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.