84 CharingCross Road

Two decades of correspondence between London and New York 

In simplest terms, this book is a collation of letters between the American author Helen Hanff and the staff in a London based (84 Charing Cross Road) second hand bookshop  - “the loveliest old shop straight out of Dickens”. 

With a style which is charming and economical, the correspondence starts in 1949, ends in 1969 and includes sufficient detail to illustrate British life during this period.  It also portrays Hanff as forthright and independent with a passion for English literature and the classics. 

Against the backdrop of a changing Britain  - the sudden death of King George VI in 1952, Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation,  the Beatles and their swooning fans – we become embroiled in the lives of the book shop staff, their families and even their neighbours.

Currently, the UK is under lockdown to control the spread of the Covid19 pandemic and the mainstream media make daily comparisons with the hardships of British life during the 2^nd world war.  Hanff shows us that  - so far anyway – our cries of suffering are rather weak.  As we complain about social distancing and having to queue for our groceries, in 1949 the British people faced far greater challenges.  Food was still rationed and entailed an allocation of 2 ounces of meat per family per week and one egg per person per month, there was no sugar, sweets or nylons to buy.  By contrast, as a New Yorker, Hanff was not subject to the same restrictions and greatly endeared herself to the bookshop staff and their families when she generously sent them food parcels of eggs and tinned meat. 

The start of the book is strongest and promises more than is actually delivered because without a plot, there is no middle or end but rather a sense of anticlimax. Nevertheless, the collection transports us to the cosy nostalgia of an old bookshop, in a London lost in the mist of time. The tales of the characters' lives seemed mundane and superficial, but we still experienced  a sense of loss when one of them unexpectedly passed.

Overall, this collection covers a lot of ground in a remarkably few pages and is a quick, easy and worthwhile read. 

For those seeking Hanff’s suggestions for future reading, her demands and purchases included (in her words):

• John Donne
• William Blake (not a fan - he swoons too much)
• Virginia Woolf’s Common Reader
• The Pilgrims Way
• Sir Roger de Coverley papers
• EM Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady
• Oxford book of English Prose
• Pepys diary
• Waltons Lives
• Pride and Prejudice
• Tristram Shandy
• Catullus 
• De Tocqueville’s Journey to America
• Wind in theWillows
• Plato
• Lamb’s essays of Elia
• The memoirs of the Duke de Saint Simon

Due to the pandemic control measures, we have not been able to give a restaurant review this month.  Instead, we can recommend a recipe for Yorkshire pudding which was sent to Helen Hanff in February 1951.  

A verbatim extract from one letter:

A cup of flour, an egg, half a cup of milk and a good shake of salt into a large bowl and beat together until it is the consistency of thick cream.  Put in the frig for several hours. When you put your roast in the oven, put in an extra pan to heat.  Half an hour before your roast is done, pour a bit of the roast grease into the baking pan, just enough to cover the bottom will do.  The pan must be very hot.  Now pour the pudding in and the roast and pudding will be ready at the same time. 

Completely new to Yorkshire pudding, Hanff wrote that it was “out of this world”.   We have put the recipe to the test and confirm that it is quick, easy and definitely tasty.  

Our next book takes us to India and to Australia.  Why not share our pleasure as we read Lion by Saroo Brierley?

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

A little taste of culture this time with the classic Scottish tale "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' surely an inspiration for subsequent master pieces. Edinburgh has produced some of the worlds greatest literature and Muriel Spark's work proved to be no exception.

In todays dark times, with fear stalking the streets like an invisible reincarnation of Mr Hyde this novel offered a truly welcome release from the current crisis gripping the world and transported us back into an era of gentle humour and innocence. This book appears on the surface to be a simple tale of a spinster teacher, fast approaching the Autumn of her life, with a magnetic attraction to girls in their formative years. Miss Jean Brodie carries with her an air of tragedy, her life's love lost in the carnage of the First World War. A strong woman ahead of her time, at logger heads with the ethos of the school in which she works.



“To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.” 

Miss Jean Brodie's theory of education fell on deaf ears in the 1930's but became mainstream in 1980's education, The Brodie set were denied knowledge by their enigmatic tutor. The world of education is in a constant state of flux, teaching methods fall in and out of fashion in a continual cycle of reinvented ideas, Miss Jean Brodie in her prime was a lonely voice in the world of education.

