Both Alex Garland and A24 Films do it again, although this is quite different to most of Garland’s work because it has no sci fi elements to it, at all. It’s not as flat out action thrills a minute as the trailer might suggest but, for me, this wasn’t a problem. Instead it’s an intelligent insight into war and beautifully captures the role of journalism and in particular photojournalism within that.
The UK’s ITV News ran a truly great piece just after the January 6th insurrection of the White House which both demonstrated the importance of on the site reportage to capture what was REALLY going on and, I suspect, provided inspiration for Garland as it’s in the moment, at the heart of the action, drama was compelling. This too.
Of course you can go back to the Spanish Civil War and perhaps more notably, Vietnam, for gripping photojournalism that changed our attitudes to what is going on in the world. Indeed recently two brilliant documentaries have arrived on our screens from the Ukrainian war that are really getting to the essence of this conflict (Twenty Days in Mariupol and Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods.)
For Garland to make this feel real in a contemporary US setting, in an unexplained war between the unlikely combination of Texas and California (the secessionists) versus the rest is quite an achievement. He is helped in this by a stunning central character duo of Kirsten Dunst (a world weary, seen it all before veteran) and a fresh faced (but shooting on monochrome film) upstart played by Cailee Penny (whom we’ll be seeing a lot more of).
Dunst reluctantly takes Penny under her wing after they are thrown together in a cross country drive from NYC to DC in tow with an elderly journo (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and a younger more daredevil Wagner Moura who’d been hitting on Penny in the NYC journalists party hotel the night before the trip. Dunst is magnificent as the weary Lee (get the name connotation?) and assumes a maternal protective role for the increasingly emboldened youngster in her care.
The movie ramps up throughout and it has to be said what the finale lacks in storytelling credibility it makes up for in edge of the seat tension.
My family thought the ending was a bit OTT, but I forgave it because the characterisation was so fantastic and the performances, especially by Dunst, riveting.
I highly recommend it.
(Oh, and there’s the crazy Jesse Plemons scene, almost worth the admittance alone.)
He is a one man opposition party to whoever runs this country, but most especially when the Tories are wreaking havoc.
In this film he has a triple attack on racism, poverty and immigration.
As usual, he employs a cast of largely amateur actors, real people, in the North (Durham area this time) and they have grievances.
A run down pit village is being repopulated with Syrian refugees and the largely unemployed and bitter ex mining community do not like the fact that these “Rag heads” are getting access to their benefits and attention of local government and volunteers.
The action centres jon an almost decrepit community pub called The Old Oak. Its manager, our hero, TJ Ballantyne (played by ex-fireman Dave Turner, a Loach regular), is struggling to keep the pub afloat with a small band of bitter and twisted ex miners as locals, racist to the core they resent TJ’s apparent favouring of the new Syrian community that is adding richness to their village.
The movie plays out in a fairly typical Loach cadence. Highs and lows, humour and pathos, atrocious behaviour and acts of great human kindness.
The script is good (by Loach’s regular Paul Laverty) if a little predictable and sometimes a touch fantastical, but that doesn’t matter. Loach’s objectives are clear and the haters will say it’s just left wing propaganda. In a way it is. It needs to be because no-one else is doing it. But Loach draws such humanity from his mixed ability cast that you simply cannot fail to love it.
It sits alongside a canon of work that is remarkable: I Daniel Blake (his rant against the benefits system), Sorry We Missed You (his rant against zero hours contracts), Looking For Eric (Cantona as a postman), Sweet Sixteen (the movie that launched Martin Compston’s career), My Name is Joe (Bitter and brutal observation on alcoholism with Gary Lewis in career-high form), Raining Stones (his polemic against the underground labouring/work system), Riff Raff, Poor Cow and, of course our beloved Kes.
What a director. This is just another solid, enjoyable, moving piece of work from a national institution.
Tickets were selling in Edinburgh at an unprecedented £175 face value. This is frankly ridiculous.
Indira Varma does a good Lady MacBeth.
But Ralph Fiennes is too old, too decrepit to be a believable ambition driven monarch. He looks more like a nice wee spot in a care home would suit him quite nicely. (My pal said he was like Leonard Rossiter in Rising Damp and I have to agree.)
As we enter the theatre (makeshift and terribly short legroom) we pass through a modern war zone (could be Syria, could be Gaza) it makes us think we are in for a modern reinterpretation of the greatest ever play.
We are, but in costume only, as it transpires.
What follows is a competent (but no more than that ) retelling of the story of Scotland’s greatest King(s).
We await greatness but it seems it will only come tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow.
I thought it was a bit of a mess really with its Star Trek whooshing doors and its slightly distempered stage.
The witches are boring, Fiennes is boring. Thank God for Indira.
Fine, but pedestrian.
If you are in Washington and hoping for the greatest English Shakespearian production of your life…save your money. Go watch Rising Damp on YouTube. Save yourself a few bucks.
This won the Booker Prize a few months ago and in quality terms sits alongside Colson Whitehead’s deadly duo of The Underground Railroad and Nickel Boys that won him the Pulitzer back to back. None of the three of them are what you would call easy reading, but each shares a love of humanity that shines through human anguish and strife like glorious beacons. In Lynch’s book, set in Ireland, a totalitarian government has rapidly insinuated the culture of the nation, turning its citizens into either patriots or rebels. Eilish, our central protagonist is a middle class mother of four married to the leader of the Irish teacher’s Union. The book opens with the Gardai at her door seeking the whereabouts of her spouse. Only a few pages later he is incarcerated, we know not where for, presumably, crimes against the state. And so begins a nightmare that threatens the whole substance and meaning of her life. Eilish, certainly not a patriot, finds herself shunned by her community. Slowly but surely the book ramps up Ireland’s descent into mayhem and the implications it has on all of Eilish’s family, including her newborn Ben who reaches toddler stage by the time of its heartbreaking denouement. The story is really about familial love in the midst of war torn chaos. It is directly inspired by the Syrian conflict that was the catalyst for the English Channel’s boat crossings but this is only one conflict in a constant global shifting sands of outrageous political, and religious, fervour. How a state as solid and secure as Ireland can implode quite is rapidly as it does is not really the point, but it’s shocking. The point is that poisonous aspects of nationhood and tribalism can spring up anywhere, any time. There are echos of the Wehrmacht that fully kicked off on Kristallnacht; it’s subtly portrayed in a horrifying passage half way through where it’s car windscreens, rather than Jewish shop windows, that take a battering. But the analogy is clear. Lynch’s prose is beautifully poetic and this conflict’s place in time is regularly referenced when he spells out that although we are reading a story set in Eilish’s present, it is rooted in both the past and will well-up again in the future, such is the certainty of the human condition. Lynch uses no para-breaks (see what I am doing here) nor quotation marks which renders the story breathless, echoing the turmoil and lack of headspace Eilish finds herself in, unable to make clear decisions because events constantly pile on top of each other. What’s more, her father is suffering from Alzheimer’s and is crumbling. Like many older people he is doggedly independent and in denial of his condition. And living on the other side of Dublin, across various frontlines, visiting him is a treacherous, verging on suicidal, undertaking. There is absolutely no let off in the accelerating heartbreak and injury that befalls Eilish and her brood as she seeks safety in some form or other. But ultimately that safety comes at a great price. It’s heart wrenching redolent of The Road but with less time for contemplation or consideration. It deserves to join the highest echelon of Irish novels, indeed any novels. I was broken-hearted that it had to end.
