122. The Fall – Albert Camus

At the back end of last year The Fall (or La Chute in the original french) fell into my lap (you see what I did there right?) and I couldn’t resist finishing off 2018 with a little existentialism. In my poking around online I have come to discover that this was the last completed novel Camus wrote, but it is far from his lightest. I have consumed a small nibble of absurdist writing and all of it Camus, I had mixed feelings on The Outsider and adored the bittersweet heartache in The Plague, but there is something about Camus that just keeps me coming back for more. There is something intoxicating about the style of writing, that I just want to absorb or embody, or wear as clothes.

Much like The Outsider, the narrative in The Fall contains seemingly meaningless events that cause something like a fall from grace. But this novel could be argued as a larger allegory for the fall of man. This fall is something inevitable and necessary and unforgiving. This is not a larger narrative that you piece together slowly. It’s framed as one of those unfortunate moments where you bump into the one drunk in the bar that will talk your ear off and not leave you alone. That drunk is Jean-Baptiste Clamance – and his confession is yours to judge.

The Fall – Albert Camus

Camus uses a seemingly innocent encounter and a way of writing I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. It is written as if you yourself are stood at the bar with Jean-Baptiste Clamance, in silence, letting him unload his confession. With minor pauses and phrases as if questions from the reader are being repeated and answered. I was in quite a rapture with this style of writing as Camus builds the characters you and this Clamance are easily. You are both men, in your forties and from Paris and you find yourself in Amsterdam at the same bar night after night listening to this seemingly helpful stranger.

Clamance states that he started out as a good man by his own measure, he was once like the listener to the tale, a magistrate where he lived a fine and satisfying life in Paris and believed himself a model citizen. But the illusion is broken when walking by the Seine one night he witnesses a woman flinging herself from the river bank to her death in the water bellow. It appears her fall triggers his own. And continuing on in his Solipsistic monologue he states how from that point on he was awakened to the reality of both his own, and the whole of humanity’s guilt.

Like some sort of vessel for the human race’s guilt, Clamence retreats from his life choosing instead to spend his days recounting his story in the hope others will be awakened as he has been. All to alleviate the burden he himself carries. He is candid about the opinion of himself saying that he is both condemned and condemning, a sort of judge-penitent and although he says he has taken to his misanthropic life with ease there is no hope to his words.

As the story unfolds, it is clear that although Clamance claims to want clemency for himself and others he is far more obsessed with himself and his self given job of judgement. Preoccupied with his own mortality early on in the novel he only seeks to do good acts when watched by groups of people. He only seeks to warn others of the danger of ‘the fall’, while both attempting to awaken listeners to the failings and delusions of humanity.

Although Clamance, as a respected lawyer should be seen as the face of morality, he seems to belong easily to the gap between reality and illusion. And I must admit a great deal of this novel seems to be about unpicking the ambiguity of Camus ideas which at best can be tricky and bleak.

Clamance is not a character I root for, but neither do I root for him to fall further and horribly and as deep into the abyss as possible. I want to try and pity him, and I watch his journey with particular morbid interest. There is a lot of selfish humanity in him, as a character life seems to fall into his lap easily, and although he struggles with genuine friendship and committing to women. He wants to possess women and their affections wholeheartedly but not being possessed in the slightest himself. And I struggle to connect with him as there isn’t anything redeemable to him in my mind.

I wholeheartedly haven’t riddled out this novel and I can’t decide if Clamance is trying to entice the reader and the listener into abandoning a prospering life. Or if his intention is simply to derail the reader so you can judge him and separate yourself from that behaviour and watch him slide into his ravings. I’m stumped on that one. I just don’t know what his actual intentions are because I don’t trust him as a narrator. And as a character I find Clamance both fascinating and repugnant, intriguing but utterly repellant. Which incidentally is exactly how I feel about 90% of the people I have bumped shoulders with and started a conversation with at a bar.

This is an interesting read, but difficult, and there is a fog of ambiguous ideas that I personally would probably need another read and a good discussion to unpick. Camus writes brilliantly as ever but I have a hunch this one in particular would be better read with his other work to support it. A good book to end a year on, or close a chapter on.

118. Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere – Jeanette Winterson

It’s also been a very long time between visits to Jeanette Winterson’s work so when this book threw itself in my path I bought it on impulse. Later on I realised it was signed and was obviously delighted by serendipity. I have adored Winterson since my first reading of the Stone Gods. Every book of hers I pick up is somehow unexpected, the mundane becomes interesting, mixed in with fairytale or a retelling of a play. Characters can be the largest giantess caricature or the most real, full of humility individual (who just so happens to be a robot) speaking from a repeating world. Much like a lighthouse on the edge of a dark choppy ocean, I keep coming back to Winterson. She has become a bit of a hero of mine.

I can’t exactly pinpoint why she is though, perhaps it is the variation in her work, the obvious experimentation and blend of elements that build up very different books. There is no set genre to her work. Maybe it’s the queer that seems to run through a good portion of her work, which isn’t shoehorned in as a fetishised exhibit. Or maybe it is a combination of a lot of things with brilliant story telling. Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere doesn’t fall short of her usual intelligent, style, but it has a healthy dose of the conversation ease found in Why be Happy when you could be Normal?

Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere – Jeanette Winterson

Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere is short enough to read in an hour and adapted from lectures. Published at the anniversary of a hundred years of (white) women (in Britain) getting the vote. It manages to say a lot of important things loudly, sometimes with humour, but is thought provoking and a great quick insight into history. While it is chewable if you’re well versed in suffragette history it may be nothing new to you, but it is written in a way that I found quite invigorating. Courage is both a reminder of how far we’ve come and a hopeful nudge to keep going and if you’re new to feminism and new to the history of gender equality then I implore you to give Courage a go.

