SOMETHING GREAT

Jun 3

Penguin edition covers of the two first books in the Thursday Next series. Cover design by Jaya Micelli and cover art by Thomas Allen.

Jun 2

thelifeofabookjunky:

Floating stage on Lake Constance in Bregenz, Austria.

Verdi’s opera, “A Masked Ball” in 1999, featured a giant book being read by a skeleton.

(via joyofbooks)

Jun 1

100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader

(via girlsgetbusyzine)

May 25

Book review : The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness by Brianna Karp (2011)

The reason I read this memoir, I’ve realised, is that finding myself homeless one day is one of my strongest, deepest fears. After all, I have vrtually no close friends and my family are poor, so what if I cannot fend for myself?
I had heard about this book over at Womanist Musings and was intrigued by the story, so I put it in my to-read list and finally got around to reading it a few days ago. It was a day when I was alone and did not have much else to do, so I read it all (about 300 pages) in one standing.
Now I know that a lot has been said about how Brianna Karp is not really homeless, as she was living in a trailer. I also know that many people have questioned the veracity of her story. I am not going to discuss either of these issues, as I am more concerned with the book itself.

I think the title of the book misled many of people. As a matter of fact, though centred on Karp’s experience with losing her home during the recession of 2008, it is about Karp’s life as a whole, starting with her childhood and history of abuse. The story is so sad and horrifying that it reminded me of Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. The first third of the book is dedicated to her family history and deals with growing up with a mentally ill, abusive mother and being molested by her biological father as a small child.
Karp also writes extensively about Jehovah’s Witnesses, and her judgement on the subject is far from nuanced. It is interesting to notice at this point that the status of the movement is widely different in the US from what it is in other countries, and that in France for instance (where I live) most people consider it a cult, and that’s that.
After that, the book moves on to the homelessness issue, and recounts how on being laid off, and after going back to live with her parents, which she quickly finds unbearable, Brianna Karp has no choice but to go live on a trailer which she inherited from her biological father.
I am not going to discuss Brianna Karp’s representativity of homeless people, not in small part because it may well be that those homeless we see the most (begging for change in the streets for instance) are not that representative of the homeless population as a whole. Karp writes that about fifty percent of the legally homeless are employed full-time in the US, and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard similar statistics about western Europe as well.
But what is certain is that Karp came to be homeless still retaining many privileges, material or otherwise. On the material side, you’ve got her car, trailer, laptop and phone. On the more intangible side, you’ve got her good résumé, her youth and — yes, I am going to talk about that — her whiteness. Though Karp is quick to acknowledge her many privileges, she almost never talks about this one, while it is all over the place. Let’s look at this paragraph, page 113:

I would roll the window down, placing my hands on the windowsill and putting on the most innocent, bland face I could muster, peering up through my lashes with wide, doelike eyes. A baby couldn’t have had a more angelic face.
“Good evening, officer! Can I help you?”

Now can you imagine for a single minute what would have happened had Karp been a woman of colour? I’m not criticizing Karp for what she is, of course not, but as I read the book it struck me over and over again how for some people being homeless is clearly temporary while for others it is so much harder once you’ve reached this point to ever have a permanent address again. And the difference depends on family history, physical and mental health, education, age, and race among other things.
Only about the middle third of the book is really mainly about being homeless. It is not, though, as the title led me to believe, full of tips on how to survive homelessness; it merely recounts the author’s daily life and how she managed to stay clean, save money and send résumés to find a job.
Then the last third is about her love story with a British homeless activist. I am not going to go in depth with this but I think that the book would have benefited from a longer period of reflection from the author before she launched into writing about it, as I think she lacked a certain detachment when writing about this.

A word about style: it is a memoir, not a novel, and I was not expecting anything amazing, but I was still sometimes a tiny bit disappointed by the triteness of it all. It is a shame, especially since the story itself is so interesting.

All in all, The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness is a good book, though I lament the fact that it was written so soon after all the events that are related in it; it would have gained from more hindsight.
Still, from what it says as well as from what it leaves unsaid, this memoir is very enlightening about homelessness, and the fact that there are many strata in the homeless population. I believe it succeeds in its mission to get people to think about homelessness and to change people’s perception about it. It also, maybe strangely, made me less scared of being homeless myself one day.