David Greig has written some of my favourite plays. I will never forget his Macbeth addendum, Dunsinane. And The Strange Undoing of Prudentia Hart is a play like no other you have ever seen. Add to that The Suppliant Women (after Aeschylus) Solaris and Yellow Moon and you have a writer of significant importance. (And that’s just the tip of the iceberg).
I bumped into him on Monday lunchtime on Lothian Road, and after chittery chattery he asked me if I was still writing this largely undiscovered colossus of writing magnificence. “Yes”, I humbly replied.
“Well, you’ll regret meeting me today” he proclaimed as he fumbled in his rucksack to fish out a copy of Columba’s Bones and thrust it into my hands. With that he disappeared into the fog.
It wasn’t foggy.
Gulping with fear I strode to Sainsbury’s for my Red Pepper and Lentil Soup, a bargain at £1.50 in these days of crippling extortion. Fear, because the thought of ploughing through a religious tale set in Iona in 825 was my idea of hell – I’d read the publicity and had abandoned the idea of purchasing this novel.
Fast forward 5.5 hours, to whence I sit on the #43 Lothian County Bus to South Queensferry. People are looking at me like I’m a leper as I guffaw at page three of this magnificent jewel.
It’s only 180 pages, it’s A5 in size, pocketable, and has big type for the hard of reading, so if it was going to be a chore it was going to be a manageable chore.
It’s not a chore.
Yes, it’s set on Iona. Yes, it’s 825AD (or whatever they call it now). Yes, it stars a monk, a viking and a widow. No, it’s not a turgid bag of fleapiss.
What David Greig does, and this cues me up to blow voluminous smoke up his beardy arse, is conjure up (based on an existing story I think) a truly great thing. Firstly, it’s hysterically funny (think Monty Python meets Mary Beard, pissed). Secondly, it’s properly engaging. In so few words Greig creates three characters that are at once unique and at the same time familiar. Thirdly it’s unputdownable.
It’s a story about revenge, love (of God, man and woman) and values. But mostly it’s just a right rollicking read. I’ll say no more because it’s easy to spoil it.
By Wednesday teatime, as I rolled off the #43, it was done. I will be extolling its virtues to all and sundry for many moons.
This is the 19th Martin Scorsese movie I’ve seen. It settles firmly into the upper quartile of this remarkable director’s work.
His range is immense and this sits closer to some of his American History documentaries than it does to, say, Gangs of New York or Wolf of Wall Street.
But it actually has its roots in Casino/Goodfellas territory, because it’s a kind of mafia film, in that it explores a very one-sided gang attitude to clansmanship (and in a small part Klansmanship).
It’s actually a story of genocide/ethnic cleansing, as Robert Di Niro’s (rarely better, certainly not in the last 40 years) rich, ranch-owning, Oklahoman one-man dynasty sets out to wrestle away the oilfield rights of the Osage tribe of Native Americans by hook or by crook – mainly by crook.
The Osage are mightily rich because oil has been found slap bang in the middle of their land and Di Niro’s William Hale is jealous and determined to get his greedy mitts on the money.
He does this in a pincer movement. Firstly by marrying his returning WWI war hero, a dim-witted nephew Ernest Burkhart (phenomenally played by Leonardo DiCaprio) into the Osage. His willing wife Mollie (a star turn by Lily Gladstone) is unaware of Hale and Burkhart’s long term ambitions and simply falls in love with him. Truth is, it’s mutual.
Hale’s second strategy in this pincer is the straightforward murders of Mollie’s family and many more Osage besides. There are numerous cold blooded killings that pepper the movie and yet it never feels gratuitous (cold blooded and shocking, yes, but not especially repellent – like it might have been in Tarantino’s hands.)
It’s a study in racism and of greed but that doesn’t mean Di Niro, DiCaprio and Gladstone don’t win you over with their overwhelmingly great performances – expect all three to feature at next year’s Oscars (I expect Di Niro to pick up his 9th nomination, DiCaprio his 8th and Gladstone her first – maybe a first ever Oscar for a woman of Native American descent?)
Gladstone is a silent but steely presence. Much of the film documents her suffering at the hands of Hale and Burkhart, and it’s truly shocking how DiCaprio treats her, despite his undoubted love for her.
It’s widely documented that the film is extraordinarily long (3h26mins without a break is a bladder challenging sit through) but although it features murders galore, it’s no action picture. Do not go looking for any Marvel escapades in this one folks. But it’s manageable, riveting and entirely justified in its length.
One other thing to point out. The soundtrack is an almost imperceptible blues bass thrum by Robbie Robertson that builds tension at an almost inaudible level but is like a heartbeat throughout. Sinister and compelling it quietly drives the story along. Bravo Robbie.
The movie is a savage insight into a part of American history that was not familiar to me and it deserves to be seen by a wide audience. Judging from the low availability of seats in Edinburgh’s cinemas this weekend that ambition at least appears to be coming to fruition.
Look at these magnificent creations for example. Obviously some are better than other but I love the way AI can make shadows meaningful. This could probably be achieved by human retouching of course, but it would be tricky.
In the pantheon of great Scottish vernacular writers Graeme Armstrong has joined the podium. He stands alongside James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Ely Percy and Anne Donovan.
Maybe he is the gold medalist, but let’s see what novel #2 brings.
My only criticism of this amazing book is it could have been edited a little more tightly.
That critique aside, in the meantime we have a belter in The Young Team which is an auto-fictional story of life in brutal, and I mean really brutal, gang culture in Airdrie and the surrounds (Coatbridge, Wishaw, Motherwell, Hamilton).
Whatever, they’re awe shite.
The Young team tells of Azzie’s life as a wannabe gang leader through the ranks, to…well, you’ll have to read it
The grit in this story is that Azzie has a brain. Trouble is he uses it infrequently as his gang-inspired rage too often rules his heart over his head.
At times you grit your teeth so hard you can barely breathe as this horrific story unfolds. It’s not quite Glasgow’s Jimmy Boyle-esque razor gangs, but it’s not far short.
Life in North Lanarkshire’s schemes is awful, although interestingly Armstrong rarely suggests that, it’s just life.
Aggro, violence, wine (Buckfast) drugs and motherly love are the soothing embraces that make this land home. No matter what.
The drugs (or is it the violence – there’s plenty of that) centre the book. Azzie is close to being a junkie, but he’s also close to being a murderer (OK, manslaughterer).
He’s smart, but he’s also mental.
I wouldn’t want to meet him (although I would love to meet Graeme Armstrong). We read of his life from wannabe gang master to sensible 22 year old retiree. But the needle still skips.
It’s, to be honest, terrifying. But it’s written with the mind of a philosopher.
Azzie can escape, unlike most.
This makes it sound like a cliche but it’s anything but. Ignore comparisons to Trainspotting. That’s lazy and predictable. This is a far more serious, and more important, book.
