The Story Of My Life

by Helen Keller

 I don't have loads to say about this really. I really wanted to read it because I volunteered a quote from Helen Keller to use on the flowers at my Grandmother's funeral, "What we have once enjoyed we can never lose, all that we love deeply becomes a part of us."
The story of Helen Keller is obviously amazing. She overcame darkness and silence to create for herself a very valuable place in the world, achieving more than most fully-abled people.
I feel bad that I found her narrative slightly irritating. Her constant sunshine and roses outlook, while admirable seems unrealistic. If she really did live in this permanent state of mind then she is very lucky but I doubt it but I do bear in mind the way she has lived and overcome.
The letters were interesting but too many. The most interesting part I found was the story re-told at the end from the perspective of her teacher, Anne Sullivan through her letters and reports. This was fascinating and a lot more realistic.

I did love these couple of lines though...

"The woman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy."

" One day, Miss Sullivan tells me, I pinned the word girl on my pinafore and stood in the wardrobe. On the shelf I arranged the words, is, in, wardrobe. Nothing delighted me so much as this game. My teacher and I played it for hours at a time. Often everything in the room was arranged in object sentences"

In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote

Written about the Clutter family murders in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959, the journey of the murderers from the crime scene to death row paralleled with the police investigation. But this book plays with your conscience and your principles. It was horrific, the way the family were murdered, although you don't find out exactly how until nearer the end but they are painted in such a golden angelic light at the beginning, that anybody could kill them is heartbreaking. But you get to know the murderers so well, Capote must have spent a great deal of time inside their heads, or at least Perry Smith's head. Dick is more straight forward, I didn't care too much about him, but much as I fought it I slowly developed an affection for Perry and I think that was the author's aim. But I don't want to feel affection for a man who "In Cold Blood" murdered an entire family in their beds.
I am entirely against the death penalty, entirely, so I didn't want anyone to hang, including the other inmates on death row but other than that I could care less about them. But I didn't want Perry to be so sad and I wanted someone to help him. Maybe they should have, should have made more of an effort to work with him but then you argue, why should they if he's shown no mercy to the Clutter's? How far should mental illness cover crime? But I can't help how I feel. I kind of liked Perry and he made me sad. I think the police felt it too.

What has really haunted me though was how on death row the lights are never turned off, ever and they can never go outside, of even their cells, and they lived like this for about 4 years. Personally I would have gone absolutely inside out insane!!

The Group

by Mary McCarthy

It is nothing like Sex In The City!!!!
I loved this book and I'm so glad that I loved it. I loved how it moved around the characters, linking them together and giving different perspectives of different events and feelings. It struck me that while you were with one particular character you sympathized with her and could see the negative points of some of the others as she felt them, like you could see the good side and the bitchy side of each character which made you feel a little two faced, like in a real group of girl friends! The main character I found I consistently like was Polly and it seemed as though she could have been the main character. Her story was sort of in the middle and she tied everyone together. She felt like a fairytale, I think she probably was supposed to with her goblin father and her prince charming and her sweet quiet ways.
It was a very in depth and open look at a group of women coming of age, especially for the time it was written. I wish I had read it when I was about 16 I think for it is quite insightful and a lot is still very relevant!
The end was a shock to me and I felt very sad but I thought it was perfect too. I had been wondering about Lakey throughout the book. I love how she was the elusive and mysterious character that you were teased with and then kept from. It all tied it together at the end and gives a very round end and seems to throw a little bit of light on how they were all drawn together. It gave me the impression of another dimension to their friendship and bond.
Very importantly though, the use of each character to tackle a different social issue was very interesting and I enjoyed the insight into the time and place as a backdrop to these issues which are still relevant today. I love Mary McCarthy's easy style of presenting ideas and thoughts, it feels so warm and confidential, like chatting with your girl friends but smart non-chick-lity ones! I shall seek out more of her.

Lolita

by Vladimir Nabokov

A tale of obssession. A road book. And the time they spent in Beardsley is oddly cosy feeling. The imagery is beautiful and the writing is so so beautiful and you think you pity Humbert Humbert but then you suddenly feel very uncomfortable being in the story. It feels all wrong at the same time as having an empathetic line drawn through it. In the end, I felt myself routing for Humbert, I wanted him to kill Quilty and I kind of wanted Lolita to go with him but of course she mustn't! He stole her childhood! He did horrific things to her that no child should ever have inflicted upon them. How is it possible you feel his love and tenderness creeping through the pages? Surely it's just obssession. But its just not written nastily. 

I don't know. There's some very beautiful words in the book, and descriptions. Its interesting and horrible to read something from that point of view, and interesting to know what people think of it in our scared society today.

'A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as it it emitted a faint radiance of its own.'

