A Book Review Frankenstein by Mary Shelly

I've read Frankenstein recently. I'm studying it with a first year literature class. So here is my review.

A novel in three volumes in which we read the journal of an arctic explorer whose ship is trapped by sea ice. He encounters Victor Frankenstein on a sleigh, close to death, chasing another sleigh navigated by an unknown but huge man.

When he has recovered a little Frankenstein tells his tale to the explorer. It is a moral tale warning against obsessive ambition and international fame.

Doctor Victor Frankenstein first fascinated by the work of alchemists and natural philosophers undertakes a degree at Ingolstadt during which he decides to create a living creature out of the dead limbs and organs of a dead person.

Eventually the creature is brought to life.

Immediately Frankenstein is revolted and disgusted by what he has created and falls ill under the strain of what he has done. A friend and fellow student called Henry Cherval looks after Victor.

Frankenstein recovers and continues to study at the university but under Henry’s example studies other languages.

Before returning home to his father, his bride to be and his two brothers he receives news that his younger brother has been murdered and an adopted sister has been blamed for the crime.

He returns home certain that the murderer is the creature - after cqatching sight of him in the mountains. The adopted sister who Victor had never met is found guilty and is executed. Two deaths.

Victor is filled with guilt, anger, revenge and disgust. He retreats to the mountains to escape his feelings and meets the creature. This meeting is explosive and Frankenstein wants to kill it. The creature persuades him to listen to his tale and journey, his struggle and defeat at being accepted by society.

Rejected by people it tells of a family who he watches secretly from a hovel he has made and develops loving and affectionate feelings towards him. He eventually makes himself known to them and they are totally repulsed by him. This final rejection is to much. He vows to be an enemy of humankind and to destroy his creator.

Searching for him he kills William – Victor’s brother and frames the adopted sister.

It demands Victor creates a female companion for it. And vows to kill Victor if he does not. Eventually Victor agrees and travels to a secluded area on Orkney, Scotland, accompanied by Henry Cherval. However Victor refuses to continue his work. He is sickened by it and fears what a male and female creature could achieve together as enemies to humanity.

On destroying his work he sails out to sea and lands in Ireland where he is arrested for the murder of – he later discovers – his friend Henry Cherval. He knows the creature killed him. He is freed, returns home and marries Elizabeth his long waiting bride to be. She is murdered on there wedding night and Victor devotes the rest of his life to hunting and destroying the creature. His father too dies broken hearted and weakened by the tragic events that have surrounded his life since the death of his wife of Scarlet Fever when Victor was still at home.

His chase leads him to the barren white wastes of the arctic ocean where he dies in the arms of his friend Robert Walton the polar explorer.

Walton witnesses the creature in Frankenstein’s cabin. It tells Walton he will travel to the Pole and there make a fire and destroy himself.

Walton returns south on a melting ocean with his crew and no longer seeks to discover the north pole. Here the tale of Frankenstein come to an end.

This is generally a badly written book. But is rescued by some engaging features.

Something different happens on every page. It is a page-turner and I genuinely wanted to know what happened and how it was achieved.

The creature’s character is interesting. A beautiful mind and sensibilities corrupted by Victor’s disgust and humanities prejudices against the unknown, the alien.

Some of the descriptions are beautifully realized for example, the setting of the novel, the Alps, Scotland are stunning.

However the book is over written. It could have been a third less in length at least.

Characters are not well drawn. They are superficial and uninteresting. Relationships are stereotyped, sentimental and gushing.

Much of the story is unrealistic and impractical and there are so many questions that the narrative just does not answer or address in any satisfactory way. For example how does the creature travel from Geneva to Scotland? How does it learn to speak, read or write so eloquently? There are many questions.

And yet what perhaps is the most successful feature of the novel are the moral and philosophical themes and issues it raises. For example, the novel asks, what is it to be human? It also discusses our responsibilities in science. And Frankenstein raises lots of issues around, parenting, paternity, individual identity, developments in artificial intelligence and genetic technologies.

One Hundred Words About Remeberance Day

Remembrance Day. I turn on the television and call the children down at ten thirty to watch the parade and wreath laying at The Cenotaph. We listen to David Dimbelbey’s commentary and the music of military bands. Dead leaves rustle and fall from the trees in Whitehall.