Alongside the edge of wry humour and likening suffragettes to Pussy Riot there is an extra spoonful of passion that toes the line of anger. Courage is the size of a postcard and a good third of it’s 72 pages are taken up with Emmeline Pankhurst’s famous 1913 speech ‘Freedom or Death’. But any anger within Courage is justified and comes from disenfranchisement, and frustration. And for something so slim and seemingly brief (it’s brief at first glance only) it riled me up.

Winterson reminds us there is still a war of the sexes going on, there is still inequality on the street and in the work place and in the home, but the glaring truth of this battle is that discrimination of any kind is never rational it only pretends to be rational. Arriving at the present day having women taking up more space than the previous hundred years is not a justification for saying feminism is finished and there is no more work to be done. It is a common mistake to make to think that it is a fight won. It is a revolution that is still singing and is still unfinished.

Why? Feminism can always be more inclusive, more intersectional, louder, clearer, and more instrumental in keeping the autonomy of bodies through health care, choice, and consent, safe (for a few). Winterson remarks on biology as destiny being an old fashioned idea, and the need for more women in technology, the success of the recent #MeToo movement, and equal pay.

She recalls the Marriage Bar where certain jobs and careers were not open to married women. That it wasn’t until 1975 the Sex Discrimination Act made it illegal to manipulate the labour market in favour of men. Although it may be clear that society is still dealing with the long shadow thrown by previous constraints, Britain is a rich and progressive country, but we have food-banks and large-scale poverty. Winterson mentions the 2008 crash, exploitative gig economy, domestic violence and Trump. And rather than being fear mongering, or a battle cry, I left it feeling hopeful and recognised.

I think what I’m getting at is Courage reminds us that if we sit in the shit for long enough, it stops smelling, but it doesn’t stop it from being shit that we’re sitting in.

It reminds us of the long shadow cast by systems that seek to dominate, belittle, and remove autonomy, and how fighting for equality, here and abroad (and of course with intersectionality) is still really important. It reminds us that Feminism is still a working part of every day equality, and if we give it up to the past as a dirty word or something that belonged to a previous century we will be doing ourselves a disservice. If it is “retired” or cast aside as irrelevant, we will be loosing a great part of the arsenal that belongs to the spheres of civil rights and equality.

116. Shades of Grey – Jasper Fforde

Isn’t it a shame that this novel has an unfortunately similar title to another well known series. Fortunately for you, readers, the subject matter in Fforde’s Shades of Grey is very different to that other series and I also don’t feel the urge to go through it with a red pen and correct all the errors. (Read: you will not be getting a rant about fan fiction and BDSM during this post.)

Shades of Grey is set in a world not so different from ours, but ‘the Something that Happened’ has rendered it a post-catastrophe one, ridged with rules, and social hierarchy. It is never clear why natural colours are waning from the world, or why artificial colour is mined from the pre-calamity relics and synthesised to add colour to towns and gardens. But there is a lot about Fforde’s Shades of Grey that is surprising in it’s original world building. While on the surface it is a book about society being ranked by what colours you can see best and the social projects of affording to repaint the town for social status, it is also quirky and a book about spoons being prized commodities, and the night being dangerous (and full of terrors… yes… I’m sure you can guess what I’ve been watching recently) and man-eating plants.

While this isn’t the most exciting novel I’ve read, it feels like a good beginning to a larger story and it is agreeably pleasant and eccentric while feeling original.

Shades of Grey – Jasper Fforde

Shades of Grey drops you straight in the middle of this 1950s-like world, where manners are important because they are a transaction with everyone you come across. It’s a world where you are marked and watched and have points (which translate as a sort of currency to be able to marry or move house) and those are some of the most precious things you possess. If you are particularly badly behaved you get sent to a sort of social rehab but nobody is sure where it is, or what happens to you after that.

The perceptual biases – in what colour you can see – has resulted in a social hierarchy which everyone is subjected to. Greens rank higher than reds and everyone who can see colour ranks higher than the greys (who are no better then servants) and it is discouraged to allow marriages to happen between certain colours. Because of course, genetics pass and mixing the colours can water you down to a grey. Everyone living in ‘the Collective’ knows how things work and don’t mention or see anyone who lives outside of their idea of what society is. Think – if I don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t destroy my world view because if I see it, I can’t explain it through the rules I know to be true.

Colour isn’t just a valuable commodity to paint or decorate with it is also medicine. It can also be an intoxicant. Staring at a particular shades of green or “chasing the frog”, is the equivalent of taking drugs. Think keeping a vanity case with a lime green paint swatch from B&Q in it and stealing glances at it.

Rather then being a giant comment of social hierarchies this book is a little more concerned with it’s own workings. While there are some glaringly obvious injustices and maladies which our protagonist struggles to place in his understanding of the world this is more of a book about trying to fit in rather then fighting to be part of the difference. But because it is so involved with itself in giving us carnivorous trees and spoons and postcodes assigned at birth and the social intricacies of marriage while tapping out stories on the water pipes after dark in morse code – the first half is a little slow narratively.

Now I don’t think this is a bad thing because writing this post has become more about the world building than the narrative. This is a lot of information to take in, it is unfamiliar and sometimes seemingly backward and it gives a lot of wiggle room for our protagonist, Edward Russett to develop as a character. But while the novel potters and putters it has a great helping of humour for light relief in the similar vein of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams which distracts from the pace.

Eddie is a gawky unpopular teenager trying to exist in a very ridged society and have a life that isn’t awful and praying that he scores highly on his colour Perception test so he can get a good job. So the first half of the novel where Eddie gets thrown into an unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar people is exactly where the reader is.

It’s a much gentler ride to some of the novels I’ve read recently where I have spent a third of the novel being bombarded with stuff while getting a handle on a complicated narrative and it is welcome relief. Sometimes you just want a gentle book right? You want a book that is a little slapstick, a little fond of word play, a little eccentric, and brilliantly written. You want something that’ll make you smile and is a little absurd and Shades of Grey is that book.

