Homesick - Eshkol Nevo

This story about a young Israeli couple making an attempt to live together was an unusual reading experience, in that I seriously considered abandoning it half-way through, but persevered and was glad I did. With hindsight I think that reflects well on the skill of the author in managing to convey the loss and alienation felt in different ways by each of the multiple narrators so well that it almost pushed me away, before allowing most of them to experience some form of homecoming at the novel's conclusion. I felt that it was significant that most of the characters are able to achieve this because they were "homesick" for something they themselves had withdrawn from, whereas the only character who was still trapped at the end (literally, in an Israeli prison) was the Arab worker whose family had fled their home years before and were unable to return.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot

This was one of those books that is utterly captivating but rather hard to describe, as it somehow manages to form a coherent whole out of strands of biography, memoir (as the author's research becomes part of the narrative), medical history, and ethical debate. The focal point for all of these aspects is the life and legacy of a young woman called Henrietta Lacks, who died of cancer in 1951, unknowingly leaving behind a sample of cells from the tumour on her cervix, which became 'HeLa' - "the world's first immortal human cells". I finally tracked it down after being given a strong recommendation for it months ago, and was very glad it did because it really got me thinking and kept popping up in conversation with everyone I spoke to for weeks afterwards. I was surprised to discover that informed consent is still not always required for cell research (e.g. in the UK "Consent is not required to use tissue obtained from living patients if the tissue is anonymous to the researcher and the project has research ethics approval"), and was in total sympathy when reading about the difficulties the Lacks family had in accepting what had happened - but intriguingly, when I mentioned the book to a friend currently doing scientific research, she appeared utterly bemused by the idea that anyone might object...

Affluenza - Oliver James

Oliver James defines "the Affluenza Virus" as "a set of values which increase our vulnerability to emotional distress", namely "placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous". It's hard to argue with his basic argument that these increasingly ubiquitous values are unfulfilling and should be resisted, but I did sometimes find his writing style a little grating; is it totally ethical for a psychoanalyst to interview people for his book and then write about some of them in such a scathing way? Also, is it really necessary to come up with uncessesary and excessively capitalised jargon to turn a piece of intelligent analysis into a Big Idea? ("Virus", "Selfish Capitalism", "Having", "Being", and "Marketing Characters" were the ones I noticed, although the last few were apparently taken from the work of Erich Fromm so I suppose I can't blame James so much...)

"Virus values" are said to cause distress because they tend to lead us away from fulfilling our genuine needs, which he describes as follows:

"we need to feel secure, emotionally and materially; we need to feel part of a community, to give and receive from family, neighbours and friends; we need to feel competent, that we're not useless, are effective in chosen tasks; and we need to feel autonomous and authentic, masters of our destinies to some degree and not living behind masks."

"Selfish Capitalism", with its resultant inequalities, is seen as the underlying cause of the spread of the "Affluenza Virus" - James characterises this system as one in which: business success is judged almost exclusively on share prices; public utilities are kept in private hands; regulation of business and taxation of the rich are minimal; and excessive reliance is placed on consumption and market forces. Intriguingly, "Virus motives" are seen as more damaging than "Virus goals" - "provided the motive is intrinsic, like meeting basic material needs, supporting a family and self-efficacy, people were not made unhappy by wanting money.".

For future reference, here are the "vaccines" that James proposes that individuals should adopt against the "Affluenza Virus":

1. Have Positive Volition:
   This seems to mean taking a realistic view of yourself and your environment, taking responsibility for your choices - but not for situations outside of your control - and actively choosing to align your life with your values as far as possible.
   
2. Replace Virus Motives:
   Audit your motives and goals, and try to shift both work and play activities towards ones where the "intrinsic" motives of "interest, enjoyment and the stimulation of a challenge" are primary.
   
3. Be Beautiful:
   Try to develop a "personal, self-expressive" idea of beauty that isn't about cultural norms, appearing attractive to others, or seeking eternal youth...
   
4. Consume What You Need:
   Be grateful for what you have got ("an inside loo, a bath, a cooker, a fridge, central heating and utilities that work") and be sceptical about the advertising-induced temptation to work harder for more money for things you don't really need - particularly to pay a huge mortgage: "it is strongly advisable not to allow our self-esteem to be attached to how our home appears to others. If you allow that you happen, you are trapped on a treadmill you will be too scared to leave."
   
5. Meet Your Children's Needs:
   Try to meet your child's basic needs and give them "supportive (but not permissive, boundaryless) nurture", modelling your values but allowing the child to choose whether to adopt them. First you'll need to audit your own values and disentangle what really matters to you...
   
6. Educate Your Children:
   After a rather frightening account of "exam fever", anxiety and depression among high-achieving teenage girls, the advice is to encourage them (and rememeber ourselves) to engage with their authentic interests with curiousity and playfulness, and pursue education for its own sake rather than as a step onto the corporate ladder: "education has been hijacked by business. The goal is to create good little producers and consumers, whereas it should be an enquiring mind, capable of both scholarship and of a playful, self-determined and emotionally productive life."
   
7. Enjoy Motherhood:
   This repeated many of the themes of How Not to F*** Them Up, emphasizing the need to get off the property treadmill and value and enjoy motherhood rather than "regard[ing] only paid work as a source of self-esteem."
   
8. Be Authentic, Vivacious and Playful:
   "imagine that you have a fatal illness and are reviewing your life from that standpoint": opt out of celebrity-watching, sleep & relax more, build honest, emotionally intimate relationships, and play with small children! (I was initially confused by the distinction James makes between being "sincere" and "authentic" - but then I heard a radio news report about the "sincere" apology made by Rupert Murdoch to the family of a murdered schoolgirl whose phone had been hacked by an investigator working for his newspaper...)

There are some unsettling observations about the drawbacks of a meritocratic system in the section on education, particularly the growth of frustration and low self-esteem in a society where a competitive educational system is used to determine people's life chances. I'd be interested to read the satire he quotes from, "The Rise of the Meritocracy" by Michael Young (1958).

The Right Hand of the Sun - Anita Mason

Having fond memories of studying the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire at university, I was very interested to find this book and I was not at all disappointed. This is a brilliantly researched account which tells the story from multiple perspectives, emphasising the voices of Cortés's two translators, a Spanish man and an Aztec woman, who had both spent years as Mayan slaves and so both sat uncomfortably between the clashing cultures. This is made particularly clear through the use of names in the book, particularly that of the Aztec emperor - Cortés arrogantly refers to him as "Muckety", the Spanish translator Gerónimo is careful to learn his correct name of Muctezuma, and the Mayan woman Marina (whose name has in turn been "given" to her by Cortés) has grown up hearing tales of his power, and calls him by his title of "Lord-Who-Is-Severe".

Although I am not usually a fan of macho war stories, the battle scenes in this book were so well written that I found them totally gripping, really imagining what it would have been like to be there. Similarly, the engineering feat of constructing several ships in pieces to be carried for miles and assembled in place is described with human passion through the eyes of their designer, bringing the achievement to life. Cortés's coexisting motives of greed, ambition, and sincere religious fervour are also very well portrayed.

My only criticism of this book probably just reveals me as a lazy reader - in the middle section where the narration is given in turn to several of the Spanish gentlemen in Cortés's company, it was hard for me to keep their details and allegiances clear in my head. Other than that, I found the book compelling, rewarding, and convincing. I particularly enjoyed the tantalising glimpses at the end into the possible motivations of the strangely passive Muctezuma: Marina felt that he "knew everything that would happen" in the moment when "a low-class woman from the coast, a slave, raised her eyes and looked him in the face", and Gerónimo remembers a conversation where the emperor mused that "the Lord of the Near lacks a sacrifice" since the youth who had lived for a year as his incarnation on Earth had been killed by a Spaniard before his ritual sacrifice could take place - and as Gerónimo later realises, the other incarnation of the "Lord of the Near" was Muctezuma himself.

