Just magic

Over the course of 7 novels J.K. Rowling has charted the progress of her hero, the eponymous Harry Potter, from his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to his final battle with the great villain, Voldemort. The Harry Potter sequence is probably one of the best plotted of any literary sequence - this is especially evident when you read the books as a single read (or at least close together), when many tiny details from earlier volumes turn out to have importance in later volumes. It's clear that the whole sequence was pretty well thought out probably even before the first volume was written.

Over-hyped? Possibly, but you can hardly blame the publisher, Bloomsbury, who took a punt on an unknown writer, who'd been turned down several times, only to find that they had a runaway success on their hands. Actually, it's surprising that Rowling was rejected as the early Potters have all the elements of classic childrens' stories : an adventure, a quest, the supernatural, and the traditional school story beloved by generations of girls but here given a new spin to appeal equally to boys too. Harry Potter is influenced by those three greats of the fantasy genre T.H. White, author of The once and future king (Dumbledore was closely modelled on White's portrayal of Merlin), C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, with a splash of Malory Towers, and big influences from ancient myths and legends and the Bible (especially the New Testament). This isn't surprising really as these were the same sources that influenced her predecessors White, Lewis and Tolkien.

At the heart of the sequence is a great traditional Good v Evil battle, dealing with biblical themes of love, atonement, and redemption; and at its best she writes incredibly movingly and brilliantly. There are some problems though - some of the later books (most notably Order of the Phoenix) need some drastic editing, they are incredibly overlong, and could have done with a good prune. Here the films do better than the books, cutting back much that is inessential, but where the films are not a patch on the books are in the back stories that Rowling gives several of her important characters (Dumbledore, Voldemort and Snape) enriching the whole sequence with their layers of complexity, and raising the whole series from a confection about a boy magician to a truly impressive saga worthy to be classed with the Narnia books, Once and future King and The Lord of the Rings.

I think that the major problem in terms of whether the books will continue to thrive and become classics once the HP hype is over is the change in tone of the books. Books 1-3 are childsize, and aimed very much at the late primary school market - they're great fun to read, generally very light and easy to read with good jokes, smashing villains, and real depth in the third volume Prisoner of Azkaban which is fairly frequently voted as readers' favourite HP. But from book 4 onwards the tone darkens as the books become correspondingly longer. The final three in the sequence are very dark in tone and deal with complex issues - these were set up in earlier volumes, but in a much lighter way, and so these latter volumes suit a teenage audience far more than a primary school one. J.K. Rowling was once asked about this, and was not bothered by it, as she felt her books were "growing up" as their readership was. Of course this was true at the time of publication, with each book coming out at roughly a year apart, but reading the whole sequence does show that there are some problems - I suspect that many younger children will not get beyond Book 4, while older children may be reluctant to read the more childish Books 1 & 2.

It would be a real shame though if the hype and the patchy writing in some of the books was to obscure what is a very fine literary sequence. Harry is an engaging hero, there's a great sense of fun, and the suspense and dark moments in Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of fire, and the final installment Deathly Hallows are brilliantly written; while in Voldemort Rowling has created one of the great all-time villains, easily on a par (if not surpassing) the White Witch and Professor Moriarty. Like all good childrens' classics, they ultimately transcend the readership they were written for; no adult should be ashamed to be caught reading a Harry Potter (yes, I have met those who refuse to read them in public) Rowling deals in deep themes of depression, life and death, love and hate. If you're a child you'll read the novels in one way, an adult will take away different things from them. I think that generally they're quite brilliant, and deserve a long life as a twenty-first century classic.

A bewitching tale

Winter on Pendle Hill

Robert Neill was a Lancastrian writer of historical novels. I know nothing further about him, and judging by what I've found on the web neither does anyone else (for a very funny discussion on his provenance see The Motley Fool), I do know however that Mist over Pendle is an eminently readable historical novel, with a real sense of place.

Set in 1611, the novel follows the events leading up to the Pendle witch trials - for more information on that see The Pendle witches. Margery, a young woman brought up in a Puritan family, is exiled to Pendle to be brought up by her cousin Roger Nowell, a local Justice of the Peace. Margery has alienated her family by her forthright ways and an ability to think for herself. Roger, however, is of the same mould as Margery and the two quickly become friends. Margery discovers that Pendle is very different from London - for a start it is surprisingly tolerant. Here although officially Roman Catholicism is illegal there are many fairly openly Catholic families, there are also many Puritan ones, and both are united by a fear of witchcraft. A series of allegations are laid against a local family of witchcraft resulting in death. Although Roger is convinced that there is malice at work, he is also sure that the deaths were natural - many of them by stroke (ironically this originally got its name from the belief that it was caused by a fairy or evil spirit "stroking" the sick person). However as the allegations escalate it becomes clear that there truly is evil at work in Pendle, with a master manipulator pulling the strings of the alleged witches for her own ends.

