Quest.

Oh, you Pretty.

I had very much planned for this visit during my time in Chicago.
First glimpse giddy.

Some online reading prior had made me realise I wouldn't get so lucky as to be in town on a regular day, complete with library tour as a book fair was scheduled but still... a fair & proper way to enjoy a library nonetheless.

Hence this fan girl left happy after time amongst the stacks.

Right proper placement amongst the stalls  ღ

[Thank you Niffenegger!]

_____________

On so many levels. 
I drafted this poem's finer details into a letter
but didn't keep stock of those for myself.

Spring Stack || Books About Books

May — June  
Dear Fahrenheit 451 | Annie Spence

Another, possibly now the last, of the books first spotted in Ripon. I came recently to have a look for a second-hand copy & then thought to check the library first. It makes good sense to be reading a book about library reads having borrowed it from a library after all.

   I'd spent a few sleepless mornings back in the pages of my beloved 'Time Traveler's Wife, having read an article on the new HBO series.

  (NB: Not that I'll be going there with the tv series, having not ventured there when the film was released either. I want my Henry and my Claire to stay uninterpreted & unblemished, without any visuals when it comes to encountering them, time after time.)

From the stacks at the Newberry direct to these - and right back again with 'Finchy' & TTTW both featuring in Spence's top reads.

 

 

 Big Stone Gap Series - 

She was crouched on a stool next to your shelf. She had obviously been browsing and been so taken with you she couldn't stop reading. I knew because she had The Look on her face: the Look people get when their brains are so engrossed that they don't care ... Because they're not out in public anymore, they're in whatever world they're reading about. It's beautiful. [30-31]

Killing - 

We can't open ourselves up to that kind of chaos in the stacks. Next thing you know we're alphabetizing the entire collection by title ... [45]   

(God bless Dewey Decimal.)

Easy Rawlins - 

God, I love wandering down dicey alleys with you, roughing up people if they need it, experiencing two decades of Los Angeles, the '40s through the '60s.. Cruising down the strip when I should be in bed with nothing but my favorite PI, Easy & the desert air on my face. But seriously, I should be in bed. I have to be up by six tomorrow. [46]

Future Book Collection -

For now, you'll have to exist in my mind alone. But I've got you all figured out: a room big enough for all of you to fit but small enough to feel cozy & hidden from the rest of the world. Leather couches that are also comfortable, piled with ratty homemade blankets   [...]    A locked door will lead into the room. This will be essential. There will be a doorbell; however, entry is denied unless visitor-candidates answer a series of question posed  [...]  

Once the riffraff is sorted through, serious visitors will only be allowed inside if they agree to speak only about books   [...]   I'll also have a Reading Room Wardrobe, full of clothing Anjelica Houston would wear, which is to say something dramatic & stylish that says "I'm not fucking around." Drapey shit. Lots of otherwise beautiful pieces marred with cigarette burns. Sinister hats. That kind of thing.

But, I mean, obviously, it'll all be about you - the books. You'll all be wrapped in thick pastel marbleized paper, with your titles and authors embossed in gold lettering on the spine. ...  You'll be placed on shelves and in artfully haphazard piles around the room.  [168-9]

.  .  .  .  .

Dear Fahrenheit 451

I'm really glad we met. Reading you has helped kick off my holiday in a most relaxing manner, even reading you in the bath. (I'm so glad you've got that reassuringly waterproof cover.)  I'm enjoying meeting the different books mentioned in you & I'm glad to see we've got a few favourites in common. 

You're certainly making me laugh out loud (Fancy Bookshelf drunken antics!) as well as appreciating having a library service more than ever. It's pretty sweet that because of you I got to visit the one in Didsbury for the first time. 

Thanks for keeping me company over this last week or two. I'd definitely file you in the Fuck It, I'm Just Going To Read Instead of Do What I Need To Do Today section.

Best wishes, 

NW

PS: About that question you posed of keeping notes "& now you have a gabazillion books on your list?" [240]   Aye...  Thanks for that: my MCC Saved List is now even longer & where that stops short, my eBay watch list picks up the slack. That's another couple of months sorted then.   