“It’s shite being Scottish”, yes it is – in this den of iniquity.
The stories of rave culture add a bit of levity (but even these are horrifying in places). I wasn’t one of them (thankfully reading this) but levity is not a tonal reference of this book.
Many say it is funny like Irvine Welsh. (It isn’t). OK, it has funny moments. But it isn’t a comedy book by any stretch of the imagination. It’s much more Alan Warner than Irving Welsh in this respect.
So, don’t buy this for a laugh.
Buy it to , I dunno, I’m so middle class that I don’t want to say/admit it – feel better about your life?
Actually, naw, just revel in Graeme Armstrong’s writing skills.
It’s a belter. And it’s coming to a TV near you soon so get it read first.
This is a journalistic review of The Johnson years as Prime Minister. The man I should just laugh at and write off as a fool and egotist beyond compare, but whom I actually despise with all my being.
In its lengthy account of a short period of power he is spared little in the way of criticism but not lampooned. Yet, the authors who have previous in this space are clearly holding back, although we are under no illusion that this man was entirely unfit for this, or any, office of state and that not only had he no moral compass but he actually had no compass at all.
So clueless was he in the job that the real Prime Ministers of this sad, pathetic ruin of a country (largely his fault) was not him but Dominic Cummings and his smart but desperately unlikeable wife, Carrie Simmonds.
The Cabinet had virtually no say in ANYTHING. But, you know, look at who that bunch of wankers were.
Johnson’s tenure is simply a series of flip flopping popularity policies, so desperate was he to recreate his popularity as Mayor of London where he had few “Big decisions” to make and the opportunity to make grandiose investments in infrastructure that made him look the great visionary he so strived to be.
He fucked up Brexit, then fucked up Covid, aided and abetted by so many muppets that he almost gets excused for some of the paucity of vision and insight. But the behaviour of number 10 during this period of national abstention was part of what brought him down, and of course, the lies.
It should be a big old schadenfreude read but the truth is it’s all a bit disappointing. It’s very badly written, and I mean awfully so. Many paragraphs are so badly constructed that you have to read them two or three times to get the point. (It was a rush job I think.)
And there’s a lot of f***ing redacting of swearing which drove me nuts.
So Daily Mail.
So, the experience of reading what should be a good old character assassination (and in a veiled way it is) is diluted by its lack of commitment and an attempt at fairness (constantly Johnson is complimented on his dealings with the Ukraine – he hardly won any medals of honour in his ill fated term at the Foreign Office though, did he.)
It’s not great. And wasn’t worth the time out of my life.
It could have been a lot shorter.
Let me have a go.
Chapter One
Boris Johnson got elected. He was a total cunt. He got binned by his inept cronies.
A right old variety of good and bloody awful today.
Mass Effect is a Danish dance show at Summerhall. Dance with a difference as, for most of it, there’s no music just five dancers (2M,3F) dressed as runners who do exactly that for the first half hour building up a considerable sweat in the process. There’s comedic nods and winks to the audience, knowing looks that had us in stitches.
Of course, all that sweat can only be dealt with on one way, by gradually disrobing until all five are stark naked, as are several of the 15 “community” dancers who sprung from the audience and the wings to join in for the final act.
It’s unexpected but great fun. Proper Fringe fare.
Next to The Hub for an EIF talk with Domo Branch, an extraordinary 23 year old jazz drummer from Portland who was interviewed by the king of pretension who hogged the event with his “I know more than anyone, including Domo” approach. He’s no Parkie. But we were treated to some extraordinary drumming too.
Our third show was the wonderful What if they ate The Baby by Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland who gave us the excellent deserved Fringe First winning And Then The Rodeo Burned Downlast year. It’s playing this year too and both shows are must sees. The new show is another surreal clowning romp in which the two writers actors and choreographers tell a more Groundhog Day than the movie story of two mid American queer housewives who can’t consummate their passion for each other fully, but give it a go, because to be queer in 50’s America during McCarthyism, was a distinct no no. It turns out, from their show research that McCarthyism not only outed Commies but gay people too. It’s funny, but also incredibly sweet and lovable, their stock in trade.
We met them both after the show, as we did last year, and I, for one, sincerely hope they land back to back Fringe Firsts. Please go see both shows, they’re a treat.
Finally, another EIF show at the Festival Theatre. The Threepenny Opera. I walked out of a production of this a decade ago and sadly reached the same conclusion this time too. 95 minutes (act one) of grim Brechtian and Weillian discord and ham singing and acting (although I think it was meant to be – is it maybe theatre of the absurd?) with a very dated script, made it teeth grinding stuff. Too much for this luvvie.
As Far As Impossible by Comedie de Geneve is a hard slog for a Monday night after your first day back to work, especially when it’s two hours of Portuguese/French subtitled wall to wall monologues with no interval and no ‘drama’ as such.
But that’s what I signed up for, with a bad cold.
Comedy de Geneve performed the largely impenetrable Dusk last weekend that pretty much brainmelted me. I should really have known better.
It’s a “play” about frontline Aid workers recounting their war zone tales. Few are uplifting , many are grim that tell of their experiences in “the Impossible” a collective name for all war zones where the worst happens, including a blood bank Sophie’s Choice moment, a potential rape saved only by a favourite football strip and an enforced ceasefire across two mountains.
The soundtrack is a highly sensitively mic’ed drummer (Gabriel Ferrandini) who plays in a massive field tent that initially covers him but is gradually raised by the cast to reveal him in all his glory before he closes the production with a 15 minute drum solo.
He is the heartbeat and the bombscape of the show.
It’s a tough gig, that’s for sure. To say it’s entertaining would be a push, but once again by this company I feel challenged and kinda glad I showed up.
Day 6 was spent almost exclusively at Roundabout in Summerhall, my favourite venue.
We started with England and Son, a one man play devised for Mark Thomas, the superior political stand up. It’s a tour de force, comparable in quality only to Jodie Comer’s turn in Prima Facie. Indeed Summerhall’s owner, Robert McDowell, presented Mark with an award at curtains for “the best single hander I’ve seen in 42 years on The Fringe”.
It’s a play about the violence his dad doled out on his mum after returning from wartime duty in Malay and Thomas’ character’s own descent into thievery and class revenge.
It questions whether institutionalized violence is acceptable on the forces’ return.
It’s bleakly funny and then just bleak.
An outstanding script delivered perfectly by Mark Thomas. Another 5 star show that prompted Jeana to ask him for a hug after the show decaying that “I’m no luvvie but…” But, she was being a luvvie. I’ve broken her.
It was impossible to beat that day but had contenders the following day at the Traverse in the form of Bloody Elle and No Love Songs – more later.
Next up, Salty Irina, an interesting two (and laterally Three) hander about two gay girls who are inspired by each other to infiltrate a Nazi music festival to see what it is that makes them tick. It’;s a really lovely relationship drama with a beating political heart that covers racism and love equally well. Gay female love has nbeen a feature of our Fringe and it’s been joyous to behold. I liked the production very much and would recommend it.