For one reason and another, East Carmine has no Swatchman (like a doctor) and Eddie’s father has been charged with the duty of standing in. East Carmine is on the very outskirts of the collective and is very different from where they have lived previously. En route they take a brief stop and Eddie sees Jane – a grey – and falls head over heels for her midst an emergency (a man – a high raking purple – is having a heart attack). Through this chance meeting once and then again in East Carmine, Eddie begins to learn that the society he lives in is not as straightforward as he believes. East Carmine is corrupt and the Collective may be a greater evil than ever imagined.

All manner of hidden secrets come out of the woodwork in this novel and I feel a little sorry for Eddie at times, he starts as a very naive young man, who is genuinely trying to make a good go of it, and just so happens to meet one of the most jaded and cynical of all people in his world. While the narrative isn’t as remarkable as some and the pace can be slower, the execution of Shades of Grey is incredible and the world building is in a class of it’s own. Although it currently stands alone – Fforde has said that there will be more.

This is a quirky, unusual read that I think is great light relief from heavier books or simply a wonderful gateway into uncharted genres.

112. The Ice Palace – Tarjei Vesaas

There isn’t much in the way of international literature on my shelves (actually less shelves more piles/mountains as I do not own bookshelves), but I am slowly and surely changing that. With a little of this and a little of that I find myself in the position of creeping, albeit slowly. The reason this one took my eye is because I am very fortunate to know a wonderful bunch of Norwegians. It is also very overdue that I start jumping into some Norwegian literature. I must admit I do sometimes shy away from translations, because some of the meaning might be lost, or it may be an awful translation and distort the original story completely and how would I know. But also, and perhaps more concerning is that the music and poetry in another language might be completely lost in English. Sometimes English cannot stand up, it can only do it’s best with the tools it has and they may be lacklustre.

As I knew nothing about Tarjei Vesaas I decided to do a little research for you in case you didn’t either so you’d have an idea of where the Ice Palace may be heading before we even get to it:

Vesaas (Born in 1897 Vinje, Telemark, Norway) is widely considered as one of Norway’s most important writers of the twentieth century. Poet and author, he may be the most important Norwegian writer since WWII. His authorship spans nearly 50 years and his work is characterised by terse and symbolic prose. Although simple, his stories are often about simple rural people undergoing psychological drama. Vesaas often revisits the themes of death, guilt, and angst, while uses the Norwegian natural landscape as a prevalent feature in his work.

So what is the book about before we go to the cover image: Siss is a regular 11-year old girl living in her rural community, and her life is about to change in ways she can’t imagine when Unn moves to the village to live with her aunt.

The Ice Palace – Tarjei Vesaas

To give you a little more idea of the plot, Siss and Unn are the opposite sides of the same coin. Siss is very outgoing, popular, and inviting and Unn is withdrawn, alone, and a little sad. They become aware of one another at school and there is an intense curiosity, a wild magnetism between them that almost verges on obsession. All Siss can think about is the excitement of Unn and spending the afternoon with her. I cannot decide if this is innocent because she has known everyone her entire life in her village and Unn is strange and exotic. Or if there is the implication of a childhood crush there because there is an intensity that did make me feel a little, not uncomfortable, but questioning.

They spend the afternoon talking for a while and after she has shown Siss a photograph of her family, Unn persuades Siss that they should undress just for fun. They watch each other and everything is so highly charged the book practically split the paint from my walls with electricity. Everything is implied and nothing is really said and nothing is fully laid bare but maybe it is? Honestly from what has gone from what I assumed was quiet a naive and misleading book about rural childhood gets turned up to eleven when Unn confesses she has a secret and she’s afraid she’ll never get into heaven. She of course promises to tell Siss what her secret is the next day.

Siss runs home and on the way passes the Ice Palace. A naturally forming ice structure that has been created by a local waterfall. She is in a flurry of emotion, as is Unn, and the next day Unn decides to skip school because she is embarrassed.

Here the novel becomes intimately sober and really starts to reveal some of the deftness of Vesaas’s skill as a novelist. Unn goes into the Ice Palace to hide and explore and the worst happens.

It is a troubling book that deals with enormous themes in a way that can be resistant to reading. Sometimes I felt as if I was reading the Ice Palace as if I myself was staring at the pages through a sheet of ice. It can be simplistic and almost resistant, and at times have a weird hallucinative quality that is almost queasy. Often I forget that Siss and Unn are children. Because they are both treated by their community as equals, and also Siss fights so incredibly to be recognised as more then just a child and as another pair of hands to be useful. But also because the other children around Siss recognise her need to grieve in her own way.

All of the children in this novel are so incredibly good at handling things that are difficult that some of them seem to do it better then the adults in the novel.

This is a bit of a terrifying fairytale that demonstrates intractable human emotion. At times it reads like a light and fluffy story that will have a happy ending and it could be argued it has a moral like a fairytale. The contrast between what is a relatively simple, rural life and what is an intense, and sometimes frightening, emotional world is pretty incredible.

I have said some reviews that believe that Siss and Unn are undeveloped characters and that this is tedious writing that is a children’s story written for adults. And in a way that is correct, but generally those reviews also confessed with not sticking to the novel to finishing it out. I went into this novel and found it uncomfortable because it pushed back at me as much as I pushed back at it. I found it tedious at first, I found it difficult, and unyielding with it’s secrets. And like all classics and most literature worth reading it revealed itself to be more than meets the eye.

I’m not saying I’m ready to re-read it tomorrow because I don’t think I’m ready for Siss and Unn again yet. But I am saying that I really want to read more Norwegian literature. This story is entirely mysterious, subtle, and satisfying, and I highly recommend it.

I found another book review here if you would like more information on the novel. If you would like to explore this and other Norwegian classics here is a list of ten books, some of which have been added to my to buy list. And of course any information I found and paraphrased about the the author (and a bit more) is found here.