On that first stroke of silence tears begin to fill my eyes. The children keep silence with me, watching, curious, silenced also by the grey uniforms and the pale sombre expressions of all those remembering. Elgar’s Nimrod seems still to hang in the air, dark, weeping, smoulders like smoke from an autumn bonfire.

One Hundred Words About One Hundred Words

I’ve decided I’m a writer. I’ve come to this page several times over the week and almost got to the end of a line – then scrapped it. But here I am again wondering if I can carry it off this time.
Simon Hoggart usually manages to write three or four paragraphs each week in his column so why shouldn’t I? There are some simple answers to that but that would be something like making excuses for not writing anything and to even mention him in the same sentence as me is assuming far too much about my abilities. So there!

One Hundred Word Poem

Dear Pam

Here is a little variation on the one hundred words theme. Hope you like it.

D

New Home

Occasionally we get a glimpse
of our new home.

It rises up to us
fractured, vague, unfocussed
like rippled glass.

Until for a moment
clear and sharp,
it shines at us.
A promise
within our grasp.

And we stare
in silence,
unspoken hope
impatient longing.

Today we stopped
at a new shelf -
and a single saucepan, gleaming.

Then it slips away again
lost under the grey skin
of masonry dust.

I look out
from the margins
of our living room.

All the pieces
of our broken lives
slowly emerging whole
out of a black, lifeless deep.

(c) David Loffman

One Hundred Words About Wind

It feels as if we are travelling. Thick dark grey cloud has been surging in from the west all day. And then it thins to bleached grey, then white. There have been stretches of blue, clean and spotless but the cloud smothers in on high winds.

Last night the rain kept waking me. The sudden sharp slaps of water hit windowpane and guttering. Water knocked hard against the wall wanting to get in. I worried about it for a while.
Outside trees twist and shake under the furious weight of the wind whipping them. Branches fling themselves at the sky helpless.

One Hundred Words About A Desert

It is four O’clock in the morning. It is dark and the air is biting. Either the sky has begun to brighten or I have got used to the dim predawn light.

I can only hear our sleepy, dry voices. Out there in the thin light is silence and beyond that the broken wall of rock that drops down into the canyon, hundreds of meters below.

Then the sun comes like a knife over the mountains. And I stand in the shadow of the earth. Soldering light scolds the cracked rock. I watch my own shadow forming – in an instant.

One Hundred Words About A Forest

Once there was a forest that stretched all the way to the sea. It was vast, unbounded. Hills and valleys were hidden in its folds. Streams flowed through that land and deep, silent pools settled in its shadows. Here Pike and Carp grew undisturbed in clear water. Great English Oaks grew and stretched out their branches over the ponds and hidden in forgotten groves grew Elm trees, tall, strong, majestic. Among the young Oaks deer grazed and sheltered in the tall ferns that grew among the clearings. And I’d heard that Boar, Bear and Wolf roamed the valleys and hills.

One Hundred Words About Sunday

We’re on holiday for a week. So we don’t need to rush. I got up at seven thirty to read the paper in peace for a couple of hours. Katy was unwell so she stayed at home with Iona while l went to church.

Then we all had lunch with old friends. We had not seen them for years. It was good to catch up.

At home by five thirty and went to work on putting up bookshelves on the landing. We unpacked about fourteen boxes of books and are beginning to make some space in the study at last.

One Hundred Words About Too Many Words

There was an open evening on Tuesday.

I stood at the English Literature stand and waited.

At five I started talking to parents and I did not stop until eight thirty. As each party left a new one came. Sometimes I looked up to see three or four other groups listening to me.

At other times I looked up and saw my colleagues and parents directing other parents in my direction.

It was an extraordinary evening, parents were impressed by my summaries and enthusiasm and colleagues were impressed with my energy.

It was exhausting and exhilarating. I didn’t sit once.

Sleepy

It feels like a heavy fluid weight that shifts position inside me so it almost throws me off balance with each step I take. I have to check myself, force myself to keep control. If I stop and sit still, the world dissolves and fades out behind my lead eyes that close and embrace the darkness. Sleep is so close to me I feel I could reach my hand out to it. I feel I could unlock my grasp of the day, and let myself fall – warm muffled thoughts. Silence, soft embrace, a sweet lingering taste, cradled, dark and hidden.