Third of the day was Lady Dealer, another single hander and again a gay female central character . This time a loud and proud LADY drug dealer. Her USP because drug dealers are guys. The real theme here is loneliness. It’s described as a poem play and starts out very poetically by our heroin(e) Charly (get it?) played by Martha Watson Allpress. She’s magic in the role as she tries to cope with the real life challenge of a power cut that cuts out her lifeline to her business and personal contact with the world when her mobile phones run out of juice. It’s a mile a minute breakneck performance of considerable skill that won over the audience. Great stuff.
Number four was Strategic Love Play, Miriam Battye’s production by the glorious Pines Plough and the equally glorious Soho Theatre is about how to win the battle in a first date. She starts out a ball breaking cynic, he a bore but the tables turn (literally) in a clever set design that perfectly suits Roundabout, before swinging back and forth in a tennis match chess game of power. It’s brilliantly scripted and performed by the two protagonists and easily garners four stars.
Then we moved to Udderbelly for last year’s Roundabout breakout hit, Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder, expanded to suit the larger performing space it has a Six vibe that should see it transfer to the West End (Soho Theatre, or The Bridge at least). It’s already played at Bristol Old Vic. It’s about two Hull based true crime podcasters who are told by their hero podcaster that they’ll be nobody’s until they solve one. So they do.
With a superior supporting cast of five, including some big licks Musical Theatre talent, they put on a great and hilarious show with some decent tunes and a great script. It’s comedy gold. Another five stars to bookend the day.
My chosen image is of Martin Bennet, because he inspired today’s Five star concert.
The day started with The Life and Times of Michael K an adaptation of JM Coetzee’s Booker Prize winning novel. The Baxter Theatre Group is better known for the spectacular puppetry of Warhorse and although this is a better tale than the flimsy horsey pish it’s less impressive puppetry-wise. In fact the puppetry is a wee bit half pish.
It’s a bit of a voyage of misery, but is charming and extremely well staged with great acting and an impressive set. Definitely not a life changer, but others in the audience liked it more than I did resulting in a standing ovation. I wasn’t that into it before I went. I wasn’t that much into it after.
Next up, a spectacular free concert at the Ross Bandstand by the Grit Orchestra, Scotland’s national youth brass band and pipe band, accompanied by the Royal Conservatoire’s Soprano and alto singers with a late finale featuring Nicola Benedetti. The stage was epic, with not an inch of space to spare.
The opening few bars set the scene for an afternoon of majesty, fluctuating between searingly hot sun to pishing it down rain. Never mind, the music overcame it all.
The programme featured the late lamented Martyn Bennet’s songbook and was epic in scale, imagination and emotion.
Tears choked back by both me and Jeana. Outstanding.
Two more music shows followed.
Firstly Choir!Choir! Choir! Which is essentially a musical rehearsal led by two Torontonians who teach the audience a multi-part song each night. On our visit it was the songbook of George Harrison with A Long And Winding Road being the complex centrepiece at Udderbelly. It’s tremendous, uplifting fun.
Finally the incomparable Baby Wants Candy, a kind of low rent version of Showstoppers, but no less wonderful. Debate raged about which is better. Showstoppers in its swanky arena or Baby in its smaller scale, but no smaller ambition hothouse. For audience approval Baby wins every time, tonight has a particularly raucous audience as they performed Sweeney Toes the Demon Masseuse of Feet Street. This led to much wonderment in terms of Sweeney Music but also an absurd plot that we all loved. Everyone should see this five star company
So two fives a four and a slightly grudging three.
When the Oscars come round I don’t think it will be Cillian Murphy that gets his shoulder tapped I think it could be Emily Blunt and Robert Downie Jr who plays Oppenheimer’s would be nemesis, Lewis Strauss. Don’t get me wrong, Murphy is good, just not truly great.
And that about sums up this overlong movie, good just not truly great.
The plot wriggles and writhes through timelines in such a way as to satisfy Nolan’s trademark need for complexity and I have to confess to being confused for much of its three hours.
Also, if I was watching this as a Japanese viewer I’d be gritting my teeth at the overall celebration of the outcome of Oppenheimer’s technical success. It treads a fine line between glorification and condemnation of the A Bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima killing over 200,000 Japanese civilians.
And while Nolan coaxes a degree of remorse out of his central character I wasn’t 100% convinced that he really did regret his actions. Sure he denounces them, to an extent, but he didn’t go into this in wide eyed innocence, Oppenheimer absolutely knew his objective. The ethics are pretty muddled, like a lot of the plot in my view.
Ach, it’s a hard one to deconstruct. I’m a little surprised at the ratings this movie is attracting because it’s a long hard slog with a LOT of dialogue and not a great deal of action.
Perhaps the best scenes are the test sequences in the desert, the senatorial election drama at the end and the creepy but well handled rabble rousing reception Oppenheimer receives from his team on the news that Hiroshima has been obliterated. At least in this scene Nolan convinces us that it’s not a celebration of the bombing, but an indictment.
Oppenheimer’s vilification as a possible Communist is a central theme of the movie and is key to Strauss’s objections and the 1954 kangaroo court FBI security clearance meeting which anchors the plot. There seems little evidence that he was a Commie, but the McCarthy regime at that time seemed to put little store in hard evidence and he clearly fared badly in this terrible stitch up.
Perhaps my favourite moment in the movie is the look of schadenfreude on the face of Strauss’s advisor towards the end of the movie.
It’s a delicious moment in a banquet that sadly has more plain fare than delicacies.
Breaking Bad has its advocates, The Sopranos, The Wire, Friends, The Simpsons and West Wing.
All are contenders and, like Succession, all are American.
Of course we have Emmerdale and The Dick Emery Show to fight our corner but it’s clear that America rules the waves when it comes to TV greatness.
Having come to a satisfactory and clean cut ending on Monday (they “stuck the landing”) Jesse Armstrong’s outrageous creation can now take its place in this Pantheon of greatness.
Everything about Succession, all 40 hours of it, is close to perfection. At its heart it’s a sitcom Shakespearean tragedy with so many subplots to keep the drama purring along that there’s never any down time.
Let’s consider the cast:
It’s led by the childhood-abused rugged self made Scotsman from Dundee, Logan Roy, who nearly died on the Atlantic crossing. He’s played by Brian Cox in a career defining role. He’s evil incarnate and yet there’s something about him that magnetises viewers. Allegedly NOT Rupert Murdoch, instead he’s an amalgam of Murdoch and Maxwell with maybe a few despots thrown in for good measure. Used sparingly throughout, every moment of on screen time with Cox is gold.
Kendall Roy, the eldest son of Logan’s second marriage to a highfalutin’ English damsel called Caroline (a grotesque caricature of English privilege and monstrous parenting skills), and killer of a waiter in the early episodes – he carries this guilt with him. He may be the natural successor, but Logan mercilessly plays with his lack of confidence and makes him a nervous wreck. Mark Strong allegedly played this character as method and never misses a beat.
Roman Roy, The crown prince jester, also sexually abused as a child hence the reason he has this outrageous older woman fetish and desire for C Suite big noise Gerri Kelman who he fires/unfires on a whim. It’s a mess but Roman , like the devil, has all the best lines. A recent favourite being when his sister declares herself pregnant he blurts “Am I the father?”. Keiran Culkin is a God, to be able to play that part with such aplomb, in my view.