The Gospel According to Luke - Emily Maguire

This is a gripping but ultimately rather unsatisfying book based on the intriguing premise of an encounter between a "youth pastor" for the "Christian Revolution" and the manager of a nearby sexual health clinic, with the most endearing character being the pregnant teenager who gets caught between their colliding worlds. Although it's unfair to blame an author for how their book is marketed, I did feel that the cover image - of a young girl whose accentuated pout manages to be provocative despite the stylised tears running down her face - was a fair reflection of the book's contents. Although it touched on some serious issues and the characters were likeable and interesting, this verged on Mills & Boon at times as a passionate attraction overcame all rational objections, and the emphasis on the transformative power of a sexual awakening seemed a little teenage...

Love Marriage - V. V. Ganeshananthan

A young woman tells the story of her "globe-scattered Sri Lankan family" through a collage of fragmentary narratives which focus on 'Marriage' and the different experiences her ancestors have had of it. As her reasons for needing to explore her (Tamil) family's history become clear, we are drawn into the story of the "unofficial war" in which "no one would be right, but ... some would be more wrong" and the terrible impact it has had on her family's lives. Coming to this as someone with practically no knowledge of Sri Lankan history or politics (shamefully, I had thought the conflict was much more of a historical one than it emerges here), I found the subject matter fascinating and shocking. I was particularly interested in how the conflict continues to influence and disrupt the lives of emigrants, and a note in the acknowledgements section about preserving the anonymity of those who helped with the research brought the reality of the situation home to me. I was also interested to read a piece by the author in which she discusses the difficulty of being perceived as the spokesperson for a whole community's view of an under-reported conflict.

The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry

This book, with its twin narratives about the same life, raises some unsettling questions about the nature of memory and identity. An elderly woman attempts to write "some kind of brittle and honest-minded history of myself", and even after the factual accuracy of many of her memories is called into question, this still seems more compelling and authoritative than the facts uncovered by the detective work of the psychiatrist who must assess her to establish whether she can be "put back into the community" as the asylum where she has lived for many years is being dismantled. The characters are engaging, particularly Roseanne herself, and the book contains plenty of interesting historical context about the Irish civil war and its aftermath. The casual judgemental cruelty of a woman whose own shaky claim to respectability makes her unable to tolerate any impropriety is particularly well portrayed, as is the pain of living as an outsider in a small community. My only complaint is that - as so often happens - the book's back cover blurb dropped a hint about the story's conclusion which led me to anticipate the way that the narratives would converge and so reduced the impact of the final revelations.

How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk - Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

I enjoyed this book on parent-child communication more than I expected to - despite its rather simplistic presentation style, with lots of cartoons and "exercises" full of leading questions, I felt as though I learned quite a lot from it (particularly the sections on acknowledging children's feelings, building autonomy, and giving praise using description rather than evaluation.) The aim of the book is to present patterns of communication which represent "the most respectful, effective ways to deal with the endless challenges presented by children" and I was sufficiently impressed to want to capture the gist of it here (this is mainly based on the 'reminder' sections within each chapter).

Helping children deal with their feelings:

• Listen quietly and attentively
  
• Acknowledge their feelings with a word ("Oh... mmm... I see...")
  
• Give the feeling a name ("That sounds frustrating!")
  
• Grant the wish in fantasy ("I wish I could..." - use exaggeration and humour, even write it down)
  
• All feelings can be accepted; certain *actions* must be limited. (E.g. anger acceptable, hitting not...) Sometimes a physical outlet or an opportunity to "draw their feelings" may help them calm down to the point where they can talk.
  

Engaging cooperation:

• Describe what you see ("There's a wet towel on the bed")
  
• Give information ("The towel is getting my blanket wet")
  
• Say it with a word ("The towel!")
  
• Describe what you feel ("I don't like sleeping in a wet bed!")
  
• Write a note (e.g. a reminder above the towel rail)
  

Alternatives to punishment:

• Express your feelings strongly - without attacking character ("I'm furious that my new saw was left outside to rust in the rain!")
  
• State your expectations ("I expect my tools to be returned after they've been borrowed")
  
• Show the child how to make amends ("What this saw needs now is steel wool and elbow grease"
  
• Give the child a choice ("You can borrow my tools and return them, or you can give up the privilege of using them. You decide.")
  
• Take action (lock the tool box!)
  
• Problem solve (talk about the child's feelings and needs, and yours; brainstorm together; write down ALL ideas; work together to eliminate ideas you don't like and decide on a plan to follow through on)
  

Encouraging autonomy ("encourage your child's sense of herself as a separate, competent, self-reliant person ... is there anything you've been doing for your child that they might start doing for him or herself?"):

• Let children make choices (e.g. about clothes & food)
  
• Show respect for a child's struggle ("It can be hard to ... Sometimes it helps if...")
  
• Don't ask too many questions ("Glad to see you. Welcome home.")
  
• Don't rush to answer questions ("That's an interesting question - what do you think?")
  
• Encourage children to use sources outside the home ("Maybe xxx would have a suggestion")
  
• Don't take away hope ("That should be an experience" - even if it's tempting to try to set more "realistic" expectations)
  
• Also:
  • Let her own her own body (refrain from continual touching / invasion of physical privacy)
    
  • Stay out of the minutiae of a child's life (don't nag on trivia)
    
  • Don't talk about a child in front of them (they're not your possession)
    
  • Let a child answer for himself (redirect 3rd-party questions)
    
  • Show respect for their eventual "readiness" (don't force, urge or embarrass, just express confidence that "when you're ready"/"one of these days"/"when you decide to" it will happen)
    
  • Watch out for too many "No"s (try alternatives, such as "we're about to...", "if it were up to you...", "I'd like to help, but...", "we can do that later", "let me think about it")
    

Praise: (describe, don't evaluate!)

• Describe what you see ("I see a clean floor, a smooth bed, and books neatly lined up on the shelf")
  
• Describe what you feel ("It's a pleasure to walk into this room!" but note that "You must be so proud of yourself!" is better than "I'm so proud of you!"...)
  
• Sum up the praiseworthy behaviour with a word ("You did ... Now that's what I call ...")
  

Freeing children from playing roles:

• Look for opportunities to show the child a new picture of himself or herself (comment on behaviour that goes against the role)
  
• Put children in situations where they can see themselves differently (give them opportunities to act against the role)
  
• Let children overhear you say something positive about them
  
• Model the behaviour you'd like to see
  
• Be a storehouse for your child's special moments ("I remember the time you...")
  
• When the child acts according to the old label, state your feelings and/or your expectations. ("I don't like that. Despite your strong feelings, I expect sportsmanship from you")
  

The Concert Ticket - Olga Grushin

This unsettling story, set in Soviet Russia, describes the effect on a small family (mother, father, son and grandmother) of their participation in a year-long queue to secure a concert ticket, rumoured to be for a one-off return performance by an exiled composer. I read it assuming that it was written as a parable, exaggerated for effect, but bizarrely, the epilogue explains that it was inspired by real events: when Stravinsky accepted a 1962 invitation to return to Russia after 50 years away, "the line for tickets began a year before the performance and evolved into a unique and complex social system, with people working together and taking turns standing in line". The same thing happens to the characters in this novel - their 'real' lives gradually disintegrate as their obsession with the tickets grows, and the social world of the line becomes more significant to them than their existing relationships - or sometimes even the promised ticket itself... The book is engagingly written and the characters are believable and (mostly) likeable despite their often destructive impulses. I was intrigued by the mysterious old man near the start of the line who initially invites Anna (the mother) to "join us", explaining that the kiosk is selling "whatever you'd most like to have", and later reflects on the enlivening power of their shared experience of hope, quoting a poem:

"When you long for something intensely,
when you long for a long time,
the purity of your wait transforms
your very nature from within"

I was interested to see in an interview with the author that she says that this character contains echoes of her much-admired father.
For most of the book I found it quite bleak, as the characters seem to be neglecting opportunities to rebuild their relationships in favour of future fantasies about the solutions the concert ticket will bring, but towards the end of the book there is a major shift - perhaps proving the old man's point - as they all start to face up to their own flaws and move from deceitful scheming about how to acquire the ticket for themselves, towards a more honest and generous way of relating to each other, which makes for a more satifsying and uplifting ending.

