Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons by Gerald Durrell

Like many readers I'm sure, my first encounter with Gerald Durrell was with My Family and Other Animals which I read many years ago. Just recently I stumbled across this copy of Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons and was drawn by the eye-catching cover (illustrated by Edward Mortelmans) and the curious title - pink pigeons, really?



So. Yes. To answer the most important question; there is indeed such a thing as a pink pigeon - and you'll have to take a trip to Mauritius if you'd like to see one... oh, okay - or Jersey zoo (wildlife park).

Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons is Gerald Durrell's account of his first sustained overseas conservation efforts for his animal sanctuary in Jersey; his expeditions to Mauritius to help prevent the extinction of several threatened species. His companions for the trips were his assistant John and secretary Ann and the secondary aim of the trip was to discuss a new captive breeding programme with the Mauritian Government whereby the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust offered a scholarship scheme for students to train with them over in Jersey and then return to their native countries to set up their own captive breeding programmes; thus ensuring the survival of a number of endangered species. Reading Golden Bats has reminded me what a ground-breaking conservationist Gerald Durrell really was. I had no idea quite how much work and dedication went into finding and capturing these birds and animals, so that they could learn from them and breed from them in captivity. Just read Durrell's descriptions of the team's visits to the extremely inhospitable Round Island for a true taste of commitment to one's work. Steep rocky screes, scorching unremitting sun, a boat landing to make even an intrepid explorer nervous; not to mention his side-splitting account of camping in the middle of a colony of Shearwaters.

Durrell writes superbly; succintly and with enough wit and humour to make conservation accessible and interesting to everyone. His descriptions make the habitat and the animals leap off the page, lifelike. I love this description of his first encounter with a Jak fruit, an essential weapon in the arsenal for bat-catching:

"What was revealed when the swaddling clothes were stripped away, was an obscene green fruit covered with knobs and looking rather like the corpse of a Martian baby. To help the illusion, there arose from it a thick, sweetish, very pungent smell, vaguely reminiscent of a putrefying body."

Although Durrell described himself as a naturalist first, writer second, his writing is accessible, fun and entertaining and I'm going to enjoy exploring some of his other books. There are loads to choose from. Here's my shortlist of titles that take my fancy:  The Drunken Forest, Menagerie Manor, The Aye-Aye and I, Fillets of Plaice, Catch me a Colobus, A Zoo in my Luggage... those should get me started. Mauritius may be a little beyond my means, but I am inspired to take another little trip to Jersey and this time visit the wildlife park. Camping there looks fun (and luxurious) too.

Gods and Warriors by Michelle Paver

(Puffin, 2012)

A Greek Bronze Age edge-of-your-seat adventure for older children (and adults). 

I love Michelle Paver's books. Having first discovered her children's books years ago with Wolf Brother, the first title in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series, I've since devoured them all and, yes, you've guessed it; I'm not a child. I can't even pretend I was child when Wolf Brother was published. Ahem. No, not even remotely. Much like other good children's books, her books are for children of all ages (approx. age 9 and up). Gods and Warriors is the first of a new series, so I approached it with more than a little trepidation: "how on earth could it match up to the thrilling Neolithic stories of Torak et al.?" BUT, cast your fears aside because this book is every bit as good.

Do you ever pick up a new book at night and say to yourself, 'I'll just read a few pages before I go to bed?'. Well, there I was a few hours later still reading - I literally couldn't put this book down until I'd finished it and I'm still trying to recover those lost hours of sleep. The story doesn't stop for breath; it's so fast paced it almost turns the pages for you.

Without giving away any key moments, here's an outline. This is the story of Hylas, a boy aged 12 who we meet at the beginning of the novel, fleeing from a frightening group of black-clad warriors. His little sister has gone missing, he's lost his dog and he has no idea why these soldiers are after him but it's fairly clear they would like to see him dead. Hylas must escape and find his sister. After being turned away by the nearby villagers Hylas seeks refuge in a cave. Here his destiny meets him head on and the story takes on a sense of mystery. The young boy sets out on a path to the sea, along the way befriending the runaway rebellious daughter of a High Priestess, Pirra. A lone dolphin, Spirit, tries to help Hylas but can anything save him from the fearsome black warriors? Will he reach his sister...?