This is a clever tale of superstition and murder with a very modern heroine at the centre of events. There's a wonderful sense of place: early seventeenth century Lancashire comes leaping to life, as does the period itself with all its difficulties and prejudices. I found myself, throughout the novel, wondering what would have happened to these characters just a few years later during the English Civil War. How would their loyalties and beliefs have survived through that turbulent time?

There's not a great deal of sympathy for the alleged witches; Neill comes down firmly on the side that they are guilty not of witchcraft but certainly of evil intent, and in the case of some of them a very unsupernatural murder. This novel doesn't attempt to re-examine the case in, say, the way Arthur Miller does the Salem witch trials in The Crucible, but it's eminently readable, a true page-turner, and well worth curling up with in front of a fire on a winter's night.

A modern tragedy

I was reminded of the previously reviewed The Dumas Club when re-reading Joe Orton's diary. The Dumas Club spoke of the influence that one book has upon another - how when reading the reader is not just reading the book that is in front of them, but also in a sense every other book that they've ever read. I first read Orton's diaries in John Lahr's (son of The wizard of Oz's cowardly lion, Bert Lahr) wonderful edition some years ago. Coincidentally around the same time I also read the then recently published Kenneth Williams' diaries. Reading the two sets of diaries together produced an amazing effect.

Williams was a close friend of the Sixties playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell. Halliwell and Orton's partnership was complicated. At first Halliwell had been the dominant member in the relationship, with Orton the Eliza Dolittle of the relationship to Halliwell's Professor Higgins. Halliwell taught about acting, writing, literature, and being a gay man at a time when it was still illegal. Gradually however the dynamic of the relationship changed, as Orton became the dominant writing partner, and little by little the more celebrated member of the pair. By the time the diaries commence in late 1966 Orton is at the height of his power, immensely gifted, incredibly promiscuous and outrageously funny; the diaries are a snapshot of a dynamic period in British theatre and artistic culture. Sadly the diaries would be cut short when Orton was bludgeoned to death by Halliwell in August '67.

I enjoyed reading the diaries in isolation. They're not always the comfiest of reads; Orton's homosexuality is not an issue now as it would have been when they were first written (it was still illegal in the UK at the beginning of the diaries). His penchant for young boys however is not easy to stomach, especially the sections set in Morocco, where he and Halliwell holiday primarily as sex tourists. What is good about the diaries though is their sheer exuberance : Orton's joy in his talents as a playwright, the wonderfully, sometimes bitchy gossip about other actors and writers, his gift for language and dialogue, his humanity, and his loyalty to his partner in what was becoming an increasingly difficult relationship.

What I got from reading the Williams diaries at the same time however was something more. Kenneth Williams was a close friend of both men, and he wrote his experiences with them as he saw it. He loved Joe, who was proudly gay and very sure in his own skin, the complete opposite of Williams, and exactly what he would have liked to have been, while he understood the sensitive, neurotic, insecure Halliwell - he was not unlike himself in many ways. What Williams saw clearly was Orton's love for Halliwell, and his loyalty to him in the face of increasing disdain from Joe's new circle of friends. He also saw Halliwell's increasing jealousy and insecurity around Joe as Halliwell becomes increasingly sidelined by others, and sometimes even Joe himself, from his life. The two diaries combined elevate the Orton diaries to a Greek tragedy. There is a dreadful sense of inevitability to the whole relationship culminating in such a brutal ending. Sensitively edited by John Lahr, these diaries are a must read for anyone who is interested in the British theatre of the 1960s. For their social commentary alone they are utterly fascinating.

Not waving but.....

The drowned world by J.G. Ballard is a bleak, tough read. Set in an apocalyptic future, the background to the novel is that rising sea levels combined with a galloping greenhouse effect have forced people to the margins of the world to the far north and south poles. London is under water, and the rising temperatures have made reptiles once more the kings of the world, with lizards and alligators sashaying through the waters above what was once Baker Street.