Shiv Roy played by the latterly pregnant (in real life AND on screen) Australian actress Sarah Snook has an outwardly pleasant demeanour but is, in fact, a total horror and arguably even more ambitious than her two horrendous brother. She will stop at no point to overcome their male entitlement and her rocky marriage to Tom Wambsgams is both a potential ticket to glory and a millstone around her neck. Her micro acting skills are off the scale.
Tom Wambsgans is married to Shiv. He’s a nervous wreck, a creep, a bully and implicated in a scandal that killed a bunch of people on a cruise liner owned by The Roys. He is the eager beaver that has only one outlet for his frustration, the weasel like wannabe Cousin Greg. Together they are “the disgusting brothers’ and play a beautiful pantomime sideshow act that never fails to entertain.
Cousin Greg is a loser and an idiot (although apparently the show’s break out sex symbol). He’s like a corporate Bambi, but underneath that gormless facade he’s actually quite smart and scheming. As the show comes to an end Cousin Greg is given his season in the sun.
Conor Roy, the eldest son and wannabe US President (FFS) is from an earlier marriage and is not connected to the business at all. He’s the butt of many jokes and is the least hateful family member. Nevertheless he is a dufus and deserves no place in civilised company. He has a majestically hideous young trophy bride, Willa, played coldly by Justine Lupe.
The Greek chorus, but all key players in their own right, and all complicit in Logan’s disgusting greed and ambition, is the “C-Suite” of Frank (the Chair), Gerri (the CEO), Karolina (PR/Comms) Hugo (also comms), and Karl (FD) – they’re great alone or together.
Then there’s takeover targets like Stewie and Mattson (one of the stand out characters of series 3/4 played by Alexander Skarsgaad – a genuine movie star).
Put all these A listers together, with the great show runner in Jesse Armstrong, and a writer’s room (many British writers as it happens) to die for, and you end up with a TV programme that is funnier than anything else on TV and more dramatic than any other show on TV. It’s a unique combination and, for me at least, the greatest TV show of all time.
You’ll have seen its gaudy cover everywhere because its ubiquitous.
So, I’m not sure I can add much to the clamour about this universally loved phenomenon.
It feels like it’s written by a woman for women (a copywriter as it happens).
But I’m a gadgey, so here’s my take.
Although it screams women’s lib in CAPITAL LETTERS, as a man, I really liked it.
I was reading it on the back of my favourite American female writer’s Privileged (Curtis Sittenfeld) – also a take on girl power but from the 18th century transposed to the 21st.
It turns out to be a clever political read that challenges male dominance (including acceptable rape) and puts sand in the oyster.
That sand being Elizabeth Zott.
She’s a character.
She’s amazing.
She’s the book.
Everything about this novel is about Elizabeth Zott. Crazy name. Crazy girl.
It becomes a thriller having started out as a character study but really, it’s just a about humanity, and love.
I could tell you about the grief, bullying, corruption and all that.
But all that matters is you love this beautiful, strident, complex woman and her battle with convention, with scientific prejudice (essentially women didn’t do science in the 1950’s) and with the television industry that, even then, objectified women – no-one though was going to objectify Elizabeth Zott, unmarried mother, scientist and hater of domesticity.
Gramus does a great job of constructing a spider’s web of a plot that all comes together beautifully in the end and creates a character that we all fall in love with as her difficult battle with integrity unfolds in 400 delicious pages.
OK let’s get going with The Latvian entry Let 3’s, Mama ŠČ!
The Eurovision Song Contest celebrates diversity through music – nothing could be more apparent than this appalling song with a cast of five Hitler-light male drag singers and an intervention from a Croatian Lurch carrying a pair of smoking nuclear warheads. My guess is these guys are not meant to be fascists but maybe making some non-understandable anti war statement.
It’s bonkers and a lot of fun. The trouble is, without the visuals you are left with a slightly out of tune, punky Macarena, and we all know the Macarena is unbearable at the best off times.
Pish but fun.
Anna’s View
Croatia has a remarkable ability to traverse the musical spectrum with unfathomable fluidity.
They’re the nation that gave us ‘Guilty Pleasure’, ‘Tick-Tock’ and ‘Nebo’ – entries which are competitively nebulous. They’re also the nation that gave us Jacques Houdek – a man who stood on stage, (nearly) missed all his cues and still managed to perform a duet with himself. Now they give us ‘Mama ŠČ’.
Not Mama ‘S.C.’ as it was pronounced on a news podcast.
This entry is far from nebulous. It’s political, it’s satirical, it’s a veritable ‘washing-machine’ of a performance – with a pair of missiles, several costume changes and some spangled netting thrown in for good measure. This is more closely aligned with entries of a Eurovision since deceased – the mirroring spirits of Bosnia’s Laka and Verka Serduchka are resonant here, and that resonance will undoubtably extend to the viewer at home. It’s contextually political – evidently – but it’s competitively nostalgic.
Musically, it’s neither here nor there. And that seems to be the point. This band want to make a statement, and a statement is what they make. In terms of voting power, I don’t believe the viewers will be swayed by it’s tangible satirical overtones – instead responding to a rousing display of madness before them.
The more tunefully-inclined, however, might not get the joke.
Prediction: POSSIBLE QUALIFIER. If it gets there, juries will rate this very low on Saturday, but with a high televote due to it’s apparent ‘novelty’ value, will likely finish around 18th.
Spain
Mark’s view
Blanca Paloma – EAEA is Spain’s entry although you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s Morocco’s so strong are the Moorish influences in the song, albeit augmented by an interesting flamenco style clapping bunch of backing singers.
The title ‘EAEA” is slightly moronic and it’s a shame because what we have here is the best song I’ve heard this year in that it is a straight folk song, not trying too hard to be outlandish and is all the better for it.
What we have is a fine vocal performance with a classy video delivery by a very good singer, although I think its folk leanings may not sit very well with the judges. I, on the other hand, really rate it.
Bravo Blanca!
Anna’s View
This is one of my least favourite Eurovision entries of the past 20 years.
The first time I listened to this, I thought the strides and success of Chanel in the face of Spain’s Eurovision struggle had been washed away. I thought they had made the wrong choice – I found this totally inaccessible.
But my view is only that of one. I really appreciate what Bianca is doing – she’s clearly an enormous talent with a strong personal story to boot! The song, is just not for me.
However, people like this. They really like this. This is strongly emerging – as many Spanish entries do given the undying ferocity of the country’s fan-base – as a strong favourite, chasing the leading pack at 4th in the odds. This is an outside, but not impossible, winner on the night. It’s rich sounds, uniqueness and traditional overtones are as likely to strike a chord with the voting public as they clearly have with the fandom. Maybe Spain have made the right choice after all?
But equally, for all the same reasons, people might just not get this. But I’m willing to be proven wrong.
Prediction: Likely TOP 5 in final.
Latvia
Mark’s view
Sudden Lights – Aijā is the Latvian entry.
I’m not certain if it is about suicide by drowning or what but it goes from a rollicking Aha-esque pop song into a sudden last verse despairing plummet where the lead singer is moved from an empty swimming pool, by a bunch of sixth formers, to a bath and essentially drowned while the music dramatically transposes from English to Latvian and the tile, which means lull, corresponds to the ritual drowning.