This book is thought to be inspired by Muriel Sparks own experience of attending an all girls school in Edinburgh. It may have been set in the period between the wars but it addresses issues still pertinent today. The role of a teacher is integral to maintaining a strong and fair society. Miss Jean Brodie had a disturbingly powerful grasp on the minds of the young girls in her charge. A charismatic character with strong personal beliefs and a clear understanding of her role in shaping lives. Through out the novel Miss Brodie is held up to scrutiny by the quiet unassuming Sandy, never underestimate your enemy. It proved to be Miss Jean's undoing, her mantra was flawed.

"Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life". 

She failed to realise that some girls can think for themselves.

In a dark and disturbing twist in the novel we discovered that grooming and radicalising young minds is not a new phenomenon.


A beautifully written book, poetic in its structure, its gently lilting prose weave in and out of the years of Miss Jean Brodies life, a complicated character born before her time.

We chose to discuss this book at 'The Robin Hood'  one of our favourite haunts, a good old fashioned hostelry with tasty good value food. Only criticism would be the lack of a 'loggy boy' to keep the open fire stoked!

We will be reading '84 Charing Cross Road' by Helen Hanff. 

Join us next month to find out what we thought of this book.

This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay

This book hurts in one way or another.

According to the hype, ‘Award Winning Million Copy Best Seller’, this book seems to be the book of the moment. Everyone we ask claiming to have read it or has it on their shelf ready to read next. The book was specially chosen for the Christmas period to be a light-hearted pick up/ put down read.  The brief was fulfilled.  It certainly didn’t fit our book club criteria. Was it a page turner?  No!  Was there a well developed plot?  No. Was there any character development?  No. Was it well written?  Well, yes. Sort of  ...

On the surface this book was a quirky, quick witted, light hearted read formulated in a dairy fashion in bite sized pieces.  The book follows Adam Kay’s 10 year career as he progressed from Junior Doctor to SHO in Gynaecology.  Yes it was well written. That’s the one thing where we were all in agreement. There really was some LOL moments dotted between the cringeworthy stories. The book gives a very good insight to the incredulous incidents in dealing with the general public.  The short chapters were good enabling you to pick it up and put it down without having to backtrack. Some of the stories stay with you but just as many are quickly forgotten. You don’t get the feeling you need to pick it up to find out what’s happening next. The only end goal which keeps you reading is the sad story about his career change. So, worth a read but easily forgotten.. Adam Kay is now a stand up comedian and we can’t help thinking that will be a short lived career once his hospital stories are exhausted. And those poor anonymous people watching. You will know who you are!!  He has also found his niche writing and checking hospital drama scripts.

On closer inspection Adam adequately covers the more serious issues of the NHS. The long hours, the low pay, the inconsistencies from hospital to hospital, the life and death decisions and the many things no amount of training can prepare you for until you are thrown in at the deep end. A lot of issues are called in to question. Some people may call in to question Mr Adam Kay himself. Sometimes you felt he really cared. Sometimes you felt he was going through the motions. Ultimately  you realise he probably was in the wrong career and was, at times, a bit arrogant.

There’s one thing we can all agree on. There is no quick fix for our beloved NHS but we are still grateful we’ve got it.

Our book discussion this month took place at a totally new venue  - The Swan at Heldon-on-the-Wall. A totally unexpected pub in a small village not far from Newcastle. Although, a quiet January, the staff were attentive and the food, which we all enjoyed, can be described as good pub food at a reasonable price. I’m sure it will be on our list for a return visit in the not too distant future.

Back to the serious subject of our next read. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark.  We are expecting great things from this renowned author.

Join us very soon to review our thoughts.                  



Friday,  31st January 2020.

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

Not salty enough!

We selected this book on the back of its many accolades (Shortlisted for the COSTA book awards and 4.6 stars on Amazon UK with 1060 reviews) and the promise of an uplifting story about shared interests in homelessness, transition, camping, Cornwall, and health. 

The story has a powerful beginning when life suddenly falls apart for the author, Ray, and her husband, Moth.  The couple, in their early fifties with two student children, are dealt a shocking and sudden double blow.  They lose their home, their savings, their possessions and their income around the same time that Moth is diagnosed with a rare degenerative and progressive neurological condition.

Forced to break free from their comfortable life and facing an uncertain future, the couple eschew mainstream solutions and decide to spend the summer walking the 630 mile long South West Coast Path.  The rest of the book tells how, armed with only what they can carry on their back and relying on minimal income in the form of basic state benefits, they steadily complete the long Salt Path.  It is a tale of sleeping rough (a.k.a. wild camping); eating very little other than noodles, hot water and fudge; the kindness of strangers and betrayal by friends; the hostility of the British marine climate especially in the winter, and homelessness in South West England in the 21^st century.

