Need a boost? Turn to . . .

Isn't it fab when someone enthuses so communicatively and un-boringly about a challenging pet topic (mountaineering, python-taming, extreme ironing) that you feel you could jolly well give said activity a go yourself?

Such was the can-do spirit instilled in me recently after listening to my friend JD talking with great warmth about the pleasure and solace he'd gained from reading a celebrated series of seven lengthy novels.

Far from being a slog, this literary marathon soon became a pleasure trip, engrossing, enthralling and utterly absorbing. I gained the impression that my friend would greet the discovery a further seven volumes with robust hurrahs.

JD read the books in translation from the original French.

And it's at this point that I'll make my admissions.

I know two other people, good friends, who've read these books - and both are fluent enough in French to have read them in the original.

I've also confided to both of them that, long ago, I'd actually set out from base camp and started novel number one...

Both made the same response, asking: 'In the original..?'

To which I replied in the negative - and with strong sense that, even had I got through all seven, my achievement would, in their view, be ever-so-slighty not up to snuff.

To be fair, my reaction probably said more about a sense of inferiority on my part, rather than any snootiness on theirs - but, whatever, I was discouraged.

So, I'm determined to allez-y and set out again. JD's winsome bigging-up of these books has made me hungry.

The books in question? The picture offers a teensy clue...

Worth the wait

Ten years ago I was knocked sideways by Kate Summerscale's extraordinary book The Queen of Whale Cay.

It's the biography of Marion 'Joe' Carstairs (born 1900), champion speedboat racer and spirited 'ruler' of a group of islands in the West Indies. Jo's boundless self-confidence was underpinned by an equally unlimited private income (Standard Oil).

Central to the story is Carstairs' wildly peculiar 'relationship' with an inanimate object - her beloved doll/mascot/alter ego 'Lord Todd Wadley' (on her shoulder above) - creepy at first glance, poignant as the story unfolds.

Intriguing, funny and deliciously outré, the book is a page-turning proof text for 'truth being infinitely stranger than fiction' .

Not surprisingly, Summerscale has taken her time finding another subject for her pen. I'm pleased to report that, ten years on, she has delivered a humdinger.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is a factual account of the shocking event that took place at Road Hill House, Trowbridge, in the summer of 1860: the murder of a child.

But this is much more than a whodunnit.

Through the prism of a family trauma, Summerscale manages to show us a vivid image of a whole turbulent society, where the seemingly powerful bonds of class and family are, in reality, deeply vulnerable.

Cracking

There's something particularly satisfying about a book that (a) has a terrific first paragraph and (b) fulfils all the expectations of that high-octane opening.

Mr Gnome and I agree that the text pictured is a tip-top example of a smashing start.

From that first warning 'If' we know we're contemplating potential transgression. We're invited to cross a boundary from the safe world of 'being told' to the altogether more alluring possibilities of finding out for yourself.

Temptation has rarely seemed more irresistible.

I've read these words aloud to umpteen groups of children over the years, and they 'work' every time. Like a spell.

No prizes for the title of the book. But Mr G and I would welcome news of similarly sensational starts.

The Road Home

How splendid to come across a contemporary novel that falls effortlessly into the categories of 'couldn't put down' and 'must tell others'.

Lev is a fortyish semi-skilled worker who, like thousands of others, rides the long-distance bus from his native eastern Europe. He arrives at Victoria Coach Station, with a suitcase, a few pounds and a yearning to better himself and his family.

Lev, still grieving following his wife's death from cancer, has left his daughter and mother in his unnamed homeland.

A lesser writer might have been content with creating a sort of 'Every-migrant' figure. Lev is much more than that - complex, troubled, stubborn, determined.

What follows is an unsentimental account of life at the ragged edges of today's Britain. Little victories, crushing setbacks, until Lev lands a job washing dishes in an up-and-coming restaurant.

Tremain has done her homework about the catering industry - the knife-edge margin between success and failure, the feverish intensity of work in a high-end kitchen, the heartless competitiveness, the occasional moments of grace and generosity.

If a mark of a good novel is that it changes how you think about other people, then The Road Home is a definite success.

Fourteen

I bought this wee anthology (on a whim) some twelve years ago - and since then it has crept up on me and is now a strong contender to be my Desert Island book choice.

I'm a bit of a fan of the sonnet - too short to be boring, but long enough to give the writer space to express a thought, a mood, a challenge - and to do so with economy, drama, precision, flair.

Compiler Don Paterson clearly loves the form as well - and, a poet himself, is strongly aware of the challenge and opportunity of having a mere fourteen lines in which to pull the poetic rabbit from the formulaic hat.

