a blind eye.  

I can also understand how a child wold misunderstand and therefore mis-hear a word without understanding its background, coming up with "out-with" for Auschwitz.  Again I certainly remember words I mistook or misheard as a child, some of which I would be embarrassed to admit to now, no so much because I misheard, but because what I thought I did hear now seems stupid and naive to me.  

The author's use of the voice of an overly naive child to tell the story adds poignancy and by contrast adds a starkness to the setting of the camp and the prisoners. Episodes that are inexplicable to the narrator are all the more shocking  just because of this confusion and lack of understanding.  Without the extreme naivete of Bruno, and perhaps even of Schmuel, the friendship between the two boys could not have existed, and the tragedy of the ending would be far less profound.

For all that Bruno was incredibly naive, his story points to the much wider questions surrounding the Holocaust, and how millions of adults could, and still do, turn a blind eye to what is going on right next door.

Now perhaps I should move on to some reading in an entirely different vein, something less likely to keep me awake pondering the vicissitudes of human nature.

Year End/Year Beginning: Two novels

I have closed the old year and opened the new year by lying around surrounded by blankets and cats, reading, knitting, and napping.  I have been actually working on two novels more or less simultaneously.  The second one begun was the first one finished, mostly because it was more frivolous and required substantially less attention,  all a boon when suffering from a major head cold.

On New Year's Eve I finished Barbara Taylor Bradford's Voice of the Heart.  I admit I enjoyed reading it.  There are times when a sappy romance just hits the spot, but in truth it has not settled particularly well, like a sickly sweet dessert that seems enticing at the time and later leads one to wonder what possessed one to overindulge.  Yes, it was heartwarming in the end.  But the characters were never particularly well developed, the story occasionally jumped from event to event in a rather awkward manner and Ms Bradford did not necessarily transition well.  It goes down well if you don't ask much of it, but if you want a dessert to really tantalize the senses, this was not the one.

Today I finished Stuart Neville's The Ghosts of Belfast,  I actually "read" this book as an audiobook, and it is one book that I believe was well served by this medium.  The narrator, Gerald Doyle really captured the Irish and the sense of the people and place, rendering it much more fully than I believe I would have experienced by reading the book.  Of course this may not be true, but ti sounds good to me right now.

Of course this book was also much better than the Bradford novel.  The author manages to make the story plausible even though the premise seems implausible -- an Irish killer haunted by the ghosts of the innocents he has killed.  The characterizations are full and the sense of the people and the place is well rendered, and this is brought home by hearing the irish brogue of the narrator.  Of course the narration is not enough to make up for a poorly written story.  These were people you could imagine, although they were not, for the most part people you would want to know.   The protagonist is a nasty piece of work but we slowly gain respect for him as we watch him slowly come to terms with his past and his own responsibility for it.  This is more than a simple story of revenge.  It is the story of how one man comes to terms with his own guilt, his responsibility for what he has done and his eventual redemption, set in a world where many are willing to sacrifice others for their own advancement without any recognition of their own culpability. 

This was a violent, harsh, nasty novel which is not for those of tender sentiments but it was also a gripping, thought-provoking story, reasonably well rendered.