Spence, Annie. Dear Fahrenheit 451. Icon Books: London, 2019.

____________

April — May

Virginia Woolf at Home | Hilary Macaskill

Another gem spotted in Ripon...  If I hold a sheepish, as opposed to a properly a Woolfish, hand up from having watched The Hours a time or two too many, I must admit I hadn't realised how much Virginia had moved around or changed homes beyond the slightly seismic shift from London to Richmond.

 I enjoyed the insight it gave; learning how much stock was set by regular reading as much as time spent writing; marrying up which books were written in which particular eras & respective house & home of the time.

Tactics around the writing of Flush: 

-- 'she continued to work on it as light relief from the early emergence of her next book, already brewing, already agonising' [135]

&,

-- The Years.. took four years. At her best, she was simply frustrated & longed to be rid of it, to get onto her next project... [135]

... I've certainly been there: desiring to swap to something a little friendlier & a less little foreboding, ready for a change & a chance to Move On.

- Knole again, mentioned - 'the extraordinary mansion that held such sway over Vita', with a glorious double-page illustration that helped me appreciate its magnificent self.

- My laugh out loud moment of houses for sale (inflation overlooked but): 

-- 'And it was cheap, just £300 for the freehold' 

-- 'they made the successful bid, obtaining it for just £700 ... 

on 16 July, they sold the Round House - .. a profit of £20.'

Ach. Ah well.  Interesting too to learn of Woolf's own interest in furnishings & textiles - supporting her sister & Duncan through the purchase or commission of artworks - as well as her bread baking.  :)  Plus Leonard's thoughts - linking in with house as character - the inherited history of a place & what would be their eventual final home together at Monk's House, with books piled high & overflowing from room to room.

Macaskill, Hilary. Virginia Woolf at Home. Pimpernel Press Ltd, 2019.

____________

March — April

Novel Houses: Twenty Famous Fictional Dwellings | Christina Hardyment

There's been a lot of houses with character recently. My reading of this happened to coincide with both a staged version of The House With Chicken Legs & a first viewing of Encanto.

I found the provided Context helpful in Hardyment's desire 

To prompt memories and tempt new readers, I sketch plots, always emphasizing settings. I also explore the lives of the authors in order to establish why they were inspired to create such dwellings.

I enjoyed re-visiting familiar houses & homes I'd known from fiction:  
Castle of Otranto / 221B Baker Street / Knole, Orlando / The Sorceror's Tower - I Capture The Castle / Uncle Tom's Cabin / Manderley, Rebecca / Cold Comfort Farm / Howards End / Wuthering Heights  

Kinship too due to Hardyment's understanding as to 'literary geography' linked to the delight I'd had a young reader. Seeing the village maps of Fern Hollow or Milly Molly Mandy as well as domestic interiors displayed in each book of The Secret Book of the Gnomes series. 

Spring Stack || DLW.

It took a while for this book to take hold & it seems now, in retrospect, I'm not alone in this. That said, I came to absolutely love it & - yes - I'd been in tears more than once by the end.

I had come across an advertisement for the novel, was struck by its name - read a brief synopsis & looked it up at the library. A popular choice; I had to wait for my reservation to take hold.

.  .  .  .

'PART ONE: Batten - Distrustful'
The jump from Esme's schooldays back to the grounds of the Scriptorium jarred & I wasn't sure why Williams was glossing over that part of events.  We'd been with Esme each step prior so it seemed odd to have that era of her life so closed off.  I suppose, for Williams as much as us readers, the drama was centred around the Scriptorium & in this respect, Scotland was now a closed book. 

But as Esme's involvement in being hands-on in the Scriptorium developed so too grew a rich array of new characters around her & with them, greater plot development.
Tilda and Bill and the stage for starters: 

   ‘I have ten minutes’, I said. ‘I wanted to see them in their costumes.'
   It was a dress rehearsal. Opening night was just three days away.
   ‘Why do you come every day?’ asked Bill.
   I had to think. ‘It’s about seeing something before it’s fully formed.