His selection included a handful of poems that were familar to me - and over the years I've come to love many of the sonnets (and poets) which he has introduced to me.

My thumbed copy has been with me to Greece, Spain, France, the USA and New Zealand. And, very selectively, I'm memorising my favourites.

As someone remarked, it's possible to appreciate all sorts of works of art. But a poem is the only masterpiece that you can 'download' into your head and take with you wherever you go for the rest of your life.

There's one sonnet per page, which means that apart from sonnets 1 and 101, each opening of the book places two poems to the eye. Paterson has a neat trick of pairing poems in ways that are, by turns, illuminating, intriguing and, occasionally, deliciously naughty.

For example, he pairs this sonnet of William Alabaster (1567-1640) with John Donne's famously forthright prayer-poem 'Batter my heart, three-personed God':

Upon the Crucifix
Now I have found thee I will evermore
Embrace this standard where thou sitst above,
Feed greedy eyes and from hence never rove;
Suck hungry soul of this eternal store;
Issue my heart from thy two-leaved door,
And let my lips from kissing not remove.
O that I were transformed into love,
And as a plant might spring upon this flower,
Like wandering ivy or sweet honeysuckle:
How would I with my twine about it buckle,
And kiss his feet with my ambitious boughs,
And climb along upon his sacred breast,
And make a garland for his wounded brows:
Lord so I am, if here my thoughts may rest.

As Paterson remarks: 'Phew!'

Train of thought

There's a cocoon-like cosiness to a railway journey in optimum (clean, uncrowded) conditions.

No intriguing interruptions or overheard conversations on a recent journey to Oxford.

Instead, the luxury of 'blank space' between the connectedness of the rest of the day. Disengagement. Peace.

The sense of separation increased by the silvery sheen of flooded fields and the sudden uplift of a hundred gulls as the train rattles past.

Time to relish the new 'Scotland Street' novel from Alexander McCall Smith, the fifth of his witty commentaries on contemporary life in Edinburgh's well-heeled New Town.

Originally published in short daily instalments in The Scotsman, the books follow a diverse bunch of characters as they negotiate the chances and choices of city life.

Smith's eye is kindly, but gimlet sharp - the books are definitely 'comfort' reading, but not too comfortable.... Watch out for the barbs.

Readers vary in their nominations for 'most loved' and 'most loathed' characters.

I have to admit to a soft spot for poor Irene Pollock - the wildly misguided uber-mother whose gifted six-year-old son is the focus of what she terms the 'Bertie project' - 'advanced' child-rearing taken to gloriously ludicrous extremes. Poor Bertie.

But then there's Angus Lordie, Domenica, hapless Matthew, the egregious Bruce, Pat and, my favourite, self-educated, unlucky-in-love cafe proprietess Big Lou....

More info at Alexander McCall Smith.

Dark Fire

When one's feeling under the weather, few things are more welcome than a totally tip-top book.

Over the last week or so I have been immersed in Henry VIII's London - its sights, sounds and pungent panorama of pongs. As Henry sought to settle the English reformation, the capital seethed with power struggles, intrigues and plots.

Spies everywhere and stray remark could take you on a fast ride to the rack, stake or gallows.

Scholarly, complex, crookbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake is Sansom's Morse - charged by the king's chief minister Thomas Cromwell to investigate the whereabouts of a top-secret Tudor WMD: 'Greek Fire', a kind of early napalm, to which, naturally enough, the king wishes to have exclusive rights.

Sansom deploys a rich array of characters with deft skill, interweaving an affecting second plot with that set in the public arena.

The narrative drive never slackens.

Terrific. And (hurrah!) there are three further books in the Shardlake series.

Home thoughts

I discovered the Puffin Book in which this illustration appears in the Salisbury branch of WH Smith on a wet afternoon in September 1961. I was eleven years old.

By the time we had returned home I had read the first chapter. I had also become convinced that the author had written his story with me in mind, so closely did it match my criteria of 'a good read'.

Four London children, a couple of whom seemed to be roughly my age, are separated from their parents and obliged to move to the depths of the country. Lucky them.

They haven't, as in my case, been sent away to boarding school.

As it turns out, they have fallen on their feet, fetching up in an upmarket, deliciously gothic mansion, empty save for themselves, a starchy housekeeper, some maidservants and, of course, an elderly professor.

And is if that isn't enough, they discover that the house contains a 'portal' into an even more extraordinary parallel, magical world.

After a variety of adventures the four children are rewarded amply and are crowned kings and queens of their newfound homeland - an outcome, which, unaccountably, had not yet been my fate.

The fast-paced text was interspersed by line drawings by Pauline Baynes. The image shown above was - and remains - my favourite.

This charming sitting room is, in fact inside a cave. Cosy, or what? 