Mobius Dick - Andrew Crumey

This was a satisfying continuation of my 'books to make your head explode' reading series started by Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr. Y. I liked the fact that the utterly bizarre cover image, with its pairs of mirrored characters, is in fact a fairly accurate representation of the plotline of much of the book. The whole thing is dense with cross-references, and yet starts with a character poking fun at the people who treat simple verbal coincidences as profound insights. The 'main' narrative concerns a physicist attempting to prevent a possible breakdown of reality caused by a secret plot to build a network of quantum computers, while another narrative strand (which is possibly a piece of writing by the main protagonist about things he doesn't know yet...) describes the experiences of his double.

Like Music, in a Foreign Language, the novel (or at least part of it!) is set in a parallel universe where Communists came to power in the UK following a German occupation during WWII, and in this book this scenario is extended into the past, with one of the narrative strands being, somewhat confusingly, an account of Schrödinger's discovery of his 'wave mechanics' theory of quantum physics, but one written as a counter-factual fiction in a universe where that did not occur. This allows for the cute observation by the author of the Schrödinger novel that it is set in a world that is "quite deliberately one that could not possibly exist. Who could believe such a thing as a female Prime Minister of Britain, or a movie actor elected President of the United States? It would be hard to be more evidently ironic without lapsing into farce." More seriously, the book ends with the same 'author' criticising 'our' world for being indifferent to truth, with our 'ridiculous and decadent' acceptance of the idea of a multiverse of realities leading to relativist chaos.

The Book of Dave - Will Self

This is a bizarre, dark and surreal novel whose plot switches between a post-apocalyptic society in which the demented ramblings of a London cab-driver have been adopted as the guiding principles for a new religion, and the disturbed life of the cabbie Dave himself. Despite the linguistic trickery of the "mokni" dialect (which is pretty funny in places) it is very readable and absorbing, but it left me somewhat confused as to what it was that I'd just read - for most of the book it is clear that the Book was a delusional mistake, and its use as the basis of a divisive and harsh social order is a tragedy, but occasionally there are flashes which appear genuinely prophetic. In particular, I found this observation from Dave very jarring, as it is such a disturbingly accurate description of the genetically engineered "moto" that appear in the future portions of the book:

"The child hadn't been a part of him at all - he was from another species, half human, half something else. He had been engineered only to be loved and then sacrificed, his corpse rendered down for whatever psychic balm it might provide."

The Good Behaviour Book - William & Martha Sears

One of the selection of 'hippie parenting books' that I'm currently reading in order to get the other side of the picture after reading Toddler Taming, this came across as a mostly-sensible guide to encouraging good behaviour without harsh punishments. I was interested by my own reaction to discovering that the authors have eight children - they mentioned this a couple of chapters in and I noticed that from that point on, I found it harder to take them seriously... even more intriguingly, this fact is presented as a positive (evidence of their experience) on the book's marketing blurb, indicating that other people (particularly Americans?) don't share my view on this! Another amusing Americanism is the inclusion of a lengthy discussion on whether there is biblical authority for smacking in their list of reasons not to hit your child ("In our opinion, nowhere in the Bible does it say you must smack your child to be a godly parent").

The authors define discipline as "what you do to encourage good behaviour" rather than emphasizing negative, punitive approaches, which seems like a good approach to me. They do discuss correction techniques, suggesting shaping a child's behaviour "through the use of praise, selective ignoring, and time-outs; through teaching an understanding of consequences; through the use of motivators, reminders, and negotiation; and through the removal of privileges". However, traditional 'punishments' tend to be given a positive spin: time out is used as 'thinking time' or 'quiet time' to help the child reflect and calm down, and surrounded by 'time in' where the child gets plenty of attention. The basic principles of discipline are listed as:

• Get connected early
• Know your child
• Help your child to respect authority
• Set limits, provide structure
• Expect obedience
• Model discipline
• Nurture your child's self-confidence
• Shape your child's behaviour
• Raise kids who care
• Talk and listen
  

The main emphasis of the book is on practising the "attachment parenting" style that the Searses advocate in order to build a sensitive, trusting relationship with a connected, secure child. In this way they claim that the need for corrective disciplining techniques later on will be significantly reduced. Their key instructions for attachment parenting are listed as: Respond to your baby's cries, Breastfeed your baby, Wear your baby, Play with your baby, Share sleep with your baby, and Become a facilitator (i.e. available and supportive but not controlling or smothering). I find the idea of sharing sleep a step too far, but (to some extent at least) I agree with and try to implement each of the other points on this list, and I do agree with their general emphasis on "parenting to sleep".

A few points that stood out for me as useful suggestions were: toddlers often behave better in an ordered environment (clearing clutter and keeping toys separated on shelves rather than muddled in boxes may help); give notice to allow gradual transitions (don't just pick up a child and leave, give them time to say goodbye to the toys etc, or incorporate slowing down and stopping into the game they are playing); involve the child in dealing with consequences (cleaning up mess, fixing broken toys etc); make eye contact, then use one simple sentence to make a positive point ("we walk indoors" rather than "don't run"), offer a motive ("get dressed so you can go outside and play") or give an alternative ("we don't touch that, but you can play with this"); write notes rather than nag older children & teens. A few of the points on ways of speaking make sense but don't come naturally to me: using the inclusive "we ..." rather than saying "no"; praising by acknowledging specifics rather than saying "good girl" or gushing over expected behaviour; and (depending on developmental level!) either breaking down tasks into small, specific, steps, or leaving space for the child to fill in the blanks or work out their own solution. I'm going to find it particularly challenging to implement their advice to foster healthy body image by using "correct" names for private parts...

I found it helpful - if worrying! - to get some warning that "the time between the ages of fourteen and eighteen months is very hard for mothers. The high-energy toddler wants to do everything, but he still needs mother involved 'big time'" - I'm hoping that the promise of being able to ease off at eighteen months helps me through this period...

The End of Mr. Y - Scarlett Thomas

After Our Tragic Universe made such an impression on me, I had to go back for more. In some ways this is very similar (an ideas-driven book with lots of intelligent dialogue and an interest in the relationship between narrative and reality) but the plot structure is very different: although the topic is loosely "thought experiments", this is a fast-paced thriller which is very far from 'storyless'. I wasn't entirely comfortable with the fact that I found this filed under science fiction in my local library, although on reflection I have to agree that some of its contents (time travel, mindreading, alternative universes) were very much at home there, even if the time travel was into the past and achieved via antiquarian bookshops and homeopathy rather than shiny futuristic machines. Once again, I found this very enjoyable and also challenging (it made me want to read up on some of the references - Heidegger, Derrida, Baudrillard, "Erewhon", "Zoonomia" etc - to get a bit more context for the ideas presented). I particularly liked the idea that if thought and matter are fundamentally the same ("because it is happening in a closed system, in which everything is made from matter"), then special types of thoughts - such as Einstein's relativity theories - could rewrite the structure of the universe. (The application of this idea to quantum physics - "No one had ever said what this tiny stuff should be doing ... So when they looked at it, they found it was doing whatever the fuck it liked" - made me laugh out loud.) Some of the passages where the heroine travels through time and space via others' minds provided opportunities for some powerful empathic writing, for example a section on the experiences of laboratory mice, and another on the private anxieties of teenage girls.