An outpost of scientists still remain at the heart of the city plagued by bad dreams, and odd recollections of a primeval past. The scientists eventually move out, but three of their number remain behind for some unexplained reason. Shortly after the departure of the military types some sinister freebooters arrive, and life in the jungle turns even nastier.....

Drowned world is very well written, but crikey, it's depressing. I found it a difficult book to get through. But it's classic Ballard, and many of his preoccupations in his Second World War semi-autobiographical novel Empire of the sun surface here too. In fact the villains of the piece Basie (Empire of the sun) and Strangman (Drowned world) are clearly of the same stock. Twenty years separate the novels, yet it is clear that they come out of the same experiences. It had never struck me so forcibly before that the dystopian world that war produces can feed equally well into writing about the often dystopian world of science fiction, as indeed Walter M. Miller Jr. did in A canticle for Leibowitz.

A dazzling if sometimes confusing read, but not for the faint hearted.

Oddly compelling

Compelling, The Dumas Club certainly is, but it's also a very odd book. There are two distinct narrative strands which appear to be interlinked, and ultimately turn out to have no connection with each other whatsoever. On one level it is an exploration of the power of books to charm and influence a reader, it's also very post-modern - a book in which characters from other books come leaping off the page, and where a reader's experience of the book is to a great extent defined by what else they have read, and how they can link readings of other books into their experience of this one.

It's also a classic horror/adventure story and is a great page-turner. Ultimately however the two narrative strands fall apart, and it's at this point that I began to feel that the story was all a bit silly and rather a waste of time. I think that the true problem is that Arturo Perez-Reverte has tried to be a bit too clever. A greater focus on one or other of the threads would probably have produced a more satisfactory, if perhaps less memorable novel. Interestingly in Roman Polanski's adaptation of the novel (produced as The ninth gate in 1999), the script-writers did focus much more strongly on the horror thread, and, I think, produced a much stronger narrative as a result.

A compelling read, but ultimately rather unsatisfactory.

Genteel comedy

E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia comedies are great; sarcastically sharp and hilariously funny the novels follow the lives of two gentlewomen of a certain age in small town England. Clearly set in Rye on the south coast, Rye (here re-named Tilling) is confusingly teleported to somewhere near Worcester (which is also near Lucia's previous abode of Riseholme) - fine for those who are geographically challenged, but a little confusing for those who know either area.

Miss Mapp and her foe, Lucia, are both queens in their own little worlds, but when the effervescent Lucia bids to take over Miss Mapp's coterie, there are going to be knitting needles at twenty paces before too long. Set in the 1930's these are very snobbish comedies, saved from being too irritating by their sly wink at the reader. Benson knows that these people are out-and-out snobs but rather than allying himself with them he pokes fun in the most delicious manner. I've got the omnibus edition of volumes 4-6 in the series, but they're best read in small chunks, much as I enjoy them I suspect that a surfeit of Lucia could be rather nauseating. They are very much of their period, and are to be enjoyed as great period pieces.

Icelandic noir

I've loved all of Arnaldur Indridason's Erlendur mysteries. Ok, they're gloomy, and of late have started to become a bit formulaic, but they're nevertheless Scandinavian noir of a high order. Outrage moves off, I think very successfully, in a slightly different direction.

In this episode of the Icelandic murder mysteries Erlendur is off trekking in a remote part of Iceland leaving one of his sidekicks, the policewoman Elinborg in charge. She is called in to investigate a particularly violent case of murder, her nose for non-Icelandic cuisines will prove to be essential in locating a possible suspect. But, all is not quite as it seems, and, as is typical of Indridason's mysteries, this very modern crime will have its roots in the past.

I loved Elinborg, and felt that she brought a fresh breath of life to the series. She too, in common with Erlendur, has family problems, but hers are much more of the everyday relatable kind. Her children and family are well portrayed. Elinborg herself is a very ordinary person, I found her very easy to relate to, but in a genre that is saturated with larger than life and rather odd characters, I found her very ordinariness endearing.

Ok the crime isn't perfect - there's a bit too much in the way of coincidence, but it's cleverly put together, and the contrast of urban cosmopolitan Reykjavik, with a remote Icelandic community was well done. There's also a great Erlendur-related cliffhanger at the end. This is probably not the best novel to read if you're new to the series, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

More Montalbano please

I love Andrea Camilleri's classy Sicilian set Inspector Montalbano mysteries. I haven't read the series in order, and The wings of the sphinx is a bit of a leap forward in time from my last Montalbano read, The scent of the night, but in spite of that it's easy to catch up on the action.

