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.