I can’t rate Chris van Tulleken’s book highly enough, for its comprehensive, well-researched and simply explained approach and the incredible amount oI can’t rate Chris van Tulleken’s book highly enough, for its comprehensive, well-researched and simply explained approach and the incredible amount of detailed examination of ultra-processed ‘food’ (“UPF”) and what it does to us. I wish I could buy a copy of this outstanding book for everyone I know, even though I am fortunate to have family and friends that are already careful about what they eat and drink and also that my grandchildren, because of where they live, are only able to access ultra-processed food restaurant chains when on holiday. It would be an extremely informative book for anyone, on what we are being sold as not food, but “edible substances” created for profit alone, which destroy our regulatory body systems and cause addiction, obesity and associated health issues. The author examines the systems behind these substances that masquerade as nutrition, their financial purpose, and even the limitations of the free market in terms of what is possible when every company is in competition with others. Regulation of this industry must come from governments; there is an irreconcilable conflict when it comes to making money. In the UK we have recently had an election. As I was starting this review I was delighted to hear that our new government is applying a watershed of 9pm for advertising of these products, in an effort to tackle child obesity and reduce demand on the National Health Service. I very rarely read non-fiction, and even more rarely read anything remotely scientific. My daughter gave me this book to read, not because I eat a lot of processed food, but because in Chapter 8 it undoes one of my favourite myths, that exercise would help me lose weight. It won’t – only fewer calories will do this. UPF is high in calories and also encourages faster, and more, consumption, including addiction. All this and much more is explained in fascinating detail in the book. I am the last person to enjoy a factual book yet I found myself enthralled from the outset, utterly convinced not only by Chris van Tulleken’s unassailable logic and scientific knowledge but also by the meticulous references to studies that back up what he is saying. It is important to understand that the author is not preaching or being overly moralistic. He does want people to understand what they are eating, and how these companies behave, so that they are making informed choices - where choice is possible, which it is not always. I remember boycotting Nestlé because of their shameful campaign to replace breast-feeding in South America with formula milk, irrespective of the mothers’ lack of access to clean water, or their inability to afford the product. I did not realise the full and terrible extent and effects of this and other incursions by Nestlé into developing countries, until I read this book. The book is easily read, each chapter following on naturally from the last, as more and more of the damage caused by the UPF industry is revealed, leading up to its effects on the environment and on climate change. There is so much detail on every aspect of the food industry that I cannot hope to convey it adequately. The is a summary near the end of the book but it would not be fair even to quote that, as the conclusions in it arise from such minutely detailed evidence in the preceding chapters. I will quote from the late Dr Michael Mosley, who said it was a “A wonderful and fascinating exposé”. I recommend it highly. ...more
This book left me feeling a bit grumpy. Some of that was to do with the book itself, but the straw that broke the donkey's back was the introduction, This book left me feeling a bit grumpy. Some of that was to do with the book itself, but the straw that broke the donkey's back was the introduction, which I carefully did not read until I'd finished the book, but which then - unbelievably - ruined the story of the book's sequel (The Weather in the Streets)! Will these writers of introductions never learn? I will not now read the sequel, especially as I consider a sequel essential to the success of this book, and what's the point of reading it now? I know what happens to our heroine, Olivia. The blurb on the back says that Rosamond Lehmann "perfectly captures the emotions of all young girls on the threshold of life". I think that's largely true, as are some of the other claims the blurb makes, but for me it sat oddly beside another book that deals with the detailed events and feeling of a very short period, and that book is Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. I do try not to evaluate a book in relation to another, but here the entire framework and, in some ways, the style, were written in a similar vein. Beside the perfection of Mrs Dalloway in all respects the style of this book by Rosamond Lehmann seemed conscientiously worked at, thus overdone, and even, at times, florid, although the first couple of pages, situating the house and family, did draw me in. Unfortunately, at the very beginning of the second chapter, I was unsure which of the two girls in it, Olivia and Kate, was speaking, and this confusion was repeated near the end, when the author suddenly switches viewpoint and focus from one to the other, then back again. The other very unfortunate thing, I felt, was that there were too many characters. It reminded me of an unpublished book someone once sent me that they'd written, in which by Page 2 we had what seemed like a dozen characters at least, none of whom was worth writing about. This all sounds harsh, I know. I did enjoy Olivia's reaction to her life, especially to her various predicaments, and there is a funny scene over the dress she wears to the ball referred to in the title. It doesn't quite ring true, as there is no explanation as to why she hasn't tried her new dress on before getting ready for the ball (I mean, who would normally not try it on?). It would have been easy to provide a reason for this, as the dress had been made up by a local dressmaker and might have only just been delivered, etc, but no such explanation was provided in a book that goes into every little detail elsewhere. The dress is what saves the book for me. I don't know whether it was intended as symbolic, but from the choice of material (a birthday gift), to how Olivia feels wearing it, it embodies the portrait of a young girl on the threshold of life, her hopes and dreams, disappointments and awkwardness, in the context of her first ball. This is where I have been unfair to make the comparison with Mrs Dallloway, who in maturity reconnects with her youth. Olivia is young, and that is what the book is about. In that respect it's highly successful. And I liked the dad, who teases and says the opposite of what he means, maybe because my own dad did that too. Rosamond Lehmann is bang on with the personalities of her characters, and she leaves us wanting a sequel, as Olivia enters the adult world. I'm not going to emulate Janet Watts in the introduction and spoil it for you!...more
This book is now twenty years old! So, as travel books go, it might seem a little dated, except for two things. Michael Palin mentions throughout thatThis book is now twenty years old! So, as travel books go, it might seem a little dated, except for two things. Michael Palin mentions throughout that little has changed for centuries in some of the regions he visited, and his voice as he describes the mammoth undertaking of “The Saga Platoon” is fresh and funny.