The Film Club - David Gilmour

A slight but interesting account of an unusual experiment - the author allowed his teenage son to drop out of school and continue living with him rent-free, on only two conditions: no drugs, and participation in the "film club" where father and son watched and discussed three films a week together. The concept is interesting - by working with the boy's interests the father managed to create opportunities to connect, and (either by luck or judgement) the son did end up going on to college. The book is also very readable and works as a family memoir, a reflection on parenting teens, and also a brief education on filmmaking... I enjoyed the dad's enthusiastic descriptions of scenes from films he loved, but also the son's casual dismissals, such as his observation that Breakfast at Tiffany's is "a peculiar movie ... It's about a pair of prostitutes. But the movie itself doesn't seem to know that. It seems to think it's about something sort of sweet and nutty."

The Seven Stages of Motherhood - Ann Pleshette Murphy

Subtitled "Making the most of your life as a mum", or more punchily in the original US version "Loving your life without losing your mind", this book focuses on the importance of focusing on the mother's development and needs, both for her own sake and to enable her to provide the best parenting she can. The experience of motherhood is described as being "as much about autonomy, independence, and self-actualization as it is about connectedness, dependence, and self-sacrifice. It's about taking risks and lashing ourselves to traditions, tolerating lightening-speed changes and mind-numbing boredom, juggling the practical along with the ineffable, and learning how to push through when life is so full of pain or bliss it hurts to breathe." There's also a healthy emphasis on the unrealistic expectations many women experience as they try to "do it all", believing - wrongly! - that if only they were a little more organised they could fulfil many roles perfectly without making any compromises.

I found the book interesting - there was plenty of good anecdotal material in it, and it did make me reflect on my own experiences so far - but (perhaps because I'm only just entering her third stage?) I didn't really absorb the differences between each of her 7 stages or understand what point she was trying to make by distinguishing between them. I agreed with the basic premise that motherhood involves massive identity changes, not just initially but on an ongoing basis, but as she says in her conclusion, "we revisit key issues ... at every stage of our development: how to balance work and family; when to coddle, when to let go; how to trust your gut; nurture your marriage; get a grip on your anxiety; set limits; tolerate intense feelings of love and anger."

The story that made most impact on me was a quote from a book called Nature's Thumbprint, which illustrates her basic point about the importance of examining your own attitudes and preconceptions as a mother. When a pair of identical twins were two and a half, their two adoptive mothers were asked about their eating habits - one complained that she was "at her wit's end" because the girl would only eat food with cinnamon on it, the other the other was delighted that her daughter would "eat anything" so long as she put cinnamon on it.

I was also particularly intrigued by the idea (taken from The Birth of a Mother) that towards the end of pregnancy, women's mental image of their baby tends to fade, to avoid disappointing comparisons between the real baby and the idealized imaginary one - and that the lack of an opportunity to do this adds to the difficulties faced by mothers whose babies are borm prematurely. I did experience this myself - at around 5 months I formed quite a strong image of a baby (which oddly, did turn out to match the one I eventually had!) but towards the end of the pregnancy, my husband and I both found it incredibly difficult to picture an actual baby at all.

Overall, I found this readable and reassuring but not in any way life-changing.

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway

This had been sitting in a pile of books to read for several years before I got around to it - I think I'd been expecting something dry, violent, macho and therefore hard for me to connect to. To my surprise, it is actually a thoughtful and humane portrayal of one man's experience of the intensity and the futility of desperate guerilla war. There was of course plenty of violence, and I was occasionally alienated by glorifications of hunting and bullfighting, and the portrayal of suicide as cowardly and shameful, but it was very engaging and the writing made me care about the characters.

Our Tragic Universe - Scarlett Thomas

From the gimmicky but desirable black-edged pages & gilt-patterned cover onwards, this book had a strangely powerful effect on me. On finishing it I found myself holding it longingly, wanting to extract more meaning from it and thereby connect with an imagined alternative self who could have written something like it - probably a simple reaction to the number of characters in the book who are writing books or reflecting on the nature of narrative, but one that was later revived when I noticed some points of connection between my own life and the author's.

Much of the book is explicitly about narrative structure. The heroine, Meg, has stalled on her 'literary' novel while successfully churning out genre fiction, but wants to get away from the formulaic and go back to exploring the unfathomable: "I want a tragic universe, not a nice rounded-off universe with a moral at the end." I couldn't quite decide how well I felt the balance was maintained between the 'traditional' and 'storyless' ("closer to a snake letting go of itself") elements of the narrative - there was a strongly plotted containing story with some predictable dramatic developments but there were also deliberately unresolved loose ends, some striking non-sequiturs & red herrings (like the teasing remark that "all stories with animals in them put the animals in peril"), and perhaps most refreshingly, space for reflective dialogue. I liked the idea of 'cultural premonitions' (where, for example, the only narrative direction for an 'unsinkable' ship is downwards...) and the description of modern Westerners aspiring to become fictional characters, and (like a woman playing hard to get so that her 'knight' has a dragon to slay) choosing to act like a character whose story ends in the way they want. In contrast to this, Meg appears to do a reasonable job of taking her own advice - by the end of the book she is (in what is ironically a positive heroic plot development which seems likely to lead to both career success and love!) on the path to becoming an anti-hero - a fool or hermit - spending time immersing herself in hobbies such as jam-making and sock-knitting purely for the experience of doing so.

I'm sure I didn't get everything out of this book that a more sophisticated reader might have done, but I loved it and I'd like to read more of her work.

A Beginner's Guide to Acting English - Shappi Khorsandi

A deceptively light-hearted memoir describing the comedian's early childhood in Iran, her family's arrival in London, and their eventual need to remain in the UK as refugees after her father's satirical journalism attracts the wrong kind of attention from the new Iranian regime. Most memorable for me were the accounts of phoning back to relatives in Iran and hearing her child-aunt - only a year and a half older than her - shower her with ultra-formal compliments ("What a beautiful voice you have! May I die for your voice!") and sing the praises of the Ayatollah, and also a disturbingly amusing tale about her brother traumatising a small refugee boy from the flat downstairs by appearing at the window wearing an Ayatollah Khomeini mask, which somehow brought the refugee experience to life more clearly than more brutal descriptions would have done. The book's ending - the family attain refugee status, and an epilogue provides a happy update from more recent times - is only partially satisfying, perhaps because of the real-life difficulty of cancelling out the deep feelings of fear and vulnerability powerfully described in the wake of an attempt on her father's life: ("I knew it was impossible for us to just huddle together, us four, in the house and never go anywhere, but that is what I wanted to do. It was the only way I would feel safe, but there is no way to say it without sounding mad.")

Toddler Taming - Dr Christopher Green

I'd heard a couple of people recommend this book, so when I was offered a free copy I picked it up. The book is written in a very down-to-earth, easy to follow style with some corny humour thrown in. Its common-sense approach comes across as a bit anti-intellectual in places which I found a bit offputting. The one I read was the 1992 edition, and I'm curious to know how much it has changed since, in particular whether some of the smacking-related advice I found objectionable has been toned down in the most recent version...

Some of Dr Green's core messages are very easy to agree with, such as his list of key points that children need to be happy & secure: love, consistency, a tension-free environment, a good example, reasonable expectations (i.e. most of the problems people complain about are very common among toddlers), fun and enjoyment, & confident parenting. He sensibly advocates trying to see life from a toddler's point of view, saying that their difficult behaviour tends to be caused by attention seeking, jealousy and competition, frustration (as their bodies cannot keep up with their brains), fear of separation, reaction to illness, tiredness or emotional upset, unreal parental expectations (toddlers don't have much sense yet and don't share adult values, and this needs to be understood and accepted until they are more mature), or parents bringing on trouble by dramatising an unimportant incident.

