Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger

(London: Virago, 2009)

This is a curious book.  Although a ghost story, menace and suspense are generated from another quarter altogether, namely the GP’s sexuality.  It’s a thoroughly good read: well written, and although the author wears her scholarship lightly, well informed. 

I was particularly taken by Waters’ evocation of manners of the landed grand immediately after the second world war.  Waters captured the firm but polite ‘management of discourse’ characteristic of the current oldest generation of landed old money – their ability to intimate without ambiguity, and deflect topics which are inappropriate or distasteful.  I was pleased that Waters was sympathetic enough towards this echelon of society to portray with conviction, their stoicism. Too often landed old money attracts only castigation and derision.  

One criticism – the house. Although this was, in effect, a major character in the plot, I failed to develop a real sense of the place.  In fact, overall, the author is much better at conjuring people than place.   One felt that she needed to have her characters revisit the relevant areas of the house time and time again, each visit adding more description to the rooms and stairs and so forth in order to build up the reader’s acquaintance with the house. As it is, we were given only the GP’s initial impressions of each area, with unease derived somewhat heavy-handedly from winter gloom, long, cold dark nights, and unexpected noises – the latter very well done.

Not great literature than, but I recommend the book highly as a thoroughly entertaining, light read.

Invisible art

Clackmannanshire is beginning to invest in a big way in public art.  I love this, but others consider it an outrageous use of public money.  My two favourite until this week were 'This journey's end' , which is on the first roundabout after the bridge over the most south easterly of the county’s bridges over the Forth as you approach from Glasgow or Edinburgh.  It's almost lyrical but it's also such an incongruous image for the area that it preoccupies for many minutes after you've passed it; and Foxboy, another sculpture which provokes because incongruous - it's in a hillfoots village, which seems so dour that nothing at all suggests the whimsy of the sculpture.  However, both have had to concede first place to new sculptures in Alloa town centre.

The centre is being radically made over, and promises to be stunningly elegant as a result, with pride of place given to three 'invisible' statues by Ron Mulholland - Mulholland's specialty.  This is a photo of some of his work (taken from the BBC News Scotland  website (16 February 2010), http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/8518153.stm)  There are four statues in this one. They're made of highly polished stainless steel, reflect their surroundings, and so disappear:

The Alloa statues were unveiled yesterday, but they're once again covered with bubble wrap to protect them from dust raised by workmen completing their installation (photo by Brian Smith, Alloa Online, http://www.alloa.org.uk/ [Accessed 6 May 2010]).

On trees

Suddenly - or so it seems - the trees are in leaf.  Last week, the Cambridge spring seemed so much further ahead of ours, because the trees there were in leaf.  Yesterday I walked the dog early in the morning and noticed, first, the copper beech in the middle of park was a wonderful light aubergine of first leafiness, and then that the  horse chestnuts were heavy with limp hands.  Limes are dotted with startling colour; and even the larches – the Miss Haversham of trees, and my absolute favourite – have a haze of colour flowing down each elegant branch. 

At home, Rangoon’s camellia has been in flower for a week or so (now beginning to look a little blowsy),  while a tiny azalea I found after cutting back a rosemary bush, seared by the snow, has miniscule buds in the centre of each of its bowls of leaves, and the magnolia tree in the garden next door is an extravagance of rich creaminess.  Our rhus has numerous large swellings along each furry branch – a relief because, for a long time after I’d pruned it, it threatened to be no more than a very big stick in a very big navy blue pot.

A gean on the main road from town is heavy with blossom.  It's mostly pink but has a skewed chevron in a different colour running from the centre and down one side. The heavy asymmetric shock of white cutting through the pink is like the fringe of some of the more exotic gamin hairstyles seen on campus at the moment.

Every year, vicious cold and relentless darkness in January and February lead me to plan to move south; but as soon as the trees leaf, I  become very happy to live in Scotland for ever.