Watching it evolve. I imagine sitting here on opening night and
appreciating every scene all the more because I understand what has
led to it.’
   Bill laughed.
   ‘What’s so funny?’
   ‘Nothing. It’s just that you don’t speak often, but when you do it’s perfect.’
   I looked down and rubbed my hands together.
   ‘And I love that you never talk about hats’, Bill said.  [149]

.  .  .  .

‘But I’m not going to get married. 'Well, not right away.' 'If I get married, I can’t be an assistant', I said. 'What makes you think that?' 'Because I’ll have to look after babies and cook all day.' Da was silenced. He looked Mr Sweatman for some support. 'If you’re not going to get married, then why not aim to become an editor?' Mr Sweatman asked. 'I’m a girl', I said, annoyed at his teasing. 'Should that matter?' I blushed and didn’t answer. Mr Sweatman cocked his head and raised his eyebrows as if to say, 'Well?' ‘Quite right, Fred’, said Da … [85]

.  .  .  .  

It was a surrender, but not to him. Like an alchemist, Bill had turned Mabel's vulgarities & Tilda's practicalities into something beautiful. I was grateful, but I was not in love. It was Tilda I missed the most; her absence that left a misboding sorrow. She had ideas I wanted to understand and she said things I could not. She cared more for what mattered and less for what didn’t. When I was with her I felt I might do something extraordinary. With her gone, I feared I never would. [175]

 .  .  .  .  

'I don’t love him, though. And I don’t want to be married.' She stiffened slightly, and I felt her take a breath. Then she pulled a chair close to mine and sat opposite, our hands clasped. 'Every woman wants to be married, Essymay.' 'If that’s true, then why is Ditte not married, or her sister? Why not Elsie or Rosfrith or Eleanor Bradley? Why not you?' 'Not all women get the chance. And some… well, some have so many books and too many ideas and they can’t settle to it.' 'I don’t think I could settle to it, Lizzie.' 'You'd get used to it.' 'But I don’t want to get used to it.' 'What do you want?' 'I want things to stay as they are. I want to keep sorting words and understand what they mean. I want to get better at it and to be given more responsibility, and want to keep earning my own money. I feel as though I’ve only begun to understand who I am. Being a wife or a mother just doesn’t fit.' It all came out in a rush and ended in sobbing. [187-8]

 .  .  .  .  

The Old Ashmolean was as grand as the Scriptorium was humble. It was stone instead of tin, and the entrance was flanked by the busts of men who had achieved something – I don’t know what.

(This part made me laugh out loud. 

- Quite.) 

When I'd first seen them, I'd felt small and out of place, but after a while they encouraged me a defiant ambition, and I'd imagined walking into that place and taking my seat at the Editor’s desk. But if women could be barred from a public budget meeting, I had no right to that ambition.

I thought about Tilda, her hunger for the fight. And I thought about the women who had gone to gaol. Can I starve myself? I wondered. If I thought it would help me become an editor? [259]

 .  .  .  .  

Bondmaid. It came back to me then, and I realised the words most often used to define us are the words that described our function in relation to others. Even the most benign words – maiden, wife, mother – told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of Mrs, of whore, of common scold? [266]

I did so want for Esme to become an editor. Not knowing the history of the OED, I held out hope a fair while. That said, perhaps the care & love which went into creating the dictionary (best engagement ring alternative ever) & the deliciousness of it joining the shelves with the other works...  That's not a bad shot. 

Other elements I loved: 

On names & naming 
(that very Winterson bend & bias of mine): 

- from being the man with the violet eyes to becoming Gareth: friend, suitor, husband
- the significance of the shift from being 'Mrs Lloyd' to Lizzie then adopting first name terms , in friendship, for each other
- Gareth's acknowledgment that Essymay, Lizzie's given nickname, is not his to use
- how Esme's daughter remains Her even after we learn her name

- Words & language:
Bertie at the Radcliffe; Esperanto returned, with purpose.

- Characters & Class:
Female friendship ~ Lizzie, Ditte, Beth.
Meeting Mabel in the Covered Market.