Poetry Reading Details

The Poetry Library | Events | Poetry Readings

check out this listing for the poetry reading on the 29 November

Note of Absence

Dear Reader, David has not been able to blog recently. Firstly, he has the most demanding timetable he has had. He teaches from nine till five twice a week and nine till four twice a week. He is teaching six A level courses – most years it has been three or four.

The family have been looking at secondary schools in the evenings and trying to decide what schools to apply to for the children.

At weekends we have been stripping doors, stripping walls, painting walls, hanging shelves, neglecting the children and unpacking boxes.

I hope normal service will resume soon.

One Hundred Words to Pam

Dear Pam it was a shame we could not talk this morning but we were just going out to my mother’s for lunch, to say goodbye to my aunt from Australia. Her last and only other visit to London was in 1978. However I remember the first time still vividly. We went to the Tate in Pimlico to see an exhibition of Blake’s paintings, like walking through a nightmare. She was and is an incredible woman. There is something very special about her. We struck up a friendship immediately and twenty-eight years of absence did not seem to diminish that.

Poetry Reading

I'm reading along side Michael O' Siadhail at Poetry in the Crypt on 29 October from 7.15 at St Mary's Church, Upper Street, Islington. £3.00 entry - £2.00 conc. All proceeds go to the St Mary's Church Homeless Project.

One Hundred Words About Children Growing

My children are growing up and I want to hold on to them. Fear dominates my thoughts when I think of them leaving the house alone in the mornings to go to school. And fear again when I think of them coming home alone, across the main road, over the level crossing. And yet they are confident and feel secure.

Today I arranged to meet my son from school. But he did not appear. So I walked slowly back until I saw his smiling face the other side of the level crossing. He greeted me with, ‘so there you are.’

One Hundred Words About Views

What a triptych of dull views I can hear you thinking and of course on one level you are absolutely right. Our friends in Abbotsbury have a view of the sea. Our friends in Toulouse live on the edge of a forest and our friends in Canada live near a ski resort. I bet the views are stunning. And friends that live near Oxford. They have an orchard for a garden. So our suburban townscape must seem pretty dull. And yet it is fascinating to me to live among so many people, each person amazing like a view of Everest.

One Hundred Words About A View

From the old house I worked mostly from the back room. There was just one small window looking out over the back garden and alleyway.

Now in the new house I am in the front of the house, sitting at a desk looking out over a bay window with three views. I can look directly down the road towards the main road filled with cars passing and the occasional pedestrian crosses. I can look directly across the road to the street and houses opposite. And then look up the road to the darker, quieter street away from the main road.

One Hundred Stressful Words

Sunday is a small breathing space. I fend off difficult thoughts that haunt us and will demand our attention as each day passes. I expect every family lives under stress. Stress is our normal state and moving house has created new pressures and strains on us all. Our bigger mortgage creates a whole range of financial pressures on us. One example is Katy will have to leave the house at eight fifteen on Wednesday’s and Thursday’s to go to work and the children will have to leave the house for school alone at eight thirty-five without us waving them off.

One Hundred Damp Words

Over the summer our stress levels were high as we moved from house to house waiting until we could move into our new home. We knew moving in wouldn’t be easy but we hoped that gradually our stress levels would decrease as everyday challenges would take over.

But I am sitting in our study where the hard rain fell this afternoon and dripped from the ceiling onto a desk with our computers and onto the new carpet we had laid. The gutters at the back of the house don’t work and there is a smell of drains in the air.

Remaking A Home

We are in our new home. We experience a whole mixture of feelings as we pass from room to room. Firstly there is the shock of boxes everywhere. There are towers of them rising up from the floor and one or two almost touch the ceiling.

Yesterday we drove to Surbition, to collect the rest of our things. So everything we have is now held within these walls. On one level I feel whole again and complete. On another everything is out of place, disordered and unfamiliar – the walls are bare.

Coming home takes time even when you are there.

Yet Another One Hundred Waiting Words

I’m sitting at my desk at work, waiting for a meeting to start. We come in to college early every year, to enrol students, have meetings, dissecting last years results and plan for this year’s courses. Essentially we are just waiting for the college year to begin.