110. Babylon’s Ashes – James. S. A Corey

Wow, so we’re in Book #6 of the Expanse series already. After Nemesis Games opened up some gaping emotional wounds and read like the first half of a larger novel I was suspicious of Babylon’s Ashes. I think I described Nemesis Games as the novel in which ‘everything falls to shit.’ The ending is not really an ending it’s a catastrophe. Naomi Nagata’s character is dismantled and her crazy ex-boyfriend Marco turns up with a bunch of idiots and blows everything up. Oh and they have a son, Filip who is for some reason pushing himself to do things he doesn’t agree with to try to win the approval of his crazy father and is really hating himself. And Marco does the one thing that will cripple the Universe and rains hellfire down on Earth.

As far as I understand it Earth is still a sort of lifeblood in the universe, the Colonies around Jupiter’s Belt and Mars supposedly cannot survive without Earth. But Medina Station has changed all of that and situated at the heart of the ring gate, with the only functioning navy in the solar system it is the ultimate statement if independence. With the gratitude of millions of belters, surely, Marco can’t loose can he?

Babylon’s Ashes – James S.A. Corey

Nemesis Games took the rule book and threw it out the window. Babylon’s Ashes might at first seem like the novel to mop up the mess of Nemesis Games but it’s more then that.

This is a novel to walk into where the stakes are already pretty high, right? The stress and tension that built in Nemesis Games is still there as you arrive into Babylon’s Ashes but the duo writing under the pseudonym, James S.A Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) give you a little time to reacclimatise to the world that is the Expanse. The scale of disaster in this novel is a little incomprehensible and Marco Inaros sits at the centre of overseeing it, and how does he feel? Why, the way all villains should feel: energised and trilled with victory.

But is it too good to be true Marco? Is it? Is IT? IS IT?

In the eyes of millions of belters he can do no wrong, the charismatic figurehead of the Free Navy has dictated a sort of justice on those who have oppressed them. But behind the smiles are reckless decisions, and a sinking suspicion with those nearest Marco, and his own son, that Marco hasn’t a clue what he’s doing now.

Some have really criticised this novel for Marco. That he is a ‘lame’ villain. But I actually think that this is a bold move by the authors. They gave a competent, charismatic, driven character the tools to build and execute a plan, and after that is done he has nothing but power driven mania.

Michio Pa has her doubts about Marco when one of his sneaky hair-brained schemes almost endangers the person she’s trying to protect she breaks from the Free Navy. Her ambitions to help people, are still firmly rooted as only reason she joined the Free Navy in the first place was to avoid her and her people being used and exploited by larger power structures. In breaking away from the Free Navy she becomes something of a ‘Pirate Queen’ and her and her family and crew decide to redistribute aid that would otherwise go to waste to those in need.

Of course, this act of compassion makes her an enemy in Marco’s eyes. A dangerous thing to be if the opera of Nemesis Games is to be believed.

Interestingly Babylon’s Ashes sees the return of some voices we know and love, but others that are completely new. The core four take a back seat while some of these further scattered voices reveal twists and turns and intricacies the core four simply couldn’t. Of course, Holden, Amos, Naomi and Alex are major players, but this novel is simply just more then just about them. For once this isn’t about Holden’s big mistake, it is about everyone in the universe and the narrative structure does that justice.

But you’d think with all these faces flying around it would loose focus right? It would maybe not be as accessible, and you’d feel lost at times right? Wrong and wrong. Babylon’s Ashes seems to widen the net of characters but tighten it’s focus.

I think my favourite part of this novel was seeing Prax settled and happily married. But more so for his perspective on the workings of the OPA and witnessing the obvious corruption that has penetrated the organisation. It isn’t all smooth sailing with the belter fractions squabbling amongst themselves, and has rebellious plot line was one of my favourites even if it is a quieter one in the novel.

Speaking of smooth sailing: politics. Politics, getting more friends that can be trusted, and trying to knock that mad bastard out of the sky are central to Holden’s plot line. Easier said then done while everyone is metaphorically stood in the same room putting guns at one another. In Babylon’s Ashes we seem to temporarily have forgotten about the proto-molecule (let’s hope to see more of that in the next one hmm?) and ancient ruins and worlds on the other side of the Ring. But let’s be clear here those who would criticise this, if someone burnt down your house would you’re first thought be about exploring the abandoned factory over the park or trying to put out those fires.

There’s a lot of emotional strain in this novel. The universe suddenly seems like a dangerous place and after the rollercoaster of the first four books the tone of the series has changed. Everyone is at breaking point and running scared. The vulnerability of humanity is really noticeable in this one. But it is less in the Frontier ‘new world, new rules’ sort of way, or ‘new disease, zombie alien vomit everywhere, run for your life’ sort of way, or ‘radiation sickness enjoy that’ sorts of way we’ve seen before.

Babylon’s Ashes is a novel about tragic events, so I don’t know if I can say it’s a high point in the series for me. I miss the days where our biggest concerns were organisms making us blind and poisonous slugs or searching for missing children. But that doesn’t take away how wonderfully written this series is and how it continues to keep me on my toes. I was doubtful after Nemesis Games that the series could make a comeback in my opinion. But it packs a punch and it feels as if we are back on track, albeit a very different track that is less fluffy.

So where oh where, do we go from here Corey?

109. A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf

Here is one of the many blind spots in my knowledge. Sadly I have never read any Woolf before. I have a smatter of knowledge from my time in university and from some of the circles I moved in, but I am a little ashamed to say it was not a puddle I dropped myself into until now. Particularly from writers and feminists I’ve known A Room of Ones Own is one of those texts talked about in deliberate, hushed voices that implore you to take it up. It is a seminal work and that if you do not read it, all you are doing is injuring yourself.

And yes, I’d agree, I wish I had come to this text far sooner – not just because of the content, but because of the richness of Woolf’s writing and some of the humour and mischief.

Woolf was asked to write a speech on Women and Fiction and instead writes a creative philosophy, supporting a woman’s need for an income and a room with a lock to be creative. She takes us through a walk on a meandering route, that begins at university doors barred to women through a quick history of women writers. She makes sure the reader can see how brief and limited a history it is and of course, why it is so.