They then carry him off to a funeral pyre. Although he may not burn ‘cos he’s too wet.
I’m not sure it’s exactly what you’d call a crowdpleaser and may come with a Samaritans phone number to phone after seeing it.
Having said all that. It’s a really good song that could do well with a positive ending.
But me, I like hard core misery so it’s a contender for my points.
Anna’s view
When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Unfortunately, Latvia have been trying again for a very long time and haven’t got anywhere with it. With the honourable exception of Aminata in 2015, their success-rate in qualifying – and doing well – has left us wanting, and I’m sorry to say that this year is unlikely to be any different.
That said, there is a silver lining for Latvia. People adore this song – the performance in the music video is fresh, contemporary and fundamentally cool. It isn’t the most instant on a first listen – which doesn’t bode well in a contest where you only have one shot and three minutes – but when you get it, it’s a pleasant and a robust addition to any background Spotify playlist.
The live performance at Supernova was unimpressively staged – the band gave it their all – but we didn’t see very much that was new. Which rings alarm bells when you need to grab people’s attention to get them to vote. If however, they are able to harness some of the magic and aesthetic from the music video and pull it out of the screen and on to the stage, their could be a route to qualification. But it’s a long-shot.
There’s a song like this every year – fans enjoy it, but when it gets to the crunch of the competition, nobody ends up loving it quite enough.
This snuck under the radar and has not been given the credit it deserves.
I’m amazed it wasn’t firstly a stage play before it’s movie theatre incarnation, and should be now because it will thrill in a theatre.
Of course, in a theatre it won’t have Nancy, played by Emma Thomson, or Leo, played by Daryl McCormack, and that might be its outdoing because this movie relies on them absolutely and the viewer is rewarded with an acting masterclass.
It’s electric from the opening moments and these two characters are critical as they have 98% of the movie’s screen time.
It’s billed as a romcom and it does indeed have some funny moments and arguably some romance. But it would be far better described as a psychological thriller (not in the slasher vein, but in the real sense in that it’s about the psychology of sex and relationships, and it’s thrilling).
It’s thrilling because Emma Thomson is gobsmackingly great in the title role of a bereaved late 50’s woman who married as a virgin and entered a marital sexual relationship that was as erotic as preparing a shopping list (indeed I imagine that’s what she did during her conjugals).
Anyway, the husband is now dead and Nancy has embarked on a journey to discover what thrilling sex with a handsome, cool as hell, young, black Irishman might be like.
Well, she finds out, slowly but surely, as Leo and Nancy’s professional relationship unfolds (professional because Leo is a sex worker, albeit a nuanced, subtle, listening type with a great line in fear reduction).
The tension is palpable throughout the movie as Nancy and Leo gradually deepen their relationship and talk about the untalkable in a script laced with pathos, dignity and a rare quality of writing.
It’s very emotional. It’s very compelling and it’s very, very good.
This beautiful documentary is nominated for the documentary Oscar, and I can see why.
It’s a unique study of urban wildlife in one of the world’s most densely populated, troubled and polluted cities, yet it teems with wildlife.
We see rats, wild pigs, cattle, camels, frogs, snails and owls, as well as the movie’s avian heroes, Black Kites.
These revered birds are finding life tough in modern day Delhi, and as they fall, ill broken, from the sky in increasing numbers two brothers, in a makeshift domestic avian hospital, nurse them back to health and freedom in increasing numbers.
It’s a slow reveal that some may find tedious.
Others, like me, will revel in its delicious unfolding of life, in abject squalor, in a Delhi slum. (And yet, I kept getting the feeling that this was a middle class neighbourhood we were witnessing/exploring).
The brothers, and their extended family, live in such a hovel that it’s difficult to comprehend the work they do, or how they do it on such limited resources, on top of a day job, and the value this brings.
It’s a wonderful exploration of nature as you have never seen it before, and deserves all the credit it is getting.
I inhaled this splendid new podcast from ITV News, presented by Paul Brand.
It’s a forensic study into the goings on in number 10 Downing Street during the clown king, Boris Johnson’s reign, throughout Covid.
Although there is nothing particularly new about the story itself, what brings freshness and interest to the sorry saga is the revelations of whistle blowers and number 10 insiders who (anonymously) share their observations with us.
Anonymous, because they fear dismissal if they were to be identified as the moles.
It rattles along at a fair old pace and intersperses the story with the many, many ITV News clips that broke each of the seemingly endless stories, including the botch job by Cressida Dick and The Metropolitan Police (clearly some insider dealings going on there) and the ultimate downfall of Johnson for unrelated reasons.
It’s a really great summary of a story that gripped the nation and, in seven short episodes (with no ads), never outstays its welcome.
I must be a feminist because this new novel is described as a seductive feminist thriller, because it places significant, albeit dubious, power into the hands of its largely female cast (and I say cast because it has movie rights written all over it) as they exact retribution on bad men, very bad men.
It’s also described as The Secret History-esque, which is actually why I bought it
It’s not.
All that said, it’s a gripping page turner set in Edinburgh and France and features a clique of super rich students who invite the rather less wealthy main protagonist, Clare, into their midst to help them in their untoward aspirations.
Clare has a dark secret that the author, Heather Darwent, in her accomplished debut, successfully hides for a large part of the novel.
What Darwent skilfully executes is a gruesome story that isn’t actually that gruesome, but features a strong storyline and an ever interesting bunch of protagonists that interact with each other in increasingly unpredictable ways. It is skilfully plotted, very fast paced, genuinely intriguing and a classic page turner. I finished it in three days which must be some sort of record for me in recent times.
Highly recommended, although hardly life changing and no, it’s not as good as The Secret History.
Little is.
Also, a very good cover, but don’t judge it on that.
Well that was a year wasn’t it. A controversial but great World Cup, the Tories entering the Death Spiral and a meltdown summer.
But as regular readers will know this end of year post is all about culture and what I most enjoyed. It’s not “the Best” because that’s impossible to define but it’s what gave me most pleasure.
But before that: family.
Jeana became the most popular knitter in the universe and brought grins to many faces, especially this Christmas. We had a great trip to Italy in September although the first week in Sicily (Palermo especially) was marred by the tremendously stifling heat. Things got a lot more bearable in Puglia, although the town (Trani) was very quiet.
Tom returned from Canada and sat at our Christmas dinner table, not once but twice, The First in Perthshire with his delightful (and highly sarcastic) Canadian girlfriend, Natasha. She really is a great match. The second was at home with family (his first in about 11 years).
In between times he wrote our car off. Oh well. On the plus side I got a fab Christmas gift from him (as Keir called it, The guilt gift). It’s great to have him back.
Ria is doing great in year three of her dentistry degree but SHUT THE FRONT DOOR, she and Keir got engaged and will marry sometime in 2043. We are all so delighted about that. Keir is a son to us, and even more sarcastic than Natasha.
Amy is prospering in London doing amazing nutrition and fitness work and her relationship with Kieran is blossoming. They now live together and we’ve been delighted to spend much more time with him. He is perhaps not quite as vocal as Natasha and Keir but can hold his own, especially when playing Catan!