- Historical landscape:
how Williams locates her narrative within the greater evolving narrative of WW1.

_________

To Read:  Lynda Mugglestone - Lost for Words
                   Peter Gilliver - The Making of the OED

_________

I found the slips for bondmaid: that beautiful troubling word ...

But there was no sign of top-slip.. - it really had been lost. [407]

I know I'll definitely return to this read again in the future. The characters lived on inside of me for days after finishing.

Brilliant, beautiful, powerful book.

Williams, Pip. The Dictionary of Lost Words. Penguin Random House: UK, 2021

'Sourdough' | Autumn '21

I started Robin Sloan's Sourdough on completion of another book & (having pulled myself through that one’s pages), just a page or two into this, I found I could exhale. Well-written & engaging; what a treat. A friend of mine, knowing me to be a baker, had recommended it to me a year or so ago.

Sourdough bread begins with sourdough starter, which is not merely living but seething. It is a community of organisms comprised of, at minimum, yeast, which is a fungus, and lactobacillus, a bacteria. They eat flour — its sugars — and poop out acid — thus, sour — in addition to, carbon dioxide which, trapped by stretchy, glutenous dough, gives the bread an airy structure, the so-called crumb, at its prettiest a dazzling network of gaps and chambers. [37]

Mhm. 🤩

Being a sourdough afficionado, Sloan’s novel had me laughing out loud in recognition of the tricksy behaviour displayed by its wild yeast & Lois’ endeavours to understand it better. Oh yes. 

… I set out my tools. I donned my apron. Everything was in order, and I was ready to produce a beautiful, burnished loaf just like Broom’s on the cover of his book. There were detailed instructions. I love detailed instructions. My whole career was detailed instructions. Precisely specified actions, executed in order. A serene confidence settled over me. I mixed the ingredients together, and immediately the project collapsed into chaos and disaster. Where the bread book showed a lump of dough folded elegantly into itself, I looked upon a twisted mutant mass. [39]

Not to mention the perils in attempt to perfect your loaf.
Optimism, dashed:

Where the bread book showed Everett Broom’s clean fingers deftly maneuvering said lump, my hands soon wore thick gauntlets of glop. I waved them over the sink, tried to shake some of it loose. Where the bread book showed a rustic work surface smartly maintained, I looked on a cramped and dingy countertop filmed with slime. There was dough on the cupboards. Dough on the faucet. Dough on the floor. It looked like a scene of a glutenous murder committed by a careless killer. [39]

The joy when a bake is executed & the desire to share, share, share. Dropping by, turning up unannounced on people's doorsteps; posting hot cross buns through a letterbox if they're out.

IT’S ALWAYS NEW AND ASTONISHING when it’s yours. Infatuation; sex; card tricks. How many humans have baked how many loaves of bread across how many centuries? I’m sure Beoreg baked calmly, matter-of-factly, without paroxysms of cosmic delight. But that didn’t matter. For me, the novice, the miracle was intact, and I felt compelled by some force — new to me, thrillingly implacable — to share. I tied the sliced loaves into neat bundles with twine and bounded outside, still wearing sweatpants I’d slept in. [45] 

_________ 

i./ I followed the scent to the kitchen, where the Clement Street starter had more than doubled in volume and was surging out of the crock, puffy tendrils oozing down the green ceramic. I heard a crispy, crackling pock-pock-pock; the starter was not merely bubbling but frothing. It is only barely anthropomorphization to say it looked happy. I could understand that. [50]

ii./ At Beo’s urging, I upgraded my flour …
The Clement Street starter loved it.
It groaned and luxuriated. It belched ecstatically. [133] 

              

Monstrous  ||  Happy bubbles indeed.

______

I’d known the Clement Street starter wasn’t normal, of course but I honestly hadn’t realised the depth of its strangeness until now, because the King Arthur starter was very normal. 

He was happy and dopey like a big brown dog. It had no special high-maintenance desires it just wanted to grow. 

I let it. [221]

 

So well observed & rendered. What else?