A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf

I can really see why some people would take a scan at my entire personality and put money on me having read Virginia Woolf. Because this is a text to get behind, it is a rally call that has never been out of print since the revised edition was published in 1929. Because this text not only presents the history of women writers, but justifies the need for more of them.

Woolf states that we should honour our ancestors, who managed to breakaway from the battlements of running a household, rearing children, and perfecting embroidery for five minutes to scribble lines for Jane Eyre, Middlemarch or Pride and Prejudice. Because it is against all adversity that these novels were conceived. With a lack of agency, a lack of autonomy, not possessing their own income, and surrounded by a thousand practical interruptions it is a miracle that the women writing these texts weren’t given over by the shame of wasting their time on the ‘frivolous’ act of writing.

However some point to the central argument of A Room of One’s Own being a mild account that one must be independently wealthy to be creative and possess a space away from others that one controls. That this alone stretches the notion of attack. I believe that independently from the bowels of the text, yes, this independent argument almost seems frivolous. But it is not a notion that stands alone in this text, but it stands shoulder to shoulder with literary history and allegory – so easily it becomes a logical step in the text. But it is not one taken from a position of attack in my opinion.

I believe that through A Room of Ones Own, Woolf attempts to dispel negativity towards the vocation of writing. Her thoughts are balanced and logical and persistently demonstrate that women writers have held greater adversity through writing and it should be celebrated and recognised. While some, like George Eliot and George Sand were more comfortable writing under male pseudonyms, it took Jane Austen twenty years to be published.

Woolf also points out that writers like Mary Shelley, the Brontes and Austen have Aphra Behn to thank for breaking into the vocation. As Aphra Behn was the first British woman to write as a profession.

These are not notes of attack to the male sex. These are notes of celebration that despite great odds the desire to enter into the vocation of writing has been strong enough for some women to fight into. She remarks that Austen does not adopt any style but her own. She cannot write about wars or politics – because these are arenas women have not won into yet. In Austen’s limited sphere of knowledge she instead writes about what she witnesses – her life in the sitting chambers of the houses of the gentry.

As Modern Women, Woolf states it is a duty to honour those ancestors for five minutes and then turn again into creativity and break with form and frameworks and find a sexless voice. This sexless voice that is ‘man-womanly’ or ‘woman-manly’ is the only one in which to write enduring classics. She predicts that in a hundred years the literary cannon will be at 50/50 and at last a reflection of the population. There is also a warning not to squander everything the women’s movement fought for at the end of the text which I believe is apt.

This is a text that encourages women to take up pens and begin. It is a reminder not to forget those that have come before. That Judith Shakespeare (William’s imaginary sister) would’ve died a pauper in the street tortured by ‘no’ at every playhouse. A Room of One’s Own is a celebration of women writers, a history of women that entered into the vocation of writing when it wasn’t a space welcome to them.

On this footing I believe it is no large step for Woolf, or anyone else, to conclude that to enter into writing a woman needs means to support herself and a room that is entirely her own to inhabit without interruption or invasion.

I really adored reading this and I have no doubt I’ll read it again. I am not sure I would’ve have appreciated it the way I do, had I read it earlier. Says the person who has finally gotten themselves a real desk chair for their creative space and is appreciating not having a bad back while writing for the first time in two and a half years.

108. Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body – Sara Pasco

Honestly I know Sara Pasco sort of, from afar. I’m a fan of the Guilty Feminist Podcast and very occasionally Pasco appears on there, gives some quick wit, self-deprecating humour and disappears again into the ether. She’s not a comedian I follow religiously, but I’ve gotten into the habit of listening to her talk and smiling mildly and nodding along.

Animal was a curiosity buy. So who is this so called person…? Really…

Perhaps unsurprisingly Pasco writes the way she does her stand-up. It’s a warm read and likeable, she is unashamedly honest about her not-perfect life and gives you all the queasy details. And like her stand-up, the stream of conscious, taking no breath rant that Pasco employs a lot on stage, leaves you without doubt that she is passionate. Pasco sketches out a journey in Animal that includes everything she’s learnt about being a woman and how she believes science informs people, and she doesn’t really care if you agree or not to begin with. But she might just convince you there is something to what she’s saying.

Animal – Sara Pasco

There was something about this book that didn’t wholeheartedly take me in. Maybe it has been a while since I have read anything feminist, whether that be easy to digest ‘pop’ or ‘pulp’ feminism that seems to be becoming more popular lately. Maybe I am just not as easily convinced. Maybe I want more Queer Theory. Maybe I want more Judith Butler. Who knows. But there was something niggling at me the entire time I was reading this.

But that isn’t to say that this book isn’t funny, wonderful, intelligently written, easily digestible, and perfect reading for public transport if you don’t mind cackling like a loon in public! It’s just that there was something. Maybe it wasn’t Queer enough with me (Queer with a capital Q). I found it as heteronormative and a perfectly adequate description of life if you accept the gender binary as something more innate and not a cultural construct. Perhaps.

Or perhaps what I’m getting at is that some of Pasco’s ‘science’ is perfectly adequate, but it isn’t gospel. And at times it isn’t robust enough for me. If you are like me and think too long and hard about things you may begin to pick at it and feel this grain of sand under your skin about Animal and not know what it is. Or why it is. But know it’s there.

I think this is probably my biggest criticism about this book is that there is something that doesn’t quite satisfy my own beliefs but that may come down to my own reading on the subjects covered and being very opinionated. Pasco essentially writes about her own journey, her own body, some of her boyfriends, her mum’s divorce, sex, periods, and sprinkles rape and sexual violence and consent and love and cultural appropriation in to the mix. Decorating it all with footnotes to lighten the mood and wit that goes in directions you’re not anticipating. But I feel as if I was in a room with Pasco and discussing this, we might not see eye to eye.