Apart from the great story, there's one other thing I love about this book: it's nicely made. I love well-produced physical books. It's a pet subject of mine. Sadly 9 times out of 10 the Americans do it better than our British publishers ever do. I've even been known to order US hardback editions of my favourite books because they are so much better made. But this time Puffin have done a good job. Good paper, striking colours, vibrant red endpapers contrasting with black page edges and a well-thought out appealing dust jacket design. All these factors make it a book I want to keep (and so I shall!). Well done Puffin. Keep up the good work with attractive physical books that we want to keep for ever and ever.

                   



Stories about Banburyshire Churches

The Saxon Princess and Her Infant Saint: Stories from the treasury of Four Shires churches by Graham Wilton

I wonder how many local residents there are out there who (like me) have little idea of the wonderful treasures sitting right on our doorstep, waiting to be discovered. This little book has opened my eyes.

The author has visited a number of churches in the villages surrounding Banbury, all shown on my map below, and also Dorchester Abbey (not included on the map as it's south of Oxford). You can tell how much I enjoyed the book - it took me ages to put the map together; that's dedication for you!

View The Saxon Princess Map in a larger map

These small parish churches have a wealth of history, architecture, beautiful stained glass windows, medieval wall paintings, Civil War history, grotesque gargoyles, 18th-century graffiti, a font dating from 1100AD, and so much more. The book is lavishly illustrated with lots of colour photos; taken on different cameras, some photos are superb, whereas others just do a good job of illustrating the text. The author has sounded out some really interesting bits of local history about each parish church.

Amongst my favourites from the book is St. Peter's at South Newington - now firmly on my list of churches to explore to see the gory Thomas a Becket wall paintings:

Another one on my must see list is St. Mary Magdalene Church at Helmdon to admire the medieval stained glass windows:

Copies of the book are just £5 (plus £2.00 P&P if required) and are available from Books & Ink Bookshop - 01295 709769

The Lighthouse by Alison Moore

The Booker judges have done a great job of selecting The Lighthouse for this year's shortlist nominations. Although first appearances suggest otherwise, there's nothing simple about this short first novel from Alison Moore.

Meet Futh; standing on a wet and blustery ferry deck on a summer's day, on his way to Germany for a solo walking holiday. Forty-something Futh, recently separated from his wife and removed from a marriage seemingly lacking in mutual love and affection, is re-visiting the country of his grandfather and the only place he holidayed with his father, at the age of twelve.

As the novel unfolds it becomes evident that adult Futh is stuck in the past of his childhood; never recovered from his mother's abrupt abandonment of he and his father more than 30 years previously. Futh carries around with him, obsessively, an antique silver perfume case in the shape of a lighthouse. It is the only memento he has of his mother. Little wonder his marriage has now gone awry as what wife can live up to the memories of a long-gone mother and a husband who is constantly making comparisons with an idolised woman?

Futh collects stick insects, he cannot stay in a room without first planning an escape route, he doesn't think to wear-in a pair of boots he expects to wear for over 100 miles of walks, his job is making synthetic perfumes, trying to re-capture his mother's scent. Socially-awkward Futh paints a disconsolate picture of a man who has never found the tools and support to face the past and move on with life.

In alternate chapters we encounter Ester's story, landlady of the small hotel in provincial small-town fictitious "Hellhaus", where Futh is to spend the first and last nights of his walking holiday. Trapped in an abusive marriage, lacking in any real affection from an obsessive, controlling husband, Ester seeks solace in sexual encounters with hotel guests. Where Futh and Ester's stories converge, leads to the catastrophic denouement of misunderstanding at the novel's close.

The novel is tightly written in symbolic and evocative prose. Effects are often hinted at rather than explicitly disclosed, adding to the novel's poignancy. As you are reading, many layers unravel and the author's understanding of the psychological make-up of her characters becomes increasingly apparent. Sad and melancholy, it's a brutal exposé of loveless dysfunctional relationships between men and women and the consequences that can arise.

I devoured this book in one sitting. It's an excellent choice for the Booker shortlist and it's refreshing to see a new author receiving the recognition she deserves. Read The Observer's recent interview with Alison Moore here. Published by independent publisher, Salt Publishing.