- Number one eater!
- Lois' workplace at General Dexterity
- Peter & the Slurry as a counter to her sourdough
- The Lois Club

In fact, it's such a well-peopled novel. I loved how richly Sloan draws his characters with a bunch of quirks and idiosyncrasies thus rendering them fully human. Lois' different interactions and relationships with a range of people: 

Beoreg & Chaiman. Chef Kate. The Loises. Lily Belasco. Horace & his library (a character in its own right).Carl & the Omebushi. Mr. Marrow. Jim Bascule. Charlotte Clingstone. Agrippa & his goats. 

Key favourite points in the novel's development:

- Lois building the Jay Steve Value Oven 
- The hurdles she faces whilst applying for the Farmers Market
- Email interludes with updates through Beo's correspondence - perfectly pitched - 
&, in that, learning more about the Mazg & how the CS Starter came into being
- How the novel uses intrigue & frames Lois as a detective, investigating the Starter's history. The physical journeys to connect with others whilst on a journey of self-discovery herself.

... I finished Sourdough & now have Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore lined up for later.  :) 

Sloan, Robin. Sourdough. Atlantic Books: London, 2018

An Update // A Modern Epic

I should probably start with my earliest read - having enjoyed the BBC series back in '99 & having it lodge in my mind ever since, it was therefore a joy to delve into the original text of The Scarlet Pimpernel - something I'd been meaning to read ever since.
 Figes, on the other hand, I'd packed into my bag to take home at Christmas but didn't get so far in my reading of it. That one's next up for sure.
Because what do I really want to write & talk about?

The Goldfinch.

Oh my.   ★★★★★

I actually checked this novel out of the library in error; what had been recommended to me by a friend was The Luminaries. No matter; as far as mistakes go, this was an excellent one to have made.

For me, the Observer says it best.

"A modern epic." - BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Absolutely.

I want to use the word, sprawling. That word often comes with negative connotations though: messy, overcooked, disordered. That's not my meaning here. Sprawling across the globe, The Goldfinch takes us from Amsterdam to New York to Las Vegas & back again.

Epic in its reach & steady with its pacing, Tartt details the daily life, the mundane & the domestic to such a point that the reader becomes so drawn into Theo Decker's present day, we forget that we've forgotten about what happened with the painting. 
 Las Vegas, as a section of the novel, was brilliant in my mind at doing this, unwrapping more layers of the relationship between Theo & Boris.

What else?

- Having not paid much heed to the blurb, my genuine suspense & shock at Theo's mother's death ... I knew something was coming but was waiting for it from the sidewalk to the museum. (A bit like when I first read Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Froerr but forgot to clock it was situated in the aftermath of 9/11.)

- Not seeking to translate the Dutch until about four-fifths of the way in
- Bereavement & grief; Theo dealing with PTSD & his dysfunctional father
- Society circles: Mrs Barbour / Hobie / the art world's elite
- The intricacies of woodwork & restoration & Hobie's love of his trade
- Theo's escape & successful bus ride with Popper. (Hurrah!)
- My despair at Theo's return to errant ways in embezzlement
... & this despite Tartt's warning to the reader as he bids Boris goodbye
- My gasp at Kitsey's betrayal of her fiancee & with whom (!)
- The state of play in Theo's unrequited love for Pippa
- Theo's identity wrapped in that of his possession & his secret
- Boris' unexpected, gallant action at the close

“Worse: the thought of returning to any kind of normal routine seemed disloyal, wrong. It kept being a shock every time I remembered it, a fresh slap: she was gone. Every new event—everything I did for the rest of my life—would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us. Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away.”
.........

"The twilights out there were florid & melodramatic, great sweeps of orange & crimson & Lawrence-in-the-desert vermillion .... I floated on my back, trying to pick out constellations I knew in the confusing white spatter of stars... all the friendly childhood patterns that had twinkled me to sleep from the glow-in-the-dark planetarium stars on my bedroom ceiling back in New York. Now, transfigured - cold & glorious like deities with their disguises fling off - it was as if they'd flown through the roof into the sky to assume their true, celestial homes."  [260]
....