I had an enjoyable year at work where Whitespace became Dentsu Creative and I looked after a bunch of international clients (including Generali, Amex and Macquarie Bank’s UK spin off).
Turning to culture…
Music
It was a great year for music. Dominated by Inflo and Little Simz. His band, SAULT, released no fewer than 6 albums although only one is now available. You snooze, you lose.
I was beside myself when Little Simz landed the Mercury.
Notable artists for me were led by the Glastonbury experience (my fourth) with Alan where Little Simz and Self Esteem (who was astounding). ruled the roost. Also Confidence Man and Amyl and The Sniffers put on great gigs.
But Warmduscher and PVA were also great at Hidden Door Festival.
Also in music I can’t overlook my Theatre experience of the year which was Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club with Jeana. Truly great theatre.
Another great theatrical music experience was Manic Street Creature at The Roundhouse during the Fringe starring the excellent Munah. Spine tingling drama.
Theatre
What a year for theatre. 51 shows at the Fringe.
Topped by The Silent treatment, Manic Street Creature, Mustard, Waterloo, Sap and Motherload. Every single one of them female (mostly solo) shows and ALL at Summerhall.
Another stunning female performance was Jodie Comer’s in NTL’s Prima Facie and the all women Pride and Prejudice (Sort of) at The Lyceum.
Yet another (and a Fringe First winner) was Breathless at The Pleasance who had, in my view, a particularly strong Fringe. We Should Definitely Have More Dancing had me in bits at Assembly (and guess what, an all female cast).
Laurel and Hardy was another Lyceum stonker in June and Dreamachine at Murrayfield Ice Rink (part of the Unboxed Festival) was so good I went to the out of body experience twice.
Books
Also a great year for books I devoured three Kasuo Ishiguro books.
Motherwell by Deborah Orr was great but maybe the highlight was by Anna Burns in her Booker-winning Milkman, an astonishing and stylised account of the troubles in Belfast, the likes of which you never re-encounter.
I enjoyed Jonathan Coe’s fun but rather slight Expo 58, and Alastair Mackay’s recounting of punk music in Edinburgh, Alternatives to Valium was genuinely original.
Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep left me desperate for more (she really is a terrific American writer) and an old one that I had missed in Portnoy’s Complaint had me laughing my head off (Phillip Roth).
I reviewed Duck Feet by Scots writer Ely Percy on December 31st last year but didn’t do this summary of the year in 2021 so it gets an honourable mention.
TV
What a year for TV. It just gets better and better doesn’t it.
We are loving Ted Lasso at the moment but other notable TV series were: The White Lotus, This Is Going to Hurt, The Traitor, Industry and, of course, The World Cup.
And again, because I didn’t do this review in 2021, I can’t let the greatest TV show of all time go unmentioned. Succession.
Movies
We didn’t make the movies so much this year. My highlight (unpopular though it is) was Blonde with the astonishing Ana Di Armas as “Marilyn” but really as Norma Jean. Ignore the haters, it’s amazing.
Of course Jodie Comer in Prima Facie gets in here for a second time as we saw it at the Bo’ness Hippodrome – our favourite cinema.
The Banshees of Inisherrin maintains Martin McDonagh’s reputation, indeed enhances it, as one of the greatest directors and, not far behind, in fact equal, was PT Anderson’s brilliant Liquorice Pizza.
I also loved Florence Pugh in The Wonder and David Bowie’s surreal Moonage Daydream documentary.
Also in music territory was Andrew Dominick’s beautiful study of Nick Cave in This Much I know to be True and Elvis is probably Bad Luhrmann’s greatest achievement.
The Year started with Speilberg’s wonderful remake of West Side Story. I loved it.
A big shout out to The Vue for their reasonable pricing policy.
Podcasts
Not such a big podcast year for men but The Rest is politics stole the show by a country mile Matt Forde continues to shine with his Political Party podcast and The News Agents (Maitliss and Sopel) after a tricky start really found its voice. But Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart left everyone else trailing in their wakes.
Sport
This was shite. My golf was laboured. My cycling jettisoned (but will be back). I got to 56 Munro’s, but partly due to the weather it was a lean second half.
So that’s it. A truly great year in which. I also turned 60 and had some fantastic times with family and friends.
Thanks everyone for being part of my life. Have a great 2023.
This curious little novel, from 2013, is Coe’s 10th (of 13) and my sixth.
Unlike most of his others it doesn’t set out to be a full blown comedy, few laugh out loud moments are found in here, but it’s an ointeresting bread nonetheless.
written in the third person (which creates a little distance between the reader and character) it follows the travails of a middle ranking Government employee (from the COI), Thomas, who is selected to oversee the British pavilion, specifically a pub called The Britannia, at the 1958 Belgian Expo near Heysel.
1958 is at the heart of the Cold War and soothes global gathering proves to be a hotbed of political conspiracy and espionage with the Britannia a favourite meeting place for many nationalities. Thomas is trailed by a couple of bungling British spy-types (maybe police officers) who ask him to keep his ear to the ground while on duty.
Meanwhile love is in the air, or at least lust, as Thomas falls for a beautiful young Belgian hostess while his wife, back in London, is being ‘looked after’ by Thomas’ lascivious neighbour.
It’s a nice read actually, far from a classic but pleasing on the eye. Whilst that might sound like I’m damning iyt with faint praise I don’t mean that. It’s just not life-changing but a bittersweet light comedy that doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Got this for my 60th from my pal Neil Walker. It’s a two part book, sort of autobiography, by Alastair McKay who was a music writer for The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and a bunch of music mags.
The first half is about McKay’s upbringing in sleepy North Berwick, a market town about 20 miles from Edinburgh in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, frequenting many of the music haunts that I too enjoyed in my youth; The Nite Club, The Hooch, the Playhouse – it explores many of the cultural phenomena of the 70’s, Gary Glitter, Slade, punk, prog rock, Radio Forth, The NME, John Peel – that sort of thing, but with a curious out of town perspective.
He’s shy but he still fronts a punk band. He’s good at English and becomes a reasonably celebrated rock writer and that’s when part two kicks in.
It’s essentially a memoire of his favourite interviews; Dolly Parton, Shirley Manson, Mo Mowlem, Iggy Pop, Red Wedge – it’s a long list. But rather than simply republishing an anthology of said interviews he places them in perspective; both his own and the prevailing cultural perspective.
It’s a great read, that lasted nary a day or two but was a most enjoyable addition to my canon of music reads and I wholeheartedly recommend it to you dear reader.
This is Ishiguro’s first novel. A very short outing but with all of his trademark unreliable narration technique and formal, often stilted (deliberately so) language and a considerable use of repetition.
It’s very beautiful as ever and set up his distinctive, unique in fact, stylised compositions.
It’s set in Nagasaki just after the war as the city rebuilds and a pregnant woman meets an older neighbour who is bringing up an almost feral daughter who feels like a modern day teenager, even though she is only around seven years old.
It flips between that period and the present day where our narrator now has two adult children, one of who is troubled and one dead, of suicide.
The story flips between the two time periods and we are gradually introduced to host of male characters: husbands, father in laws and lovers few of whom are in any way positive to the lives of those around them.