Twenty years ago I missed both this book and the wonderful television series (which, fortunately, was repeated recently). I had, however, climbed Everest three times from my sofa. The Ascent of Everest by John Hunt, after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit in 1953, was standard issue when I was a child, and it was only when I read two later accounts of climbing Everest that I realised the extent of its battle-worn vocabulary and style – so few years after two World Wars, this is hardly surprising. The two more modern accounts I read differed in style from this and from each other. Into Thin Air, a 1990’s book by Jon Krakauer, accents the technical advances and the disaster that took place despite the technology. The third book, In My Father’s Footsteps by Tenzing Norgay’s son, was much more spiritual, respecting Qomolangma/Chomolungma (Everest) as a goddess, Mother of the Earth. Michael Palin pays tribute to both the pre-technology attempt by George Mallory in the ‘twenties, from which he did not return, and revered the mountain as “Mother of the Earth”, in the detailed picture that frames his journey of the great rivers that begin in the Himalaya and grow to feed the surrounding lands with water and the soil that is washed down with it.
Well, back in the day (twenty years ago) my interest had been such that my wonderful daughter even offered to get me up to Everest Base Camp (I know!). Michael Palin, then aged sixty, was driven there, but even that at a cost. He felt ill at times and two at least of his “Saga Platoon” had to turn back due to altitude sickness, another being flown back to London at a later stage suffering from fluid in the lung, caused by high altitude. From Everest Base Camp the remaining members of Saga Platoon did climb, as far as they could, up towards the Rongbuk Glacier, before having to turn back.
They had begun the trip in Pakistan and into India, where they had audience with the Dalai Lama in exile, then onto Nepal and Tibet, from where they approached Everest. Tibet now being an autonomous region of China, they went on to the Yunnan region of China, then Nagaland and Assam, and Bhutan, where the official policy is Gross National Happiness before Gross National Product. There is poverty and unemployment, but, according to one young Bhutanese, “The Buddhist version of poverty is a situation where you have nothing to contribute.” This young man was an actor, not a monk, and Michael is at pains throughout to illustrate the importance of Buddhism in those countries, giving many examples of religious devotion and fervour. They tried to include as many ceremonies and festivities as they could, with, in the book, much more detail than in the films, of course. Michael’s own reactions and feelings are gone into much more fully in the book than is possible in the televised production.
They end their journey in Bangladesh, a country of much variation and contrast between crowded cities and vast delta lands, where an island might appear just long enough for a crop to be planted and harvested before being submerged again in the monsoon or in extremes of flood. The country is fertile (due to the run-off from the Himalaya) but fragile, as we have seen in recent times, vulnerable to flood and famine.
The books ends with plans going completely awry for a final shot of the sunset over the delta, and the situation being saved at the last minute by lucky chance. This is the last paragraph of the book:
“In the heady rush of our emergency ending, I almost forgot why we were here. Only after the camera’s turned off for the last time and we’re heading for the muddy shores of the Sundarban Islands do I have time to feel that umbilical connection between the water I’m on now and the remote mountains where it all began for us, many months and several thousand miles ago.”
In an earlier paragraph he mentions that despite the grandeur of all that he has seen, it is the people he met that will stick in his mind.
“The enjoyment of the world is immeasurably enhanced by not just meeting people who think, look, talk and dress differently from yourself, but by having to depend on them.”
The book is serious and funny, entertaining and thought-provoking. Michael’s gently satirical yet respectful style never flags. The books has many, beautiful, coloured photographs, and I was glad to see again in them some of the wonderful characters I had seen in the television programme, including the vibrant Mosuo film star Namu, and polo player Bulbul Jan and his beloved Punjabi horse Truc, in the Shandur Pass.