His description of "what really matters" when it comes to discipline is also pretty persuasive: love, consistency, staying calm and in control, communicating convincingly (stating what will happen rather than offering maybes and wiggle-room), avoiding trouble, boosting the best & underplaying undesirable behaviour, using common sense and cunning (e.g. offering a diversion rather than picking a fight), having sensible expectations, using safety valves (time apart or outside), remembering to be committed to providing a positive environment, & keeping a sense of humour. However, we part company a little when it comes to some of the details of how this should be implemented. Much of what he says on smacking is actually pretty sensible, and I can see that there might be value in a physical deterrent in extremely dangerous situations, but it made me feel uncomfortable that he includes smacking in his lists of steps for managing several difficult behaviours, even advocating a "light, symbolic smack" for a child who repeatedly comes to the parents' bed in the night... A lot of the more general discipline section is devoted to the "Time Out" technique, which I can't really comment on as I haven't tried using it - I'd hope to only have to attempt something like this as a last resort though. His approach to tantrums can be briefly summarised as: stay calm, try a diversion, try ignoring the behaviour, use a Time Out if needed, then forgive quickly and move on. He does acknowledge that this is going to be easier to implement at home than when out shopping!

The section on sleep in this book also didn't sit well with me, as it focused on the controlled crying technique (which I was surprised that he described as "his", I've always heard it associated with Dr Richard Ferber before). I don't want to judge this too harshly from my fortunate position of never having had to use it, but I don't like the idea of it and my gut feeling is to reject Dr Green's belief that "the more readily available the comfort at night, the worse the sleep pattern of the child" as a potentially damaging oversimplification - I do believe that it's possible to be too responsive, but I feel that being under-responsive could be far worse for the child.

Although I'm not at that stage yet, the section on toilet training seemed sensible ("don't start too early, don't force the child, and just take your time") and provided some useful rebuttals to use to the "my-children-were-out-of-nappies-by-this-age" brigade - he distinguishes between "toilet timing" where the child is placed on the potty to coincide with their regular movements, and true toilet training, which can only be achieved when the child's body and brain have matured sufficiently for them to sense, understand, and anticipate their bodily functions.

I was totally in agreement with Dr Green's advice on mealtimes, as he emphasizes making eating fun, not creating conflict over how much or what the child is eating so long as it is reasonably nutritious, and never force-feeding. "Within reason, try to give them what they want, where they want it, and when they are hungry." He also attempts to allay parental anxiety about children who won't eat by pointing out that hunger strikers can take about 68 days to die...

I did take away some useful messages from this book - in addition to the emphasis on calmness and consistency, it was useful to be reminded that toddlers just don't have the self-control to be responsible for their own behaviour in the face of temptation, and that toddler-proofing the environment and avoiding known conflict-triggers can save a lot of stress. A couple of points that made me laugh out loud relate to comparing the public behaviour of children: what you see in public places "is modified by a form of natural selection", so if your child is embarrassing you, remember the crowds of worse-behaved children whose parents are too scared to take them shopping. On a similar note, he also recommends "the therapeutic powers of MacDonald's restaurants", where "you just have to walk in the door and immediately you know that there are other children even worse-behaved than your own". These flippant points act as reminders of one of his most useful themes, that of reasonable expectations, remembering that "normal" toddler behaviour is not perfect and not making a big drama out of "non-problems".

On the whole, an interesting & very readable book with some useful content, although not one with which I could totally agree. If anything, it has inspired me to look around for one from the attachment parenting end of the spectrum, with the intention of trying to take the best points from both...

The Pursuit of Happiness - Douglas Kennedy

Selected as a big trashy novel to read while recovering from wisdom tooth extraction, this was a little more substantial (& therefore satisfying) than I'd expected. Although at its core it is indeed an epic family saga complete with doomed love affair and slowly revealed mystery, it is convincingly written and the characters are memorable and likeable. I particularly enjoyed reading it soon after The Golden Notebook as it deals in depth with the communist witch-hunts of 1950s America.

Not Quite White - Simon Thirsk

"The Welsh are blessed in the smallest of ways - by being not quite white"
- Osi Rhys Osmond

I've just googled the author of the quote above & he is described as a practising artist concerned with "integrating myth and modernity", which seems appropriate for this book. The novel is an allegorical love story between "Gwalia" (the ancient name for Wales) and "Jon Bull", the think tank researcher sent from London to present a plan for bringing electricity and running water to her isolated small Welsh town. Bull soon clashes with Dewi, the unsophisticated Welsh nationalist whose devotion to Gwalia outweighs his capacity to understand how to help her recover from the trauma that has affected her, and also with the town leaders determined to preserve their language and way of life whatever the cost. After a while it becomes apparent that Bull represents forward-looking multicultural Britain, and he is eventually able to come up with a successful plan to revive the village by embracing their language and culture and suggesting that they produce a showcase for "Enaid Cymru" - the soul of Wales as embodied in Welsh-speaking communities. The story is told in reminiscences addressed to each other, so the characters are free to interject & interpret events explicitly, such as Jon's conclusion that "it seems so clear now, looking back: the problem wasn't that you & I came from different backgrounds but that we had different ideologies. I wanted the world to leave its history & cultural baggage behind and start afresh, free of all past bitterness, resentment and distrust. You seemed destined only to drown yourself in yours." The book does a nice job of illustrating the necessity of finding a balance between looking to the past and looking to the future, and shows how something valuable can be created when two people are influenced and changed by each other.

Border Songs - Jim Lynch

A beautiful, kind and quirky celebration of difference and human connections that acknowledges Andy Goldsworthy's art and Temple Grandin's books as inspirations. The book is set on the US / Canadian border, with the central character (Brandon, a 6'8" dyslexic with a talent for ephemeral art and communicating with animals) joining the border patrol with unexpected effects for the local dairy farming community and the Canadian cannabis smugglers he is pitted against. "Hobbies", when pursued passionately, seem to have redemptive power for many of the characters in this book - Brandon creates art, his father builds a boat, and another man works on "re-inventions", reproducing the failed experiments that led to Edison's creation of the light bulb in order to share the excitement of seeing the first one working. Characters who struggle with impairments also seem to be granted unusual insights as they perceive situations more clearly - as well as the obvious theme of Brandon's talent for noticing the unusual, his mother (struggling with the onset of dementia) is the only one who takes time to really listen to the enigmatic oral historian Sophie, who most people only see through the filter of their own fantasies.

The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing

I only managed to finish this big, dense, complex novel on my 3rd attempt (although my 2nd can perhaps be discounted, as I found it difficult to concentrate on even simple books while pregnant...). It demands a high level of concentration because it deliberately plays with different ways of viewing the same events & situations, as the same characters and scenarios are presented three times: as simplified snapshots in the frame novel, from a different perspective in the central character Anna's blue notebook, and through the distorting lens of fiction (with the main characters appearing recognisably under different names) in her yellow notebook.

In the introduction to the edition I read, Lessing says that one of her main aims in the book was to capture "the intellectual and moral climate" of 1950s Britain, which I think the novel does beautifully. The political atmosphere - in which communism dominated the agenda and the only available options were membership of a dogmatic but disintegrating party or total rejection of the programme - pervades the book, and the difficulties faced by the "free women" who are trying to engage honestly with men without taking refuge in marriages of compromise are equally forcefully presented.

The central theme is the relationship between madness and a divided self (& it's only in writing this that I notice the obvious connection with R. D. Laing's ideas) - Anna is restored to herself when she allows all of her barriers to break down during her relationship with fellow-writer Saul, and ultimately discards her compartmentalised notebooks in favour of the single Golden Notebook of the title. Lessing's introduction states that the "essence of the book [...] says [...] that we must not divide things off, must not compartmentalize", picking out as an announcement of this cenral motif the comment early in the book where Anna laughingly dismisses the categories that divide people: "Men. Women. Bound. Free. Good. Bad. Yes. No. Capitalism. Socialism. Sex. Love . . .". Despite my initial struggle to get through the book without losing concentration, and occasional moments where I found it hard to engage emotionally with the characters or to relate to their inner worlds (since they put so much emphasis on Freudian & Marxist ideas & language), I found this a convincing and satisfying read.