Homecoming & return: 

"The streets were much louder than I remembered - smellier, too. Standing on the corner by A La Virile Russie I found myself overpowered with the familiar old Midtown stench: carriage horses, bus exhaust, perfume, and urine. For so long I'd thought of Vegas as something temporary - my real life was New York - but was it? Not any more, I thought, dismally..."   [409]
.....

"Not this woman."
Boris laughed. "Well, you have found a good one, then! A rare one! Is she beautiful?"
"Yes."
"Rich?"
"Yes."
"Intelligent?"
"Most people would say so, yes."
"Heartless?"
"A bit."
Boris laughed. "And you love her, yes. But not too much."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because you are not mad, or wild, or grieving! You are not roaring out to choke her with your own bare hands! Which means your soul is not too mixed up with hers. And that is good. Here is my experience. Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you. What you want is to live & be happy in the world is a woman who has her own life & lets you have yours." [667]

____________

xxv.

ALL DAY, I WAS practically out-of-body with excitement at the thought of the evening ahead. Downstairs, in the store (where I was too busy with Christmas customers to devote undivided attention to my plans), I thought about what I would wear (something casual, not a suit, nothing too studied) and where I would take her to dinner—nothing too fancy, nothing that would put her on guard or seem self-conscious on my part but really special all the same, special and charming and quiet enough for us to talk and not too terribly far from Film Forum—besides which, she’d been out of the city for a while, she’d probably enjoy going someplace new (“Oh, this little place? yeah, it’s great, glad you like it, a real find”) but apart from all the above (and quiet was the main thing, more than food or location, I didn’t want to be anyplace where we were going to have to yell) it was going to have to be someplace I could get us in at short notice—and then too, there was the vegetarian issue. Someplace adorable. Not too expensive to raise alarms. It couldn’t look as if I was going to too much trouble; it had to seem thoughtless, unplanned.  [680]

ON THE WAY OVER, I couldn’t help humming and smiling. And when I turned the corner and spotted her standing out in front of the theater I was so nervous I had to stop and compose myself for a moment before rushing in to greet her, helping her with her bags (she, laden with shopping, babbling about her day), perfect, perfect bliss of standing in line with her, huddling close because it was cold, and then inside, the red carpet and the whole evening ahead of us, clapping her gloved hands together: “oh, do you want some popcorn?” “Sure!” (me springing to the counter) “Popcorn’s great here—” and then, walking into the theater together, me touching her back casually, the velvety back of her coat, perfect brown coat and perfect green hat and perfect, perfect, little red head—“here—aisle? do you like the aisle?” we’d gone to the movies just enough (five times) for me to make careful note of where she liked to sit, plus, I knew it well enough from Hobie after years of inconspicuously questioning him as much as I dared about her tastes, her likes and dislikes, her habits, slipping the questions in casually, one at a time, for almost a decade, does she like this, does she like that; and there she was, turning and smiling at me, at me! and there were way too many people in the theater because it was the seven o’clock show, way more people than I was comfortable with given my generalized anxiety and hatred of crowded places, and more people trickling in even after the film had already started but I didn’t care, it could have been a foxhole in the Somme being shelled by the Germans and all that mattered was her next to me in the dark, her arm beside mine. And the music! Glenn Gould at the piano, wild-haired, ebullient, head thrown back, emissary from the realm of angels, rapt and consumed by the sublime! I kept stealing looks at her, unable to help myself; but it was at least half an hour in before I had the nerve to turn and look at her full-on—profile washed white in the glow from the screen—and realized, to my horror, that she wasn’t enjoying the film. She was bored. No: she was upset. [682]
.............

xxviii.