Among many other jewels is the “Number One Toilet in Heaven and Earth”, in Yunnan, “cantilevered out over the mountainside . . . the land seems to fall away, and all that can be seen are the walls and saw-tooth peaks of Ha Ba Snow Mountain on the other side of the gorge . . .”, and let me not forget the man from Woking who had signed the famous Dr Ho’s visitors' book some years previously as “Michael Palin and John Cleese,” leaving unfunny comments but causing Dr Ho to exclaim with delight at seeing his “old friend” again, to Michael's bemusement.
I think what I will remember best is the Grameen Bank scheme set up in Bangladesh to provide loans for village women to buy an item such as a sewing machine or plot of land, “to try to help break the spiral of poverty”. Through the bank, the Grameen (‘Village’) Phone scheme provides a loan for a mobile phone and a solar panel with which to charge it. This means that the woman with the loan can charge the villagers for the use of the phone to contact their families working abroad, an arrangement that benefits all. The Grameen Phone villager Michael was taken to meet had managed to send her daughter to university, something she had never expected to be able to do.
Wonderful stuff, from start to finish; instructive and entertaining on every page. Highly recommended....more
I read Montaigne in French in the Gallimard editions. I’m writing this in English, because the lingua franca language of the brilliant group members wI read Montaigne in French in the Gallimard editions. I’m writing this in English, because the lingua franca language of the brilliant group members with whom I read the three books of essays was English. We were a diverse group and we each contributed differently to our study. For me it was a fantastic experience, as I couldn’t have read and appreciated Montaigne without the knowledge, insight and encouragement of the other contributors, as experience had already proved! We read the essays over a long period and there was a lot of discussion and commentary on each essay. For excellent and comprehensive reviews do read Roman Clodia’s and David’s, here:
I’ve been ages wondering whether I’m up to writing a good review of the Essais, as there was so much we covered. The answer is, I’m not! Another person in the group mentioned that despite extensive notes she too had not yet managed to write a review. This proved an encouragement, and also a spur to me, to just do it, despite, in my case, the entire absence of notes! The impetus came, as well, from having started Montaigne’s Journal Du Voyage En Italie, which was very different to the Essais. I haven’t got very far with this book yet, but I found myself reacting against the style of it. It just didn’t feel like Montaigne – and it wasn’t, as I discovered. He had a secretary who wrote the journal, from his dictation, yes, but also referring to Montaigne in the third person, which distanced him and altered the tone of the writing.
This was no good! I wanted Montaigne back, as himself. It dawned on me that it was primarily his personal style that I liked. He emphasises throughout that he is only writing about himself, and this is more apparent in the later essays, which demand more, I think, of the modern reader. The first volume tends to have very short essays, from memory mainly his observations on society’s moeurs. A large part of Volume II is taken up with a long ‘apology’ on a book by Raymond Sibond, which, at his father’s express request, Montaigne had translated from the Latin. Again from memory (I don’t even have the books beside me as I write this) the second book seems to delve more into the ways of people. Montaigne laments the cruelties of the conquest of ‘The New World’, and, indeed, the ‘apology for Raymond Sibaud’ focuses on Nature, as given by God, as our essential guide for living. In 16th Century France there were religious wars, from which Montaigne suffered badly, with incursions into his home and attacks on his person, which he details in Vol III. There we also hear a lot about justification for writing, for life itself. Montaigne is in ill health and, in terms of 16th century standards, ageing. He comments that one should not postpone writing until one is sufficiently wise or experienced, as our brains go soggy with old age (forgive the translation!).
On the subject of wisdom and experience, there are an awful lot of classical references in the essays, used to back up his opinions, Montaigne’s favourites being Socrates, Lucretius and (in terms of personal heroism) Cato the Younger, whose horrible death we get to hear about often. Roman Clodia helpfully pointed out that medieval education consisted more of quotations from the classical authors than their entire works, possibly due to the expense and difficulty of providing entire books. I was fascinated to learn that one of Montaigne’s tutors was the Scottish poet George Buchanan, whose poem on nicotine (in translation) still has me laughing. Latin was actually Montaigne’s first language (this was due to his father’s insistence – he admired his father tremendously and felt he could not fill his shoes when it came to managing his estate and household).