Next Wednesday I meet my new tutor group for the first time and next Thursday I start teaching the first year students. There is a relaxed, holiday atmosphere around my colleagues that talk about their summer trips but I'm not listening, I'm waiting.

We move into our new home on Saturday.

Another One Hundred Waiting Words

Every Sunday we were expected to attend Hebrew classes. My dad took us on the bus every week and we made our own way back three hours later. Eventually I decided I did not want to go any more but instead of pleading with my parents as I did every week with no success we decided to skip the classes and make a long slow three hour walk home. We developed a routine, stopped outside shop windows, spent our bus money on sweets and checked out the local cinema, until eventually, cold, full of lies and guilt, we arrived home.

One Hundred Words While Waiting

I’ve done a lot of waiting in my life and I am embarrassed and a little humiliated to admit it, ashamed also for writing this, waiting, in an empty corner of a pub with my back to the door, out of sight, trying to make myself invisible until the right moment arrives to come out of the shadows and play my part.

But I am grateful for this moment of freedom, a cloak of invisibility where people think I’m somewhere else. Here is a little space alone, a way from the stresses that surround us and threaten to overwhelm me.

One Hundred Photographic Words

There are photographs in the lounge, hallways and study of the family that live here. There are family portraits, five of them huddled tight together, parents arms opened out in an embrace. And single portraits of the girls, carefully framed and hung. They smile, strong and confident, looking at the camera.

The photographs are like mirrors reflecting the people they once were, a way of measuring themselves, like notches carved into a doorframe – but measuring more then height or physical shape. The photographs connect each other to themselves, the rest of the family the the home where these portraits hang.

One Hundred Busy Words

The kitchen in our new home is being built and the bathroom just needs a floor and a couple of handles on the doors. On Tuesday the gas supply will be connected and we will have hot water. Also on Tuesday John will fit our new floor in kitchen and bathroom.

But there is still other work to do.

A new horizon is emerging that includes arranging for carpets to be chosen, bought and laid, removers to be booked, school and college is looming. And we have to find another place to camp out until we can move in.

One Hundred Homely Words

There is something strong and healthy about the house we are staying in while the owners are away.

A family lives here and every object and piece of furniture connects the people to themselves, each other and the outside world. For example, the dinning room is not a stuffy room for best, but light and airy, connecting each family member to each other.

The two bathrooms are fitted with showers and large thick towels. There is such care taken over the tiling and the colour schemes.

The sitting room is warm and embracing with large deep sofas, we love it.

A Time For Change

Tonight we’re sleeping our second night in our new incomplete house. The first was the day we bought the house. Since then we’ve been “camping out.”

We moved out of the flat we were staying in this afternoon, a day early. Our daughter is going on holiday tomorrow . And our son returns from camp tomorrow afternoon.

Tomorrow we begin house sitting for two weeks . We hope to move from there to the new house. On Monday the builders start the final stages of the work at our house.

I’ve booked the removers for the twenty ninth of August.

One Hundred Weary Words

Tired. At first it is the shop, inconvenient, under staffed and lacking variety. I’m feeling hot and a little claustrophobic. I want to leave, give up and go back to the car. But the car feels miles away. So I trudge on and find a wall to perch on for a few moments. It is too bright. My legs feel heavy, a strain to lift each one. I’m walking slower. The camber of the pavement is awkward and the road feels as if it is rising – slow tortuous gradient. And then the head pressure – continuous drilling, a dizzy, numb, incoherent fumbling.

One Hundred Cohen Words

Listening to good music makes me want to write.

Tonight we are staying with friends. After dinner while my wife showed Lucy round our new home. David played me Leonard Cohen – a concert recorded in 88. He often plays Cohen to me. And again he knocked me out.

One song I remember – an old one I’ve known for years - but touched me in a new way was ‘Who By Fire”. What struck me was the depth of his lyrics. Like his voice the words have the texture of seasoned wood. They are finely wrought worked over slowly and resonate.

One Hundred More Fragile Words

Once I wrote ‘ how fragile I stand upon the earth’. It was written at a time when I had leg ulcers that made walking difficult. When my legs were amputated last year I had thought that my fragility would be no more. But I am mistaken.