My rating: 3/5

[Cross-posted to Goodreads]

“Le pernod, la fumée, le poulet, les voix, tout se mélange et pèse sur mon cœur, je suis seule, lourde, loin. Quand marcherai-je, pour m’éloigner définitivement de ces gens ? Ma présence ne les gêne pas : Julien s’en assure, re-paye un bout de pension et s’en va. Je cache mon ingratitude, ma rogne, ma déception constante : comme je préférais mes voyous de la Série Noire ! Depuis mon évasion, je ne côtoie que des ex-tôlards, des repris et non-repris de justice ; bien sûr, en prélude à mes retrouvailles avec Rolande, je n’avais pas l’intention de fréquenter d’autre monde, je rêvais de mauvaises relations, de mauvais coups, d’un tas de mauvaises choses à lui étaler ; mais mes rêves s’effritent, l’été décroît, Rolande s’irréalise… Bonjour, c’est moi : tu vois, je suis venue. Que peux-tu, que veux-tu faire avec moi, demain, lorsque nous aurons mangé, bu, bavardé et dormi ensemble ? Crois-tu que je me soucie encore de pèleriner aux sources de ton derrière, maintenant que d’autres moyens de jouir et de pleurer me sont revenus ? Entre toi et moi, à chaque seconde, le temps monte son mur ; je reste dans la nuit, mais s’il y a quelque part une aurore et que j’en découvre le chemin, j’y marcherai sans m’appuyer à toi, Rolande, Rolande de merde que c’est ta faute si j’ai la patte esquintée, oui : je me serais tirée de toute façon, j’aurais rencontré Julien quand même, et je ne serais pas obligée aujourd’hui de penser à toi, ma douce, avec la reconnaissance et la rancœur au ventre.” Albertine Sarrazin · L’Astragale (1967)

May 24

Book review : L’Astragale par Albertine Sarrazin

J’ai lu ce livre après beaucoup de recommandations venant de ma grand-mère aussi bien que de Just Kids. C’est un bon livre, mais j’ai été (un tout petit peu !) déçue.
Avant de parler du contenu lui-même, un mot sur l’édition. Celle que je possède est décorée d’une jolie photo (ci-dessus), mais la préface de Patrick Besson (que je ne connaissais pas avant de faire une recherche sur lui) est égocentrique, prétentieuse et insensible, bref complètement dispensable, et elle dessert tellement le bouquin que je me demande qui a eu l’idée de cette aberration.
Le roman lui-même, maintenant : le style est ciselé mais jamais pompeux, et lire l’argot des années cinquante-soixante est un vrai délice. Notamment, il est rare de parler d’amour avec autant de justesse que Sarrazin, sans jamais tomber dans la facilité.
Le sujet lui-même est également intéressant puisqu’il s’agit de la cavale d’Anne, le double d’Albertine, qui se casse l’astragale (un os de la cheville) en s’évadant d’une prison pour mineures (l’héroïne a vingt ans — l’occasion pour moi d’apprendre que la majorité à dix-huit ans en France date de 1974). Elle rencontre Julien, qui sera l’amour de sa vie.
Mais ce qui a manqué à ce roman pour moi pour le rendre vraiment intéressant, spécial, c’est une intrigue. Ici le livre se déroule, et Anne passe de planque en planque, revoyant Julien périodiquement. C’est tout. Je ne vous raconte pas la fin, mais elle est prévisible. Et même si Sarrazin avec son style si précis, érudit et dépourvu de clichés, peut rendre n’importe quel récit intéressant, j’ai attendu des personnages, des développements, bref une trame romanesque… En fait, même si le nom d’Albertine a été changé, L’Astragale est un récit, pas un roman. D’où les trois étoiles, pas une de plus.

Ma note : 3/5

[Egalement posté sur Goodreads]

May 22

atomsandauthenticity:

From the top-left to bottom-right, respectively: covers of volumes 1-6 of Charles Burns’ Black Hole

(via pussy-envy)

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” Virginia Woolf

(via fuckyeahfeministartandliterature)

May 21

fyeahenglishmajorarmadillo:

[Picture: Background — a six piece pie style colour split, alternating black and grey. Foreground — a picture of an armadillo. Top text: “ [Tells joke about santa’s little helpers: the subordinate clauses] ” Bottom text: “ [no one laughs] ”]

I laughed hard.