The Wine of Solitude by Irène Némirovsky

Irène Némirovsky's works blasted into the current public eye with the publication in 2004 (subsequent media spotlight with the English translation making its way into paperback, with Vintage in 2007) of Suite française, a planned sequence of five novels portraying life in France after the occupation began in 1940. The sequence was cut short. Irène had completed just the first two novels in the sequence when, in July 1942, she was arrested as a Jew and subsequently sent to Auschwitz, where she died. The notebook containing the novels survived in her daughter's possession but wasn't read until 1998, when her daughter, Denise, first took a look at it. Since the great success of Suite française, a number of Irène's earlier novels have since been translated into English and have become available to a wider audience. Le vin de solitude is the latest of these to have been published in English, with the Vintage paperback having just been released (6 September, 2012).

The novel begins in a shabby apartment in a provincial town in the Ukraine ...'The silence of this sleepy provincial town, lost deep within Russia, was intense, heavy and overwhelmingly sad.' Eight-year-old Hélène sits at the dinner table with her mother, father, grandparents and French governess, Mademoiselle Rose. Devoid of affection from her mother, indifferent to the affections of her grandparents, Hélène has only eyes for her beloved Papa, who rarely makes the time to notice her, and her practical and caring Mademoiselle Rose. In this environment young Hélène's distance from her mother begins its descent to hatred, fuelled by her mother's love affairs, her treatment of her papa, her coldness towards her daughter and treatment of Mlle Rose.

As the family's fortunes change, papa Boris moves them first to St. Petersburg, leaving Hélène's grandparents behind and taking with them Max, Hélène's cousin and Bella's lover; subsequently, the Russian Revolution leads Boris and Bella to hide money and share certificates in every available piece of furniture, stuffing notes into sofas for safekeeping. Hélène sadly watches the Revolution go on around them from her privileged position, despondent at her parents ignorance of the hardships surrounding them. The Revolution then leads them to flee first to the Finnish borders, and then to Helsinki; later, after the War's end, to Paris. Hélène's teenage years are spent mostly in isolation, against this backdrop of war and upheaval, changing fortunes, lies and deceit. She grows up devoid of affection, falls into an innocent, brief affair with a married man and hatches a plot to wreak revenge on her mother. In all, we see her emerge into a hard and bitter young woman; her redeeming features being her determination to turn out differently and not succumb to the same path as her mother. It's not difficult to empathise with this bitter, young Hélène as what else has she known?

A number of Irène Némirovsky's novels carry this theme of mother-daughter estrangement and the rebellious daughter, and The Wine of Solitude is believed to be the most autobiographical of these - the fleeing from the Russian Empire, the year spent in Finland, before settling in Paris. The denouement of the novel is perhaps more final than Irène's gradual estrangement from her mother (reference. Jonathan Weiss, Irène Némirovsky: Her Life and Works). It leaves the reader to wonder if this is the dramatic exit from her mother's life that Irene wishes she had taken.

It's a very well-executed novel, short on words but not lacking in description; fluidly written, evocative and shocking, and undeniably, a powerful coming-of-age story.

The Famished Road by Ben Okri

So, recently I've been reading or re-reading my way through a selection of past Booker Prize winners - yes, it's that time of year again, with this year's shortlist due to be announced on Tuesday 11th - and this past-winner caught my eye.

In part, I was intrigued by the wildly polarised array of reviews that this book has had; love it or hate it, marmite-style reviews. I also felt quite drawn to the promise of mysticism and a quote from a reviewer from The Times citing the novel as 'unlike anything you have ever read before', piqued my interest. The story of a spirit child born to live for just a short while but who decides to defy this destiny and stay in the living world; partly with a thirst to experience life and partly for the sake of his mother, sounded like a really interesting premise and refreshingly different from other novels I've read recently.

I wasn't disappointed.

'The Famished Road' won the Booker Prize for fiction in 1991 and I found it easy to see why. Ben Okri writes beautifully. His lyrical, poetic style is a delight to read. His use of language is at times literally breathtaking. As the reviewer for the Independent on Sunday wrote, 'Okri is incapable of writing a boring sentence.' Although there is an abundance of mystical reflection in this novel, and it is by no means a page-turner in the conventional sense, I yet felt compelled to keep reading. Some greater force - the force of powerful language - was keeping me hungry for more.