In Wings of the sphinx a dead girl is found with her face smashed in, in a Sicilian quarry. The only clue to the girl's identity is a tattoo of a rare Sphinx moth. Montalbano is soon on the case and on the trail of an organization which appears to be set up to help impoverished recent immigrants to Italy, but Montalbano soon begins to suspect that the organization is more keen to help themselves, than the girls that they are allegedly trying to save. Meanwhile as the detective's relationship with his beloved Livia falls apart, he is in a race both to save the relationship and to prevent the deaths of any more girls.

In many ways, in spite of the dark matter, this is one of the funniest of Camilleri's books. It's an enjoyable read with a strong central crime story. It's fairly obvious from early on where the narrative is going, this isn't going to be a novel that keeps you guessing to the end, but it's great fun. Not the best Camilleri, but well worth a quick read.

Dear diary

Mass Observation was an amazing organization. Set up in 1937, Mass Observation aimed to establish "an anthropology of ourselves", using diaries, questionnaires and directive responses (a sort of pared-down survey), MO examined the lives of hundreds of people in all walks of live throughout the UK. It was purely coincidental, but MO came into being just as millions of lives were about to be changed by the outbreak of World War II.

The MO respondents in common with the modern blogger were very different. Some were more guarded in their responses giving few personal details (although all repondents details were "disguised" in the Mass Observation database and files), while others were very open about their lives and experiences. Some kept extensive diaries over a long period, others over a shorter time frame, and sometimes just brief notes. The responses to the work of MO give a snapshot of life in Britain at a particular time and place.

Olivia Cockett's diaries, published as Love and war in London, follow the life of a young civil servant living in Deptford, and working for the police near New Scotland Yard, at the outbreak of war and up until 1943. Olivia was probably quite unusual for her time, she, in common with many single women, still lived at home with her close-knit family, but she was also engaged in an affair with a married man. Thought to be quite shocking in its time, being open about this affair would almost certainly have cost Olivia and her lover their jobs. So the affair was kept generally secret, although Olivia was amazingly open in her diary.

Life became more complicated with the advent of war and the blitz. Already struggling with transportation problems due to the disruption caused by air raids, simple things liking meeting up with friends and lovers became increasingly difficult. Living in Deptford, too, would soon put Olivia's family under great strain, as the area became a target for German bombers.

This is a great read if you want to know what it was like to live as an ordinary Londoner in extraordinary circumstances. It's not the most moving wartime diary you'll ever read, but for a snapshot of a life lived under wartime stress, and yet trying to keep up a semblance of normality it's a fascinating read.

Mass Observation is still doing its stuff today, and its archive both of wartime and of more modern experiences are housed at the University of Sussex library. For more information see Mass Observation.

Down on the farm

Betty MacDonald was a very young newly wed in 1927. After a brief honeymoon her husband announced that his life's ambition was to run a chicken farm, so off the young couple went to a remote patch of land in Washington State, and started up the chicken farm. The community was isolated with long distances between dwellings, and the nearest "town" little more than a village. It was a hard life, and could have been the end of many a happy marriage, but Betty MacDonald survived the day-to-day tussles with idiotic chickens, eccentric smallholders, and the evil-minded Stove (an inanimate object that acquired quite a character through the course of the memoirs) with great good humour.

The egg and I is wonderfully funny, as well as being a real testament to a late blossoming of the pioneer spirit. At the time the memoirs were originally published, they received rave reviews. More modern reviewers have not been so kind. I personally found some of the comments on Native Americans offensive, but in the context of the times in which it was written (1945) MacDonald was generally quite positive about the native tribes - it's clear from the narrative that her husband had good relationships with many natives.

The mores are very much of the time - a woman's place is definitely in the home, but this doesn't mean that MacDonald is subserviant to her husband. The remote location of their home forces them to be a partnership, and although firmly set in the twentieth century, there is a very real sense of what it would have meant to have been a pioneer woman with family on the trail. A great book to read just to get a sense of what it was like to live in that time and place, but also wonderfully funny; one of the great classic comic reads.