It’s a beguiling read with a shortage of plot, although this doesn’t hamper what is a quality read with a great deal of subtlety between its sparse lines. Nonetheless there is a strange, even creepy, subplot that really engages the reader and takes some working out, as does the Japanese naming conventions and the complex interrelationship of everyone involved in this sad little story.
Ishiguro went on to win the Nobel Prize for literature later in his career and has been on top of his game throughout.
It deals with the complex rights and traditions of life in post war Japan where women are second class citizens and yet strongly influence the menfolk around them.
I read it in little over a day but it has a powerful impact and is a highly rewarding and thought-provoking read. Highly recommended, as are all of his novels. Simply lovely.
To say I love Curtis Sittenfeld’s writing would be a tremendous understatement. Her two fictitious accounts of Laura Bush and Hilary Clinton’s lives blew me away but I’ve gone back to the start, her first novel.
It reads as if autobiographical, in a way, about a young girl finding her way in life at a privileged Prep school in the USA.
As a midwesterner (a kind of redneck I guess) the main protagonist Lee Fiori (Italian extraction, not given) this LMC (lower middle class) girl (maybe (ULC) gets a scholarship to Ault, a super posh prep school that preps kids for the Ivy League colleges. She’s a rural superstar but an Ault also ran and she is so lacking in self confidence that you wonder how she can possibly make it through.
It’s a mental health primer many years before we were obsessed with it and that makes it so compelling.
Coming of age novels usually follow the male trajectory but this brings a new aspect to it in a way that’s gripping, truly gripping. It starts all “Secret History” but very quickly moves into something else (Donna Tartt must love it though).
I’m not female so I haven’t lived through the whole “crush” thing that Fiori goes though, but I do get the outsider aspect of her life that is so superb conveyed. One reviewer suggests Sittenfeld was wire tapped at Prep herself to capture the authenticity of her conversational pieces in this wonderful book.
The few relationships that this poor, uncool, nervous wreck of a girl manages to chisel out of her miserable (not miserable) existence are truly life affirming. I loved Martha so much.
We have suicide attempts, well one. So beautifully rendered.
We have sexual awakening. Eventually. And so , again, beautifully described.
We have racism and classism, indeed the book really is about class.
We have astounding characters. Lee’s mum and dad, when they appear from time to time, are gold dust. (For the record I am Lee’s dad.)
I read this in Italy on holiday and it gripped me from cover to cover, luaghing out loud many times.
Why Curtis Sittenfeld has yet to win the Pulitzer is beyond me.
But you know, fuck it, it’s only a prize.
Stand alongside Tartt, Ian McEwan and John Irving as master storytellers Curtis. This is magnificent and it was only the start. (Rodham is mind-blowing)
In 1967 this book caused an uproar (and a lot of titillation), even in the swinging 60’s, for its forthright use of four letter language. most of it entered around genitalia and female in particular and graphic sex.
It has two central themes, unbridled sexual demand (stemming from Oedipal desire) from the central protagonist Alexander Portnoy, and BEING JEWISH. I write this in caps because Roth has a great love of them.
It’s a guilty read because it’s a misogynistic fantasy and includes a scene near the end that’s essentially a rape.
But, and I can’t emphasise this enough, it is astonishingly funny.
Apparently in the 60’s it was passed from pillar to post, thumbed by many as they, perhaps, considered what later to do with their own thumbs.
The world of Portnoy is split into Goys (Gentiles) and JEWS. He has a deep desire for Goy girls , or shiska. The worst nightmare for his incredibly over the top mother and suffering father. Marrying a shiska would bring shame to the family, the fact that Portnoy spend 250 pages fucking them senseless was not part of Portnoy’s Momma-sharing info (some of them resembling her – except for their blonde hair).
It’s FILTHY. Really, really filthy. And it’s FUNNY. Really really funny. Laugh out loud funny.
And it’s SEXIST. Really, really sexist. And it’s RACIST. A bit.
Before I shared my thoughts on this I thought I better look up some other recent reviews to see if I was out of kilter with acceptable views on this hilarious read. Seems not, seems it’s STILL considered a classic, even by people on Good Reads.
I feel I should be soiled by reading it, but I couldn’t stop laughing, most notably for his self-deprecative assassination of Jewish stereotypes (obv He’s Jewish and therefore has permission to observe his kinship judgementally) but I’ve read other Jewish books and just not ‘got’ it. I get it now.
It may be more than 50 years old now, and has dated a lot, but it’s vital, hilarious and (almost) educational.
I’ve clocked Richard Walker, CEO of Iceland Frozen Foods, on Question Time and thought he was the smartest person in the room more than once. Jeana therefore bought me this book subtitles, One Man’s Manifesto for Corporate Activism, in which he sets out his policy on life, carbon reduction and fair play all round (remember his palm oil crusade?)
He’s privileged and he admits it up front being born into the family firm. And it’s a £2bn plus family firm. Clearly his dad is his hero and has established a strong social democracy ethic. Walker admits he has a conflicted life travelling the globe in search of the perfect wave as a dedicated surfer yet bemoaning the rise in greenhouse gas emission. But that doesn’t stop me admiring him greatly, because his firm has led so many industry initiatives that it’s ridiculous.
He also deliberately started out at the firm (albeit only 10 years ago) as a shelf stacker and recounts the tale of how he had to work for acceptance. But this gives him a good and genuine perspective that feels like more than a PR stunt.
He cares deeply about his workers and his customers and he is a strong lobbies of government and businesses in his supply chain to constantly find better ways to package products.
Iceland has the advantage of having no shareholders, but then a lot of the people in retail you most hate don’t either, that doesn’t make them corporate activists it makes them tossers, Walker clearly is far from that.
It’s very well written, even if it lingers too long, often, on what a great thing Iceland is doing. I mean the PR department has surely proofed this, if not ghost-written it. And it goes on a bit longer than you’d want. But, all said, if you want an insight into how to care in business then read this.
It certainly left me wishing there was an Iceland near me, but I’d have to burn so much hydrocarbon juice to find one that I’d be undoing the point of it.
CJ Hopkins’ Horse Country by Wales’ Flying Bridge Theatre Company (although you wouldn’t know it, so impeccable are the two protagonists’ American accents) at Assemble One is a mind fuck.
It won a Fringe First in 2002 and the quality of this performance 20 years later is certainly of that standard, but what the actual fuck?
Compared in the PR to Waiting for Godot you can certainly see the absurdist comparison but where WFG has a beautiful charm and a sense of purpose (even if that purpose is ultimately unfulfilled) this is a much deeper, much more complex metaphor about the American dream, capitalism and horses. The two characters (Sam and Bob played by Daniel Llewelyn-Williams and Michael Edwards) race through an hour of dialogue with a bit of slapstick thrown in, at a hundred miles an hour. You get your money’s worth in terms of words per minute on a minimalist set and, it must be said, a minimalist audience too, and it’s all fine stuff. The trouble is, it’s so meta as to be meaningless (to me) and consequently I was doing a hell of a lot of watch watching. My pal James, a fan of CJ Hopkins, was rather more enamoured of it.
But I have to show my hand and declare that I was outdone by this one so can only give it three stars.
gibberish 