I realise that this is not a review but only a personal reaction. Montaigne left his writing, freely and openly, for anyone to take whatever they wanted from it. Until I read him I swallowed the frequent labelling of him as a philosopher. He’s not. I really think that that would be the last thing he would want to be remembered as. He isn’t preachy or moralistic in his style and doesn’t develop any systematic philosophy. He observes people and society and comments on them, and especially on injustice and cruelty. As far as religion goes, he has to be careful, because of the strictures of the Catholic Church at that time. It seems to be commonly believed that he was a devout Christian. I couldn’t ‘feel’ that from his writing, although at the time when he lived, belief in God was taken as read. Montaigne’s ancestors were Spanish Jews who had converted, or been forced to convert, to Christianity. His writing on religious faith focuses on God and God’s gift of nature, without reference to Christ, although his devotion to God comes across clearly. His beloved friend, Estienne de La Boétie, immortalised in the essay On Friendship, advocated tolerance between Catholic and Protestant, and Montaigne himself was in the diplomatic service where he too worked for this.
A note on the translation I looked at alongside the French of the Gallimard edition. Again, thanks to a group member mentioning the name of John Florio, I bought his translation, dating from 1603 or thereabouts. John Florio’s poetic eloquence and the language of the Shakespearian era delighted me, but the French was sometimes clearer for me than this elevated translation! If you don’t have much time to read Montaigne, or don’t have French, a modern translation is probably better. And finally, speaking of modernity, I often felt, while reading, that Montaigne might live just next door and we’d get on fine – except that he probably wouldn’t rate me as a conversationalist – the misogyny in the essays cannot be ignored, although he does seem to respect women writers such as Marguerite de Navarre, and also his adopted daughter Marie de Gournay, who admired and later edited and published his essays.
Like us all, Montaigne is a product of his time. The conflicts in his century and his country may have contributed to his repugnance at the idea of revolution, involving, as it does, violence. He’s essentially conservative, although he recognises his own privileged position as the owner of an estate. One story that sticks in my mind is his compassion for the lack of access to justice suffered by the peasantry, as demonstrated by a group of peasants who came to him to tell him about an injured man lying in a nearby wood. The peasants had not dared touch him; in the event that they might be blamed somehow for his condition, they would have no judicial recourse to establish their innocence.
Oh, and lastly, he does keep us guessing! He doesn’t care, he says, if he contradicts himself. He writes without pretension and with a care for the natural world and the environment that is not out of place today. I’d like to say “Thank you” for his gift to us, these essays that challenge our thinking. Since he’s not my next-door neighbour and I can’t do that, I’ve finally written this poor attempt at a response to his life’s work, and as a huge thank you to everyone in the Montaigne group, who persevered despite all the demands of daily life, and who have enabled me, after half a century, to read Montaigne!...more
In 1936, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and teacher, already a renowned writer and theologian, had already been attracting the attention of the In 1936, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and teacher, already a renowned writer and theologian, had already been attracting the attention of the Nazi government, and was forbidden to teach. In the forward to Letters and Papers from Prison, his editor and friend Eberhard Bethge reveals that he had in earlier years been very near to absolute pacifism. However he began to have increased contact with major figures of opposition to Hitler and the Nazi government, including those planning to assassinate Hitler. By 1939, on a lecture tour in America, “he no longer saw any way of escape into some region of piety”, and took the decision, against advice from all sides, to return to Germany. He became a courier for The Resistance, but was arrested in April 1943 and spent two years in prison, lastly in Buchenwald, Schönberg, and Flossenbürg. He was hanged in April 1945, two weeks before the war ended.
During the first eighteen months of his imprisonment, in the military section of Tegel Prison in Berlin, he made “such good friends” with the warders and medical orderlies that he was able to write letters. The first section of the book contains letters to his parents, which seek to uphold them in their concern for him, as well as to make requests of them to send or bring him necessities, some food when they could, to supplement prison rations that had been cut, but especially books, from the library. The letters to his friend, in the next section of the book, are very different, sometimes in code, referring to the assassination plan, or to other members of The Resistance, and a mutual sharing of personal distress and suffering. These letters also contain opinions on literature, music, art, and his changing thoughts on Christianity and The Old Testament. He comes to a disagreement with some aspects of his own pre-war work The Cost of Discipleship, although he says he will stand by what he wrote then. His time in prison served to increase his spirituality and his devotion to his God and to his fellow men and women. This is the main section of the book, and the most interesting.
I wonder how religious people, or The Church in general, would have found him if he had survived imprisonment. Some of what he writes in these letters goes far deeper than what is often the line taken by preachers of religion, for instance this:
“The difference between the Christian hope of resurrection and a mythological hope is that the Christian hope sends a man back to his life on earth in a wholly new way which is even more sharply defined than it is in the Old Testament . . . The Christian , unlike the devotees of the salvation myths, does not need a last refuge in the eternal from earthly tasks and difficulties.”