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life - Karen Armstrong

I bought this when I went to hear her speak on the subject of 'God as imperative' (i.e. religion having meaning as a call to action rather than a set of beliefs) recently. The book is presented as a sort of accompanying workbook for her Charter for Compassion, for people who want to strengthen their ability to implement the "Golden Rule" (always treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself), and deliberately uses the familiar AA 12-step format because "we are addicted to our egotism".

The 12 steps she suggests are:

1. Learn about compassion
2. Look at your own world
3. Compassion for yourself
4. Empathy
5. Mindfulness
6. Action
7. How little we know
8. How should we speak to one another?
9. Concern for everybody
10. Knowledge
11. Recognition
12. Love your enemies

I have to admit that I found the book itself a little lightweight - there is some interesting material on the concept of compassion through history & in different faiths, but also a lot of repetition, and the passages based on neuroscience - emphasizing the capacity of the "new-brain" to overcome the "old-brain" impulses of the Four Fs (feeding, fighting, fleeing and f***ing) - seemed somewhat superficial. However, this assessment is probably missing the point - the book is presented as a challenge or signpost, & its value lies more in what the reader does with it - to judge it fairly it would (will?) be necessary to follow her instruction: "do not leave a step until the recommended practices have become part of your daily routine".

Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones

A deceptively slim book about a young girl attending a strange makeshift school on a tropical island cut off by civil war. Matilda is torn between her mother's faith and the story of Pip as told by the only white person there, in much the same way as the village is (tragically) caught between the increasingly vicious conflict of the 'redskins' and the 'rambos'. As she learns to use her imagination to escape to another world and to invent a new reality for herself, she is also - brutally - forced to realise that, as her mother and Mr. Watts ultimately agree, "We know the devil because we know ourselves. And how do we know God? We know God because we know ourselves."

Eat Pray Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

I picked this up at an airport intending it as throwaway holiday reading, and to some extent it obliged nicely - it was an absorbing but undemandng read, and didn't contain much to challenge or surprise. I did enjoy it more than I'd expected to though, and found a few memorable passages - I liked her attitude to antidepressants (try them if desperate but for the minimum time possible and only in conjunction with lots of other efforts to rescue yourself), and some of her quirky ideas (communicating with the divine via a notebook, or when things are at their worst, trying to change one thing to regain some control, even if it's just to stand on one leg while sobbing hysterically). I also laughed at the observation of one of her friends that while some people look like their pets, she had a tendency to become so absorbed in relationships that she grew to look like her men...

My favourite section was the time she spent in an Ashram in India, which is where the most substantial content of the book appears (and amusingly, if the promotional photos are anything to go by, this is the part that the film glosses over...). I liked the improvised ritual of forgiveness / freedom that a friend prescribed for her to get over her messy divorce (as she says, "we do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma ... we all need such places of ritual safekeeping ... and I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you're craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising.".) Most of all I appreciated the way she eventually found a glimpse of what she was looking for - first by persevering with the one practice she found extremely difficult, and then, having decided to embrace silence, she was asked to take on the much more in-character role of 'hostess' for a retreat. In accepting this (noting the yogic saying "God dwells within you, as you", i.e. as your true self rather than "some performance of personality" that fits your notion of a spiritual person) she found herself able to meditate fully while lurking at the back of the temple to be on hand for the retreat participants.

Two other ideas resonated with me: one was the possibility of finding a middle ground between getting ripped off or losing a friend when trying to play the benefactor (by playing a game back to call the person's bluff, while understanding their perfectly reasonable need to get the most out of the situation). The other actually came from the teaser for the sequel at the end of the book, and is the simple tactic of asking "What would you do now, if you were in our situation?" when faced with "a dispassionate customer service operator or an apathetic bureaucrat". The ending - finding love after regaining her independence and spiritual balance - does ring true, but by wrapping up the book neatly as a happy ending, it risks sending the message that finding the right man was the ultimate purpose of her quest, rather than a positive consequence of the real goal of finding peace.

The Good Thief - Hannah Tinti

I picked this up from the library because I was impressed by a couple of the reviews, particularly one imagining families reading it aloud together. Having read it, I would hesitate to choose this sometimes gruesome tale as a bedtime story - too many grave-robbers and mining disasters for my liking! I did enjoy it on one level - it has an engaging plot and some memorable characters - but overall I found the experience of reading it rather unsettling. (This may just have been because I had toothache while reading the description of the robbers trying to sell rotten teeth to a dentist?)

Manufacturing Depression (The Secret History of a Modern Disease) - Gary Greenberg

Despite the author's claim that the book deals in doubt & uncertainty, this is a determined polemic against the definition of depression as an illness that can be treated without taking account of the patient's inner life - "the pathologising of emotion for profit", as one reviewer describes it. This is a definition that needs to be examined because it is "an idea about our suffering, its source, and its relief, about who we are that we suffer this way and who we will be when we are cured."

In one of his frequent historical digressions, Greenberg states that in 1850, "to the extent that physicians were successful they relied not on knowledge of how their remedies acted biochemically to cure a disease but on luck, on trial and error and, perhaps above all else, on the placebo effect." Much of the rest of the book is devoted to demonstrating that in the case of depression, this is still accurate today. He does, however, make the interesting point that "a good working definition of disease" might be "not a condition with a specific biochemical cause, but a form of suffering that a particular society deems worthy of devoting health care resources to relieving" - in which case depression does qualify...

Much of the book is devoted to accumulating evidence against the idea that depression is a well-understood biologically-based illness which modern anti-depressants are able to cure by targeted action within the brain. The current diagnostic model of checklists and questionnaires as laid out in the psychiatric profession's manual was described (by an insider) as having "100 percent reliability but zero validity" - in other words, it accurately describes a set of symptoms, but provides no evidence that they correspond to / are caused by a single coherent disease, and confusion still reigns about the causes of depression and the mechanism(s) by which antidepressants have their effects. An interesting point about the ineffectiveness of antidepressants is that US law permits drug approval based on "substantial evidence" rather than the "preponderance of evidence" - so one study showing a drug's efficacy is enough even if many other studies suggest otherwise...

I was particularly interested in the chapter on cognitive therapy, in which Greenberg attends a course run by Aaron Beck's daughter Judy, and concludes that the approach's open intent to persuade the patient to "embrace the model" is one of the keys to its success as it explicitly harnesses the placebo effect (which Greenberg sees as a positive and valid therapeutic tool, resulting from "a patient's entering into a caring relationship with a healer"). He quotes some research to support this theory: Luborsky's confirmation of Rosenzweig's finding that "all must have prizes"; analyses of cognitive therapy trials that point out limitations such as the unreality of the control treatments or the failure to count drop-outs as failures; and Jacobson & Dobson's attempt to examine the effects of independent components of Beck's manual, which found no difference between complete or partial implementations of it.

Ultimately, Greenberg rejects the medicalisation of depression, and it's hard to disagree with the conclusion he draws from his own experiences of emerging from bleak periods (once through experiencing deep love while taking Ecstacy, once through building a house) that "the redemption of despair lies in involvement in the world and engagement with others - to put it briefly, in love".

The Photograph - Penelope Lively

The photograph of the title is one revealing an infidelity, found several years after the death of the unfaithful wife. The husband's quest to find the truth disrupts the lives of others who had been close to them, and each person is forced to confront new truths about the dead woman, reintegrate their memories of her, and rebuild remaining relationships. Two of the main characters' work is concerned with landscapes and gardens - uncovering their pasts or constructing and assessing their beauty, and there is some interesting material about our relationships with time and place here alongside the more central themes of the fallibility of memory and perception, and how our knowledge of each other can never be more than partial. Although the journey is an unsettling one for the characters involved, this is written in Lively's usual calm and gentle style, and so provides a soothing and comforting experience for the reader.