That’s a funny way to feel about a book, right? But that may also be because Pasco’s experience of her own sexuality, life, politics and everything else she covers in Animal is a little different to mine. Animal is unashamedly about Sara Pasco as much as anything else.

This book could be a conversation with one of your girlfriends and at times it could be a long rant that is a little sapping and exhausting. But it isn’t because there is anything wrong with what your friend is saying, it’s just that your friend is a bit of a steamroller and doesn’t pause and take a breath. In other words at times I found the style this book was written in taxing my patience.

But for as little as it hit the mark for me – Animal is easy to digest, funny, wonderful and I’d recommend it to anyone who hasn’t explored this subject as much as I have. Or if you have, to turn your brain off while you’re reading it. Animal, like How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran, is one of those books that could be the brilliant start into thinking about feminism and the female body and how it belongs and how it is used. If you haven’t begun to think of why monogamy might be (temporarily) useful biologically, while running around the savannah avoiding being eaten by lions, or how cultural appropriation and even politics are imprinted onto the female body or how body shaming even works this might be the book for you. It’s a comprehensive glance at a lot of things under a very wide umbrella that I think a lot of people should stand under together (because it’s big enough – when it’s the intersectional umbrella – which is the only umbrella I will ever refer to).

Pasco manages to write a book that doesn’t feel shoehorned or forced but some would point out that at times it feels like a soapbox and the science is not as robust as they would like. For as much as something, whatever it is, feels a little off with me while I was reading it – that speck of grit that got under my skin – that doesn’t take away from the value I feel this book has. It’s not perfect, but perhaps that is the point of Animal as Sara Pasco herself writes about her own flaws and how unafraid she is of being imperfect to her readers.

106. Big Magic – Elizabeth Gilbert

About six months ago a friend of mine lent me Big Magic saying words to the effect of: “try it, it might speak to you.” That day I had been talking about my writing and how little I had done and how much I missed stealing those hours for myself. How I missed the industrious rhythm and those pieces of myself that shine brightest of all when I am within that space. Worst of all I talked about how I felt that creativity was becoming a remote part of myself and I was loosing faith I would ever reclaim it.

Often it has felt that my life and my creativity are two separate entities. Not because I have decided it is so, but because I have been told this is how it is so. Culturally the assumption is that eventually, your creativity must take a backseat because it is very unlikely it will ever be important or recognised enough to make you money. Earning money is survival. It’s clear very early on that nothing is worth pursuing unless it makes you money.

My friend handed me this book in the sort of way friends hand books to you when you know that they won’t let you leave without it. In the same way someone cooks you a meal when they know you have no food at home and you are broke and haven’t eaten for days. Big Magic was a bit like a note in a bottle that washed up on the shore of that remote part of myself I felt I was loosing.

Big Magic: Creative Living beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

With creativity, in my experience, you have a limited number of options culturally. Creativity is never assumed as an integral part of your existence. Creativity is a luxury. It’s a whimsy or a personality quirk. But it is a compartmentalised part of you that is not part of your organic being and definitely not part of the bedrock of your personality. It is only allowed to take up time in the right circumstances or space in the right environment or with the right people. Or if it isn’t a luxury that is policed in these specific terms, it’s self-torture. Creativity is a dismantling, it is loosing friends and loved ones, it’s narcism, alcoholism, drug abuse, over medicating, under medicating, being penniless, being promiscuous, being reckless. It is burning brightly and loudly and quickly and being dead by 27.

And even that assumption is a luxury, because only great artists are allowed suicide after prolific activity because somehow the art makes it worth it.

How bleak.

Elizabeth Gilbert has many things to say on the subject. She spends a lot of time in Big Magic relaying her own experiences with creative living and also a lot of time dismantling unhealthy assumptions about creativity.

But this book isn’t exclusive to writing as she talks about examples of other artists and other people returning to there creativity. One of the most vivid examples that comes to mind is about a woman who realises how unhappy and unsatisfied she is in her life. When she reflects back to the time where she was really happy, she realises that was when she was training to a high level in ice skating. She just missed out on the Olympic team and because she wasn’t ‘the best’ decided to stop. Gilbert writes that this woman, after twenty years, begins getting up at 4am before work to go to the ice rink to skate before work every morning. And the effect is instant and positive.

The point Gilbert is also trying to make is that it doesn’t matter if you’re the best, your creativity is allowed to be frivolous or mediocre. Your creativity is allowed to be whatever it is as long as it is yours. The pressure we put on creativity to be ‘the best’ or nothing at all is usually the thing that smothers it, it can be the thing that stops us even trying. Gilbert also hammers this point, by stating that there is evidence that human beings have been drawing on cave walls longer then their has been evidence of agriculture. In other words, there is evidence that putting your hand print on a wall permanently was at one point more important then a steady food supply and a static homestead.

And also you’re allowed to have a break. You’re allowed to go back to the thing after a lengthy absence.

Gilbert also writes about ideas in a way that really caught my imagination. She suggests several things. Firstly that we have a difficult notion of ideas. If someone has an idea that leads to a successful and long running play that shakes the audience to tears, to laugher and is celebrated by critics. Then that person may be heralded as a sort of genius. This is very different to how the Romans (I think – it could’ve been the Greeks) viewed genius as they believed genius was a sort of negotiation or partnership between the individual and the ‘genius’ that existed outside of that person and had inspired that person.

For her the only way to create things isn’t to sit waiting for a strike of luck, but to show up to work every day and work steadily, because your inspiration is sat in the corner waiting to give you a brilliant nudge in the right direction. But they can’t if you don’t show up to work. Here she talks about Tom Petty who once said he would get very frustrated with his own inspiration who may throw a line for a song at him while driving. Here Petty says he would speak aloud at his inspiration. In doing this some of the pressure would be taken off of him in writing that song. He also says there are some songs that would never quite get written or completed by him because they simply weren’t for him.