This may refer back to Jesus’ assertion, “Heaven is within you”, but it also draws on the idea of salvation in the Old Testament, which, he says, is more to do with earthly salvation of the Jews. In this earthly ‘salvation’ the duty of the Christian is clear:
“The Christian does not have to wait until he suffers himself; the sufferings of his brethren for whom Christ died are enough to awaken his active sympathy.”
In reading Montaigne’s Essays recently with a group on GR, I was interested in his (Montaigne’s) references to what he calls “Fortune”, not closely defined by him. Bonhoeffer has this, which seems to me to be something beyond mere pragmatism:
“I am sure we must rise to the great responsibilities which are peculiarly our own . . . we must sally forth to defy fate . . . with just as much resolution as we submit to it when the time comes. One can only speak of providence on the other side of this dialectical process. God encounters us not only as a Thou, but also disguised as an It; so in the last resort my question is how are we to find the Thou in this It (i.e. fate). In other words, how does fate become providence? It is impossible therefore to define the boundary between resistance and submission in the abstract. Faith demands this elasticity of behaviour. Only so can we stand our ground in each situation as it comes along, and turn it to gain.”
Various other writings form the remaining sections of the book, with much that I found interesting, for instance this snippet from “A Wedding Sermon”:
“It is not your love which sustains the marriage, but from now on the marriage that sustains your love.”
The main point I took from this last section, from “After Ten Years” and concerning “The great masquerade of evil” was the section “Of Folly”. In an examination of why people follow the march of evil he brings to the fore the “sociological problem” of folly:
“It is a special form of the operation of historical circumstances upon men, a psychological by-product of definite external factors . . . the upsurge of power is so terrific that it deprives men of an independent judgement, and they give up trying – more or less unconsciously – to assess the new state of affairs for themselves . . . (on talking to him) one is confronted with a series of slogans, watchwords and the like, which have acquired power over him. He is under a spell, he is blinded, his very humanity is being prostituted and exploited. Once he has surrendered his will and become a mere tool, there are no lengths of evil to which the fool will not go, yet all the time he is unable to see that it is evil . . .”
If this brilliant and compassionate man had lived, I might not have heard of him, and if I had, I might have dismissed his writings as ‘too religious’ for me. But in killing him the Nazis compelled me to learn about him. They created a martyr, an icon. Bonhoeffer himself, in a reference to a young Christian he had met, repudiated the notion of wanting sainthood, and simply asked to be given faith....more
It was Ian’s fascinating and detailed review that led me to this book: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... I agree with him that this is a remarkaIt was Ian’s fascinating and detailed review that led me to this book: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... I agree with him that this is a remarkable book and well worth reading. Ian gives the background in detail, so I won’t repeat it, except to say briefly that the author is an Englishwoman married to a Serb, who became a refugee from Belgrade during its occupation by the German Army in 1941. As Ian says, the war really dominates only the last couple of chapters, and the build-up to this is that the villagers don’t know or understand much of what is going on, as the German Army occupies Serbia, the Allies send bombs on Belgrade and the Russian Army takes over. As well as these official forces there is constant ‘popping ‘ from the woods, as Partisans and Chetniks use “pinprick” tactics, shooting Germans here and there, sometimes descending on villages in order to conscript young men or be fed by the householders. The book centres on the women in the village of Rušanj, where the author stayed with her little girl and her husband, when he was not needed in Belgrade. Time has stood still in the village and there are references throughout to the condition of the Serbian peasants, and the women themselves, being much the same as those described in classical works of Rome and Greece, their clothes, their cooking, their farming, their houses. There is a wonderful passage where she has lent a translation of Virgil to Vida, one of the household (see Ian’s review for Vida’s ‘discovery’ of choice) and tells her that the man who wrote the book is in the village. Vida leaps up, her eyes full of joy: “Is Virgil in Rušanj?” He very well might be. I am ignorant when it comes to the classics, but Louisa Raynor does explain her references fully, including similarities of vocabulary. She shares the primitive lives of the peasants as one of them, putting up with what we would call unimaginable squalor, fleas, in particular, being a continual torment, not only for her but for all the refugees. Each person in the book comes fully to life in her hands, never callously, always with a depth of understanding born of intelligence and empathy. There is no room for sentimentality in her approach to these women; what they do, they do because they must, and if it is hard, it still must be done, even when it comes to putting the health of safety of a cow before that of a child; the loss of a cow “would mean a sharp descent for the whole family from bearable into unbearable poverty.” A moment of lightness when the village woman gather for the making of a pita (flattened and worked dough rolled