More evil under the sun

A Caribbean mystery is probably Agatha Christie's most exoticly set mystery. A poorly Miss Marple has been packed off to the West Indies by her nephew, Raymond, to recover after a nasty illness. The setting seems idyllic, and there's the usual quota of adulterers and various dodgy types to keep Miss M happy, although exiled from her beloved St. Mary Mead. However an unexpected conversation with an elderly bore "D'you want to see a photo of a murderer?" gains a more sinister significance when elderly gent promptly expires.

This isn't one of Christie's greatest mysteries, but it's well constructed, and has a great new character in the eccentric and exceedingly grumpy millionaire, Jason Rafiel (who would feature, from beyond the grave, in the creepy Nemesis).

Written in 1964 it marked a definite return to form for the crime writer. Oddly some elements in the crime are closely related to the much earlier Sleeping murder (although published posthumously, it was written during the Second World War) with Christie's regular themes of murder and induced madness important here.

Caribbean mystery has also been immensely helpful to me in enabling me to tick off another country for my 666 Challenge. Sadly, it doesn't look as though I'm quite going to be able to complete the challenge this year, but there should be just a few countries to go to finish off the challenge in the New Year. The Christie thriller is set on the fictional West Indies island of St. Honore, but Christie had been inspired to set a mystery in the Caribbean following a holiday there in the company of some archaeologist friends. St. Honore is reputedly the real life island of St. Lucia, part of the Lesser Antilles, so it's another one to tick off my North American list.

The comic strip revisited

I've never read a graphic novel. I did think about venturing to dip a toe in the water after reading a blog post by Aarti, but never quite got around to it, and then I was taken ill....Illness seems to be a good time to revisit all those books you loved (childhood favourites, classic crime, lots of light reading), and give yourself the luxury of indulging yourself in them, and perhaps finally taking a light plunge into something new. A friend helpfully brought me a new issue of library books including one of Herge's Tintin adventures - The Calculus Affair.

Now I grew up with Tintin, I followed all his adventures on the TV, my favourite cuddly dog toy (now celebrating his 90th birthday) was alternately named Krypto (after Superman's dog) or Snowy (for Tintin's canine companion). And in fact I learned to read (although I have no clear recollection of a time before reading) from a mixture of Grimm's fairy stories, the Arabian nights, and comics (I have a vague memory of a very clever Uncle Scrooge McDuck skit on Hamlet). So, I have no excuse for an aversion to graphic novels. OK - Tintin is an easy way to start, what's there not to like? But, it's a way into the genre.

As for The Calculus Affair itself, it is completely and unutterably brilliant. Great, witty translation - very funny. The illustrations are fabulous, each one a mini work of art in itself. And the story is clever too - at heart a spy story with some Slavic types (apologies to non-sinister Slavs, but somebody has to be the baddie!) out to steal a weapon of mass destruction which uses sound waves to destroy all in its path. There's an interesting little aside here too as the scientists wrestle with their consciences trying to decide what to do with their dangerous knowledge. Written in the 1950s, it owes a lot to the Manhattan project and the atom bomb spies. Herge brilliantly combines a cracking adventure story with some laugh out loud moments, the insurance agent Jolyon Wagstaff and his effect on poor Captain Haddock is hilarious. It's not easy coughing and laughing at the same time, but Herge got me doing this to perfection.

Floating down the river

Death on the Nile is classic Christie. Written in 1937, during one of Agatha Christie's best writing periods, and in a setting that she loved and was very familiar with, this is one of her great crime novels. It's not perfect, there are a couple of holes in the plot, but the basic crime is cleverly plotted, and there's a great cast of secondary characters. In fact, although it's not set in a country house, this is your archetypal Cluedo mystery.

The setting is fabulous, a luxury cruise down the Nile, with the great and not-so-good of the between war years. It wouldn't be too difficult to update the novel either, there is a very twenty-first century crooked financier, and social mores are perhaps not as dramatically changed as you might expect. It's probably one of her cleverest novels in terms of how alibis are constructed and how the quickness of the author's hand deceives the reader's eye - proving that it's not just magicians that can do this. It's also a great relaxing fun read - just perfect for when you're down with the flu and incapable of doing anything much else....

Just great

If A Tale of two cities is my desert island book, Great Expectations runs it pretty close. This is one of those books that I forget how good it is, until I re-read it, and am struck again by Dicken's complete brilliance. It's a pretty chunky read, but the narrative, in common with Two cities, is kept firmly to the point, so we don't go off into endless digressions or sub-plots as with Pickwick Papers, or Oliver Twist. Probably for this reason the narrative flow is very strong, and propels you along as inexorably as the River Thames runs through the heart of the book.