Girls of Riyadh - Rajaa Alsanea

A gossipy tale about the lives of a group of female friends in Saudi Arabia, this would be disposable holiday reading, sex-and-the-city style, if it weren't for the light it sheds on life - and particularly love and marriage - in that culture. The girls in the book are from the pampered "velvet class" (& for an interesting perspective on that see this review) but are still constantly frustrated by their position in society as women and the difficulty of finding and keeping a satisfying relationship. Most of the men in the book are portrayed as weak or hypocritical - divorcing a woman who agrees to sex between their marriage and the wedding celebration, sacrificing love to please their families, or casually mistreating a wife taken on reluctantly. The women are a little more varied, with some finding strength and ambition as the story unfolds, while others remain trapped by their obsession with the belief that finding a good husband is the main objective of a woman's life.

Emotionally Weird - Kate Atkinson

An exceptionally playful story-within-a-story which takes self-reference to extremes - the narrative is altered in response to interjections from the audience, and when life imitates art, a disaster can be undone by destroying the page where it was described. Being partially set in a university English department provides further opportunities to discuss and experiment with narrative structures and the nature of the text, but it's all done in an accessible and light-hearted way. There is mystery and intrigue in abundance - as well as a detective story being written by a central character - providing an amusing comment on Atkinson's later work (crimewriting is "the least reputable genre" which can only be made respectable by pretending it's "a postmodernist kind of thing these days"). Great fun.

Tomorrow - Graham Swift

I loved reading this. Like others of his that I've read, the narrative messes with time, in this case focusing all our attention on the 'tomorrow' that we never quite reach, leaving the reader wondering how the big revelatory conversation actually goes... In the meantime, the sleepless mother tells the story of how the secret came about, which turns out to be the story of a marriage, in an unexpurgated version that includes some information that won't be revealed even in the honesty of 'tomorrow'. Some of the cheap shots in this spoof version do hit home though...

The Blue - Maggie Gee

I picked this up having enjoyed her novel "The Ice People", and found something very different - these stories are so short that they appear to have been distilled down to a single precisely expressed and often painful idea. Several themes - and even characters - recur through the collection; the ones that made most impression on me were those told from the perspective of a rather smug central character appearing to wilfully fail to notice the pain or troubles of someone 'different' who is attempting to communicate with them.

Arlington Park - Rachel Cusk

A beautifully-written account of a day in an English suburb, with echoes of "Mrs. Dalloway", told through the eyes of a group of women who are all struggling with petty resentments, disappointments and obsessions. I love the clarity of Cusk's writing - the initial section describing the rain sweeping over the city and into the suburb brought vivid images to my mind, which is very unusual for me. Like the other books of hers that I've read ("A Life's Work" & "The Lucky Ones"), this emphasises the frustrations of family life rather than the joys, but it portrays them believably, with some startling observations along the way, and room left for hope at the end.

The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith

I spotted this in the library, having enjoyed the film, and thought I'd see how the book compared, especially as I was surprised to find that it was written in 1955, as the film seemed very modern to me despite its period setting. The film had mostly stuck closely to the plot, and the book was an enjoyable read, although it made me realise how much the film benefited from the beautiful Italian scenery. The book did show its age a little in the emphasis on repressed homosexuality and Ripley's fear of being labelled a 'sissy' or 'pansy'. Also, the final scene of the film, which had particularly impressed me, turned out to be an invention of the director based on a brief hint in the book that Ripley feels an attraction towards the character who becomes his lover in the film.

Nurture Shock - Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman

The subtitle of this book - "Why everything we think about raising our children is wrong" - inevitably exaggerates, but it does contain some genuinely surprising and intriguing findings. The chapter headings give a flavour, & I've added a few notes of things I found memorable or worth trying to implement:

• "The inverse power of praise" - experiments showing how calling children 'clever' makes them protective of their intelligent identity and less willing to risk failure; children should be taught that the brain is like a muscle that expands when stretched, and praise should focus on effort or specific positive actions.


• "The lost hour" - children now sleep an average of one hour less than 30 yrs ago; sleep is not just about rest for children, but crucial for learning, the processing of pleasant (as opposed to negative) memories, and the regulation of appetite etc.


• "Why white parents don't talk about race" - passive immersion in a multicultural environment is not enough to prevent racism, since children naturally classify on the basis of visible features; parents are scared of broaching the subject but do need to be explicit about their attitudes if they want to pass them on.


• "Why kids lie" - most children lie frequently and it's hard to tell when; they can't distinguish between a mistake and a lie so parents seem to be modelling lying when they make a sincere promise that they later can't keep; lying is often intended to please the audience so the most effective strategy for preventing it is teaching that the truth is always valued even if it's not the answer they wanted.


• "The search for intelligent life in kindergarten" - screening children for 'gifted' programmes in kindergarten is useless because their brains haven't yet finished developing; there's even some evidence to suggest that exceptional intelligence may be associated with slow brain maturation.


• "The sibling effect" - the best predictor of how siblings get along is the older child's existing friendships; social skills are learned outside the home and transferred back rather than the other way around. To improve sibling relationships, emphasise learning to have fun together, rather than conflict reduction.


• "The science of teen rebellion" - risk-taking and deception are ubiquitous in teenagers - the thrill-seeking behaviour is almost inevitable since their brains respond like addicts', only reacting positively to extreme rewards, and they are terrified of social embarrassment but have little fear of physical danger; permissive parenting doesn't appear to reduce lying; parents find arguments stressful, but for teenagers, trying to negotiate is a mark of respect since the alternative is to disrespect the parent by sneaking out and doing it anyway, so listening and making some concessions is a way to keep the dialogue open.


• "Can self-control be taught?" - a very positive description of a kindergarten programme called 'Tools of the Mind' which appears to help children develop 'executive function' skills such as planning and concentration. The children make up 'play plans' which they stick to during extended role plays, take turns telling each other stories, learn to assess the quality of their own work by checking each other's, and play games involving restraint, such as Simon Says.


• "Plays well with others" - perhaps the chapter that came closest to living up to the subtitle: educational TV leads to 'relational aggression' (because children are just as likely to learn from the extended 'bad situation' setup as from the brief reconciliation at the end that is intended to be the lesson of the show!); if an argument breaks out in front of the children, don't leave the room to spare their feelings, because it's important that they see the peaceful resolution; smacking appears to actually do less harm in families where it is used regularly, because it is normalised, whereas the occasional smackers do it angrily, conveying the message that the child has behaved so badly that they are outside of the normal rules; aggressive behaviour can be part of a toolkit used by a socially competent child; 'progressive' dads may be inconsistent and permissive, leading their children to be more aggressive than those of 'traditional' parents.


• "Why Hannah talks and Alyssa doesn't" - this one made me laugh: general TV watching doesn't impair speech development, but Baby Einstein DVDs do... the multilingual soundtracks intended to encourage language acquisistion actually delay it because they are not synched with a human face, and so babies can't process the noise as speech (babies use lip-reading to detect word boundaries). It also appears that the most important factors in encouraging a child to speak are to respond quickly to their babbling, and always to ensure that the word being taught corresponds to the focus of the child's attention (for example by wiggling it as you say the name).

How to Paint a Dead Man - Sarah Hall

I found this totally captivating - four strands of loosely-linked stories to do with art and loss, all slightly disturbing but utterly fascinating, told in brief sections with very different voices - even one (about a bereaved twin without a clear sense of her own identity) addressed to "you". I am in awe of the precision and power of her writing, and some of the scenes (such as the blind girl trying to understand the mesmerising power of her family's newly acquired television) are lingering in my imagination still - in fact, this was the kind of novel where the characters stayed with me, leaving me trying to unravel mysteries in the plot and envisage "what happened next".

Being Emily - Anne Donovan

Engaging tale about a likeable Glaswegian girl with an Emily Brontë obsession trying to find her way in life despite family tragedy and turbulent relationships. Does well at conveying the spiralling effects of grief and self-destructive behaviour as well as the struggle to balance reason with emotion and the difficulty of opening up to well-meaning adults. (I also liked her previous novel, 'Buddha Da'.)