SOMEHOW—AS IF BY pre-arrangement of the gods—the half-empty wine bar we’d ducked into, on impulse, was warm and golden and candle-lit and much, much better than any of the restaurants I’d planned for.
Tiny table. My knee to her knee—was she aware of it? Quite as aware as I was? Bloom of the candle flame on her face, flame glinting metallic in her hair, hair so bright it looked about to catch fire. Everything blazing, everything sweet. They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arm around a girl like on the old record cover—because Pippa was exactly that girl, not the prettiest, but the no-makeup and kind of ordinary-looking girl he’d chosen to be happy with, and in fact that picture was an ideal of happiness in its way, the hike of his shoulders and the slightly embarrassed quality of her smile, that open-ended look like they might just wander off anywhere they wanted together, and—there she was! her! and she was talking about herself, affectionate and old-shoe, asking me about Hobie and the shop and my spirits and what I was reading and what I was listening to, lots and lots of questions but seeming anxious to share her life with me too, her chilly flat expensive to heat, depressing light and damp stale smell, cheap clothes on the high street and so many American chains in London now it’s like a shopping mall, and what meds are you on and what meds am I on (we both had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a malady that in Europe had different initials, it seemed, and got you sent to a hospital for Army vets if you weren’t careful); her tiny garden, which she shared with half a dozen people, and the batty Englishwoman who’d filled it with ailing tortoises she’d smuggled from the south of France (“they all die, of cold and malnutrition—it’s really cruel—she doesn’t feed them properly, crumbled bread, can you imagine, I buy them turtle food at the pet store without telling her”)—and how terribly she wanted a dog, but of course it was hard in London with the quarantine which they had in Switzerland too, how did she always end up living in all these dog-unfriendly places? and wow, I looked better than she’d seen me in years, she’d missed me, missed the hell out of me, what an amazing evening—and we’d been there for hours, laughing over little things but being serious too, very grave, she being both generous and receptive (this was another thing about her; she listened, her attention was dazzling—I never had the feeling that other people listened to me half as closely; I felt like a different person in her company, a better one, could say things to her I couldn’t say to anyone else, certainly not Kitsey, who had a brittle way of deflating serious comments by making a joke, or switching to another topic, or interrupting, or sometimes just pretending not to hear), and it was an utter delight to be with her, I loved her every minute of every day, heart and mind and soul and all of it, and it was getting late and I wanted the place never to close, never.
“No no,” she was saying, running a finger around the rim of her wine glass—the shape of her hands moved me intensely, Welty’s signet on her forefinger, I could stare at her hands the way I could never stare at her face without seeming like a creep. “I loved the movie, actually. And the music—” she laughed, and the laugh, for me, had all the joy of the music behind it. “Knocked the breath out of me. Welty saw him play once, at Carnegie. One of the great nights of his life, he said. It’s just—”
“Yes?” The smell of her wine. Red-wine stain on her mouth. This was one of the great nights of my life.
___________

“I felt like a lifetime had come and gone since my night with Pippa and I thought how happy I'd been, rushing to meet her in the sharp-edged winter darkness, my elation at spotting her under a streetlamp out in front of Film Forum and how I'd stood on the corner to savor it - the joy of watching her watch for me. Her expectant watching-the-crowd face. Me she was watching for: me. And the heart-shock of believing, for only a moment, that you might just have what could never be yours.”
__________

Lighting out West:

"When will you be back?"

"Oh, soon," I said, not very convincingly. I would have been happy to walk out of that room & keep walking for days & months until I was on some beach in Mexico maybe, some isolated shore where I could wander alone & wear the same clothes till they rotted off me & be the crazy gringo in the horn rimmed glasses who repaired chairs & tables for a living. [715]

" 'Symmetries"

It was, of course, a good choice. 

I'm reading every evening before falling asleep until I recognise I'm no longer taking in the words from the page & draw to a close. 

I'm reading every morning after my alarm goes off; just another page or two before I get up & face the world. 

I don't do that often: it's usually a snatched moment or away from the demands of the day in some enclosed vacuum of time, on a bus or a train journey when it's possible to do very little else. 

But Winterson invites the luxury of the moment, the prioritising of that particular time spent on that activity as opposed to any other. She draws in her reader, establishes an intimate confidence and in doing so, maintains their interest in plot development. 

 It took me a good chapter or so to find my stride & settle into the story. I recognised some of the conscious rhetoric also deployed in The Passion & wasn't sure if I would take to it. 