up with a filling) leads to a description of the only woman not admiring of Andja, the woman doing the baking. This is a Jewish woman who has no longer any name. Her father, husband, brothers and little son have been killed by the Germans, and she has gone mad. Andja has taken care of her for two years. Her story is detailed in the context of the “profound horror and grief” of the Serbian people at the treatment of Jews: the women and children “were imprisoned, in bitter winter weather, in exhibition pavilions of glass and concrete. They were given one miserable snack of soup and bread a day and set to work to sweep the snow off the airport at Zemun. It was rumoured that they were poisoned with gas in vans, but this cannot be believed. . . .A new principle was apparent in this extermination, that of using up human power. Fuel for power was scarce. Human lives were cheap . . . .We were deeply moved by the calamity of the Jewesses, but when the same methods were applied to Christians and we heard of the arrest of friends and neighbours, we said, “How dreadful!” but we did not feel anything except relief that we ourselves were spared. Nature did not let us feel everything. After a time she made us insensitive so that we should not go mad. We were ashamed of being insensitive, but we remained sane.” There is more on the condition of the poor woman, with the realisation that for Jewish women in Serbian society at that time, their “devotion and noble creative impulse” had no outlet in the Synagogue or in the creative arts: ”All their talent was therefore bestowed on home and family. So the Jewess, when her home and family were destroyed, had nothing whatever to which her thoughts could turn, and God in his mercy had sent her the gift of madness.” This is a rare reference to religious faith, as despite important feast days for sometimes quite fictitious saints, the peasants mostly had recourse to pagan beliefs, for example, in healing. “Vida owned a large white pig, called Belko. When we came to the village Belko had just been destined for fattening and had undergone the operation necessary for this purpose. He was bleeding copiously down his back legs and, to cure him of bleeding, both his ears had been pierced and stuck through with plants of dog’s mercury pulled up whole. He walked about flapping this greenery, for all the world, like Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane, a very strange sight.” The second time the pita making is described it is the author’s hostess who makes it, under the primitive conditions prevailing in her house, where through the door open due to smoke and darkness, the hens and cats took an interest in the dough being stretched on a tablecloth on the floor, and when they were chased out, in rushed a pig, and so on. The end product, she says, was delicious! She is always respectful, and sometimes admiring of, the peasants and their lives and problems respectfully detailed with her observations on the twin gods, “Poverty and Necessity” under the rule of “Earth and Sky”, driving every aspect of their existence. This is where there is a reference to beatings, where she did not try to explain that in England they are considered cruel; she realises that in the worst of the severity of need, beatings can have the result of driving people or animals to that last, vital effort. There is so much more of interest in this book, and the hardships of living in the village are viewed with imagination and insight. Savka, in particular, the grandmother, ruled her household “with a dignity quite queenly”, and the author marvels that “In the six months that I stayed in their house I never heard a voice raised or a word spoken in anger.” Lastly (I try not to write a very long review) I would repeat that there is no sentimentality whatsoever in this book, and the human faults and failings of the people described are never glossed over. The author does return to her now half-bombed-out house in Belgrade, but life, and relations, have changed; due to her sympathies with England, about which she has been discreet with supporters of the Partisans, she can now be denounced. The Rule of Stalin is mad enough to provoke the Rule of Earth and Sky....more
I read this novel after reading Ian's excellent and comprehensive review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). A comment on the back cover from TI read this novel after reading Ian's excellent and comprehensive review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). A comment on the back cover from The Sunday Telegraph describes this book as "genuinely moving" and the style as developing "an almost hypnotic power over the reader". I found this to be absolutely true. I read it at every opportunity. I was grateful for Ian's alert about the opening pages of the book; nothing prepares the reader for the seemingly disconnected series of episodes, images and references. But they all make sense later. Ian's review details the setting - Ceauşescu's Romania. The book focuses on a group of students who become suspects, and are targeted, under the dictatorship. I looked up Herta Müller, and discovered that parts of the book are autobiographical, for instance the job of the female protagonist, who, I only now realise, is not named; the narrative is written in the first person. The German website below describes the book as «autofiktonal» and comments: "Nichts stimmt, aber alles ist wahr": (Nothing is factually correct, but everything is true). https://literaturzeitschrift.de/book-... Ian explained that the German title of the novel is "Herztier", and that this term comes up often in the book, translated as "heart-beast". GR Berengaria's response to this was that she felt instinctively that the term referred to something emotional, and I'm sure