My artificial legs also have problems. On my left leg I have a sore. My skin is red along the scar line and there is a graze developing. One reason perhaps, I had a fall the other day and may have damaged my stump. Or my socket is new and needs some tweaking.

One Hundred Fragile Words

Sometimes I forget how fragile our life is at present. I build routines for us that help give an impression of stability and permanence. But then something happens like an earth tremor. The day before yesterday my wife wrapped our second car round a lamppost. She was not hurt – just a little shaken for a while. We are waiting for a response from our insurance company but it will probably be a write off. The crash reminded me again what a narrow path we tread. Thinking about it does not help. All the possible problems and disasters loom up close.

One Hundred Wet Words

Today it’s raining. The milk was off. My wife crashed our car. The builders didn’t turn up. We’ve lost our internet connection twice. My wife lost her work and my son lost a battle he was fighting.

Sometimes it’s like this. And I wonder if there is something bringing about these problems. Maybe our minds are tuned into disasters and block out the other possible narratives of the day. Like the flowers my daughter presented to my wife. Or the neighbour who came over from the bus stop to greet me, or the lunch my family shared on our laps.

One Hundred Post Move Words

The holiday stretches out before us. And we are not in our new home. We are camping out in a borrowed flat in Surbition. We’ve also been staying with friends at weekends. In mid August we will be house sitting for two weeks. After that we hope to move into our newly repaired and adapted home. It still feels like a long way off. We are fragile and feel vulnerable and stressed. We have reached a stable state though. We had lurched from crisis to crisis on a daily bases but we feel that we are reaching the home stretch.

One Hundred Stressed Words

There is too much in my head. I zoom in and out of thoughts, they come up close, to horrific proportions, then they fragment, dissolve and fade, replaced by urgent more disturbing thoughts this time clawing at me with sharp hooks that draw so much pain it feels like blood flows from my head. I’m reeling, my thoughts lurch from children’s lunches and picking up times to building works and plans. People talk and I can barely listen. I swing from tragedy one minute and victory the next. Our life is changing. It feels like an operation with eyes open.

Quick Before The Connection Fails

Life feels very fragile and our patchy connections to the web are a symptom of how things are now. So while the connection is holding and a computer engineer is sitting beside me here I go with a blog.

Yes we have moved. Well our boxes and builders have moved in. We have moved out and are sort of camping in a flat on the second floor of an Edwardian house about three miles away.

Strange. Transitional. Change. Turmoil. Juggling money, builders, computers, homes, children, book clubs, work, class preparation, admin, teaching, utilities, gas connections, dinners, washing, showers, security, the list seems endless.

How long can we keep going like this?

We need to be set up at home as soon as possible.

Three Hundred Words - Moving Pains

Wednesday, 15 June 2005

This is the first half hour when I got home. I’m arranging for the gas people to connect us to a gas pipe. This took ages – hanging on – listening to Vivaldi. My wife started telling me about her meeting. A knock at the door, my sister-in-law and her dog distributing presents to the children – their birthday, and a moving in present – we move on Monday – stress, and she wants to talk. My son wants to play outside. A phone call invites my daughter on holiday this summer – decision time. Another call about canoeing and lifts there and back this evening.


Tuesday, 14 June 2005

The tensions are growing. We feel we have achieved and done a lot of packing. My wife’s instinct is to relax and slow down. Mine is to work harder as the moving date approaches. I’m beginning to feel the burden of the physical work is falling onto me. My wife is going out to meetings and having long family phone conversations. I was desperate to get days off work so we could move but now I’ve decided I won’t bother. We talked about it and she seems to understand - although she’s having another one of those conversations right now.


Monday, 13 June 2005

After I dropped the children at school I drove to Richmond Park and sat on my favourite bench looking out over woods and grassland towards Ham. I sat still, back straight, eyes closed, breathed in slow, counting, breathed out slow, counting. I named and welcomed all I could hear, a sudden gust of wind in the trees, the cars on the distant ring road, the sound of a dog passing and women talking as they walked behind me. And of course the birds, crows in the oaks behind me and parakeets squabbling close by. Fifteen minutes, deep rhythm flowing, survival.