It is Ray’s first book and she writes well.  Her prose vividly depicts the daily grind and hardship of their existence.  But as we turned the pages, the Sunday Times promise of “A tale of triumph: hope over despair; of love over everything” did not quite materialise.  This disappointment was compounded by little attempt to portray the beauty of the South West coast,  the practicalities of walking the famous Salt Path, and some of the controversial choices made by the couple.  The first half of their journey is described in considerably more detail than the second and it is unlikely that, if you have not visited Falmouth or Penzance, you will be any clearer about these and many other famous South West towns.
 

To be fair, this is not a guide book, and Winn frequently acknowledges that such a book has already been well written by  Paddy Dillon.  But it also fell flat as an enduring, classic tale of transition. If there are lessons to learn from this story, we could not easily unravel them.  Frustratingly, having completed our own page by page trek, we were none the wiser about loss, love, life, or, indeed, the South West coast.  We did however recognise the importance of decent sleeping bags when camping rough. 

We were not tempted to light the Primus stove and boil up some noodles, and instead we dined at   The Rat Inn at Anick.  If you are in the area  (camping, hiking, or simply living),  we can highly recommend the quality of the food and the service.  

Sadly, this unreserved recommendation does not extend to the Salt Path.
 

Our next read takes us into the NHS and the daily trials and tribulations of a junior doctor specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology.

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

A haunting tale from the heart of Northumberland

Having read several of her previous novels, we hoped that this latest offering would be the pinnacle of Sarah Moss's work so far. In "Night Waking' the author succeeded in bringing the wild beauty of a remote Scottish Island to life, would she be able to evoke the essence of Northumberland in her latest novel?  

The novel opens with the sacrificial murder of a young girl, bound and naked, dragged out to a bog  to face a long and lingering death. An echo from the ancient past, her pain buried in the peat of the moors for over two thousand years. Interest piqued, the main story takes place in modern day, All the ingredients were there for a hauntingly good history lesson on the Iron Age. The main character is Sylvie a young girl from  a patriarchal northern  family whose spare time is spent taking part in historical re -enactments. The family have been asked to help with a university field study, chiefly because Sylvie's overbearing father is renowned for his survival skills. They travel to the far North, yes it does sound  like 'A Game of Thrones ' to The Wall, where they live as Iron Age people in a reconstructed round house. It was at this point that flaws in the plot began to emerge, why didn't the students and professor live in the round house with the family? If they truly wanted to experience life in those times surely they should all have lived together under one thatched roof rather than each enjoying the luxury of their own private, neon tent. A clear theme in the book is misogyny, the author compares the treatment of women and girls in the Iron Age to that of women today, Sylvie's father is a violent wife beater who turns his rage on his daughter as she develops into a young, independent woman. A worthy topic to tackle but a bit lazy to make the perpetrator an uneducated thug, domestic violence knows no social class and a slightly less monochrome abuser would have added depth to the  narrative. Again there were plot holes, horrendous beatings in plain sight, a conspiracy of silence amongst a group of people renowned for their stance on equality and non violence. This just didn't ring true, a university professor would not suddenly abandon his moral code on a short summer holiday. Clearly the reader was supposed to believe that isolation and the mystic draw of the landscape turned reasonable well balanced people into monsters but the narrative failed to build to this crescendo. The characters were not well developed, the reader was not led to see the flaws in each that would lead them to perpetrate such a crime against Sylvie. We needed to feel the gradual decent into madness brought on by the attempt to live as Iron Age people, isolation and the rationing of food would have gone along way to explain this but the students had so many trips to 'Spar' that it was hard to imagine any kind of mind bending taking place.

Night Waking evoked  the raw beauty of a Scottish Isle, the landscape almost became a character in the narrative. Northumberland is without doubt one of the most beautiful and diverse landscapes in the world, vast expanses of moorland, deep, dark forests, acres of sand dunes and secluded seaside bays. Perhaps it was the speed at which the author wrote this novel that robbed it of it's alure, the true essence of Northumberland sacrificed to Moss's  haste to push out her latest work. The group were left wondering which part of Northumberland the story was set in.

The plot was interesting the setting should have been unequalled and the characters had the potential to make you feel pity and revulsion in equal measure.  The reader was left feeling that they would like to know more about everyday life in an Iron Age round house. A very interesting example of one can be visited at .....

The Scottish Crannog Centre  info@crannog.co.uk

The Hadrian at Wall provided the backdrop for our discussions of the book. Having been told the place was on the up and in line for an award we had high hopes. Unfortunately they were not to be realised as the food was over cooked and the coffee was cold. The waitress fulfilled our requests with a grudging hostility a mutual lack of respect flourished between served and server.