A real fire, tea, cake, books and agreeable, if slightly semi-human, company.

In short, my eleven-year-old idea of heaven.

The Faun is my favourite character: domesticated, self-sufficient and what used to be called 'a confirmed bachelor'. Does he look as if he enjoys a vigorous game of rugby? I don't think so.

He's a book-lover, and happily fond of the 'wrong' kinds of food. In addition, he's hospitable, musical, kindly, yet carrying with him a slight air of melancholy. 

And, of course, he's flawed, vulnerable and not entirely what he seems. 

Hmm, Mr Lewis, what could you be thinking of?

Others told me that the book was a fable about salvation - and, yes, I 'got' the allegory.

But for me, it was, is and always will be about this extraordinary little scene and the thoughts and feelings that it so magically conjures up....

Ruff and tumble

Mr Gnome is immersed in this deliciously enjoyable yarn.

Shamelessly leaping aboard the Da Vinci bandwagon of secrets and conspiracies, author JL Carrell dishes up a steaming banquet of top-quality tosh.

The text is definitely better than the delightfully dodgy back-cover blurb:A serial killer is bad enough. But a deadly one? Yikes.

How to be topp

The immortal Nigel Molesworth (aka the Curse of St Custards). I wonder if anyone remembers him....

Molesworth was the deeply subversive love child of writer Geoffrey Willans and illustrator Ronald Searle.

I discovered him when I was nine and a boarder at a prep school that had echoes both of Linbury Court (of the Jennings stories) and the loopily recognizable world of St Custard's.


It's one of those books where much (but not all) of the humour comes via Molesworth's idiosyncratic spelling.

I relished the fact the Molesworth's constant efforst to be 'tuogh' came to nothing, and he's frequently trumped by the gloriously effete Basil Fotherington Thomas 'who say "Hello clouds, hello sky" and skip like a girlie'.


Nigel Molesworth, friend and role model. Hurrah!

Bearable

A card with a Rupert Bear illustration provoked waves of nostalgia for both Gnome and HB.

At Christmas, one hoped to receive an 'annual' (Eagle, Swift, Dandy, Beano, Sooty and Sweep) - but the uber-annual was always Rupert.

I adored them, mainly I think for the strange 'otherness' of Rupert's world: like ours, and yet so unlike. The delicate colours, the homely interiors, the weird machinery - all were enchanting. Hurrah for illustrator Alfred Bestall.

Then there was the layout. Extraordinary when you think about it. Four pictures, each with a rhyming couplet beneath. Expanded prose text at the bottom in two columns. A helpful heading at the top, plus two tiny vignette figures top right and left. So you get the narrative in three forms: pictures, couplets, prose. The pattern never varied. And I've never seen it used apart from for Rupert.

Fossilised fishhooks

Comfort reading. We all need it from time to time.

And what could offer more comfortable pleasure than a dip into the schoolboy stories of Anthony Buckeridge?

The irrepressible Jennings and his bespectacled sidekick Darbishire are boarders at Linbury Court Preparatory School where day-to-day life oscillates, as it does for small boys, between joy ('wizard') and misery ('ozard', or, worse, 'ozard cubed').

J and D's adventures, to be honest, aren't very adventurous. This isn't Mallory Towers, let alone Hogwarts.

The two boys, always well-intentioned, get into 'scrapes' - usually to the intense annoyance of highly combustible schoolmaster Mr Wilkins ('I, I, I... corwumph!').

Matters are usually brought to resolution through the gentle intervention of Mr Wilkins' opposite number - Mr Carter, a teacher blessed with a wry turn of phrase and an innate understanding of the not-all-that-complex psychology of nine-year-old boys.

Anthony Buckeridge's skill is to find laugh-aloud comedy in the lives of boys who are basically kind, honest and truthful.

That Jennings and Darbishire are never cloying, dull or prim is a bit of triumph.

Gnome movies

The gifts continue to arrive - and Mr G is very thrilled with this charming volume.

His respect for copyright prevents him from reproducing any more of the spreads.

'Go buy,' he says, teasingly....

Shire delight

Mr Gnome strikes a Tolkienesque pose beside one of his HB's most treasured volumes.

The HB recalls: 'I bought this with my pocket money at a school book event in the spring of 1962.'

(The enterprising bookseller was also briskly shifting under-the-counter copies of Lady Chatterly to the older boys.)

'Puffin had the rights for a relatively brief time and I believe this paperback edition is something of a rarity. The cover is by Pauline Baynes, the illustrator of the Narnia books.

'Discovering The Hobbit was one of those very special childhood moments.

'I felt that the author had written the book entirely for me.

'I found myself reading slowly, not wanting the story to end.... '