The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

An epic hallucination of a novel that somehow manages to blend a plot about modern life for immigrants in London with fables about angels, demons, miracles and revelations without diminishing either, asking big questions along the way about identity and morality. The opening section is dramatically supernatural, which I found a little alienating, but before long sincere observations were mingling with the magical farce, as with the description of the contents of a plane falling to earth, starting with the physical detritus but moving on to the "debris of the soul" of the migrants killed in the crash:

"broken memories, sloughed-off selves, severed mother-tongues, violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, land, belonging, home."

I was also struck by the explanation, in the middle of a plot about monstrous mutant immigrants attempting to escape police custody, of how the transformation has been imposed upon them: "They describe us... That's all. They have the power of description, and we succumb to the pictures they construct."

The novel's central values are integrity - characters are tested with possible compromises of the truth, or 'easier' false identities - and mercy, as choices must be made about forgiveness or revenge. The way that these choices are handled as the story unfolds is gripping and thought-provoking.

Runaway - Alice Munro

A collection of beautifully written short stories which were utterly absorbing but easier to admire than to love. The overwhelming majority were rather bleak, and while I don't have a problem with a bit of grit in fiction, I did find it disturbing that the darkness in these tended to come from the inadequacies of the main characters themselves, or even more depressingly, from the implied impossibility of meaningful connections or true understanding between people. The story Tresspasses really got under my skin and left me quite shaken - a sign of powerful writing, but not a particularly enjoyable read!

The Road Home - Rose Tremain

A fascinating insight into the lives of economic migrants and the sheer determination required to succeed when starting out with nothing, as well as a compelling exploration of life after bereavement. The past can never be recaptured, and so the road home after a period of exile in England leads not to life as it was, but to a fresh start in a nearby town, and the central journey is about reconnecting with people and finding hope and energy after a period of numbness and flight.

The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton

A family saga told backwards, as a young woman tries to complete her grandmother's attempts to uncover her own mysterious origins and the narrative shifts between several points in time as the secrets of the past are gradually revealed. Readable and absorbing, but too reliant on a rather predictable plot, with an unfortunate tendency towards melodrama and caricature - fun to read once but would not be satisfying a second time around.

Gifted - Nikita Lalwani

This is the story of the teenage years of a young Indian girl growing up in Wales whose life comes to be increasingly defined by her mathematical ability and her father's ambitions for her, which ultimately tear the family apart. It perfectly captured the painful emotions of a teenage girl out of step with her peers - her self-defeating interactions and compulsive behaviour are utterly convincing and I really felt for her throughout, hoping against all the evidence for a happy ending.

Starter For Ten - David Nicholls

Comic novel set in the 80s, about a working-class boy's disastrous experiences as he arrives at university, joins the University Challenge team, and falls headlong for his beautiful teammate. Funny in parts, but some of his struggles & pathetic behaviour made me cringe too much on his behalf to be fully enjoyable, and the more serious sections about his background and his father's death seemed to sit uneasily alongside the humour.

The Bad Mother's Handbook - Kate Long

A lighthearted and often funny look at mother-daughter relationships and the transformations brought about by family connections, as a teenage girl's pregnancy impacts each of the three generations of women living in her home. The characters are flawed but likeable, and some serious subjects are touched on without disturbing the flow - the main premise being that it's better to appreciate what you have than to waste your life fantasising about some implausible alternative.

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

An endearing tale about a boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard, growing up through a series of captivating magical adventures and ultimately vanquishing his enemies and reclaiming his human life. I didn't pick up on the parallels with the Jungle Book until I saw Gaiman quoted as saying that he had set out to write something similar set in a graveyard - and on reflection, this hits that mark perfectly, evoking the same feelings of loneliness and confusion as the hero tries to move between the world of his upbringing and that of his birth.

The Sorrows of an American - Siri Hustvedt

I thought this was brilliant - beautiful, intelligent, and compulsively readable all at once. The characters were complex, ambiguous and likeable, the plot was filled with mysteries in the current lives of the central characters as well as their family histories, and it included a convincing and positive portrayal of the work of a psychotherapist illustrating the power of honesty and awareness when directed towards oneself and others. I particularly liked the way it managed to avoid an overly neat resolution without being unsatisfying.

Baby-led Weaning - Gill Rapley & Tracey Murkett

Rather militant exposition of the self-feeding approach to weaning, emphasising the importance of allowing the baby to be in control of the process by using finger foods and tolerating mess, and including babies in family mealtimes eating the same food as everyone else. Helpful in places, with some good lists of suitable finger foods and useful information on nutrition etc. and worth it if only for the photos of babies tucking into the most unlikely foods, but a bit extreme in the way it portrays spoon-feeding as tantamount to cruelty, and arguably not the most efficient way to increase the calorie intake of a baby that is starting to lose weight & sleep less well...

The Baby In The Mirror (a child's world from birth to three) - Charles Fernyhough

This was one of those frustrating reading experiences where an interesting book held my attention throughout, but I forgot most of it as soon as I put it down. I enjoyed the author's attempts to describe life from his infant daughter's point of view (laughing out loud at her initial recognition that her world is populated by two main characters, "a tall person, whose clothes open at the front at mealtimes, and an even taller one, who has no such talent"). A few random pieces of information about babies' cognitive development that have stuck with me are:

• Newborns emerge with a kind of synesthesia, taking a while for the senses to become differentiated (for example, in a study where infants were shown clearly different visual stimuli, there was no difference in the reactions of the visual cortex, but olfactory, auditory and even motor control areas showed differences) - "The smell of her shawl might be a dim flash of light to her. The daylight beyond her eyelids might reach her as a faint hum. She is tasting in colour, smelling in sound. Compared to that, dreaming seems positively mundane."
• Babies are born able to perceive a distinction between things that move like people and things that don't.
• Fat in the diet is massively important in the first few months because it's being used to produce the myelin sheaths that coat nerve cells in the brain and improve communication between them.
• Private speech (i.e. talking to yourself) is extremely positive for problem solving and learning and should not be discouraged.

How Not to F*** Them Up - Oliver James

Quite an easy read from a psychologist with a largely psychoanalytic approach presenting his opinions on caring for under-threes - his main assertion being the importance of a consistent, calm, responsive and tuned-in carer. I found this quite useful as it helped me to clarify my thinking around my gut feeling that I didn't like the idea of a nursery at a young age but wouldn't mind one-to-one care from a relative. I also liked the discussion of the loss of status associated with taking on the traditional "housewife" role and the importance of explicitly thinking this through and doing household chores without resentment by making it a conscious choice to do them in order to create a positive home for your baby. The most interesting idea that was new to me was his emphasis on the importance of cultivating the belief that abilities and behaviours are malleable rather than genetically determined, quoting studies showing that bad behaviour, academic underperformance, and mental illness are all more likely to "stick" if carers and children believe that they cannot be changed.

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

Reading this straight after The Other Boleyn Girl, I was unable to appreciate its complexity and depth - in comparison it seemed dry, excessively male, and rather heavy going. I found it a little inaccessible, although as with so many of the books I've tried to read recently, I expect it would be far more rewarding if read with the energy to concentrate on it properly...

The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory

Exactly the big dose of escapism I was after when I read it - absorbing and dramatic, with an enjoyable and convincing emphasis on the female perspective on life in a powerful family at the Tudor court. I did wonder occasionally whether her desire to make her heroine engaging and fresh led her into some anachronisms, for example her attitudes to the treatment of her children sometimes seemed a little too modern.

The Clothes On Their Backs - Linda Grant

Absorbing story dealing with the way people perceive each other based on the images we choose to present and what we choose to reveal or conceal about ourselves. Interesting insights on the subjects of who controls our identities and the way that these images are interpreted. The pervasive themes of clothing and image managed to be subtle and unobtrusive without losing their power.