Throughout Big Magic Gilbert tries to break down the idea of ‘the unreachable’ to a collaboration and I really adore that idea. She talks about pools of ideas and how ideas can jump from one person to another and her own experience of that.

Perhaps the most resonating parts of Big Magic for me are Gilbert’s writing about ideas roaming looking for creative types to make them happen.

When meeting the American poet Ruth Stone for an interview, Stone talked about her childhood and about working in the fields. Gilbert writes that Stone would hear a poem coming across the fields at her and when she did she would have to “run like hell” to get a piece of paper and a pencil. Otherwise the poem would pass her by and go on to find another poet. Stone also said that sometimes she managed to catch the tail end of the poem and pull it back to her and at these points the poem would arrive on the paper fully formed but backwards.

Big Magic covers a great deal more but I think if I continue I will make reading it pointless for everyone. She covers fear, being courageous, being the trickster rather then the martyr, and the importance of curiosity. Big Magic tries to shift the perception of ‘the serious artist’ to ‘the playful artist.’

She encourages you to have an affair with your own creativity. To sit in stairwells and write for ten minutes because you can. Steal time with your creativity like you would a new lover and treat it like a secret relationship that trills you.

In the last six months I am not embarrassed to admit that I have both read it and listened to the audiobook because I needed to revisit these ideas again. I know that I will return to it time and time again because I find it reassuring. Big Magic is motivation to drop my fears and doubts and encouragement to be curious and playful and give it a try. Much of the advice in this book isn’t new to me because I have been fortunate to know a lot of writers and artists, but it’s important to be reminded occasionally.

So if you are loosing faith, if you feel as if you are stranded, if you feel as if it is becoming unreachable, and the general feelings of despair are becoming overwhelming – get Big Magic. I can’t promise it’ll work for you like it has for me. But try it, it might just speak to you.

104. Down and Out in Paris and London – George Orwell

It might come as a shock to no one that Orwell is one of my go-to guys and I have frequented the phrase ‘Orwellian state’ far too many times in the last 18 months. But there has been far too little of Orwell in my life the last few years though! Perhaps as a result the morbid call to reread 1984 and Animal Farm are pulling quite strongly at me again (even if that is also to put myself in a position to write about them).

Down and Out in Paris and London is far from his other work, Orwell is penniless, living in lice ridden rooms, and destitute. His first hand account of living within Paris and London in the 1920s in less then ideal circumstance is probably one of the more interesting things you could have drop in your path. It is humbling. It is not a scream at a starving artist waiting for daddy to come rescue you while you endlessly tap out dreadful prose on a rusty typewriter. It is more of a book within the present moment, struggling through homelessness, near starvation with a good helping of the people. Street artists, drunks, tramps, and down-on-their-luck-con men, this book has it all. Orwell scrapes together survival on sugary tea, stale bread, cheap wine, and cigarette butts. But as he writes Orwell doesn’t condemn the people he rubs shoulders with, instead he condemns the people who fail in their desires to better life for their fellow man.

Down and out in Paris and London – George Orwell

“A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this: ‘We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.'” – p.120

Any observation or comment Orwell makes about class politics or social situation is done with an air of good humour. He talks of the relief of finally realising you, yourself are at last down and out, as if it is inevitable to fall as low as you can and survive.

Orwell’s Paris is a difficult affair. Everything he owns has gone to pawn shops or has been sold to keep his lodgings, and he tramps around Paris chasing rumours of employment. The job he finds is at a restaurant washing dishes, where the hours are unbelievably long and he is at the very bottom of the hierarchal ladder and must endure being verbally abused. From this stand point Orwell also sees behind the scenes of the restaurant, he sees the waiters, how the kitchen is run and how the food is really treated away from the customer.

There is something queasy in these scenes, a nightmare of dirty dishes piling up, the over intimacy the head cook treats food destined for customers and “the secret vein of dirt, running through the garish hotel like the intestines through a man’s body.” It is difficult to not love the disgust Orwell brings to Down and Out. It is difficult to not be swept up in it.

There is potentially something romantic in the Paris half of Down and Out, working hard on 17 hour shifts, 7 days a week, for a couple of glasses of wine every night, accompanying the whimper of rubbing together francs for anything to fill the belly. But more importantly is how he demonstrates empathy with the poor and the lower classes that likely is the precursor for his later works. Orwell is shrewd in this book but he does not continually push his beliefs through the somber material but waits for natural pauses in the narrative.

The second half of the novel is based in London which is far less vivid and interesting to my mind. But Orwell there describes what it is to tramp around London, living from found cigarette butts, in long days walking from one place to another for a mouldy blanket and a mattress with 60 other people.

There seems to be more energy in the first half of the novel for me, more vitality but that may have more to do with the content. Tramping around London seems more to do with waiting, and pausing, and waiting whereas the Paris section is energetic in it’s search for work. It’s energetic in its packhorse mentality, the urgency of survival seems more keen in the first half of the book. Whereas London is a sort of apathy, a sort of, drifting no man’s land. To compare them, the two halves have a very different sort of feel. But they are demonstrating two very different things, one is utter unemployment and reliance on the good nature of others and hand outs, and the other is good-honest-work of the kind that leaves no room for self-pity.

I really loved this book. I’m not sure what to call it, a memoir, a thinly veiled perhaps true account somewhat stirred with artistic licence – there is real divided opinion. But wikipedia says it’s non-fiction so I guess that’s a start? Out of all of the books I have read this year this one really sticks out as one that shines, one that has a touch of rebellion about it. One that I’m sure to read again. There is something honest and ‘within the present’ at the time it was written, there is something intangible that I can’t quite put words to. But perhaps that is because I, myself, come from a privileged position and have never experienced what it is to be down and out.

