Posts tagged with “Costa Book Awards”

16 January

The Secret Scriptures

07:44 AM
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One could be forgiven for thinking that this book might fall into the Dan Brown/Da Vinci code “genre” to go by the title, but you’d be wrong.  There is a narrative device of two journals which alternate and one of these is necessarily hidden away and secret.  Perhaps secret is the wrong word, but there is a big “secret” which is only revealed towards the end of the book.  It is hard for me to talk about plot specifics without revealing this secret without “spoiling” the plot.

I was really quite taken with the way this book covers the sweep of an entire century, yet does so in a very engaging way by literally covering the life story of a woman from the last century to this.  All this in the context of Ireland.  There always seem to be questions I am left asking myself after reading a book, and I think the more of them I have usually is a pretty reliable indicator as to how good the book is or at least how much it engaged me.

For this book one question was if Sebastian Barry were Irish and another was whether he started the book with the ending in mind and some sort of plot outline.  For the former a quick google has revealed that he was Dublin born and is indeed Irish, as I expected since the book is immersed in Irish culture and history which was one of the reasons I so enjoyed it.  This also enabled me to learn a lot of history and background both of the troubles and of the recent revelations of abuse cases endemic in Ireland and a few other island nations (such as the island of Jersey where a residential childrens’ facility apparently had many many historic abuse cases).

As to where he started his planning of the book - well Google is less revealing of course and we can likely only speculate.

But this does lead me to the last thing I am curious about, which is how many readers are surprised by the final “twist” to the plot.  As the interleaving narratives progress we are left wondering if they will overlap in any other way than their perspectives on Roseanne’s life (it is told in the first person from the beginning and in third person from the end).  The third person is not the narrator per se, but another character in the book.  I found this plot device immensely satisfying and it gave Mr Barry a lot of opportunity to show what a fine writer he is.

To conclude - thoroughly recommended!  And please please do leave a comment to let me know if you were totally surprised as you finished the book or if you, like me, had intimations as to what was to be revealed before it was!

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2 February

The Tenderness of Wolves

03:57 PM
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wolf-photo.jpg

I remembered this book today, which I read not long after it’s initial publication.  This is a credit to a book for me, because there must be many books I could not and would not wish to remember particularly and worse yet some I wish I could forget!  (Mark Haddon’s follow-up to his hit publication being a case in point).

The remarkable thing about Stef Penney’s book as it was presented at the time was that it had been written and entirely set in the frozen wastes of Canada during the early days of settlement (nineteenth century) and yet Ms Penny had never set foot in Canada, her only experiece of any snowbound wilderness being confined to her native Scotland (and she was a city dweller from Edinburgh at that).  I think the media unkindly fixated on this because she suffered agrophobia and limited all her research to libraries.  The book won the Costa prize in 2006.  During that year I was profoundly in love with a Canadian woman who shared my love of books.  I knew I would read this book, though I had no idea she was to jilt me not long after to my great shock and hurt.

I clearly remember mentioning at book group when I finally did read this book (in 2007, I think) that I could see this novel set as a film script, so it has not suprised me to discover that Stef Penney has also done some work as a film maker, she obviously has a filmic eye when writing, and I think it does her credit that this shines through.  The portrayal of the Hudson Bay Trading Company is interesting and not something that had occurred to me.  I liked the interplay of characters, particularly our heroine and the native, Parker.  Some of the others struck me as a pain in the fundament, particularly the two sisters, one of whom has the awful fate to become a “cat woman”!  The portrayal of the “love that dare not speak it’s name” was well done, I thought.  I found the protagonist a great example of a positive model in post-feminist times, even if she does seem to do some extremely dumb things as the adventure side of the novel unfolds (I seem to remember her getting lost in the snow AND allowing her feet to get wet!).

I thought I would post a belated and somewhat abbreviated set of notes on my recollections of this book in view of the weather - the Hamish Henderson post will come in the end!

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