Hilly Ground

Ooooh, joy unbounded.

Have finally got my greasy mitts on a copy of the new Susan Hill and I’m delighted with life.

Well, I got my mitts on it the day it came out but I had three essays due that week. So it’s taken me a few days to get around to it; I didn’t want to rush it, see.

Susan Hill, as you may have guessed, is one of my all-time favourite writers. The last couple of weeks have been excellent for anybody who is similarly inclined, with the release of a paperback edition of The Shadows in The Street, a collectors edition copy of The Woman in Black, and the aforementioned new novel, the sixth in her Simon Serailler series.  These are seriously popular novels, which heartens me because they’re not your average whodunit. There’s more of a literary fiction vibe about the series, but not in a scary way; think Kate Atkinson and her Jackson Brodie novels and you have the right idea.

Anyway, The Betrayal of Trust opens with massive flooding in the south of England, which causes a landslip that exposes some skeletal human remains. These remains are likely those of the daughter of a lord and lady who disappeared some fifteen years prior. Our hero is no faced with a cold case, in a police department plagued by cutbacks and dwindling resources. There’s also a secondary storyline about assisted suicide that I imagine will raise some debate; it’s not an area that people seem to be very comfortable with, but Hill tackles it with her usual skill and a sense of firmness that I quite liked. There’s also an economy of prose to the book; what other writers say in fifteen words, Hill will say in five. Five decent, fleshy words with not a wasted apostrophe. I approve heartily of this skill in a novelist. There aren’t many writers out there who can write so sparsely but so well.

If you haven’t read any of this series yet, I’d go out and get the first one, The Various Haunts of Men post haste. They are proper winter books for long nights in with the central heating on full blast and a nice glass of red wine. The new book is a solid eight out of ten-not the best in the series but still a damn good read.

War on Waste

Very productive reading day.

In between the Irish financial crisis and Judith Butler at college, and some stupid event for shmoozers at work, I got through the whole of The Waste Land, and Tomorrow When The War Began, by John Marsden.

The Waste Land I shall skip. I will not pretend to even have the faintest idea what’s going on in it, and I’ve read it about ten times. But then my lecturer hasn’t a cue either, so I’m okay with that.

Obviously I missed something fairly major as far as TWTWB is concerned, because until I watched the film with my little brothers I’d never heard of it. Apparently though, according to Google, this book is a very big deal. It’s a recommended secondary school text in countries the world over and in Sweden it was doled out to every schoolchild of appropriate age in an attempt to promote literacy.

God, in my school they just gave us fifty pence book vouchers.

Anyway, in its’ native Australia this book is like, I don’t know, Goodnight Mister Tom, or Under the Hawthorn Tree if you went to school in Ireland. It’s a rite of passage type of affair.

And deservedly so I reckon. The book is pacy, believable and boasts a likeable narrator in Ellie, our eye on the world.  The plot concerns a group of Aussie teens who head into the bush for an end-of-summer camp out (which is soooo what I did with my mates at school) only for the country to be invaded by unnamed forces while they’re off cosseted in the wilderness. The novel then becomes an account of the friends’ attempt to win back the freedom of their homeland, as well as their fight to stay alive.

The book is the first in a series of seven, the second of which is due to be reprinted in January-the books first appeared in the nineties and are widely out of print in the UK and Ireland now, which is a pity; I’m actually quite excited to read part two. The film adaption is also quite good if you’re not feeling up to a whole novel this late in the week.

In other news, I'm waiting to get my paws on Susan Hills' The Betrayal of Trust, which is out this week. I'm really looking forward to this, so stay tuned for a review early next week.

Sex-y Time

How did I not know about Barbara Trapido? How?

I blame my parents. They're heathens who think that the daily tabloids constitute a proper reading diet. I mean, I didn't discover Susan Hill until I got access to the internet, so I'm fighting a losing battle, but even so; Barbara Trapido is so amazing that I can't believe I've only just found her.

It all started last Monday. I was hiding out in the conveniently located Uni bookshop, watching out the window for signs of an approaching bus, when my gaze happened upon this pretty little book with ballet shoes on the cover.

Now, I have a serious weakness for ballet. I spent much of my adolescence badgering my mam for lessons, only to be told that she didn't think ballet was for me. This was perfectly sensible of my mother. I am Irish, which means I am part potato; there was no way I would ever be able to pirouette and not shame myself. Still, when I saw those magic shoes on the cover of Sex and Stravinsky I felt, just for a minute, the wistful yearnings of my childhood.

Naturally, I bought the book.

I took it home and under the guise of 'doing up my notes on TS Eliot' I read the thing cover-to-cover in one sitting. And guess what? One of the characters is a little girl who wants to do ballet and her mam won't let her! I admit it, I wept a little bit.

The book-child, Zoe, is much more proactive than me though. She gets herself a ballet instruction manual from the library and teaches herself the basics in the hope that her mother will relent. I never did this; I used to just throw myself on the sofa and have hissy fits before storming off to re-read Ballet Shoes.

Of course, the book is about alot more than just wanting to do ballet. There's partner swapping, a really sad story of an arranged marriage, the most loathsome mother to ever grace the pages of a novel and an amazing Amazon called Caroline.

I finished it in a blur of excitement and immediately acquired Frankie and Stankie and Brother of the More Famous Jack (which induced similar fits of glee).

I can't believe I haven't been reading Barbara all my life.

Seriously though-read Sex and Stravinsky. It's properly good and it's going in the 'for keeps' stack.

Why? Why?!

I don't understand why the University is doing this to me.

The addition of a second hand bookshop to the Student Union is bad. Very bad.

I’ll concede to some redeeming features. Firstly, some of the texts are extortionate if you buy them new-and here I point the finger at the Geography textbook that cost me the best part of one hundred squids in First Year (I was young, new and naïve. How I’ve learned). Plus, for the people on Educational grants, the sundries allowance has been slashed this year, so make your savings where you can.

Secondly, it looks like a good spot to pick up secondary reading material, which the lovely old lecturers mention is passing and then put on exam papers, just ‘cause they can. They don’t always have the recommended texts in the ‘real’ bookshop, and the last time someone ordered one in, they had three kids and a mortgage before the thing arrived. Thus, I’m happy to let someone else do the initial buying, and then pass it on cheaply when they are done and I am in need.

Downside?? I already spend the equivalent of the national debt of small European nations on books. I don’t need any more. If I didn’t buy another book until next October, I’d still have plenty to keep me going. And then some. So I went in to this new musty bookshop today, making a solemn vow to myself that I WOULD NOT BUY ANYTHING.

Fittingly I emerged ten minutes later with two Marina Warner paperbacks and a new pen.

Sigh. My book buying is a standing joke with everyone I know. My parents keep threatening to throw me out because my collection has spilled over the boundaries of my (tiny) bedroom and expanded onto the landing. The girls in work at the weekend use me as a library (only they never seem to remember that you’re supposed to give the books back). My grandmother just takes paperbacks unashamedly from the stack beside my bed, safe in the knowledge that, due to sheer volume, they will not be missed. We once had a book related accident, where my bookcase collapsed (I think it was the addition of Richardsons' Clarissa that did it) and I was buried in an avalanche of paperbacks.

This brings me to Kittys’ Bookshelf, where I intend to share with the whole internet (rofl) what I am reading at the moment. This is purely self indulgent, yes, but hopefully we will all learn something.

See you back here soon for the first proper instalment.