★★★½
Once again, it’s been far too long since I last posted, and I apologise for that. Work continues to be frantic and, since so much of my job involves writing, I can’t quite get my head around handling more words when I come home in the evenings. Plus, I’ve been travelling again. But the good thing about hanging around in airports is that there’s a lot of time to read and so I’ve got several interesting books to share with you in the next few days.
★★½
The Accursed Kings: Book I
I imagine many of you will already have tackled this book, which was published in a new edition with much fanfare about a year ago. I’m fully aware that I’m late to the party: I remember that Helen read it, and liked it, in March last year. As Helen mentioned, the quote blazoned on the cover from George R.R. Martin (‘This is the original Game of Thrones‘) has actually worked against the book in some ways: some eager fantasy readers have ended up with rather more medieval intrigue and rather fewer direwolves than they’d counted on, and so some reviews have been critical because people have, fundamentally, just been expecting the wrong kind of book.
★★½
The Marquise of the Angels
I know. I know. This needs some explanation. Angélique was recommended automatically, either by Goodreads or Amazon, with a considerably more innocuous cover. I’d never heard of the series but reviews were glowing, promising wonderful characters and breathless adventure; and one reviewer even suggested that readers looking for something similar should try the Lymond Chronicles. Naturally such a comparison caught my attention and, despite slight misgivings, I went ahead and ordered it.
(Royal Academy, London, until 26 January 2014)
The Royal Academy’s autumn exhibition, nestled up in the Sackler Wing, turns the focus onto Daumier, one of the liveliest and most irrepressible artists of the 19th century. He has always fallen slightly outside my comfort zone and, when I first began looking at his art some years ago, I had the impression that there was something rather hard and cutting about it. That’s probably because I was most familiar with his lithographs, laced with political satire, whereas this show presents a survey of his whole career, deliberately looking beyond the caricatures to bring to light the vein of human sympathy running through his art.
★★½
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for the random swashbuckler of the week! I had never heard of this book, which was recommended automatically to me by LibraryThing, but since the Kindle version was free, I couldn’t resist. It turns out that Captain Fracasse was Gautier’s third full-length novel, published in 1863, nine years before his death. It’s a romantic romp through a picturesque vision of 17th-century France, following a troupe of commedia dell’ arte actors travelling from Gascony to Paris, with a poverty-stricken young nobleman in their midst.
★★★½
When reading a book that’s been translated from another language, I don’t often think too much about the act of translation. Indeed, I usually think the mark of a good translator is that he or she should be almost self-effacing: you shouldn’t notice that there’s a degree of separation between you as the reader and the original author. However, I couldn’t help but notice the translation in this book: in a good way. As you might remember, I’ve only read one book by Colette before, and that was Chéri, translated by Roger Senhouse. My French isn’t good enough to be able to judge it against the original, but in English Chéri was entirely successful, giving the story an elegiac and slightly satirical tone which worked perfectly. And so I began specifically to look out for other translations by Senhouse.
★★★½
Sometimes, on opening a book for the first time, you find a phrase that makes you sigh contentedly, settle down and think, ‘Oh, yes.’ I had never read anything by Sabatini before and yet, when I read this novel’s opening line – ‘He was born with a gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad‘ – I knew instinctively that we’d get along well. With an avowed weakness for adventure, derring-do and the buckling of swashes, I’m amazed that I didn’t stumble across Scaramouche years ago. It was only when Helen mentioned it, in her post on The Prisoner of Zenda, that I realised it was something I’d enjoy.
★★★★½
The Lymond Chronicles: Book II
It is 1550, two years after the events in The Game of Kings. Mary of Guise plans a journey to France, to visit her eight-year-old daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, who is being brought up at Henri II’s court as the affianced bride of the Dauphin. The fate of Scotland depends on the fate of this little girl and Mary of Guise fears that the vultures have grown more daring. She calls on Lymond (now restored to favour) to accompany her to France and unearth any plots against the little Queen.
★★★
(directed by Woody Allen, 2011)
Several people have told me over the last few months that I had to watch this film. ‘You’ll really like it,’ they said, friends and colleagues alike, ‘it’s just up your street.’ Clearly my conviction that I should have been born in another age (preferably as Lucy Honeychurch) isn’t as secret as I thought. And it’s little wonder the film has been so popular. Whimsical and light-hearted, it’s set in one of the world’s most photogenic cities and stars Owen Wilson, on mellow form, as a romantic, vulnerable and misunderstood writer. The concept is fresh and clever, but at heart it’s a deeply traditional fable of the kind Hollywood loves, all about finding yourself and realising that happiness is about facing up to your problems rather than running away from them. It’s the kind of film you watch on a girls’ night in with white wine and chocolate truffles. It was always going to be a hit.
★★★
Let me start with a disclaimer. I’ve had this book on my Amazon wishlist for two years and so, when I stumbled over it on the shelves of the addictive Book & Comic Exchange in Notting Hill, I snaffled it immediately. I’ve long been fascinated by the few details I know about the real Cyrano de Bergerac and, since I first saw it, the film version of Edmond Rostand’s play has been one of my all-time favourites.
The Idle Woman 