Growing Pains

Silence. A yawning gap appears between us. It’s not always there. But my questions deliver just mumbled one-word answers. I have to strain to hear. I ask him to repeat himself but his reply seems designed to destroy conversation, it seems to suck meaning or purpose from the air. My thoughts feel flat and meaningless. I glance over to him to read his expression. It is neutral, a sort of impassive indifference. Maybe I ask too many questions. Maybe he thinks my questions are interrogations. Perhaps my self-consciousness puts him off. I just want to get closer to my son.

The Chauffer Years

Yesterday I left college at two thirty and picked up my daughter from school at three thirty. At four thirty I drove back to pick up my son – he had football practice. We drove on to pick up boxes so we can carry on packing. We got lost but managed to get my daughter to her ballet lesson for six thirty. While she was there the rest of us dashed home to get changed and pick up her dancing shoes then picked her up at seven forty five. We rushed to Kingston for dinner at eight at a local restaurant.

Four Hundred Words

I found this website I thought looked interesting. What do you think?

Friday, 03 June 2005

I woke early to the sound of car engines driving through my sleep. Then the rubbish lorry pummelling down the street. Then clattering of metal on kerbstones, metal on the metal lip of the lorry and men shouting instructions above the roar of the engine.

Then hard sunlight pours through the blinds.

I’m restless. So I turn over again. My wife is asleep beside me. She had a bad night. She struggled with a sleeplessness for two hours. Put the light on and read for a while. Turned over and over.

We are waiting. Our days slip by.


Thursday 2 June 2005

There is an uneasy restlessness. A tightness that fills the air, it’s been here in the house, hanging around our lives for weeks now. It is unsettling. The children feel it too. My daughter will cry about something unimportant but won’t be able to stop, not for ages. My son has developed lots of routines – little things – like the way he wraps his bathrobe tightly around him and ties it with a cord it looks a little obsessive.

I often wake at four and slip uneasily in and out of sleep till six. I’ve had a few headaches recently too.


Sunday, 29 May 2005

This Sunday my daughter is in a Gymnastics competition this morning and my son is at a football birthday party this afternoon. I’ve just heard my daughter has won joint first place for her age group. I feel very proud and have dashed out to buy her flowers, a card and cake to celebrate later.

But I feel heavy like lead. I’m burning inside, something is eating away at me. I could give myself up to tears but if I do that I won’t be able to pick up my son from his party or my daughter from the competition.


Saturday 28 May 2005

I said goodbye to some students yesterday. It was the last time I’ll see many of them again. They were a great class. I felt good and excited every time I closed the door behind me and began to take the register. I’d look up to friendly, smiling and attentive faces and for three hours every week of the academic year we’d just play with words.

We played with Hamlet and an anthology of American poetry in the first year and this year we played with Othello, The Tempest, Translations by Brian Friel, and lots more poetry. I’ll miss them.

A Book Review Spies by Michael Frayn

Lots going on but difficult to write about in an orderly way. So I'll just hand you over to a book review.

I'm hopeless. This whole Conjuring Sunlight blog is a testimony to my superfical and very limited little life.

Today I've been working on two poems, I'm trying to get my head around the General Election and I've been working on two book reviews. Out there we are trying to move house, buy a car and I'm trying to keep up with a job that at times feels too much for me - even though I'm not doing full hours. Somewhere among all the day to day stress and busyness are my wife and children.

My prayer life is nil. My fairtrade/debt/aid/green concerns have fallen to the ground, let alone my parenting ideals and practice.

It's not because of my legs. My head as always is full of dust. Simply. I do not seem to be able to apply myself.

I feel quite pathetic.

Spies

By Michael Frayn

A good book. Beautifully written at times. It evokes an English suburban childhood during the second world war years. It reminds me of L. P Hartley’s The Go-Between. There are so many parallels Frayn must have used The Go-Between as his starting point.

Two school boys aged somewhere between eleven and thirteen hit upon a new game. Or is it a game? Keith declares one day, his mother is a German spy, and so the two set about watching her every move, at weekends, after school, during the holidays.

But the game becomes serious and has tragic consequences for the main characters in this mystery novel, heavy with nostalgia, raising issues of memory, childhood, loyalty, betrayal and friendship.