she's right. Fear dominates everything, and emotion is either unlearned, or crushed. There is ample evidence in the story of emotion seeping out in uncontrolled or inappropriate ways. The characters are isolated, necessarily deprived of loving, trusting, relationships, and are desperate for affection. The German website I mentioned above explains: "Das titelgebende «Herztier» nämlich, als Begriff dem rumänischen Neologismus «inimal» als Verschmelzung von inimă (Herz) und animal (Tier) entsprechend, prägt schließlich jeden Menschen auf ganz eigene Weise, auch den lesenden". (The eponymous “heart animal”, as a term corresponding to the Romanian neologism “inimal” as a fusion of inimă (heart) and animal (animal), ultimately shapes every person in their own unique way, including those who read it.) The "heart beast" is in us all. When repressed it will surface, here at times in violence, cruelty or in nightmarish visions:
" And in between the houses stood trees so bare that the shadows of their branches made you hesitate over every step. Their shadows lay on the ground like antlers. Work was over for the day. Our eyes weren't yet used to the harsh sun. There wasn't a scrap of leaf on any of the branches. The whole of the sky hung over our heads. Thereza grew light-headed and wild. Under a tree Tereza moved her head up and down so long that its shadow touched the antlers on the ground. Under the shadows stood a beast. Tereza moved her back against the spindly tree trunk. The antlers shook, left their beast, and found it once again. When winter was over, Tereza said, a lot of people took advantage of the first sunshine of the year to go for walks in town. While they were out walking, they saw a strange beast slowly entering the city. It came on foot, though it could also fly. Tereza put her hand in her pockets and flapped the skirts of her open coat like wings. When the strange beast arrived in the big square in the middle of the city, it beat its wings, Tereza said. People began to scream and fled in fear into the houses of strangers. Only two people remained in the street. They didn't know each other. The antlers flew off the head of the strange beast and settled on the railing of a balcony. Up there in the bright sunshine the antlers shone like the lines in someone's hand. The two people saw their entire lives written in those lines. When the strange beast beat its wings again, the antlers left the balcony and settled back on the wild animal's head. Then the strange beast trudged down the bright, empty streets, out of the city. When it was far away, the people emerged from the strangers' houses and went about their lives once again. The fear remained in their faces. It twisted their features. Those people were never happy again. But the other two went about their lives and avoided all misfortune. Who were those two people? I asked. I didn't want an answer. I was afraid Tereza might say: You and me."
The details of this nightmarish vision refer to images connected with the events of the narrative, and also reflect the hunting culture of the early Swabian settlers in Romania. But I feel that the description also acts on a prophetic level, foreseeing the events of 1989 when violent revolution ended the oppression and cruelty of Ceauşescu's dictatorship. It is probably superfluous to say that the poverty and ignorance of the peasants in Romania runs through every page of the book, like the thread from a loose button that the protagonist holds between her teeth in order to reuse it to sew the button back on. Of course there are many, many, more distressing examples. Personally I feel that the title in English does indicate the poverty and bitterness of the people, and the insidious effect of the lives they are forced to lead; but it does seem to skirt around this almost indefinable word, "Herztier", which underlies everything, not only in these characters, but in every person crushed and fearful as these people had become. The narrative flow of this novel does not falter. Dramatic tension hisses from every page; what will happen to our group of students, and when? Is it only a matter of time, or will something of the 'Herztier" emerge? I have just remembered Yeats' stunning lines from his poem "Second Coming": "And what strange beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
Herta Müller's book is utterly compelling, and the style simply astonishing....more
An English version follows this review. Both reviews reveal something of the story, though as little as possible.
Il me fait toujours plaisir de trouveAn English version follows this review. Both reviews reveal something of the story, though as little as possible.
Il me fait toujours plaisir de trouver un narratif simple qui fonctionne en allégorie. Ce voyage en train démontre de traits humains universels, en nous offrant Marcel, un type réprésentif, je ne dis pas ordinaire, mais j’y suis tentée, car combien y avait-il de garçons comme lui dont l’enfance fut brisée, terminée au fait, par la première guerre mondiale, et qui devaient souffrir la deuxième guerre en leur âge adulte ?
Marcel ne s’en plaint pas et affirme plus d’une fois qu’il est content de sa vie. Du moment où lui et sa famille font partie de l’exode en 1940, de la Belgique et du nord de la France, tout est bouleversé et il réagit tout autrement, non seulement lui, insiste-t-il, mais tout le monde dans ce wagon de bestiaux où sont dirigés les hommes, et les femmes non accompagnées par des enfants, des malades ou des vieux. Ces jours dans le train, et la destination finale, ont le caractère d’une métamorphose pour tous ces réfugiés – métamorphose en quoi ? Voilà où commence l’anéantissement de toute sécurité, des toute habitude quotidienne, qui constitue – ou remplace – la vie. Qu’est-ce qui en naîtra ?
