Monthly Archives: May 2012

History

The Greatest Day in History – Nicholas Best

The Greatest Day in History – the 11th Hour of the 11th day of the 11th Month – How the Great War Really Ended by Nicholas Best (Phoenix 2008)
I am probably being pedantic here, but I see a bit of a contradiction between this book’s title and its sub-title: either the book is about the 11th November 1918 – the day – or the 11th hour of that day, or about how the war really ended, which is infinitely more complex than just the analysis of one hour or day.
Pedantry aside, what the author has done here is actually very interesting – he has gathered together a series or memoirs and recollection of the end of the First World War, and woven them together. Sensibly he hasn’t been dogmatic about the time span, and where the narrative requires it he has gone outside the 24 hour constraints.
The book is a curious mixture of these memoirs with some genuine historical analysis, charting hour by hour how the Germans came to sign the Armistice. Armistice not of course surrender, a detail which matter significantly for the later course of European history. The Nazi version of events, whereby the undefeated German army was betrayed by the politicians, is comprehensively demolished through this detail. The last hours of the Kaiser before the abdication is also minutely described. Other scenes are more impressionistic – what various famous or to be famous people were doing at the time of the Armistice.
Many scenes from this book stayed with me, including the account of how, when the news that an armistice and ceasefire was imminent, some troops rushed to the front so they could claim they had “seen action”, not wanting to miss the last chance to have a go at the “Boche”. Some men died minutes before 11, and of course some fighting went on after 11.
I was a little surprised that this approach worked – that a deep dive into one day could tell so much about broader European historical themes such as the end of the second Reich and the Austro-Hungarian empire, instead of a traditional, broad narrative sweep across the years. The use of so much raw material, especially the diaries and letters, gives the account an immediacy and urgency – you can share the elation, the relief, and the bitterness as the war ends.
For anyone who wants to read about the Great War but doesn’t want to lose the personal stories of those involved, this is highly recommended.
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20th century Literature

Westwood – Stella Gibbons

“If Cold Comfort Farm is Stella Gibbon’s Pride and Prejudice, then Westwood is her Persuasion,” says Lynne Truss, in her introduction. The observation is acute. It is intended as a positive comment, but I am not sure it does Gibbons or Westwood any favours – Persuasion is a book it is hard to love, the characters being largely unengaging and unsympathetic, all the more so when contrasted with the earlier work which inspires such devotion. Once the first bright flare of Cold Comfort farm had faded away, what was Gibbons to do –  keep silent like Harper Lee, or earn a modest living churning out uninspired and uninspiring stories that have dated horribly and never hint at the heights of achievement CCF achieved. There is some amusement in spotting traces of the DNA of Mr Mybug in the characterisation of Gerard Challis, the pompous and horny playwright gleefully exposed to his family as a “cad”, but the principal character, Margaret Steggles, is just the kind of self absorbed young woman whom Flora would have kindly said “yes dear” to and then got away from as quickly as possible. Her dilemma – of being a young, clever, but plain young women in a world where men are in short supply, and likely to continue thus, is one women of the time would be identified with, but today makes us just sigh with relief. Some reviewers have claimed that the description of a post blitz London provides some interest – Westwood was published in 1946, and the story takes place in London just after the Blitz; – but this is not enough to support the interest of a 21st century reader.

I quite understand the idea of mining the Gibbons back-catalogue – Vintage must have done quite well out of it, and have done the job respectfully, assembling some nicely designed editions with thoughtful introductions. But I can’t resist the thought that once the flurry of interest has died away these books will fade back out of print until the next rediscovery.

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First Among Sequels – Jasper Fforde

First Among Sequels is (I think, but I may have lost count) the fifth in the Thursday Next series. Halfway through this novel it would be fair to say I was disappointed. Not a lot had happened, and most of the text was a reiteration of the ideas of the earlier books in the series. While several years have elapsed since Something Rotten, Thursday has acquired several children, and is no longer a literary policewoman, despite all this ostensible change, everything felt very familiar.

Then about halfway the book seemed to wake up, sit upright, and give itself a good shake. In fact Fforde seems to have spotted what was happening himself, because he introduces a couple of very clever ways of stopping lazy reading – that is where the reader doesn’t really engage with the text, pays only partial attention, and doesn’t mind too much about the detail – like when taking a train ride you have been on many times before you don’t look out of the window. Spoiler alert – don’t read further if you don’t want to know how he does this. The first of these techniques is that one of Thursday’s children doesn’t exist – she is a mindworm implanted by Aeornis Hades, a mind controlling villain from an earlier book. Thursday is convinced she exists, and when told she doesn’t has only moments of lucidity before relapsing into the illusion again. It explains why the child is so under-written, and the reader realises with a jolt that they had not been paying enough attention to realise what had been happening. Later on this lesson is reinforced with a subtle, unflagged and very clever change of narrational point of view. I don’t mind admitting it had me tracking back a chapter or so to spot what I had missed at first.



This is confident playful writing by a writer at the top of his game. Fforde creates a deliciously dark villain in Thursday Next 1-4, and although she is killed off “textually” at the end of the novel, as we always knew she must be, I would not be at all surprised to see her return. In reading First Among Sequels I was reminded of some of the better episodes of Doctor Who, where time travelling allows just about anything to happen, including dead characters to reappear. There’s a wealth of other really funny and interesting ideas, plus an appearance of one of my favourite characters in literature, to make this a really worthwhile and valueable addition to the series. Fforde is in complete control of his material, despite sometimes juggling with concepts which in lesser hands would be simply silly (e.g. the recipe for unscrambled eggs), but definitely pulls it off.

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Feed – Mira Grant

By this week’s guest blogger, SRJ:

It is clear this book was written for a purpose, a message of some sort, because it is a zombie book – yet I feel zombies were not the focus. For a 550 page book there are surprisingly few zombie encounters; in fact I was relieved when the Eakly attack happened, since I was starting to wonder whether the zombies would actually feature again.
 
So if the focus isn’t zombies, what is? Is it the relationship between Shaun and Georgia? Is it the journey they make from beta journalists to alpha to national plot uncoverers? Or is it about the “truth” Georgia so vehemently pursues? If so then I feel the book did not mirror this enough; after all, we never find out who is really behind the big plan, nor their true reasons for it. We only find out about one man involved, who confesses practically nothing. We never even see or find out about the attackers.
 
I feel that the book spent too much time with background zombie-related things such as the blood tests rather than actual zombies to be one of those books that focus on action and excitement like most zombie books. So it must make a point somewhere, but it wasn’t clear enough. I might do a separate piece because I have some thoughts on the blood tests (watch this space!).
 

Nevertheless, it was a good book; I enjoyed the zombie attacks where they happened, and the story itself was enthralling. Maybe we find out more details of the plot in the sequel, but somehow it won’t be the same with the book ending the way it did.

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