Keith’s mother is not a spy but does have a secret and the novel tracks Stephen’s agonizing, cowardly and humiliating search for a truth he eventually discovers and becomes unable to escape from – trapped by a code of honour, his youth and an overwhelming sense of guilt and personal responsibility.

On the brink of adolescence he witnesses and is exposed to a raw, dark and brutal adult world from which he has no defences.

The narrator is Stephen, Keith’s sidekick. Who returns fifty years later to The Close where they lived and played out this little drama.
There are a couple of weaknesses for me.

Firstly the narrator. It is a strong confident voice that unfolds the story to us. For me it is too confident. I can see Michael Frayn ringing his hands with joy, knowing Stephen has a good story to tell. There is just the whiff of self satisfaction in his highly accomplished, glossy prose.

Secondly unlike Leo in The Go-Between Stephen’s life does not seem to have been damaged by his experience. He returns to The Close because of a long forgotten smell and at the end of the novel Stephen says he wants to find a scarf he buried all those years ago.

Whereas Leo’s return to Norfolk many years later represents his hopeless and pathetic search for his life that he has squandered and wasted due to the events that took place there over fifty years ago.

So much of the two England’s are similar. An England bound by strict class codes, inscrutable adults, distant and unapproachable father’s that can barely communicate with their sons. Innocent childhood’s that are wrecked by frustrated adult desire and selfishness.

Well I do seem to have written a lot.

Poem in the rain

We've been away for a while to Spain. But here is a finished poem that began life as part of a previous blog. Written in colder and bitter weather. See the blog entry for the 12 February.

All at Once

Today in the high street
bright winter sunlight,
low in the sky,
ricochets off pavements
and windscreens, blinding.
And a bitter gust
picks at me, thinly wrapped.

Then an ambulance passes
its siren blasts out,
clogged all the way
down the high street,
and my wife
and children yelling
urgent instructions
above the roar.

Suddenly I’m in pain.

I retreat to the railings
in search of space.
Rain so cold
it seems to cut
like broken glass.
Sweat is dripping
from my nose.
My glasses steamed up,
and full of rainwater.
I take them off
and draw in deep, cold air

thinking, this is my life
and I'm still not ready for it.


© David Loffman

Here I am writing or editing Slaying a Dragon 

Cygnet Committee (lyric). Album: David Bowie, 1969.

There was a sale at HMV last week. I bought four CD's for £20.00. They were discounting music from the past so it was an opportunity to catch up on turning my LP's into CD's. It took a long time to choose my four and to be honest the CD's I chose were not the most important ones on my catch up list.

They were Joni Mitchel's Hissing of Summer Lawns - I should have bought For the Roses is a better album, less polished, folk, raw and more personal. But still HoSL is one of my favourites.

Secondly Crosby, Stills and Nash and their Crosby Stills and Nash album - I would have preferred to have bought Deja Vu with Neil Young - CSNY but they did not have that one on offer. However it did inspire me to buy Deja Vu on Amazon. That should be here tomorrow. There are some good songs on CSN, Judy Blue Eyes and Wooden Ships to name two.

Thirdly I bought Miles Davis's The Birth of the Cool. I have a tape of it somewhere. I don't know this at all but I've enjoyed A Kind of Blue, Milestones, In a Silent Way and Sketches of Spain - so we will see.

Finally Space Oddity by David Bowie. I was hoping for The Rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust but it was no where to be found. I already have a few on CD collected over the summer, Low, Hunky Dory, The Man Who Sold The World, The Best of David Bowie, Heroes. I can wait for Ziggy, Young Americans, Aladdin Sane - but not too long I hope. Anyway I remember what hooked me in to Bowie back in1971. And that was words. The earlier the album the richer the lyrics. Space Oddity has some strong lyrics - Unwashed..., The Wild Eye Boy From Free Cloud, Memory of a Free Festival and of course Cygnet committee. Here are the lyrics for your pleasure. Cygnet Committee (lyric). Album: David Bowie, 1969.

I've been writing. Three poems slipped out over three or four days - almost whole in the first drafts. I've been tinkering with them a little - but not there yet.

Katy is selling booklets and I've been distributing them to people. It is quite awkward really, especially in church. Some people I want to give booklets to and it feels odd that some will buy from Katy and others will receive gifts from me. Ummmm!