101. Come As You Are – Emily Nagoski

So I may have put myself in a bit of a bind as now I need to talk about sex and isn’t that always a bit of an awkward topic when you’re not sure who is listening? Come as you are is a bit of a mixed bag for some for other’s it’s the self help sex guide they have been looking for. Personally I feel it fills in some of the gaps lacking in sexual education because it moves beyond mechanics and cultural questions like ‘does my junk look like their junk and if it doesn’t is it still okay?’ It’s aim is to reassure and to dispel some myths. But it also jumps straight into several different narratives associated with sexuality.

Rather then giving straight answers to questions it gives a frame work of suggestions of what could be going on and how to alleviate the problems being encountered. But it does it all with a confidence boosting tone in a non-invasive, sitting-here-to-chat-and-not-judge-way. Because if you’re here already, surely you’re already curious right?

And if you’re already curious, then this book assumes you’re obviously ready to do a little work in exploring.

Come as you are – Emily Nagoski

Firstly I should say that this book is very gendered. It is a broad look at a woman’s sexuality, but it deals in both heterosexual and homosexual partners. But. And this is a big but (heh heh butt) you do not have to identify as a woman to get something from this book. To paraphrase Emily Nagoski a little and to put my own spin on it: Human beings are the same biological-ikea-flatpack with slightly different instructions. Fundamentally we are all the same, but we are in different arrangements. (As a side note, everyone is allowed to realise those instructions and the current arrangement do not match up and bloody change the arrangement if they want. Don’t be shitty.)

This might not be relevant to you because of the parts you possess arranged in the ways they are, but if you’ve had sex before with anyone, even yourself, you will likely find something to think about in Come as you are. Even if you become the best buddy giving advice to his buddy about is other buddy’s girlfriend. Sometimes it pay’s to do a little homework on a subject you think you’re already pretty hot in.

Nagoski covers an umbrella of topics that are for the most part interlinked and inform one another. Her ten years of experience as a sex therapist has given her a rabbit warren of things to write about. She talks about anatomy, stress, lions, your emotional brain, your primitive monkey brain, trauma triggers, brakes and accelerators, being sex positive and cultural myth for a few. But she writes in a gentle way, discussion on the theoretical doesn’t read as confusing or suffocating. Instead she gives you easy to digest metaphors and compresses things down without condescending. For example, giving the boiler a long time to heat the water BEFORE trying to use the shower (more on that later).

Nagoski generally writes what feels like a safe and informed space that’s relatable. Partly she achieves this by writing about fictional couples each battling with one or several different issues. These couples each feature throughout the book to inform her own writing and ideas, but they aren’t simplistic. Put though their paces these couples demonstrate that intimate relationships are a work in progress. But also these couples reinforce her idea that the map of what we expect to happen (which has been given to us culturally, through hollywood and a sex education that only considers mechanics) isn’t necessarily the terrain of HOW it WILL happen.

The terrain of how it will happen belongs almost entirely to context. Whatever is going on in your life will inform the sex you are having. You may have just lost a relative, or lost your job, or gained a promotion, or have a child that’s sick or or you might suddenly have a weekend free for the first time in months or you just may not be feeling your own vibe in your own skin. For example, Nagoski writes about a couple who deal with stress very differently, for her it is an accelerating factor for her desire and increases it, but he is the complete opposite. This leads to miscommunication on the topic and feelings of unease and pressure but ultimately goes towards a solution of why she smothers her stress with desire.

In this and the other couples Nagoski writes about solutions aren’t easy and are worked for with a lot of mistakes along the road. But they are worth finding.

Nagoski writes eloquently in the way she breaks up sexuality into building blocks that are easier to understand. Rather then the so called myth of a ‘drive’, she claims instead that a combination of Accelerators and Brakes (things that turn us on and off) are responsible for sexual desire.

The catch-22 is that some of your past sexual experiences will have informed your Accelerators and Brakes. But some of your general experiences will have too. The things that make us stop and freeze in flight response and the things that get the party going, are rooted in our emotional world. Of course, they are different for everyone and figuring out you have a sensitive Brake is just as important as understanding how to work around that with your partner.

Here is the point where I am going to be clever and explain one of those metaphors: “giving the boiler a long time to heat the water BEFORE trying to use the shower.” In Come as you are there is a couple where one party has one of these very sensitive Brakes and a low Accelerator. An easily triggered Brake or flight response is a good as an off switch, and the only way this couple found to move away from the stress signal of THERE ARE LIONS ABOUT TO EAT ME, is to take a long time heating the water in the boiler. Sometimes it was about giving pleasure rather then receiving it but before all of that came a quiet night in, having fun and relaxing, and telling the story of how they met to rekindle the intimacy and remember why they were together in the first place. And hey presto! The shower works and is running hot. And there are no lions.

Nagoski talk about lions and stress a lot in this book. She suggests that stress cycles are something that our brains deal with the same way it would a hungry, salivating lion coming towards us on the savannah. She suggests that the only way to break that stress cycle is to complete it. In the savannah when a lion is chasing you, you have two (maybe three) options: one. run, get back to the village and tell everyone, and survive and feel relief, two. be lunch (three. batman swoops down from a helicopter and saves you). But it has to be a process of I’m at Risk, I am in an action, and I am now safe for a stress cycle to complete. We cannot rush the process from shutting down entirely because I am at risk without the action that finds us safe is not a completed cycle.

She suggests a number of ways of being kind to ourselves in forming deliberate rituals that complete our stress cycles. Whether it is running, art therapy, but most of all it is communicating with your body that you’ve survived. Such as a good cry, a primal scream, sharing affection, body self care such as grooming, or progressive muscle relaxation or other sensorimotor meditation.

The biggest thing Nagoski offers in Come as you are is being kind to yourself through this entire process. Often when we have a problem, we try to muscle through it and in doing so misunderstand what we need from ourselves and other people. She offers common sense clues into what might be going on, a way of reminding ourselves that our primal monkey brain is still wired to deal with lions and not stock sheets. And sometimes those wires get a little lost and the lions creep into bed with us.

On the whole I love this book and have recommended it to just about everyone.