'All I know is that while the Haze woman and I went down the steps into the breathless garden, my knees were like reflections of knees in rippling water,'

'So my nymphet is not in the house at all! Gone! What I thought was a prismatic weave turns out to be an old grey cobweb, the house is empty, is dead. And then comes Lolita's soft sweet chuckle through my half-open door "Don't tell Mother but I've eaten all your bacon." Gone when I scuttle out of my room. Lolita, where are you? My breakfast tray, lovingly prepared by my landlady, leers at me toothlessly, ready to be taken in. Lola, Lolita!'

'and hardly had I turned my back to go and buy this very Lo a lollipop, than I would hear her and the fair mechanic burst into a perfect love song of wisecracks.'

'but for some reason did not come-was perhaps not allowed to come-to our house; so i recall her only as a flash of natural sunshine on an indoor court.'

A Passage To India

by E.M. Forster

This was fairly hard work actually. I didn't like any of the characters and the subject was difficult and hard to sympathise with. E.M. Forster's writing is clearly very beautiful and the descriptions of scenery, relationships and religion were so vivid and clever and I really appreciated what he was doing with it all. The book is obviously very important and its very interesting to look at a picture of human nature in such a way, politically but more than that, generally. At the end, the base message seems to be that human nature and the way we have constructed our world makes it very difficult for two men to meet and just be very good friends. Much as they might try, life and politics will destroy it because of our instinctive tribal mentality. I find this very sad and hope desperately that it does not apply to me and definitely not to my children's generation.

On the other side of the book, the details about England still trying to force itself on India. It was interesting to read about and made the English look rather preposterous. The whole idea of barging into a country and forcing rule upon it is quite odd to me and comes across this way in the book but unfortunately is a truth that is still relevant today. I like that there is a book that makes it seem silly. But that was what I was left with at the end, that it was all important and sad but really just very silly, that people can't just let each other be and not create ridiculous ways to maintain control over each other and in the end not just be friends.
To end, I just want to include some of my favourite beautiful passages...

"The sky too has its changes, but they are less marked than those of the vegetation and the river. Clouds map it up at times, but it is normally a dome of blending tints, and the main tint blue. By day the blue will pale down into white where it touches the white of the land, after sunset it has a new circumference - orange, melting upwards into tenderest purple. But the core of blue persists, and so it is by night. Then the stars hang like lamps from the immense vault. The distance between the earth and them is as nothing to the distance behind them; and that further distance, though beyond colour, last freed itself from blue."

"It was the last moment of the light, and as he gazed at the Marabar Hills they seemed to move graciously towards him like a queen, and their charm became the sky's. At the moment they vanished they were everywhere, the cool benediction of the night descended, the stars sparkled, and the whole universe was a hill."

"She didn't think what had happened, or even remember in the ordinary way of memory, but she returned to the Marabar Hills, and spoke from the across a sort of darkness to Mr McBryde. The fatal day recurred, in every detail, but now she was of it and not of it at the same time, and this double relation gave it indescribable splendour. Why had she thought the expedition 'dull'? Now the sun rose again, the elephant waited, the pale masses of the rock flowed round her and presented the first cave; she entered, and a match was reflected in the polished walls - all beautiful and significant, though she had been blind to it at the time."

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The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie

by Muriel Spark

 I have been drawn to this book for a while and then finding a copy for £3 in HMV, I had it and read it immediately.
I liked it, but I didn't love it as I thought I might. The imagery of 1930s Edinburgh was wonderfully described in places, especially Edinburgh in the evenings and I love Muriel Spark's way and shall definately look out some of her other work. I just wanted a little more. I wanted to know more about the girls and their lives as they grew up, more about Miss Brodie and her Prime, about Italy and art and music. More about Edinburgh and the darker side and how it applied to their lives and how it didn't apply to their lives. More about Miss Brodie's surprising political views, why she thought that way, espeically when it turns out to be so important. More about why Sandy became a nun, and what happened to Jenny then? And Monica?  I'm missing the point, I know, by wanting all these things but that's just what I wanted, more!
I want to say more about this book, discuss the girls and ideas but I don't feel like I have much to go on. The birthday tea that Jenny attends at Sandy's house was my favourite though. I want pineapple and cream for my birthday this year. I liked the cosy feel of a dark afternoon spent in an Edinburgh town house dreaming of stories with your best friend and the feeling of the house drenched in a twilight blue and the moon.

'"Let's be witches by the fire, like we were at Hallowe'en."
They sat in the twilight eating toffees and incanting witches' spells'

'It was time for Jenny to go home with her Mother, all the way in the tram car through the haunted November twilight of Edinburgh across the Dean Bridge.'

Having just seen that Maggie Smith plays Miss Brodie in the film (I didn't even know there was a film!) I definately want to see it!

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