I've still got some to post - Pam and Simon in France, Neil and Lesley - Birmingham/Canada, Steve and Tammie - Portland US. I've got to get my act together.

See you. Driving tomorrow!!

Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | There's a first time for everyone

Well I've linked to a number of sites recently and not really posted any thing myself. Here I have yet another link from The Guardian but an interesting article all the same. I particulaly liked this section by Charles Chadwick from London aged 72

"So why go on writing with little or no hope of publication? Svevo once said: 'Write what one must. What one needn't do is publish.' Is it that one has to learn to do it for its own sake? There's nothing odd, and certainly now in the least heroically tenacious, about that. There are millions of people out there who weave tapestry, make furniture and pots, write poetry, paint watercolours because that is what they enjoy doing and want to get better at. The creative imagination seems to have a life and persistence of its own. Another imperative is to take trouble to do things properly. When you see someone having a shot at painting a few houses and trees and clouds or whatever, you don't feel like tapping them on the shoulder and saying: 'Why bother with all that detail; you'll only shove it away in your garage or give it to Uncle Frank and Aunt Ethel who won't know the difference?"

For me the pleasure of getting the right words in the right place is my most important ambition for my writing. I've been able to hold that in balance with the way people respond to the poems. My first pleasure is getting it right. As Plath puts it "Like a well done sum."

I've begun to distribute the booklet. I've even sent the booklet to The Poetry Book Society. We'll see if they promote it at all. Not much feed back yet from my colleagues although my two main poetry mentors have both made quite positive comments about individual poems and the project as a whole.

www.andynewberg.com

http://www.andrewnewberg.com/books.asp And here is a summary of a book connected to the previous blogs.

www.andynewberg.com

http://www.andrewnewberg.com/ here is one of the links from Guardian Unlimited thsat refers to the previous blog.

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Tests of faith

Guardian Unlimited Life Tests of faith I thought this looked an interesting article. Thought I ought to consider it's ideas and come back to it with reasoned Christian response.

Sonnets and Short Poems of John Keats, audio readings by Walter Rufus Eagles

Sonnets and Short Poems of John Keats, audio readings by Walter Rufus Eagles Here is a reading of the sonnet. It is not an easy poem to read as much of the first eight lines is a list that does not give much time to pause. However this reading is fairly true to the sonnet.

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Keats's last sonnet

Guardian Unlimited Books Review Keats's last sonnet

Crumbs I'd almost forgotten about this one. I read "The Last Sonnet" at The Troubadour on Monday 21 February. My first visit back for over a year. It was a very enjoyable evening celebrating Valentine's day with a poetry reading bonaza of love sonnets. Each reader just one sonnet.

I spend some time ploughing through an anthology of love poetry and eventually was drawn to this one. I didn't know who wrote it at first. Once I'd worked out the poet I thought I ought to do a little research on it and came across the above article. Interesting??

Well the booklet is out and safely at home. As always - for me at least - a couple of mistakes but suprisingly less then others in the past. However still frustrating. For example I missed out a whole poem. I don't know how it happened. It was there in the first mock ups of the booklet but totally absent from the finished booklet. How is that possible??

I can think of some fairly good reasons for not including it - for example it would mess up the overall V shape of the collection and I would need another 4 pages, however it really should have been included.

So here is the poor missing poem

In My Wheelchair, Kingston

A late October, Saturday
the first Christmas crowds
gather in the shopping centre.

Rain and early glitter season the streets.

I’m in my wheelchair,
chest height to the tangled crowd
that glance down at me,
disturbed for a moment.
Horror is in the brief flicker
of their eyes
before they turn away.
Except for the children
eye to eye, face on, honesty,
their open stares
full of terror and fascination
at all my scars on the outside.

I zip myself up
against the growing cold and rain.

Looking at the crowd
is like looking into a mirror.
I see in their faces
my own sad and shocked reflection.

It has been a quiet week. A little writing, some time with the family. Keeping warm. Walking in Richmond Park. Friends. Walking the Millenium Bridge, Tate Modern. Reading.

This half term week last year the same friends we saw this week came to stay. Last year we were in Richmond Park too. What a year!!