Our next book takes us to the opposite end of the country for an epic walk.

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett

Never mind disagreeing with the crowd - we also disagree with each other!!


                                           

This book was chosen by one of the Incognito members after viewing the film. Whether certain windows from the film resonated with windows in our lives or whether Alan Bennett’s writing shone through, whatever it was, the film hit a chord with the chooser, so to speak, and as books are often better than the film, then this seemed a sure bet,  POSSIBLY!

True to form, this was not the case for the chooser. The film was carefully scripted to cover the life of the lady in the Van as well as that of Alan Bennett, but the book was just a diary version of  The Lady in the Van, so for some, the comparisons between their lives wasn’t apparent which made the film far more interesting.  We later found out that the film version was available in book form and may have been more enjoyable with all the added dialogue keeping a very sad story light-hearted. POSSIBLY!
The other readers did rate the book from enjoyable, to less being more, to just ok.

The Lady in the Van is a true story of a lady who came to park her van in Alan Bennett’s drive for 3 months yet stayed for 15 years. Over that time, due to his own character weaknesses and admitted laziness and timidness, he found out very little about the fact she had been a music student in Paris, played at the Proms, spoke fluent French, was a nun twice, was sectioned by her brother, escaped  and later was found to be outside of the law due to an unfortunate accident which blighted her life and possibly sent her over the edge.  That and the nuns refusing her access to her music which was surely her only release.  All of these things he only found out after her death.

Alan Bennett knew he would write about her after her death which is perhaps why he allowed her to stay for so long. Something that would never be allowed or accepted today. POSSIBLY!

There is a poignant quote in the book which perhaps summed the writer up and I quote ....

          Good nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all
          virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition.
          (William Hazlitt ‘On the Knowledge of Character’ 1822.


All in all a ‘not too bad’ book which touched some more than others, as did the writing style.

As dining in a caravan would have been poo pooed by some, we dined at The Rat Inn. Choosing wisely was the order of the night. Lots of usual things on the menu but unfortunately the chosen duck was a bit dry and lacking a good jus to rescue the situation. The cod was very good but again lacking a bit of sauce. We all need a bit of sauce in our lives POSSIBLY!

Next months book is another short read which will, hopefully, pack a punch. POSSIBLY!


                                               GHOST WALL  BY  SARAH MOSS.

12 October 2019.

PS I love you by Cecilia Ahern

PS We did not love you!!

“PS I love you” tells the story of a young widow who finds a way through her grief with the help of friends, family and letters from her late husband.    

It was published in 2004, and quickly became a global bestseller, reaching No1 in the Sunday Times bestseller list.  In 2007, it was adapted as a movie starring Hilary Swank. 

The book was a debut novel for author, Cecilia Ahern, whose father is former Irish prime minster, Bertie Ahern.  Ahern was only 21 and had recently completed her degree in Journalism and Media Communications,  when she published "PS I love you" .  Since then, she has published a new novel every year and has now sold 25 million books worldwide, in over 40 countries. 

On Goodreads it currently has an average rating of 4.02 stars based on 316,665 reviews. This excerpt portrays a typically positive review. 

Beautiful. Wonderful. Lovely. A Masterpiece. Heart-warming. Fantastic. Sensational. Emotionally evoking. 

The same level of acclaim is evident on  Amazon with average ratings of 4.4 stars based on 650 customer reviews. 

Despite this fountain of praise, we found it hard to say anything positive about this book.  Clearly we are in a minority ( only 2% of reviews on Goodreads rated this book as low as 1 star) but our honest impression is that this was a painful and tedious read. The plot was OK but poorly developed, the characters were flat and lifeless, the setting immediately forgettable. 

However, these issues were irrelevant in comparison to the writing.  Cliched, clumsy, dull and repetitive, Ahern’s prose seemed to break every writer’s rule and was so consistently bad that it distracted from the story.  

In a quest to understand its charm, we also watched the film. Although the plot, characters and dialogue were much improved, it still missed the mark.   Even Hilary Swank was disappointing. 

As a group, we are often divided in our views about books. On this occasion we were unanimous and so we can at least thank Ahern for achieving an unusual degree of accord!

Fortunately, our culinary experience was more enjoyable. We did not pursue an Irish Bar as featured in the book, instead choosing a traditional Northumberland Inn, the Duke of Wellington

  The service and the food were good, and the cheese souffle was delicious:

But the house salad was rather lacklustre: 

And so to our next read. ..........

Another popular and successful author, but will it be a winner for us?  As we have learned this week, our group doesn’t always agree with the crowd!!