The basic plot is pretty simple, an orphan Pip gets a nasty surprise one weekend when he runs into an escaped convict on the Kentish marshes and is forced to steal food from his sister's house for the convict. Once the convict is recaptured and Pip's crime has gone unnoticed, life looks up for Pip when he is introduced to the wealthy and eccentric Miss Havisham, and her ward, the beautiful aloof Estella. Pip starts to have dreams of marrying Estella and moving up in society, away from his probable future as a blacksmith on the desolate marshes. And then, one day, it happens, a mystery benefactor bestows immense wealth on Pip, who moves to London abandoning his loyal stepfather and friends in Kent. Pip soon becomes an out-and-out snob, but a reality check is awaiting him....

This is beautifully written, with some great characterisation and humour; also a touch of grand guignol in the over-the-top Miss Havisham. Dickens cleverly overturns all our preconceptions in this novel, you'd have to be very hard-hearted not to feel for Magwitch, the ex-criminal, at the end of the novel. The only part of the novel that I felt didn't work quite so well was the very end with the reconciliation of Pip and Estella. I only discovered recently that Dickens, himself, had problems with this and wrote two possible endings. Both are rather weak, and apparently in the latest film adaptation there is to be yet another ending - it will be interesting to see if the writer can improve upon Dickens. But this is just a minor quibble - Great Expectations is a gem of a novel - if you've never read a Victorian novel before, this is the one to read.

Dusk

Irene Nemirovsky is probably best known for the posthumously published Suite Francaise. Before her death in Auschwitz in 1942 many of her books had been published in her native France including this, her last novel to be published in her lifetime, The dogs and the wolves.

Nemirovsky herself is quite a controversial character, a Jew, who converted to Roman Catholicism, she has been accused of being a "self-hating Jew", it could be argued that there are several instances of this in The dogs and the wolves. The novel follows the lives of Jewish cousins brought up in a small town in Russia. The "dogs" are the observant, poorer Jews, who live in the ghetto, are frequently subject to pogroms and racist abuse, and for that reason seem to cling more obstinately to their religion, while also, in many cases, seeking a way to break free of the life that they are forced to live. The "wolves" are the assimilated Jews, who live a life of luxury in the Gentile part of the town, and who have to a great extent dispensed with their Jewishness. The cousins of this novel follow a life not unlike that of Irene Nemirovsky and her ancestors emigrating from Russia to France. Indeed there is an odd link here to the previously reviewed Hare with amber eyes, as the family in this novel hail originally from Berdichev, the small town from which Edmund de Waal's family also originated.

Once settled in France the lives of the cousins intermingle, but it's harder to abandon their roots than they might hope.....

Although there is a bit of a vein of anti-semitism in the novel, I think it's not entirely fair to accuse Nemirovsky of self-hatred. What she clearly does hate is the unfairness of class divisions. If she was writing of any general society - say an English family, or a Russian family - she would hardly be accused of discrimination, it appears to be precisely because of the specifics of the family that she is writing about, i.e. a Jewish family, that she is accused of anti-semitism. I think that The dogs and the wolves has less to do with anti-semitism, and much more to do with the inequalities in early twentieth century Europe between levels of society and the sexes; and it's perhaps not surprising that Nemirovsky, as a Jewish writer, should write about what she knows, or at least how she perceives what she knows.

I don't think the title helps either - The dogs and the wolves is perhaps unfortunate. Calling anyone a dog suggests something cowardly, inhuman, contemptible (goodness knows why as dogs are one of the most loyal, brave companions that a person can have), while a wolf suggests cunning, a criminal element, relic perhaps of European fairy stories. However Nemirovsky's title originally came from a French aphorism "Entre chiens et loups" meaning twilight or dusk (presumably the time when dogs go home with their owners and the wolves own the night). If we take the title to be more about dusk, than the canine elements, the novel makes more sense and also becomes less controversial. For there is no controversy here - written in 1940, Nemirovsky is indeed writing about the dusk of Jewish civilization in Europe when all is about to be swept away. This is not a great novel, but it's certainly interesting and gets you thinking.

Apologies for no recent blog posts - Bookhound has been ill - normal service (and lots of reviews - illness seems to increase my reading levels exponentially) will resume shortly....