“Bosco [the cat] could light fires by willpower. He could also fill food dishes and empty his favourite chair by the same useful force. His method was simple: He sat and gazed at the object to be controlled. it always worked; sooner or later, some human slave would come along and notice his implacable golden stare.
At this point Bosco would speak his only word.
“Woe!” he would say (mournfully), and the human slave would immediately and apologetically cry, “Oh, Bosco! Poor old Bosco! Have you been waiting long?”
And they would rush to obey his command.” Hilary McKay · Wishing for Tomorrow (2009)

May 18

Book review: Wishing for Tomorrow, by Hilary McKay (2009)

Remember when I posted this a few months ago? Well, I finally read it! And it lacks the magic and the timelessness, granted, but I was glad all the same to be back at Miss Minchin’s and follow the adventures of Ermengarde, Lottie and all the others.

I had never read anything by Hilary McKay before, but when I looked around the Interwebs to get readers’ opinions on this book, I found that many said that they would have been horrified if anyone else had attempted to write the sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess, and that they wre glad that it was McKay who decided to undertake this perilous task. So I went and bought it, with confidence.

Now let me tell you a word about the cover. You can’t see very well on the picture, but I guarantee you that when you have the real thing in front of you it is beautiful. It was made by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini for the McElderry American edition.

The book itself is not, as I’ve said, amazing, but it is atmospheric, witty and funny. It is centered on Ermengarde and also deals quite a lot with Lottie and Lavinia. McKay does a great job of humanising the latter as well as Miss Minchin, whose establishment Sara’s departure leaves shaken and weak.

Wishing for Tomorrow respects the integrity of all the characters created by Burnett (except when it talks about Sara’s brown skin, when it seems quite clear from reading A Little Princess that Sara, though having lived in India, is white, with a Frenchwoman for a mother and a father named Crewe…). And it introduces new ones as well, among them Bosco the cat and the new scullery maid, Alice.

Alice is a symbol of the shift in perspective implemented by McKay: where Becky was submissive and worked her hands to the bone, Alice knows her worth as a worker, refuses to sleep in the attic and do more than implied in her job description. She is also neither afraid of nor impressed by the young ladies she works for, and is quite willing to treat them just as she treated her younger sisters back in Epping.

This is one of the new elements brought in by Hilary McKay focusing the book towards modernity and a more modern audience. Another example of that is the theme of higher education for girls and women. While some people would argue that it is in contradiction with the tone of the original, the 1900s definitely were a time for social change.

The book, however, lacks what made A Little Princess very dear to me: the lesson in resilience and non-violence that Sara is, the idea that reading and imagination are key to a better life, the fact that what is called childishness is to be cherished and that you can change other people’s lives through kindness, selflessness and understanding. But then, I suppose what made A Little Princess so special was the character of Sara — and she only makes a brief physical appearance in this sequel.

Still, all in all, Wishing for Tomorrow is a quick, good read for adults and children alike.

My rating: 3/5.

[Cross-posted to Goodreads]

“What is that picture you are sending to Sara, Ermie?
“The Tower.”
“What tower?”
“The Tower of London. I thought it was pretty.”
“You thought the Tower of London was pretty?” repeated Lavinia. “It’s a prison, for goodness’ sake!”
“Is it?” asked Lottie. “Oh, I’ve got a lovely idea! Let me take it a minute! I’ll be very careful! there!”
Lavinia laughed, Lottie smirked, Jessica and several others sniggered, and Ermengarde put her head down on her table and wailed. Every bit of post that left the school was first checked by Miss Minchin or Miss Amelia. This card was now doomed.
MISS MINCHINS SLECKT SEMINRY read a row of black capitals across the top, and a bedraggled-looking raven glowering in the foreground was labeled (with an arrow) MISS MINCHIN.” Hilary McKay · Wishing for Tomorrow (2009)

May 16

Albertine Sarrazin, 1937-1967

Close to Harriet M. Welsch’s house is Carl Schurz Park. Photo by Park Odyssey.

May 15

“And if I’m not a good ball player, I’ll tell you something, I’m going to be a C.P.A.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t know what a C.P.A. is?”
“No,” said Harriet. She never minded admitting she didn’t know something. So what, she thought; I could always learn.” Louise Fitzhugh · Harriet the Spy (1964)

SOMETHING GREAT

Ada, 23. Feminist. Lives in Lyon, France. Translation student on a gap year. Reads a lot, tries to write novels and stuff. I blog about books, social justice, and also fashion, music and art in general. Current obsessions include Marina and the Diamonds and Loco Roco.

100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader

Ada, 23. Feminist. Lives in Lyon, France. Translation student on a gap year. Reads a lot, tries to write novels and stuff.
I blog about books, social justice, and also fashion, music and art in general. Current obsessions include Marina and the Diamonds and Loco Roco.