Il n’y a pas de contre-interrogatoire psychologique détaillé, mais au cours du voyage apparemment interminable allant et venant dans le train, Marcel lui-même s’étonne de ses propres pensées et de ses actions, en éprouvant une liberté née de « l’entre-acte » dans laquelle il se trouve ; une liberté d’esprit, une énergie croissante. Dans le train, l’humanité est exposée, sans la protection des possessions, sans maison, sans famille. Impuissantes, libérées de toute responsabilité, ces personnes fuyantes devant l’ennemi perdent, peu à peu, l’assurance, la suffisance, qui les a soutenues jusqu’à là. Il y a des moments d’humour, tels que l’incident où l’un des voyageurs (« l’homme à la pipe ») demande au chef de gare, où l’on devait arriver dans le train, et si l’on avait le droit de le quitter : celui-là se gratte la tête pour décider s’ils étaient considérés comme des évacués ou des réfugiés ; la réponse semble finalement dépendre d’une autre question, ont-ils payé leurs billets ? Non, il n-y avait personne au guichet. Avaient-ils le droit de quitter le train ?
« Cela devenait trop compliqué pour lui et, après un geste évasif, il se précipita vers le quai 3 où un train était annoncé, un vrai train, avec des voyageurs ordinaires qui savaient où ils se rendaient et qui avaient payé leur place. »
Leur dépendance, leur impuissance dans leurs wagons de bestiaux ne s’approchent certainement pas l’état incroyablement effroyable, plus tard dans la guerre, des prisonniers en route pour les camps de concentration. Ce n’est que le ‘drôle de guerre’. L’effroi et la sensation de vide de ces voyageurs-ci dans notre train s’attache à ne pas savoir ce que sera leur futur, et à la circonstance de vivre dans une sorte d’oubli. A un certain point dans le narratif ‘l’homme à la pipe’, qui est assis, jambes pendantes, à la porte ouverte du wagon, fait une découverte, comme le train amorçait une courbe :
« Les salauds ont raccourci le train !
Leurs femmes, leurs enfants, dans les voitures de voyageurs au-devant, arriveraient où ?
Le dernier lien avec la vie normale est coupé. Qui sait si l’on se reverrait ? C’est quoi la liberté ? En quoi consiste une vie valable ?
Les derniers pages de ce récit ont référence à ces questions. Je m’attendais à quelque chose de surprenant, de révélateur; je n’y étais pas déçue.
English version
I am always pleased to come upon a simple narrative that is actually an allegory. This train journey demonstrates universal human characteristics, by offering us Marcel, representative if not exactly ordinary, although I’m tempted to call him that also, for how many boys like him were there whose childhoods were cut short, terminated really, by the First World War, and who then went through the Second World War as adults?
Marcel doesn’t complain about this and asserts more than once that he is happy with his life. From the time he and his family take part in the exodus of 1940 from Belgium and Northern France, everything is overturned, and he reacts quite differently, not he alone, but everyone in the cattle wagon where the men have been sent, and women not accompanied by children, sick, or old, people. Those days in the train, and the final destination, have the character of a metamorphosis for all these refugees – but a metamorphosis into what? Here begins the annihilation of security, daily habits, which constitute – or replace - life. What will this engender?
There is no in-depth psychological cross-examination, but in the course of this apparently interminable journey here, there and back again in the train, Marcel himself is surprised by his own thoughts and actions, experiencing a liberty born of the limbo in which he finds himself; a liberty of mind and spirit, an increasing energy. In the train, humanity is exposed, without the protection of possessions, home or family. Powerless, released from all responsibility, these people fleeing the enemy lose, little by little, the confidence and self-sufficiency that has sustained them up till now. There are moments of humour, such as the incident where one of the passengers (“the man with the pipe) asks the stationmaster where they were going on the train, and if they could leave it: the stationmaster scratches his head, trying to decide if they are to be considered as evacuees or refugees; the answer seems finally to depend on whether they’ve paid for their tickets. No, there was no one in the ticket office. Could they choose to leave the train?
“This was becoming too complicated for him, and, with an evasive gesture, he hurried off to Platform 3, where a train had been announced, a real train, with ordinary passengers who knew where they were going and who had paid for their seats.”
Their dependence, their powerlessness, is certainly nothing like the unbelievably horrifying condition, later in the war, of prisoners bound for the concentration camps. This is only the “Phoney War”. The alarm and sense of loss of these passengers in our train arises from not knowing anything about what their future is likely to be, and from existing in a limbo. At one point in the narrative “the man with a pipe”, who is seated, legs dangling, at the open doors of the wagon, makes a discovery as the train negotiates a bend:
“Those swines have shortened the train!”
Their wives and children, in the passenger coaches at the front; where would they be taken now?
The last link with normal life was cut. Who knew whether they would ever find their families again? What price liberty? What constitutes a life worth living?
The final pages of this story relate to these questions. I was expecting something surprising, something telling; I wasn’t disappointed....more
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