The flowery writing and mystical narrative was at times a little frustrating. I found I was intensely interested in the child, Azaro, and his small family; their poverty-stricken life of hardships, hunger, sorrows and joy moved me. I wanted to know more about the flattening of the surrounding forest and its effect, and the building of new compounds, about the arrival of electricity, about the changing world around them and the infiltration of outside influences. I wanted to know more about the story of the photo-journalist who took photos of everyday life and hardships, tragedies and politicians - a documentary life of his neighbours if you like - and who had these controversial pictures published in the local press. I had to do a little digging of my own to discover that the novel is set in Nigeria as this is never overtly mentioned. All-in-all, beautiful as it is, I'm sure I would have fallen in love with the book if it had a more even balance of mystical and harsh gritty reality. The intense concentration on mysticism left me feeling one step removed from seeing the whole - the poverty, politics, daily grind, myth, legend and mysticism, all combined - and instead feeling like I had only truly grasped a part of the picture.

The beautiful writing makes this a worthy read for anyone who appreciates world-class use of language, but its ethereal qualities may put off readers looking for something more solid, rather than spiritual. If you do read and enjoy it I recommend going back and re-reading the last chapter every now and then - its message is universal.

A Life with Books by Julian Barnes

A review of Julian Barnes's short essay on books.
(Some of my own thoughts on printed books, bookshops and bookselling may just have crept in... a little...)

One of the little gems published especially for indie booksellers this Independent Booksellers Week 2012 is this short essay by Julian Barnes. It's a heartwarming piece from a world-renowned author about the indispensability of the physical book and how books have influenced his life: the nostalgia of inherited or prize-won volumes; the serendipity of discovery by browsing in bookshops, or the way in which he discovered books as a teenager by browsing his parents' and brother's bookshelves. I love these sentiments and agree wholeheartedly, as I do with Barnes's caveat that should the printed book survive and even flourish in the future then books and bookshops:

...'will have to earn their keep... Books will have to become more desirable: not luxury goods, but well-designed, attractive, making us want to pick them up, buy them, give them as presents, keep them, think about rereading them, and remember in later years that this was the edition in which we first encountered what lay inside.' (pp.25-25).

This has never been more true. His own recent Man Booker Prize Winner 'The Sense of an Ending' was beautifully produced in hardback and the newly released paperback is also an attractive book with its' black edged pages. I expect sales of the paperback edition to flourish as well as the hardback did, and not just because of the content of the Booker Prize, but also because it is a physically attractive and pleasing book to pick up and read. So too, 'The Night Circus' by Erin Morgenstern; another well-made and attractively designed physical book which was set with a competitive recommended retail price and which sold well in hardback, with many customers commenting favourably about how lovely the book looked. As an indie bookseller I know I have to offer something over and above the online retail and the e-book experience so with both of these books I ensured a good stock of first edition copies and offered them on my shelves with dust jackets supplied by us in protective archival clear film - collectables of the future.

I am delighted that Julian Barnes retains an optimistic belief in the future of books and reading and hope very much that he is right. As a 30-something bookseller I have sampled e-readers, spend a large proportion of my working day online, use an iPad and so on. But, nothing will ever replace physical books for me. I can turn pages; feel the sentiment; remember people, places and things when I reach out for the books on my shelves; smell that glorious new book smell and that more time-worn old book smell; make notes easily; lend my favourite paperbacks to friends; I don't have to plug my books in to recharge them; they don't break; they are a pleasure to browse on my shelves; picture books given to children can be romped around with, loved, cuddled up with, dropped on the floor; I have books with treasured inscriptions from friends and family; more books with treasured signatures and inscriptions from authors; tatty books where just a glance takes me to where I was when I first encountered them; and ultimately when my bookshelves are positively groaning I can give away or sell on the books that no longer have meaning for me. Physical books open doors into my imagination, in a way that e-books have so far failed to do.

Julian Barnes's essay has also been published in the Guardian newspaper (Friday 29 June 2012) and is available to read online. If you would like a physical copy, it's available as a lovely little booklet with a striking cover design by Suzanne Dean, from independent bookshops only (it's not on Amazon - at least not at the moment). Priced £1.99. Proceeds from the sale of 'A Life with Books' will be donated to Freedom from Torture: The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.