    The Passion is deemed so unique and elevated amongst her works that I didn't want to risk a repeat encounter; I wanted something new. It's Winterson's lyricism & metaphor which I love. The post-modernism and meta-narrative is fun & can be cleverly deployed but in terms of defining character, it now belongs in my head to Villanelle who assumes it like a second skin. 

  In the chapter of The Fool, I was struggling to establish which voice out of the two women, Stella & Alice, was speaking. But once into The Tower & the finding of the affair and from then onwards into the three chapters of childhood, the novel just flowed. Beautiful words and fully eloquent passages. 

   I've been passing them across the ocean, borrowing from their nuances & metaphor to lend weight to other words. To try & articulate emotional experiences, which would otherwise be struggling into sense or remain mute, entirely wordless.

 ___

Walk with me ... Walk the seen and the unseen. What can be rendered visible and what cannot.

The wind up at dusk and the leaves in squalls and the birds flying into the wind-backed leaves so that in the lost light I could not say where the leaves stopped and the birds began. I try to distinguish but at crucial moments the space between carefully separated objects collapses and I too am whirled up against my will into the dervish of matter. The difficulty is that every firm step I win out of chaos is a firm step towards . . . more chaos. I throw a rope bridge, haul myself across the gap, and huddled on a little outcrop, safe for now, observe the view. What is the view? Another gap, another stretch of water. (102)

___

.. The riverrun is maverick, there is a high chance of cross-current, a snag of time that returns us without warning to a place we thought we had sailed through long since. 

Anyone to whom this happens clings faithfully to the clock; the hour will pass, we will certainly move on. Then we find the clock is neither raft nor lifebelt. The horological illusion of progress sinks. The past comes with us, like a drag-net of fishes. We tow it down river, people and things, emotion, time's inhabitants, not left on shore way back, but still swimming close by. .. The unconscious, it seems, will not let go of its hoard. The past comes with us and occassionally kidnaps the present, so that the distinctions we depend on for safety, for sanity, disappear. Past. Present. Future. When this happens we are no longer sure who we are, or perhaps we can no longer pretend to be sure who we are. If time is a river then we shall all meet death by water. (104-5)

____

Walk with me. Walk the broken past, named and not. Walk the splintered planks, chaos on both sides, walk the discovered and what cannot be discovered. Walk the uneasy peace we share. Walk with me, through the night, the night air, the breathing particles of other lives. Breathe in, breathe out, steady now, not too fast on gassed lungs. I did not mean my words to poison you. Walk with me, walk it off, the excess fat of misery and fear. Too much to carry around the heart. Walk free. (117-8)

____

I want to feel but with feeling comes pain. I could advise myself to keep out complications and I won't pretend that I have no choice in any of this. I have noticed that the choices seem to be made in advance of what is chosen. The time gap in between the determining will and the determined event is a handy excuse to deny causality. In space-time there is always a lag between prediction and response.., sometimes of seconds, sometimes of years, but we programme events far more than we like to think. (120)

____

'Do you fall in love often?'

Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.

'I'm not in love with you.'

What would it be to love? Would it be the field under rain, the vivid green the grass takes? .. Would it be natural at all? Would it be lucky find or magic trick? Buried treasure of sleight of hand? Would I be the conjuror or the conjured? Would it be a spell or the song I sing? If I am a wound would love be my salve? If I am speechless would love be a mouth? I do not want to declare love on you as of midnight yesterday. I do not want to be captured nor to hold a honeyed gun at your head. I do not want to spend the rest of my life as a volunteer member of the FBI. Where did you go, who did you see, what did you do today dear? I would love you as a bird loves flight, as meat loves salt, as a dog loves chase, as water finds its own level. (126-7)

Winterson, Jeanette. Gut Symmetries. Granta Books: London, 1997

Why I love "Rapture":

Carol Ann Duffy — mother, daughter, sister, friend, lover and now poet laureate to more than 60m of us — is good with words. You could say they hang around her unadorned throat like pearls. She wouldn’t, because she’s as unpretentious as her verse. But those simple lines of hers contain whole universes, and we are talking about love.

~ Extract from this Times article